Academics across the globe have been challenged to open up the discussion about transformational knowledge, which includes a holistic focus on higher education systems as well as decolonisation.
As interpreters of knowledge, academics should examine how they can shape alternative ways of knowing, said Crain Soudien, professor emeritus of education and African studies and former deputy vice-chancellor of the University of Cape Town, South Africa.
He was one of a diverse range of scholars who were brought together by the Australian-based Deakin University to explore how coloniality is involved in datafication and transforming social behaviour in education and international development by applying mathematical analysis.
Coloniality is explained to mean the set of attitudes, values of knowing and power structures upheld as normative by Western colonising societies to perpetuate Western dominance.
Soudien said academics could stimulate this discussion about how they manage the space in which their organisations find themselves.
In a keynote at the online ‘Decolonising Data Summit’ earlier in April, organised by the Network for International Policies and Cooperation in Education and Training (NORRAG), Soudien said that, at present, humanity was at a difficult point in the history of civilisation and required an understanding of how it got there.
Recognising that people on the planet live in an interconnected world that determines how they behave as individuals and collectives has deep implications for the world in which humans find themselves, he said.
Quoting Catherine Hoppers, a Ugandan-born professor in development education at the University of South Africa, Soudien said that “as people, we know instinctively, that no community is complete without the other” adding that “awareness of the other opens us to the largest asset that makes us come to understand elements of ourselves, which we may not have been able to come to an understanding of by ourselves without the others …”
To shape how knowledge can be inclusive, Soudien pointed to the work of Indian academic Professor Shiv Visvanathan who says that, like society, no knowledge is complete by itself and has all of the answers to the problems of the world.
Soudien urged that we strive to build a ‘knowledge commons’. In working towards this, we need to acknowledge that ‘commons’ is not possible without hospitality, reciprocity, generosity, plurality.
“Now knowledge is in a space where it can both look backward and look forward, grasp the full complexity of what it is about us and about the world. No knowledge is complete without accessing the dreams of the other,” he said.
Academics across the globe have been challenged to open up the discussion about transformational knowledge, which includes a holistic focus on higher education systems as well as decolonisation.
As interpreters of knowledge, academics should examine how they can shape alternative ways of knowing, said Crain Soudien, professor emeritus of education and African studies and former deputy vice-chancellor of the University of Cape Town, South Africa.
He was one of a diverse range of scholars who were brought together by the Australian-based Deakin University to explore how coloniality is involved in datafication and transforming social behaviour in education and international development by applying mathematical analysis.
Coloniality is explained to mean the set of attitudes, values of knowing and power structures upheld as normative by Western colonising societies to perpetuate Western dominance.
Soudien said academics could stimulate this discussion about how they manage the space in which their organisations find themselves.
In a keynote at the online ‘Decolonising Data Summit’ earlier in April, organised by the Network for International Policies and Cooperation in Education and Training (NORRAG), Soudien said that, at present, humanity was at a difficult point in the history of civilisation and required an understanding of how it got there.
Recognising that people on the planet live in an interconnected world that determines how they behave as individuals and collectives has deep implications for the world in which humans find themselves, he said.
Quoting Catherine Hoppers, a Ugandan-born professor in development education at the University of South Africa, Soudien said that “as people, we know instinctively, that no community is complete without the other” adding that “awareness of the other opens us to the largest asset that makes us come to understand elements of ourselves, which we may not have been able to come to an understanding of by ourselves without the others …”
To shape how knowledge can be inclusive, Soudien pointed to the work of Indian academic Professor Shiv Visvanathan who says that, like society, no knowledge is complete by itself and has all of the answers to the problems of the world.
Soudien urged that we strive to build a ‘knowledge commons’. In working towards this, we need to acknowledge that ‘commons’ is not possible without hospitality, reciprocity, generosity, plurality.
“Now knowledge is in a space where it can both look backward and look forward, grasp the full complexity of what it is about us and about the world. No knowledge is complete without accessing the dreams of the other,” he said.
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