Africanizing the School Curriculum: Promoting an Inclusive, Decolonial Education in African Contexts

Connecting cultures to educational settings is an essential component of critical pedagogy. This book addresses many of the key issues and challenges in decolonizing the African school curriculum. It highlights important philosophical arguments on the challenges and possibilities of achieving these goals in a meaningful manner. Topics covered in the book include:

• operationalizing the key terms of “inclusion” and “curriculum”
• strategies for Africanizing the school curriculum, and
• the implications of local knowledge for schooling reform

This book also raises a variety of key questions:

• how do we frame an inclusive anti-colonial African future and what is the nature of the work required to collectively arrive at that future?
• what education are learners of today going to receive and how will they apply it to their schooling and work lives?
• how do we re-fashion our work as African educators and learners to create more relevant understandings of what it means to be human?
• how do we challenge colonizing and imperializing relations of the academy? What are the possibilities and limits of counter-visions of education?
• how do we make school curricula inclusive through teaching, research and graduate training in questions of Indigeneity and multi-centric ways of knowing?

The book identifies specific areas of an “inclusive/decolonized curriculum agenda” through educational programming and reform. It is essential reading to any student or teacher concerned about understanding the many facets of an African school curriculum.

Perfect for courses such as: Principles of Anti-Racism Education | Anti-Colonial Thought: Pedagogical Implications | Indigenous Knowledge and Decolonization: Pedagogical Implications | Modernization, Development and Education in African Contexts | African Systems of Thought |  Introduction to African Studies

Anthony Afful-Broni is a Professor and Vice Chancellor of the University of Education, Winneba, Ghana. He was a consultant to the Academic Quality Assurance Unit of the University of Ghana. Professor Afful-Broni is the Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Educational Leadership, Ghana. He is a specialist in Time Management and still facilitates workshops on Time Management, Staff Development and Leadership in universities locally and internationally. Professor Afful-Broni led a team that ran training for the West African College of Physicians and Surgeons.

Jophus Anamuah-Mensah is a science education expert, tertiary education consultant with over 45 years in academia as university researcher, teacher, administrator, policy analyst and national and international consultant. Professor Anamuah-Mensah’s university leadership positions have included six years as Head of Department of Science Education, three years as Dean of Faculty of Education, two years as Pro-Vice Chancellor of the University of Cape Coast, and nine years as Principal and foundation Vice Chancellor of the University of Education, Winneba. Contributions to national development included chairing and producing the blueprint for the 2002 President’s Committee on Review of Educational System in Ghana. Professor Anamuah-Mensah research has centred on crafting the concept of community knowledge system to improve STEM education that has now been introduced into the school science curricula to gradually create awareness of the value of our endogenous activities.

Kolawole Raheem is the Head of the Centre for School and Community Science and Technology Studies (SACOST) at the Institute for Educational Research and Innovation Studies (IERIS), University of Education, Winneba, Ghana. He worked for many years as a Special Researcher at the Institute for Educational Research and the Department of Biological and Environmental Science, University of Jyvaskyla, Finland. Professor Raheem is a member of the Advisory Board for the Lagos State University (LASU), Africa Centre of Excellence, for Innovative and Transformative STEM Education (LASU-ACEITSE)

Ghanaian-born George Sefa Dei is a renowned educator, researcher and writer who is considered by many as one of Canada’s foremost scholars on race, anti-racism studies, Black and minority education, African Indigeneity and anti-colonial thought. Professor Dei has forty-seven (47) books, over eighty (80) refereed journal articles, as well as 78 chapters in books to his credit. Finally, in June of 2007, Professor Dei was installed as a traditional chief in Ghana, specifically, as the Gyaasehene of the town of Asokore, Koforidua in the New Juaben Traditional Area of Ghana. His stool name is Nana Adusei Sefa Tweneboah.