Abstract

ODORA, Catherine. Transformation and change in knowledge generation paradigms in the African and global contexts: implications for education research in the 21st century. Educ. res. soc. change [online]. 2017, vol.6, n.1, pp.1-11. ISSN 2221-4070.  http://dx.doi.org/10.17159/2221-4070/2017/v6i1a1.

There are many things that education and development in Africa was supposed to be about, but which it is still not. To many critical readers, education has stood by, "eyeless in Gaza" (Milton, 1667-1671, l. 41), unable to find the words and strategies deep enough to deal with epistemological disenfranchisement and cognitive justice with untold consequences for the development of the "whole person" in Africa. When it has engaged with "development," education either encourages blind assimilation into it, or it proposes ameliorative responses to the effects of development such as over consumption and environmental pollution-or selectively focuses on particular aspects of development such as economic development whilst underplaying or totally ignoring cultural and intercultural education. For its part, development has been rescued from time to time from itself by such humanising prefixes as sustainable, human-centred, and ecological, and so forth. But at its core, its pungent inheritance has yet to be unpacked. Indigenous knowledge systems impel and compel profound rethinking of the actual templates upon which both education and development are premised, and challenge both conceptually, methodologically, and ontologically a new level of action in response to the rebirth of Africa.

Keywords : knowledge; development; transformation; African perspectives; rethinking thinking.

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