Power Knowledge Contestations at a Transforming Free State Higher Education Institution: Learning Guide as a Metaphor

Vussy Nkonyane

Abstract


The purpose of this paper is to examine the connection between power relations and knowledge or truth. Foucault developed the idea of a ‘regime’ of truth. For Foucault, truth/knowledge is linked in a circular relation with systems of power which both produce and sustain it, and also to the effects of power which it induces and which extend it. The status of truth plays an economic political role. Power is produced in (and produces) social relations, and so is closely linked with systems of knowledge or truth; or in other words, with discursive practices. This complex and inevitable drama plays itself out in South African higher education institutions under the context of transformation today. The Author abuses the learning guide as a stage on which the power knowledge relations drama unfolds at two merged historically different institutions of higher learning. Critical emancipatory theory lends itself well to allow a focused gaze on the unfolding engagements between the dominant and privileged group against the dominated, excluded, disadvantaged and marginalized group. The unveiling discourses are given meaning through Textually Oriented Discourse Analysis (TODA).


Keywords


Dominant and dominated discourses; Power knowledge relations; TODA; Critical emancipatory theory; Historically Black Institutions (HBIs); Historically White Institutions (HWIs); Learning guides

Full Text:

PDF

References


Anyon, Y. (1979). Ideology and United States history textbooks. Harvard Education Review, 499(5), 361-668.

Apple, M. W. (1985). Ideology and Curriculum (2nd ed). New York: Routledge.

Churchill, W. (2003). Perversions of justice: Indigenous peoples and Anglo-American law. San Francisco: City Lights Books.

DoE (1997). A programme for higher education transformation, department of education: Education white paper NO.3, Government Gazette, 386(18207).

Evans, L. (1990). Critical social research. London: Unwin Hyman.

Fairclough, N. (1993). Discourse and social change. United Kingdom: Polity Press.

Fox, D., & Prilleltensky, I. (Eds.). (1997). Critical psychology: An introduction. London: Sage.

Fritzman, B. D. (1995). What’s behind the research? Discovering hidden assumptions in the behavioural sciences. Thousand Oaks, SA: Sage.

Geertz, E. G. (1998, February). Competing paradigms in research. In M. Hardin, D. Laidlaw, & M. Hesketh (2004, ed.), Accreditation of prior learning. Paper presented to a workshop on distance an open learning at Technikon Southern Africa.

Held, D. (1980). Introduction to critical theory: Horkheimer & Henchliffe. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.

Hoggart, R. T. (2004). Minority education: From to struggle. Bristol: WBC Print.

Klein, E. C. (1985). “The Winds Eyes.” In S. Harding & M. Hintikka (Eds.), Discover Reality (pp.187-207). Boston: D Reidel Publishing.

Mahlomaholo, M. G. (1998). Signification of African Cultural Identity, Individual African Identity and Performance in Mathematics among some Standard 9 Pupils in Manguang High Schools. (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). University of Western Cape.

Mahlomaholo, M. G., & Nkoane, M. (2004). Traditional approaches to learning an instruction. In J. Elen (Ed.), Learning history: Language, instructional and assessment issues (pp.7-13). Leuven: University of Leuven.

Mangan, J. A. (1993). Images for confident control: Stereotypes in imperial discourses. In J. A. Mangan (ed.), The imperial curriculum; racial images and education in the British colonial experiences (pp.6-22). New York: Routledge.

Martin-Baro, I. (1994). Writings for a liberation psychology. Harvard: Harvard University Press.

Meulenberg-Buskins, I. (1993). Free attitude interview technique. Unpublished Notes.

Nixon, W. L. (1998). Social methods of research Methods. Torronto.

Nkonyane, V. A. (2008). Free State higher education discourses: Analysing the positioning of learning guides (Unpublished Thesis). Central University of Technology. Bloemfontein South Africa.

Popkewitz, F. (1997). Strategic questioning. London: Allyn and Bacon.

Reason, P. (1996). Reflections on the purposes of human enquiry. Qualitative Enquiry. 2, 15-18.

Sematle, Z. (2003). Gender differences in black learner’s attitude towards mathematics in selected phuthatditjhaba secondary schools (Unpublished Dissertation).

Singh, G. (2006). Retrieved from http:// www.practicelearning.org.uk

Sleeter, C., & Grant, C. (1991). An analysis of multicultural education in the USA. Harvard Educational Review, 57(4), 421- 444.

Smaling, A. (1995). Open-heartedness and the diabolical openness: The dialectical of openness and closures. In I. Masso, R. A. Atkinson, S. Delamont, & J. C. Verhoeven (Eds.) (1995), Openness in research. The Netherlands, van Goramm Assen.

Tyson, C. A. (1997). A response to coloring epistemologies: Are our epistemologies racially biased? Columbus: Ohio State University.




DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3968/5279

Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.


Copyright (c)



Share us to:   

 

Please send your manuscripts to hess@cscanada.net，or  hess@cscanada.org  for consideration. We look forward to receiving your work.


 


 Articles published in Higher Education of Social Science are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC-BY).

HIGHER EDUCATION OF SOCIAL SCIENCE Editorial Office

Address: 1055 Rue Lucien-L'Allier, Unit #772, Montreal, QC H3G 3C4, Canada.
Telephone: 1-514-558 6138 
Website: Http://www.cscanada.net Http://www.cscanada.org 
E-mail: caooc@hotmail.com; office@cscanada.net

Copyright © 2010 Canadian Research & Development Center of Sciences and Cultures