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Acta Academica

On-line version ISSN 2415-0479
Print version ISSN 0587-2405

Abstract

HLATSHWAYO, Mlamuli Nkosingphile. A decolonial reading of Bernstein's sociology of education in transforming the university in South Africa. Acta acad. (Bloemfontein, Online) [online]. 2024, vol.56, n.1, pp.62-79. ISSN 2415-0479.  http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/aa.v56i1.7683.

In this paper, I reclaim Bernstein's pedagogic device to think through and theorise higher education transformation and decolonisation in the global South. I am especially persuaded by Bernstein's work on the pedagogic device and the endless possibilities it provides in re-thinking the public university and what it could be. Using South Africa as a case study, I focus on the decolonial calls sparked by the #FeesMustFall and #RhodesMustFall protests in 2015/2016 around the need to critique, evaluate and dismantle the neoliberal university in South Africa. I suggest that Bernstein's ideas of the field of production, the field of recontextualisation as well as the field of reproduction offer an intersectional, and dialectically useful, lens in making epistemic, ontological and methodological intervention(s) in transforming the university in South Africa. I end the paper with some concluding remarks on the discursive usefulness of Bernstein's work in transforming the public university in the global South.

Keywords : Bernstein; transformation; pedagogic device; higher education; teaching and learning.

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