Reflexive Ubuntu, Co-learning, and Transforming Higher Education at a Rural University in South Africa

Abstract

This chapter discusses the introduction of self-study as a viable research methodology at Walter Sisulu University (WSU), a comprehensive poorly resourced institution in a rural setting in South Africa. It outlines the processes followed towards establishing a self-study research group and shares the challenges and successes that followed. As authors, we are two African women scholars with multiple backgrounds who had to negotiate different personal and scholarship landscapes in this venture. In the chapter, we share the experiences and approaches adopted, and to do this, we had to draw from our values and cultural ideals, as people working in a university with many challenges. We reflect on this “mission” by looking at how we went about this project and how the university community received, and, finally, we reflect on what we have learned and unlearned for us to have had some results. The reciprocity between self-study research and forms of knowing is now widely acknowledged. Drawing from (LaBoskey, The methodology of self-study and its theoretical underpinnings. In: Loughran JJ, Hamilton ML, LaBoskey VK, Russell T (eds) International handbook of self-study of teaching and teacher education practices. Kluwer, Dordrecht, pp 817–869, 2004), (Kirk, Starting with the self: reflexivity in studying women teachers’ lives in development. In: Mitchell C, Weber S, O’Reilly-Scanlon K (eds) Just who do we think we are? Methodologies for autobiography and self-study in teaching. Routledge/Falmer, London, pp 231–241), (Samaras, Self-study teacher research: improving your practice through collaborative inquiry. Sage, Thousand Oaks, 2011), and Pithouse-Morgan and van Laren (2012), our commitment has been driven by the quest to generate knowledge and contribute towards meaningful social transformation at the university. The work of these scholars encapsulates the theoretical lens used in this chapter. The discussion includes situated perspectives, care, and unlearning, borrowing heavily from the reflexive ubuntu philosophy (Harrison et al., Alternation 19:12–37, 2012; van Laren et al., South Afr J High Educ 28:639–659, 2014), an offshoot of ubuntu, a concept which was “renaissanced” by Mandela, South Africa’s first democratically elected president. Our analysis shows that our cultural backgrounds and religious affiliation have affected not only our approach to our self-study work but also our thought processes. In turn, these elements have affected how we have engaged in different contexts with our students and colleagues. We explain how our personal journeys and stories brought us together through the Transformative Education/al Studies (TES) project and examine the challenges and contradictions of introducing self-study research in an environment that ironically needed an approach like self-study for revival and transformation.