Aug 2026· Journal of Research in Special Educational Needs· Vol 26· 0 citations· 17 references
Abstract
Inclusive education in higher education is increasingly framed through commitments to equity, diversity, and epistemic justice, yet the enactment of these commitments remains uneven and contested. This qualitative case study examines a cross‐disciplinary staff development initiative at a UK post‐92 university that engaged academic and professional services staff with decolonial approaches to curriculum design. Grounded conceptually in praxis, positionality and pluriversality, the initiative comprised participatory workshops and a practical toolkit intended to support critical reflection on colonial legacies in teaching and learning. Data were generated through workshop feedback, reflective testimonies and follow‐up consultations with 40 self‐selecting participants across education, health, business and professional services. Reflexive thematic analysis indicates that the initiative functioned primarily as a space for conceptual clarification and affective engagement rather than sustained pedagogical or structural transformation. Participants reported increased confidence in articulating decolonial concepts and heightened awareness of epistemic exclusion, alongside persistent constraints linked to assessment practices, institutional regulation and audit cultures. Although framed within inclusive education, issues of Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) and neurodiversity were largely absent from participant reflections. Rather than treating this as a limitation, the paper interrogates this absence as an empirical finding.
The South African education system has increasingly progressed in educational access and promoting equity within historically marginalised schooling environments. Despite these reforms, managing learner discipline has become a challenge because it is an under-theorised feature of inclusive education. This study explores the experiences of ten departmental heads (DHs) in implementing inclusive disciplinary practices for learners in digitally evolving classrooms. Underpinned by the inclusive pedagogical theory and transformational leadership theory, this study utilised a qualitative approach within an interpretivist paradigm and a phenomenological design. Data were collected through open-ended questionnaires and semi-structured interviews and analysed through thematic analysis. The findings indicate that although DHs possess robust conceptual understanding of inclusive and restorative discipline, their capacity to implement these practices is limited by systemic and contextual challenges, including entrenched teacher beliefs, resource disparities, policy-practice disjunctions, and escalating administrative demands. However, DHs are strategically positioned to reframe disciplinary measures in inclusive education through well-conceptualised professional development programmes.
R. Mestry, T. Zwane· International Journal of Stu...· 0 citations
Decolonising assessment remains an underdeveloped yet essential component of higher education transformation. In research, much attention has been assigned to decolonising content knowledge and pedagogy, with limited attention to assessment. Hence, this systematic literature review examines empirical studies published between 2018 and 2025 to explore how decolonial assessment is enacted in higher education. Using the PRISMA 2020 framework, 17 studies were analysed to identify theoretical foundations, methodological trends, dominant themes, key findings, and literature gaps to make recommendations for future research. The findings reveal six interconnected practices characterising decolonial assessment: humanising learning, contextualising assessment within students’ cultural and community realities, disrupting power hierarchies through co-creation, collaborative and peer-based approaches, diversifying modes of expression, and enhancing transparency and cultural responsiveness. These practices validate students’ lived experiences, foreground multiple epistemologies, and challenge traditional assessment norms, thereby promoting deeper engagement, agency, and belonging. However, the scholarship is constrained by a reliance on small-scale qualitative designs, limited theoretical development, and regional concentration, particularly in South Africa and the United States. The review concludes that while decolonial assessment offers transformative potential, its broader institutional uptake requires methodological pluralism, stronger theoretical frameworks, and policy-level support. The paper recommends embedding decolonial principles in assessment design, expanding research across diverse contexts, and strengthening lecturer capacity to develop equitable, inclusive, and contextually grounded assessment practices that advance epistemic justice in higher education.
Nonjabulo Madonda, L. Jita· Education sciences· 0 citations
Higher education in South Africa has been widely critiqued for privileging Eurocentric epistemologies that marginalise local knowledge systems and distance learning from the socio-political realities students inhabit. Such dynamics constrain students’ capacity to critically engage the historical and structural forces shaping identity, belonging, and wellbeing. Responding to these concerns, this study examines how a collaborative, arts-based pedagogical strategy centred on graffiti can advance more inclusive and socially responsive teaching practices for diverse student populations. Grounded in critical pedagogy and decolonial theory and informed by the group psychoanalytic concept of the social unconscious, the study conceptualises a graffiti installation as a participatory archive through which students explore the intersections of identity, power, place, and collective memory. A qualitative, participatory design was employed with 12 postgraduate students (7 psychology and 5 design students) across 2 private South African institutions. Through a series of facilitated workshops, participants engaged in critical dialogue, collaboratively created a graffiti installation in a public campus space, and reflected on the meanings embedded in the evolving artwork. Data were generated through the visual artifact, transcribed discussions, participant reflections, and facilitator notes, and analysed using iterative thematic and visual analysis. Findings indicate that the collaborative process enabled students to articulate complex experiences of identity, belonging, and mental health while situating these within broader socio-historical dynamics. The installation functioned as a dialogical and multimodal learning space that supported diverse forms of expression, legitimised experiential knowledge, and uncovered both visible and silenced tensions. The chapter’s original contribution lies in demonstrating how participatory visual methods can operationalise intellectual decolonisation in practice while advancing inclusive teaching strategies that engage cognitive, affective, and spatial ways of knowing.
S. Auld· International Journal of Stu...· 0 citations
Reflective practice is a crucial component of initial teacher education (ITE), potentially guiding pedagogical praxis toward social justice and equity. Based on the written work of residents in the Chemistry Teaching Program, this article analyses the challenges and opportunities that reflection offers for developing this awareness. Through a qualitative study on the interpretive analysis of two residents' final projects, we investigate how their reflections on chemistry teaching reveal an emerging awareness (or lack thereof) of social justice and equity dimensions. The findings indicate a predominance of focusing on technical and didactic challenges and using descriptive and dialogic reflective writing modalities. While signs of sensitivity toward equity emerge—particularly in the concern for all students' understanding and pedagogical clarity—explicitly critical reflection on the structural dimensions of social justice is still incipient or absent. It is concluded that, although reflective practice constitutes fertile ground, FDI needs to implement more intentional strategies and tools to guide future teachers in connecting their didactic reflections with an active commitment to equity and social justice in the science classroom.
This commentary responds to growing but uneven engagement with decolonising occupational therapy education in South Africa. Drawing on national conversations with occupational therapy educators and reflections from international professional discourse, it highlights a striking tension: while the profession speaks confidently about occupational justice and contextual responsiveness, there remains limited articulation of what decolonising occupational therapy education entails. Situated within broader South African higher education debates, the paper clarifies the distinction between colonialism and coloniality and argues that decolonising is not additive reform, symbolic inclusion, or wholesale rejection of Global North scholarship. Rather, it is an ongoing epistemic, pedagogical and relational project. The commentary proposes three interrelated commitments to guide national dialogue: engaging in criticality and historicity through reflexive examination of power and positionality; valuing epistemic plurality through integration of diverse knowledge systems; and emphasising relational praxis that reconfigures how knowledge is co-created in education and practice. Decolonising occupational therapy education is framed not as ideological positioning, but as an ethical and professional imperative to ensure contextual relevance and epistemic justice. The article invites sustained collective engagement rather than a singular blueprint for transformation.
M. Hannington· South African Journal of Occ...· 0 citations
This study critically examines the transformation of South African higher education following the #RhodesMustFall and #FeesMustFall movements (2015–2017), which challenged racialised institutional cultures, Eurocentric epistemologies and neoliberal governance. Anchored in decolonial theory and critical pedagogy – drawing on Frantz Fanon, Ngũgĩ Wa Thiong’o, Paulo Freire and scholars of pluriversal knowledge systems – the study situates ‘Fallist’ activism within broader critiques of corporatisation, managerialism, and statutory constraints imposed by the Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET), the Council on Higher Education (CHE) and the South African Qualifications Authority (SAQA). Employing qualitative documentary analysis and narrative inquiry, the study draws on primary protest texts, student manifestos, media reports, policy documents and academic literature. Findings highlight the movements’ demands for curriculum decolonisation, free education, epistemic justice and institutional inclusivity, while revealing post-movement challenges such as intensified managerial control, audit-driven cultures and marginalisation of student agency. The study argues that while symbolic and material gains were achieved, sustainable transformation remains fragile, underscoring the need for structural, epistemic and ethical reform beyond episodic protest.
Mogomme A. Masoga· Journal of Higher Education...· 0 citations