������RNA: Indigenous Knowledge for Rural Development (IK4RD)�Africanizing and digitising our rural development curriculum: a proposal for using IK4RD and visual problem appraisal (VPA) within higher education ���

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Neil Davies Evans– DH-IGNITE 2022

Contextual setting

• The call to decolonise universities is about making their learning environments more welcoming to black students who feel alienated from their culture (Boughey in Voster, 2016).
• According to Boughey in Voster (2016) this means paying attention to changing the content of HE curricula in terms of including the:
• Geographic dimension
• Economic dimension
• Social dimension
• Political dimension
• Cultural dimension

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Conceptual setting

• Social constructivism (Piaget and Vygotsky) refers to the understanding that learning and teaching is a collective process in which we are both teachers and learners at the same time and are thus better able to understand the information we have constructed by ourselves.
• As a film-based methodology visual problem appraisal (VPA) allows learners and researchers to engage in problem solving by critically analysing documented interviews on socio-economic issues found in society.
• These VPA films are produced with the intention of providing support to teaching and learning as well as to support research activities.

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Research questions

1. How does the case study ‘Siphila Ka-nje! This is how we live! ’, uncover a diverse number of ‘wicked’ problems found within rural livelihoods in KwaZulu-Natal?
2. Can this case study help Africanize UNIZULU’s rural development curriculum and contribute to sustainable socio-economic development in South Africa?

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Research methodology

• Paradigm: Constructivism- interpretivism and critical
• Qualitative methods
• Literature review and content analysis
• Population will be the 28 participants
• Purposeful sample of all interviews
• The 28 VPA interviewees all gave consent to be filmed.

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Data collection and analysis

• The study reviewed Witteveen et al (2012) ranked topic list and interview transcripts:

Ranking using the topic list:

• 1 = mentioned once or twice
• 3 = a distinct issue in the interview
• 5 = a major issue in the interview

Diversity check

• Gender
• Languages
• Distribution of direct and indirect stakeholder also in comparison to length of text
• Presence of stakeholders

Findings

• The main results are:
• (Un)Employment, grants & income
• Health & AIDS
• Education & agricultural knowledge
• Land issues & land reform
• Family life, youth & gender
• Environmental issues
• Context of crop production & cattle production
• History of apartheid

Recommendations

• The main results are:
• (Un)Employment, grants & income – eGovernment services
• Health & AIDS – Telemedicine
• Education & agricultural knowledge – Hybrid Blended model for teaching and learning
• Land issues & land reform - eGovernment services
• Family life, youth & gender – Online wellness programme and safety app
• Environmental issues – Online awareness campaign ideas
• Context of crop production & cattle production
• History of apartheid – Online counselling

References

• Council on Higher Education (CHE) (2014). Advice to the Minister of Higher Education and Training on the Reform of the Undergraduate Curriculum in Higher Education. South Africa.
• Council for Higher Education (CHE) website. Student racial profile. Available: http://www.che.ac.za/focus_areas/higher_education_data/2013/participation Accessed 26/07/2017.
• Department of Education (DOE), (1997).Education White Paper 3: A programme for the transformation of higher education. Pretoria, South Africa. Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET), (2013). White paper for post-school education and training: Building an expanded, effective and integrated post-school system. Pretoria, South Africa.
• Evans, N.D. (2013). Predicting User Acceptance of Electronic Learning at the University of Zululand.
• Lapuz, E.B. (2016). Slideshare. Available: www.slideshare.com.
• Trading economics website (2016). South Africa Unemployment Rate . Available: http://www.tradingeconomics.com/south-africa/unemployment-rate. Accessed 01 June 2016.
• Voster, J. 2016. Curriculum in the context of transformation: Reframing traditional understanding and practices. Rhodes University.
• Witteveen, L., Lie, R. and Bele, C. (2012) . Rural Livelihoods in KwaZulu-Natal. PowerPoint.

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