Abstract
Postcolonial pedagogy invites academic teaching staff to create situations, in which hegemonic modes of knowledge production can be critically reflected and one’s own entanglement as disciplinary socialised member of (western) academia experienced. Such a postcolonial approach has been applied to a seminar in the context of cultural musicology and its impact on teaching and learning analysed. In this paper, the findings of the accompanying research are presented and discussed in relation to the concept of Bildung, theories on individual learning (in higher education) and current processes to internationalise the curricula. Throughout the argumentation, I will demonstrate how postcolonial pedagogy may cause the construction of otherness and why this simultaneously constitutes the biggest challenge as well as the profoundest reward when applying such an approach to university teaching. In addition to that, this paper introduces a definition of postcolonial pedagogy and offers recommendations to foster its implementation in higher education contexts.
Introducing the (methodological) setting
‘We need to be open-minded.’
1
The findings of this article are based on various data I collected throughout and in the aftermath of this seminar on postcolonial musicology. Being an educational developer, academically socialised in cultural anthropology and the disciplinary non-expert of the teaching team, I chose to include a scholarly perspective in our teaching and applied the roles of a participant observer and field researcher in addition to the role of an academic teacher. In this field research, I triangulated and interpreted three kinds of material: First, structured fieldnotes 4 taken after each of the 14 teaching sessions. Second, fieldnotes of each planning meeting in which my colleague and I critically evaluated the challenges of postcolonial pedagogy, the reaction and needs of our students, and the steps necessary to (still) reach the intended learning outcomes together with the group. Third, reflective statements of the group of students as well as the leading teacher, which I collected via an (anonymous) online survey long after the official closing of the course, after all assignments had been performed, all grades given and received and new academic teaching and learning experiences made. I chose to offer both – students and teaching team partner – some time to process their experiences with the postcolonial approach of the seminar. Analytically combined, all three kinds of data offered the insights presented in this paper.
The motivation for choosing a postcolonial teaching approach in the first place as well as including a scholarly perspective therein was twofold: On the one hand, my team teaching partner and I sought a way to connect our postcolonial focus in research with our learner-centred teaching modes. On the other, we wanted to gain more knowledge on how to practically facilitate the decolonisation of the university, which is, especially since the start of the project on internationalisation of the curricula in 2015 (Casper-Hehne and Reiffenrath, 2017), one strategical focus at the University of Göttingen. While the concept of internationalisation of the curriculum lays the ground for and therefore aims at decolonising university teaching, a postcolonial approach to teaching is one way to realise this inside and beyond higher education classrooms.
Let me shortly introduce what I mean when I say postcolonial approach in relation to the seminar of this case study. As a teaching team, we decided to use a working definition of postcolonial higher education teaching, which characterised it as an approach to new information by…
seeking to discover meanings and patterns from within the learning material, avoiding comparisons between the newly detected and the already known, using descriptions and names offered by context insiders instead of western scholars, critically reflecting this information in contrast to one’s prior knowledge and regarding hitherto known concepts or theories in order to enhance a critically oriented process to make meaning.
Based on these guiding characteristics, the seminar on ‘Postcolonial Musicology: Hindustani Classical Music’ was designed.
Before presenting the seminars’ realisation in detail, I will critically discuss the relevance of postcolonial approaches in academia and elaborate on its connection to the concept of Bildung as well as to basic findings on individual learning. After this, the context of the case study will be outlined against the background of the different dimension of curriculum in higher education in general and the concept of internationalisation of curricula in specific. These theoretical aspects offer the framework for this paper, whereas the two subsequent parts constitute its centrepiece. Here, I will present the results of my analysis and summarise the challenges and didactic coping strategies, while critically reflecting the experiences with this postcolonial approach to teaching. Part of this is a section in which I discuss how the experienced challenges mainly derived because of the otherness of the teaching and learning situation. Facing this otherness in higher education, is, as I will argue, the core challenge that needs to be addressed when applying a postcolonial approach to university teaching. At the end of this paper the reader will find recommendations on what to keep in mind when seeking to transfer such an approach to one’s own teaching contexts. Finally, I will offer a definition of postcolonial teaching in higher education as pedagogical approach and sum up by arguing why such an approach is indeed valuable to (further) decolonise universities.
Thinking about academia, the concept of Bildung and individual learning
Academia seeks to increase the knowledge of the world by scientific research and to disseminate it via teaching that is devoted to the concept of Bildung. Referred to as one of the most complex and contested concepts of the German (pedagogical) tradition (Faulstich, 2002: 16), the ideas behind Bildung can be linked to the era of Enlightenment. While Enlightenment aimed at educating all mankind, at enabling them to question tradition and to (re)position themselves as subjects, Bildung can be understood as the pedagogical instrument to achieve this. Nowadays, Bildung and its feature to circle around discourses of the self 5 is often defined as the ongoing process of dealing with the experiences individuals gather throughout their life; a process which makes a person change perceptions and understandings of others, of the world, and of her- or himself within it (Koller, 2012: 9).
Influenced by colonialism and its effect to systematically producing otherness (Taylor, 2016), the concept of Bildung has become a tool in western education to define which knowledge was worth distributing. Just like the concept of Bildung, academia itself is not unbiased, but lived, created and reproduced by people, who have been socialised within disciplinary modes of knowledge production, instilled with norms and values, which are being passed on through academic action. These modes of knowledge production are based on epistemologies that seek to confirm western hegemonic structures and aim at positioning former colonial societies at the centre of the world, hierarchically above others (see Said, 2003 [1978]; Spivak, 1994). Regarding this, Mbembe (2016: 33) points out that ‘[t]his hegemonic notion of knowledge production has generated discursive scientific practices and has set up interpretative frames that make it difficult to think outside these frames.’ Thus, concerning academia, postcolonial pedagogy can focus on revealing the power relations that regulate discourses in which academic teaching and learning (and research) take place. It can help to uncover what lies underneath and thereby enable the people involved to comprehend their role in (re)producing or changing these discourses. Academia needs to become aware of its colonial heritage in order to (re)position itself beyond and to fulfil its purpose as institutions of Bildung aware of former and historically created blind spots. This might reinforce and enhance the core notion of Bildung as concept: the holistic development of an individual, learning open-mindedly to locate her- or himself as a member of the world, while being able to uncover, understand and critically deal with the power relations existing in it. 6
Whereas Bildung addresses a person’s development at a more holistic level, theories of learning focus on individual processes of gathering information and making meaning. Learning theories and, especially, constructivism emphasise that each new information needs to be filled with meaning individually (Blumberg, 2009). During these mean-making processes a person critically evaluates his or her prior knowledge, decides whether the new information can be added to existing structures or whether (parts of) information already known need to be transformed (see Ambrose et al., 2010). In other words, during the process of learning a person interacts with new information and thus experiences it. In the context of postcolonial pedagogy, the importance of experience for such processes becomes even more significant. A postcolonial teaching approach focusses on individual perceptions, invites contradictory ways of understanding and seeks to avoid situations in which a teacher acts from an expert point of view. It therefore meets the demand to foster active learning, which is crucial for adult learning in general and higher education learning in particular (Fink, 2013).
Often academic teaching staff intuitively focusses on aspects that facilitate learning: We ask students what they already know about a topic, invite them to question and critically reflect new lines of argumentation, and offer feedback to help them carry on, all of which engages students and thus triggers active learning. Postcolonial pedagogy includes actions like these, adding a broader perspective. It does not only invite students to critically reflect content but to also question the way content emerged, is being talked about and dealt with. And this is crucial. Because when we learn, we do not only learn on the content-level, but simultaneously about the ways in which learning takes place. We are becoming used to learning contexts, strategies and methods and apply them without (always) questioning them. Why? Because it is easier not to question the how in order to focus more clearly on the what in learning processes. Learning needs to be understood and analysed with respect to its social context. As Berger and Luckmann argued decades ago in 1966, learning, like all realities, is socially constructed. And as such, learning contexts influence the way individuals construct their knowledge. Keeping this in mind, postcolonial pedagogy differs from other teaching approaches. Such a postcolonial approach asks teachers to first understand the socially constructed nature of each classroom and their own knowledge systems before including various epistemologies in their teaching. It asks them to critically reflect how these epistemologies relate to each other and how they as teachers might support students to position themselves within this plurality. It asks teachers to invite and enable students to apply an inductive perspective when being confronted with new subjects, instead of developing the need to first classify them. Such thinking is inherent to the mode of teaching applied in the case study presented here.
The case study and its context
To introduce the context of the case study, the dimensions of higher education curriculum offer meaningful insight. Referring to Carroll (2015: 104), I understand curriculum as ‘[…] everything that shapes the student’s learning experience,’ not just the mere syllabus. It is according to this basic definition that the different dimensions of curriculum in academia should be looked at. Higher education curriculum can be divided into two broader areas: The explicit and the implicit. Part of the explicit are the formal curriculum (e.g. the predefined content and forms of assessment) and the informal curriculum (e.g. activities offered by university institutions to support a students’ learning) (Carroll, 2015; Leask, 2015). The implicit areas of the curriculum can be divided into the hidden curriculum (the values and norms based on which members socialised in one respective learning context shape their expectations regarding suitable teaching and learning behaviour) (Leask, 2015; Thielsch, 2017) and the null curriculum (those aspects regarding content as well as values and norms excluded, or in other words “[…] what is not taught and learned in a university” (Le Grange, 2016: 7)).
Current approaches to the internationalisation 7 of the curriculum and especially internationalisation at home 8 utilise this understanding to “[…] critique and destabilise the dominant paradigms that support the status quo” (Leask, 2015: 13) of western knowledge production. Being instruments to open campuses to the world – regarding content, global perspectives and various epistemologies – the aims of both are closely linked to and overlapping with those of decolonising university. They seek to uncover hegemonic discourses and show how these are being (re)produced by higher education institutions and the people acting within them (whether knowingly or not).
Based on this, let’s take a closer look at the case study: The seminar on ‘Postcolonial Musicology: Hindustani Classical Music’ conducted at the University of Göttingen. Classified as module M.Mus.32 ‘Musical Flows, Genres, and Areas’ of the humanities master’s degree ‘Cultural Musicology’ it calls for the following intended learning outcomes: Students…
broaden their musical repertoire, acquire knowledge on the cultural contexts of the genre in question, develop the ability to critically analyse the genre from a musical and cultural perspective, classify the respective phenomenon regarding its historical and regional contexts.
Within these parameters, the module offers academic staff to include musical genres from all over the world as part of the formal curriculum. It thereby fulfils one major demand of current approaches to internationalisation of the curriculum, namely to broaden the syllabus by integrating global perspectives.
Despite its openness in terms of content, the module specifications regarding the form of assessment yield more restrictive interpretations. They evoke expectations of students and teachers based on previous assessments. These expectations, influenced by the hidden curriculum of this master’s degree, include that writing a term paper involves demonstrating one’s ability to apply scientific theories, methodologies and lines of argumentation in a way that – so far – has been rewarded with high grades. In consequence, it might be challenging for students to transfer new information regarding (genre-specific) ways of knowledge production in their writing, if these do not correspond with the epistemologies they are used to applying. For our seminar this entailed that the openness which module M.Mus.32 offers might to some extent contradict the assessment-related expectations that are lived and (re)produced by the hidden curriculum of the study programme and the people acting within.
Based on this awareness we designed the seminar ‘Postcolonial Musicology: Hindustani Classical Music’ along the parameters of postcolonial teaching and labelled it as such. From the announcement to the actual teaching the seminar has been introduced as using an inductive and postcolonial approach, in which students learn about a genre new to them by listening to the music first, instead of listening to or reading an experts’ introduction. Students were asked to develop their own paths in understanding the music, its elements and structures, without being offered genre-related terminology nor comparison to or classification in any set of musicology theory. Instead, audio and video recordings were used to become familiar with the music as well as with the various contexts of its production, representation, and performance. Within the seminar, we aimed at fostering a growing complexity in our students’ understanding of Hindustani classical music as genre, while continually reflecting their perceptions, their per-auditives, 9 and the processes of knowledge production inherent to them from a postcolonial point of view.
We worked within a triangle of contradictory focusses: We wanted our students to create their own meaning and negotiate it constructively within the group. At the same time, we wanted them to realise, how often and how easily they apply western norms and concepts without questioning whether they fit in that particular context or what kind of colonial thinking would be (re)produced by using them. We aimed at supporting processes of individual meaning-making, while constantly allowing insecurity by not accepting the use of hegemonic argumentation. This balancing between security and insecurity turns out to be the most difficult task when designing postcolonial teaching.
Critical refection on a postcolonial approach to teaching
At the beginning of this paper, I stated that one motivation to apply a postcolonial approach to teaching was to find out how claims of postcolonial theories might be realised and lived in teaching. While both of us in the teaching team had experiences in facilitating seminars on postcolonial theories and supervising student assessments on this topic, not one of us had thus far dared to apply the underlying notion of postcolonial studies – to question processes of knowledge production – in our teaching. How would our students – used to approximating music led by categories to listen out for – react, when being asked to do so without such guiding categories? How would this influence the atmosphere in the classroom? How would we as teachers cope with the anticipated insecurity of our students… and of ourselves in this process? Obviously, we expected to face some challenges. In this section, I first summarise what we anticipated and thus included in our didactical design. Later on, I will focus on the challenges we did not expect and how we reacted to them.
Dealing with the obvious: Anticipated challenges and fruitful precautions
Since the seminar was conducted as part of a master’s programme that belongs to the broad area of cultural studies, we expected our students to be used to engaging with and discussing cultural theories in general. Even though we transparently emphasised that this seminar would be using a postcolonial approach to teaching, we dedicated two sessions to the anticipated need to become familiar with a postcolonial approach to music. Fortunately, Solomon’s work (2012) on the postcolonial in ethnomusicology and the concise introduction to postcolonialism by Young (2003) offered valuable starting points for our discussion and comprehensible arguments for using such an approach in musicology. In addition to making the mode of teaching and learning in the seminar subject of discussion, we explicitly communicated that an approach like this would be challenging for us as teachers as well. Together with the group we collected and discussed ways to regulate our work in the seminar and jointly decided on a code of conduct. This code of conduct was visualised, documented and regularly presented in the seminar as reminder. Moreover, we used a symbolical object (in this case colourful glasses with ‘PoCo’ printed on the lenses) to indicate if the code of conduct had been breached. During the first sessions, one of the team teaching members was responsible to use these so-called PoCo-glasses, later on students assumed this responsibility as well. Crucial here was that every action against the code of conduct (e.g. not to use normative concepts, not to apply western terminology to describe the musical aspects experienced), whether by students of teachers, would be pointed out. That we as teachers as well could and should be subject to criticism was underlined by our positioning in the room. We decided not to sit in front, but among the group, visually reminding us and them that our primary role in the seminar was not one of non-negotiable expertise but of guidance.
Decolonising our ears was the essential aim while encountering and learning about the genre of Hindustani classical music. We expected two challenges to be caused by this: Providing enough time to listen as well as to practice how to describe what one has heard. Therefore, we included weekly listening and writing assignments as preparatory task for the respectively next session. Each week, students listened to a piece of music at home, always focussing on different aspects and formulating their experiences in writing. Each week they would receive feedback on their assignments before the beginning of the next session and were thereby equipped with assured knowledge as what to share in class and how to do so. Complementary to this regular individual feedback, the group of students was emphatically invited to give feedback regarding their learning experiences in class. We valued this feedback by opening the process of teaching for discussion, adapting the pace of the seminar as well as the complexity of the weekly assignments, and openly reflecting on individual challenges deriving from this postcolonial approach to teaching. Facilitated by the latter, we gained valuable information on the insecurity that this epistemologically challenging approach to teaching involves. Even though we expected our students as well as ourselves to experience insecurity regarding the ways to express opinions and to describe musical experiences while avoiding normative knowledge, we did not expect that the study programme’s hidden curriculum would have such an impact.
Dealing with the hidden curriculum: Insecurity by students and academic teaching staff
This section offers a closer look at how exactly the hidden curriculum, ‘[…] the various unintended, implicit and hidden messages sent to the students […]’ (Leask, 2015: 8) influenced the seminar by bringing students and teachers alike in situations in which fundamental aspects of their prior experiences on how to behave and what to expect in a seminar were contradicted or challenged. In case of the students this was mainly caused by the grading system within the study programme. Moreover, the expectations on how teaching and learning in this context should work influenced our perception as teaching team as well. During our weekly meeting, when preparing and analysing the class session, two observations tended to reoccur: On the one hand, there was wonder, even frustration regarding the pace of the seminar; on the other, there was a need to offer the group of students more security by accentuating their learning successes 10 more clearly. Both might have worked to undermine our teaching approach. Yet, since we critically reflected their quality and origins as teaching team, we generated a way to cope with our individual affective reactions and designed strategies to support our students while pursuing the postcolonial approach. I will present these strategies and the challenges they addressed in the following.
The insecurity of the group of students was caused by their habitual need to give ‘correct’ answers and to participate by offering ‘the right’ contributions. Although having agreed on the importance of multiple perspectives and explicitly questioning modes of knowledge production, their being used to collect correct information during a semester influenced their actions in this seminar. Herein lies the most powerful aspect of the hidden curriculum we experienced as teaching team: No matter how transparent, no matter how reassuring, it is the process of assessment that effects the learning strategies of students more than the approach to teaching. Not being able to change the parameters of assessment at that time (especially the obligatory grading and the asymmetrical power relation it causes between teaching staff and students), we instead focussed on integrating ways to provide more security for the students, while reflecting this from a postcolonial perspective. Let me give some examples: Sooner than planned we introduced genre specific vocabulary and invited the group to name perceived musical aspects (e.g. rhythmic patterns, tonal structures). Additionally, we included a critical discussion on the discursive power of language, the (colonial) strategy to name something in order to exert power over it (Ashcroft, 2003: 7–8), and reflected this with respect to the students’ learning experiences in our seminar. From then on, we repeatedly discussed the concepts we collected at the beginning of the semester and considered meaningful for working in a postcolonial mode, such as alterity, third space and discourse. Henceforth, we used these concepts as abstract, yet safe levels of reflection to meet and discuss the experiences in class. This way of re-grouping on theoretical ground helped our students (as much as us) to proceed on the content level. Furthermore, because describing one’s listening experiences (even while knowing some vocabulary) was challenging, we offered ways of visualisation to express the perceived without using words. Different forms of visual representations in Hindustani classical music were compared, their advantages and disadvantages discussed, and thereby we underlined that deciding to choose one form of representation always means to knowingly exclude some musical aspects and to attribute some with more importance than others.
Whereas these strategies proved to be helpful within individual sessions, the overall anxiety to fail the examination or receive bad grades reappeared various times. One reason for this became obvious during a discussion with the group, in which one student revealed the cause of her recent insecurity: She had found herself arguing with another lecturer regarding the way to question modes of knowledge production which she experienced in our class. 11 Thus, caused by the discursive power of the hidden curriculum and the expectations deriving from it, the challenges of postcolonial teaching came upon the classroom from the inside as well as from the outside. Our students found themselves confronted with a kind of higher education teaching and learning other than expected. To better understand the impact of this otherness, the next part of this chapter offers some critical remarks.
Detecting otherness. The primary challenge
In the course of one’s learning biography, various aspects influence our understanding of how the process of knowledge production should work. Entering university, this understanding reaches a new level, the educational focus shifts from a content-centred one to one that equally deals with its emergence. Learning how scholarly knowledge production is organised in general and in one discipline in particular, often constitutes a threshold for our students (see Land et al., 2003). Yet, by the means of university teaching, academic systems seek to address these thresholds and offer ways to bridge them. But when teaching is characterised as element to foster processes of academic socialisation, what does this imply for studying? Rhein (2010: 41) suggests the following: To him, the act of studying implies grasping the meaning behind scientific action and acquiring the ability to act meaningfully within and according to the same meaning system. 12 Students therefore are the agents of their own socialisation and identity development. They learn how to be a student, to gather scientific information, survey new insights, and critically reflect their doing. They learn to find their way among disciplinary relevant theories and approaches and even start identifying with some of them. One might say that a new layer of their identity evolves: A scholarly self.
This newly developed scholarly self is being constructed based on its affiliation to one disciplinary community. If a person finds her- or himself in (academic) situations that challenge the values of this community or its epistemological convictions, the construction of otherness may be provoked to (re)assure the accuracy of one’s own perspective. Both, identity and its other, are interdependent (Rapport and Overing, 2000: 12). Instead of being opposites to each other, they actually share the same border (Müller-Funk, 2016: 42) and in fact, any ‘[…] “construction” of the subject itself can be seen to be inseparable from the construction of its others’ (Ashcroft et al., 2000: 11). What does this imply for postcolonial approaches in higher education teaching? Students, whilst in the middle of developing their scholarly self, are being asked to question the essence of their disciplines’ knowledge production and to acknowledge that other ways can be equally meaningful. This value-oriented notion of otherness, which emerges because of postcolonial teaching, challenges part of a students’ identity. Furthermore, it challenges them on a habitual level. During one’s studies, a person gets used to learning in distinct ways. Being socialised as student, 13 a person knows how to behave and what to expect in class. This includes context knowledge on assessment and grading as well, which are being challenged because of an epistemologically divers, non-normative postcolonial approach to teaching.
Even if the constructed otherness regarding one’s academic values is overcome (in class), the expectations a person has as member of a specific academic discourse still may cause contradictory expectations. Perhaps, applying a postcolonial approach might be easier with first-semester students, whose socialisation in one academic field, its norms, values and expected behaviour is just beginning. Yet, whether new or experienced, the effect of becoming aware of this impulse to construct otherness offers significant learning opportunities for students and even though it is challenging it thus constitutes an important benefit of postcolonial pedagogy. It invites students and teachers alike to examine their own knowledge concepts as well as their respective origins. By experiencing something as different, as unfamiliar and strange, we find ourselves in the process of our own identity construction. As Ahmed (2000: 55) points out: ‘The strange is produced as a category within knowledge, rather than coming into being in an absence of knowledge.’ Hence, dealing with the otherness we experience offers us a gateway to encounter modes of our (individual) knowledge construction and invites us to challenge them. What better way to start learning… or teaching?
Recommendations for higher education teaching
Based on these experiences, some recommendations will be introduced, focussing on what to keep in mind when implementing a postcolonial approach to teaching. Condensed, these recommendations can be labelled as listening out and dealing with otherness. I shall start with the latter.
Dealing with otherness
As discussed above, postcolonial pedagogy may trigger resistance by students (and at times by teachers as well), when it comes to questioning or even contradicting their prior understandings on knowledge production within academic settings. When encountering this constructed otherness in a seminar, three aspects turned out to be relevant.
First, and long before the seminar starts, teachers should find another academic familiar with postcolonial thinking as ally. The main purpose of this is to provide theoretical and conceptual support during the semester. After all, one’s own involvement in the hidden curriculum of a discipline as well as its hegemonic ways of knowledge production is complex. Thus, chances are that one might fall back into former teaching habits and/or perceptions. Being able to discuss the challenges faced regularly during the seminar and to reflect on the students’ expectations helps to become aware of one’s expectations regarding how academic teaching and learning should work. Working as teaching team offers the most accurate support, 14 since both experience the entire teaching process and every situation in class. Still, even having a colleague as ongoing critical friend throughout the semester is invaluable.
Second, evaluate possibilities to prevent grading anxiety by the students. Check whether non-graded assessment is possible and, if this is not the case, try to divide the assessment in a graded and a non-graded part (e.g. a portfolio). Illustrate in class why assessment criteria might differ from the criteria students are familiar with (maybe encountering them just now in other seminars), thereby connecting the aims of postcolonial teaching in the intended learning outcomes and thus in the grading.
Third, offer as much transparency as possible regarding the fact that the seminar is being conducted as postcolonial seminar, including a short introduction as to what is meant by it. Once the semester starts and the group meets for the first time, reason your intentions for using a postcolonial approach, help students to understand the main goals of postcolonial theories and how this will influence the way of working during the seminar. Discuss openly how this may challenge everyone, students and teacher(s) alike, and decide together on a code of conduct for realising that kind of postcolonial perspective within the seminar. Ensure the relevance of the code by making it part of every session, e.g. by appointing one student as guard of it. If working as teaching team, this role can be taken by one teacher during the first weeks, in order to establish it as vivid part of the seminar.
Together, these three aspects constitute a basis for the second part of what can be recommended in accordance to the finding: To listen out for individual learning processes.
Listening out
Whereas dealing with the otherness of postcolonial pedagogy can (to a certain extent) be designed beforehand, this approach to teaching involves dealing with sudden individual insecurities as well. This is a challenge that might be anticipated yet needs to be explored continually. Listening out to the students’ learning processes, their needs as individual learners as well as group is crucial and should therefore be included as a core aspect in one’s teaching in class and beyond. After all, each individual involved in such a teaching and learning context faces her and his own challenges by encountering individually constructed versions of otherness. And as teachers we should be aware of that. Therefore, asking for and valuing student feedback on their learning experience here is as important as offering examples and content-related feedback to them. A postcolonial approach to teaching asks for explicit communication and multifaceted critical reflection. Both of which need time, which is why applying a flexible course design with sufficient buffer time that allows you to react to the needs of your students is necessary. Whether the insecurity of a student is caused by grading anxiety or by the concern to repeat normative thinking, as academic teacher you cannot react adequately without understanding the core of insecure behaviour. So, in a way listening out also means to try and decode the hidden curriculum that affects the various expectations inside the classroom, 15 lived and (re)produced by students and teachers alike. These expectations will have an impact on how easily (or not) students and teachers adapt to a postcolonial approach to teaching.
Finally…a definition
Postcolonial higher education pedagogy can be defined as an inductive approach to university teaching that aims at better understanding the power relations inherent in different modes of academic knowledge production; it alters the student–teacher relationship by valuing subjectivity, openly discussing contradictory perceptions (and per-auditives), and critically reflecting presumptive expert knowledge.
If the value of postcolonial theory and criticism, as Walder (2007: 195) states, ‘lies in its attention to forms of cultural representation […],’ then postcolonial pedagogy most likely receives value by its attention to the various forms of knowledge production and their intertwined connotations… which is exactly how it differs from other pedagogical approaches. It demands teaching and learning contexts to be (re)designed not only on the level of argumentation or interaction, but on the level of knowledge production itself. It is not about applying a mode of teaching in a given epistemological setting but about using one’s own conviction as an academic as starting point to be challenged. Hence, a postcolonial approach to teaching does not start by planning and designing one’s courses but by critically reflecting one’s own scholarly self.
To sum up, I would like to apply these thoughts to the characteristics of postcolonialism, which Young (2007) compiled in his definition of the term and which we used in the seminar at the beginning of our journey: ‘[P]ostcolonialism seeks to intervene, to force its alternative knowledges into the power structures of the west as well as the non-west. It seeks to change the way people think, the way they behave […]. It disturbs the order of the world. It threatens privilege and power. It refuses the superiority of western cultures.’ (Young, 2007: 7)
In this paper, I have illustrated that such an approach challenges teachers and students on various levels, since it asks them to question and (re)evaluate cornerstones of their previous academic socialisation. It dares identities to reflect the scholarly parameters based on which layers of their selves have been constructed. Summing up, I wish to emphasise that such an approach – even though challenging – is rewarding on an individual level as well as in relation to the aims of internationalising the curricula and decolonising university teaching. Postcolonial pedagogy helps our students to better understand why they learn and act in distinct ways, as individuals and as students; it helps them to better understand which kinds of power relations influence teaching and learning at Universities, how they are being (re)produced and how they can be disrupted; it irritates and challenges identities by pushing them out of their comfort zones and confronting them with their socially and academically constructed other.
If our students learn how to deal with this otherness because of a teaching approach such as described above, they learn how to listen out for and value thoughts articulated outside the frames of hegemonic knowledge and may become epistemically open-minded academics.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
My profound gratitude goes to Eva-Maria van Straaten, friend, team teaching partner and amazing academic, whose creativity and joy in teaching made this seminar a rewarding experience and self-reflective adventure.
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.