Our process involved the search for theoretical lenses to guide our reflections on university transformation in our context and curricula, specifically in enabling epistemological access for students (Morrow 2009). Jaakkola (2020:19, 22) describes such a process as theory adaptation. Starting from a focal theory (powerful knowledge, in the case of this CoP) and then problematising it, we soon experienced a conceptual need to supplement it with additional theoretical approaches. We presented our reflections at a SU conference in 2021 and continued to meet during 2022 and 2023, with conversations across various faculties and disciplines represented by the CoP members (Figure 1).

Our theoretical exploration journeyed from powerful knowledge (Muller & Young 2019) to ubuntu pedagogy (Waghid 2020), decoloniality and Fraser’s (2007) three-dimensional theory of social justice (Figure 1). We used reflective techniques (drawing and writing) to facilitate interdisciplinary discussions of the focal theories. The CoP was structured by the interdisciplinary nature of the group, which brought a variety of perspectives to our shared goal of transformation to bear on our discussions, ranging from the positivity of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) to the fluidity of social sciences. Comparison between academics’ teaching subjects facilitated discussion and reflection and enriched our perspectives.

Community of Practice members wrote vignettes about their experiences of the journey to decolonise their curricula. We turned to the vignettes as ‘resources for thinking’ in our context (Beetham et al. 2022:26). The vignettes were thus accepted as ‘personal data’ of each person’s authentic, lived experiences in diverse situations. This process contributed to this collaborative article. We came into the study with our own perceptions and interpretations, but through reflective practice and deliberations, we became aware of others’ perspectives. Over time, this process shaped our collective conclusions.

The CoP emerged in the context of the formal transformation processes at SU (Figure 2). Our engagement in the CoP, as a form of praxis, involved ‘processes of conversation, involvement and engagement as modes of revealing knowledge’ (Gibbs, Angelides & Michaelides 2004:183).

This approach inspired us to ‘dig deeper, not always to accept the authority of others, but to involve ourselves in experiences in order to know’ (Gibbs et al. 2004:185). After three years of engagement as a group, we continue to grapple with how issues of transformation can be taken up in our teaching, with our students and in our personal capacities. This grappling is demonstrated in a vignette by one of our CoP members who has taught various disciplines, written on the challenges of belonging in academia and now advises on academic development:

Our reflections left us feeling that the assimilation of our curricula into the colonial hegemony needed to be interrupted. We explored whether the concept of powerful knowledge (Muller & Young 2019) can contribute to our quest to ‘rid the curriculum of its deformative properties’ without losing its powerful properties of ‘generality, coherence, explanatory power, and capacity to extend horizons’ (2019:197). Although we agree with Muller and Young (2019:210) that the lecturer is a crucial mediator of the transformative capacity of powerful knowledge in a discipline, we were disappointed with their apparent disregard for various forms of knowledge, including the knowledges students carry with them. The criteria of powerful knowledge as existing only in formal, codified, theoretical and generalisable knowledge, places the Natural Sciences at the top of an epistemic hierarchy (Muller & Young 2019:3, 4, 18). Alderson (2020:98), on the contrary, argues that knowledge exists anywhere in any form and does not need to be bounded in ‘single-discipline systems and grammars’. We agree with Whitty (2017:10) that a discipline’s powerful knowledge should articulate with other knowledge forms. Knowledge with power would thus have an impact on professional practices and on the life chances of less privileged students (Whitty 2017:10). We were also disappointed that the theorists of powerful knowledge postponed the thorny issue Whitty raised about how powerful knowledge can best articulate with the life worlds of all learners, making it accessible without boring or alienating them (Muller & Young 2019:211).

Our CoP experienced a sense of urgency to stop alienating knowledges and students, as expressed in a vignette by one of our members of colour:

Alderson warns that alienation, such as expressed in the above vignette, results when people are treated as objects while knowledge is reified as in the theory of powerful knowledge. Powerful knowledge as a concept ‘reifies knowledge, transforming human activities and relationships (such as of knowing) into an impersonal powerful thing: powerful knowledge’ (Alderson 2020:100). It can become alienating to people when their work is reified as a commodity to be priced, bought and sold while they are treated as objects. These problems of alienation and commodification resonated with us, as one of our members expressed in the following vignette:

Instead of reifying knowledge, Alderson (2020:103) connects knowledge to a broader social and cultural context. The power of knowledge depends on human agents, also the lecturer and the students and how they decide to understand and apply knowledge in their social contexts.

To consider alternative forms of knowledge we turned to ubuntu pedagogy as an approach where human interdependence and humaneness are central to knowing and power. Waghid (2020:305) applies to higher education (HE), the African philosophy of ubuntu as sharing, belonging and participation. He emphasises humans in conversation and deliberation, rather than reifying knowledge. This approach supported our CoP’s interdisciplinary process of sharing and collaboration to empower and not alienate students and knowledge systems.

Key tenets of ubuntu pedagogy include social responsibility and cultivating citizenship, deliberative engagement in pedagogic encounters (which might be disruptive and are critical of injustice) and attentiveness to dissonance, others and otherness (Waghid 2020). This shifts the focus of HE from initiating students into knowledge towards autonomous learning in a context of co-belonging and shared humanity. Lecturers would aim to enable students’ co-belonging in pedagogical encounters, empowering them to form their own opinions and identify societal issues that require transformative action. Such co-belonging creates space for students to be critical of domination, to inquire freely and to reflect and change while being connected to others. Ubuntu theory also enabled us in the CoP to be supported in our journey through dissonance and discussion.

Our theoretical journey then turned to Fraser’s theory of social justice. It is derived from distinct obstacles that people experience within ‘parity of participation’ in various contexts. It conceptualises parity of participation as a requirement of justice that ‘permit[s] all to participate as peers in social life’ (Fraser 2007:92). These requirements include redistribution, recognition and representation. We unpack these dimensions later in this article as we discuss how we grappled with theories to support the practical implementation of decolonisation in our curricula and specific contexts.

Ethical clearance to conduct this study was obtained from the Stellenbosch University Research Ethics Committee: Social, Behavioural and Education Research (RED: SBE). (No. TL-2022-23578).

Higher education pedagogical practices in South Africa continue to draw from Western, Eurocentric views. These practices ‘other’, misrecognise, undermine and dismiss many peoples’ humanity and their sense of knowing, acting and being in the world. This is regarded as epistemic violence on the level of curricula, perpetrated by an untransformed and alienating HE landscape (Ngubane & Makua 2021:2520). Epistemic violence in Social Science research is the act of accounting for a limited number of views and promoting those views as the only knowledge of the world (Boughey & McKenna 2021). Heleta (2016:48) concurs that epistemic violence is an unacceptable form of oppression, directed at marginalised students. Leibowitz and Bozalek (2016) state that there is no complete transformation in HE without redressing the curriculum and re-centring social justice issues such as equal learning opportunities, fair participation and language equity. This means that our curriculum content must include and not alienate our students. One of our CoP members, who teaches Agrisciences and achieved teaching awards and fellowships, describes her realisation that even her best attempts to provide inclusive content and learning spaces still, sometimes, excluded students:

Studies about student experiences of seeking ‘social inclusion’ and ‘epistemological access’ in South African HE supported students’ call for decoloniality in the #mustfall movements (Ndelu in ed. Langa 2017:22). It was against the backdrop of these contrapuntal national discourses that the CoP members situated their conversations. Our reflections resonated with voices that do not homogenise and assimilate, but are open to a plurality of voices and knowledge systems.

The notion of widening access and participation in HWIs is complex. Students and staff may gain access physically; however, inclusion does not always mean the inclusion of culture. Once physical access is achieved, for some, alienation happens when curricula are exclusionary and non-representative, ignoring their life-world knowledges (McKenna 2012:52). People with diverse ways of knowing and being, still experience cultural exclusion as universities often retain remnants of patriarchal colonial systems.

Recent media reports in South Africa (Mbao 2022; Naidoo 2022; O’Regan 2022) portray HWIs such as SU as being self-serving, lacking self-interrogation of positionality and blind to socio-cultural responsibility. Universities globally have been critiqued for being slow or failing to develop language policies, curricula, methodologies and theories to create inclusive, accommodating contexts (eds. Pattman & Carolissen 2018). Fataar (2019), highlighting the (mis)recognition of the struggles of students at the post-apartheid university, refers to the exclusionary institutional discourses and practices of South Africa’s universities that continue to prevent the majority of (Black) students from achieving a successful education. This experience of access, which yet excludes and assimilates, is expressed by one of the CoP members in the following vignette:

The sense of surveillance rather than agency expresses the dilemma of assimilation.

For Fataar (ed. 2021a), recognising, embracing and aligning with the practices of all students would establish an institutional platform to properly engage students in their intellectual becoming. Such a platform, he suggests, should be based on a view of curriculum knowledge that promotes powerful conversations between disciplinary knowledge, decoloniality and students’ own life-world knowledges. He suggests a socio-epistemic centring of knowledge based on ethical social justice considerations as espoused by Zipin, Fataar and Brennan (2015:32).

There is no equal footing in South African HE. Conditions experienced by students emanate from unequal schooling to disparate current HE practices (Bozalek & Boughey 2012; Soudien 2008). Many HWIs are not sufficiently self-critical around their responses to these issues, and thus reparation is limited or stalled. Where cultural disadvantages intersect with issues stemming from apartheid, challenges and complexities are multiplied (Bozalek & Boughey 2012; Soudien 2008). Reflection and interpretation of the complex issues experienced by students at HWIs are required to highlight problematic areas in need of attention.

In our specific context, SU as an HWI has a particular historical burden as an apartheid university (Grundlingh & Nasson 2018). In the struggle to redress, SU has been an example of how challenging it is to get rid of habitual coloniality. Figure 2 tracks some of the recent events at SU. Its history as a white Afrikaans institution is reflected not only in curricula but also in physical spaces. As the curricula required transformation, the campus spaces also needed visual transformations. Perold and Costandius (2015) published on the transformative potential of collaborative art projects on the SU campus.

In response to the multiple calls to decolonise, the SU Task Team on Decolonisation advised that it cannot be assumed that ‘decolonisation will automatically be present’ (SU 2017a:2). It recommended various components to decolonise, including: restitution and accountability of the university; managerial support; understanding decolonisation terminology; and offering resources and discussion spaces for academic staff to engage in decolonisation in their disciplines (SU 2017a). Stellenbosch University adopted a restitution statement acknowledging its contribution towards the injustices of the past and its deep regret for it (SU 2018). In 2023, SU launched a short-course project to encourage the SU community to critically reflect on the restitution statement and enhance transformation.

As the decolonial discourse spread through various faculties, transformation in specific subject areas emerged. This included disciplines such as economics and business studies, teaching (America & Le Grange 2019), sports science (Cleophas 2020), biomedical research (Van Niekerk 2019) and accounting (Terblanche & Waghid 2020). Learner-centred education featured (Le Grange 2019a), with a focus on the self (Perold-Bull & Costandius 2019) and vulnerability in reconciliation (Grohmann 2020). The importance of different voices in curricula (Le Grange 2019b) as well as varied methodologies of teaching and learning were considered (Becker 2021; Perold-Bull & Costandius 2019). Case studies were examined for ‘decolonial washing’ (Le Grange et al. 2020:26), and Waghid (2021) emphasised that the decolonisation of HE ‘without critique is not possible’.

If one considers scholarly outputs as an indication of transformation, the pace of change at SU seems to have been increasing steadily (see Figure 3). The idea of decolonial knowledge building in HE and within curricula has gained traction (Fataar 2021b) with the curricula in diverse subject areas such as biomedical disciplines (Jacobs et al. 2020; Louw et al. 2021), psychology (Cornell, Kessi & Ratele 2022; Fernández et al. 2021), music (Struwig 2021), sciences (eds. Hlatshwayo et al. 2021), religion (Esau 2021), law (Quinot 2020) and more, being scrutinised recently in the light of decoloniality.

Based on such scholarship and available policies and transformation plans, there seems to be a firm commitment to transformation. However, in 2022, three racist urination incidents at male residences raised doubts about whether these aspirational transformation imperatives had reached the student population and the broader SU culture. In 2022, SU appointed a Commission of Inquiry to investigate specific racist incidents and the progress of transformation at SU. The Commission’s report (Khampepe 2022) acknowledged that although transformation policies have been put in place at SU, the pace of transformation has been slow. There are still shortcomings and challenges in understanding the lived experiences of staff and students from previously excluded communities. These challenges include issues with institutional culture, residence culture and practices and deficiencies in human interaction. This resonated with our conversations as a CoP, where we reflected that culture eats policy and task team recommendations for breakfast.

The Committee for the Institutional Response to the Commission’s Recommendations was established to run alongside existing SU transformation work. After the committee’s inaugural meeting in April 2023, Rector and Vice-Chancellor Professor Wim de Villiers acknowledged that despite SU’s ‘formidable transformation apparatus… our University remains a place of alienation for [staff and students from previously excluded communities]’ (De Villiers 2023).

In the context of our current challenges after a history fraught with physical and symbolic violence, we looked for a conceptual framework to empower our students with epistemological access. Since the #mustfall student protests at South African universities (2015–2017), there has been renewed interest in themes of decolonisation and social justice in education (Adam 2020). Because of the multiple connotations of the terms ‘social justice’ and ‘decoloniality’, academics are often confused and bewildered on how to address injustices (Matthews 2018:3). Lecturers’ views on justice are often limited to their approach to their students and their pedagogies (Giroux 2003; Keddie 2012). According to Adam (2020:2), social justice frameworks and theories have traditionally been conceptualised by institutions from the Global North, particularly the United States of America, from and for their contexts and worldviews. Superficial interpretations of social justice, based on hegemonic Global Northern intellectual thought and social theories (Ndlovu-Gatsheni 2015:485) can lead to misplaced perceptions that equate social justice to economic justice and decolonial movements to Africanisation. Yet, we found that our decolonial journey was enriched by some of the Northern theories of social justice. Lambert in Adam (2020:3) succinctly summarises this multi-dimensional framework for social justice:

While social justice discourses from the Global North mainly focus on the consequences of systems of oppression, decolonial discourses emphasise the sources of systematic oppression and dominance as argued by scholars from the Global South such as Grosfoguel (2007), Maldonado-Torres (2007), Mbembe (2016), Ndlovu-Gatsheni (2015) and Wa Thiong’o (1981). We have captured some of the decoloniality terms in Table 1.

For Morreira et al. (eds. 2021:2) decoloniality in pedagogy is an inherently plural set of practices that aim to interrupt the dominant power or knowledge matrix in HE practices. These practices affect what knowledge is considered legitimate and produced via research and then selected for a curriculum (what content is taught) and how teaching, learning and assessment occur (including the social power relations at work). Such plurality has the power to resolve the dilemma of powerful knowledges that disempower, through its intentional interruption of the power or knowledge matrix.

Drawing on Fraser (1996), we also argue for an interruption of dominant power or knowledge practices that allow HE to move beyond access to a recognition and representation component that allows for ‘parity of participation’ (Fraser 2007:92) for all. To consider the how of parity of participation for all, we found Hodgkinson-Williams and Trotter’s (2018) development of Fraser’s (1996) multi-dimensional framework for social justice useful in its transformative dimension that resembles decolonial approaches rooted in South African and Global South contexts. Bozalek and Boughey (2012) explain what Fraser sees as the dimensions necessary for influencing peoples’ abilities to act as equals. This resonates with ubuntu openness to an encounter with the other. Redistribution includes the economic dimension as the distribution of material resources that enable people to interact as equals. Redistribution in class could be to make reading material available for all students rather than saying ‘Go research it’. In another example, one of our members intentionally enabled students’ co-belonging by grouping the privileged and less privileged around workplace-based learning projects. Students with a car could fulfil the group role of transport, while students without a car had other equally important group roles, such as community communication or research preparation. While it is important to emphasise redistribution to combat the root causes of maldistribution (Hodgkinson-Williams & Trotter 2018:207), this should not take place without recognition of the cultural and social arrangements to provide equal respect for all participating in society. In class and curricula, recognition could, for example, be implemented through peer assessment, or by enabling assessment choices and diverse answers rather than one task and one correct answer. Recognising diverse assessment responses in class discussions acknowledges students’ lived experiences. If these cultural and social dimensions are represented in the curriculum, there is a potential to then achieve representation, Fraser’s (1996) third dimension of social justice. Representation implies parity of class participation, for instance through ubuntu encounters. We reflected that although students in our classes have access to HE, as a form of Fraser’s redistribution, such access is not fair and equal because of the structural inequalities of apartheid. Thus, lecturers must facilitate the recognition and representation of students’ knowledges.

To this end, our CoP conversations centred on our concern that curricular content is deeply informed by Western ideologies and that curricula need to be restructured so that they are representative and inclusive of the diverse student population in our classrooms. For example, a recognition aspect of the curriculum as shared by one of our CoP members is the inclusion of the fragrance of impepho in the Oenology curriculum, a medicinal plant used in several indigenous knowledge systems. This indigenous plant is widely used in ancestral and other rituals in South Africa. Recognising it as a fragrance reference has the effect of recognising students’ social and cultural frameworks. As such, it recognises the students, in a cyclical process between recognition and representation.

Hodgkinson-Williams and Trotter propose a reframing beyond representation (in Adam 2020:3). The term is also used by Luckett and Shay (2017:12) to highlight the need to ‘democratise the process of frame-setting itself’ after South African student protests for free and decolonised education. The dimensions of injustice in our curriculum content and assessment practices are complex and cannot be oversimplified. In this regard, Grosfoguel (2007:213) speaks of the entangled nature of decolonial discourses and how difficult it is to categorise injustices independently with this assertion: ‘Nobody escapes the class, sexual, gender, spiritual, linguistic, geographical and racial hierarchies of the modern, colonial capitalist or patriarchal world-system’ (Grosfoguel 2007:217).

In this article, we reflect on access and power in what we teach. Turning away from powerful knowledge as a theoretical source for curricular transformation, our journey leads via ubuntu pedagogy towards decoloniality with resonance in the conceptual frameworks of social justice. This journey adapted our understanding of the power of knowledge towards decolonial empowerment.