{"id":233,"date":"2017-07-27T22:33:29","date_gmt":"2017-07-27T20:33:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.seanmuller.co.za\/notesfromtheperiphery\/?p=233"},"modified":"2017-08-03T20:58:19","modified_gmt":"2017-08-03T18:58:19","slug":"decolonising-the-south-african-economics-curriculum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.seanmuller.co.za\/notesfromtheperiphery\/2017\/07\/27\/decolonising-the-south-african-economics-curriculum\/","title":{"rendered":"Decolonising the South African economics curriculum"},"content":{"rendered":"

This week I attended the ‘Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SOTL) in the South<\/a>‘ conference hosted by the University of Johannesburg, where I presented a paper entitled: “What would an (South) African economics curriculum look like?”. (A project I have gestured at previously when commenting on discussions around UCT’s economics curriculum – here<\/a>, here<\/a> – and promised<\/a> to do a follow-up on).<\/p>\n

The paper can be found in the published conference proceedings here [pdf]<\/a>. The short slide presentation can be downloaded from here [pdf]<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The conference itself was interesting and included a number of different perspectives, and opinions, on the question of\u00a0 ‘decolonisation’. The conclusion I came to was that there are two main aspects to this issue: institutional change and disciplinary change. And in both cases we need to start talking details, because that’s where the really hard work will start and become apparent. In this context, my paper aims to make a contribution in relation to the discipline of economics.<\/p>\n

In the end, my discussion of what should go in the curriculum is very limited. One reason is because of the word limit for contributions, but the main reason is that I found there to be many preliminary issues that required fleshing-out first. Some of the more provocative, and important, assertions I make are that:<\/p>\n