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Worldviews, Knowledge and Education - EDU00064I

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  • Department: Education
  • Module co-ordinator: Dr. Eleanor Brown
  • Credit value: 20 credits
  • Credit level: I
  • Academic year of delivery: 2022-23

Module summary

The purpose of this module is to encourage students to think more critically about where knowledge comes from and explore different ways of knowing. It will analyse ways we can begin to decolonise education and research and consider worldviews that challenge dominant discourses.

Module will run

Occurrence Teaching period
A Semester 1 2022-23

Module aims

The key aims of the module are:

  • Reflecting on where knowledge comes from and what makes knowledge legitimate

  • Critiquing Eurocentric approaches to knowledge, education and research

  • Exploring different worldviews in recognition of epistemological pluralism.

  • Analysing education viewed from around the world

Module learning outcomes

Learning Outcomes

  • Understand the rise of dominant discourses about education, knowledge and research

  • Understand the impact of colonialism on education and research

  • Recognise a range of worldviews and challenges to dominant discourse on global issues

  • Analyse the power relations behind the way that knowledge is legitimised and understand a range of alternative worldviews

  • Examine approaches to education from around the world

Subject content

By the end of this module students will be able to:

Academic and graduate skills

  • Collaborative problem solving

  • Collaborative filmmaking and use of editing software

  • Effective communication

  • Presenting research on a topic

Module content

Introductory Unit

  1. Where does knowledge come from?

  2. Dominant discourses and Enlightenment knowledge

Decolonising

  1. Decolonising knowledge (traditional knowledge)

  2. Decolonising education

  3. Decolonising the university

Exploring the Pluriverse and expanding worldviews

  1. Buen vivir, Swaraj, Ubuntu

  2. Confucianism, Taoism, Ecology

  3. Degrowth, food sovereignty and environmental justice

Education and knowledge viewed from around the world

  1. Case study 1

  2. Case study 2

  3. Case study 3

Assessment

None

Special assessment rules

None

Additional assessment information

The summative assessment will be assessed using the Imagining Alternative Futures bespoke rubric in order to assess non-written content alongside the written reflections.

The group project short film will be formatively assessed but it will be necessary for students to complete this in order to do the summative assessment, which will be assessed individually.

Reassessment

None

Module feedback

Individual written feedback reports, with follow-up tutor meeting, if necessary. The feedback is returned to students in line with university policy. Please check the Guide to Assessment, Standards, Marking and Feedback for more information

Indicative reading

Kothari, A., Salleh, A., Escobar, A., Demaria, F. and Acosta, A. (eds.) (2019) Pluriverse: A Post-Development Dictionary. Tulika Books.

Bhambra, Gurminder K., Gebrial, Dalia and Nisancioglu, Kerem (eds) (2018) Decolonising the University. Pluto Press.

Sharon Stein, Cash Ahenakew, Elwood Jimmy, Vanessa Andreotti, Will Valley, Sarah Amsler, Bill Calhoun & the Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures Collective Developing (2021) Stamina for Decolonizing Higher Education: A Workbook for Non-Indigenous People. Retrieved from https://higheredotherwise.net/resources/

Sutoris, P. (2021) “Environmental Futures through Children’s Eyes: Slow Observational Participatory Videomaking and Multi-Sited Ethnography,” Visual Anthropology Review 37:2

Sutoris, P. (2018) "Elitism and its challengers: Educational development ideology in postcolonial India through the prism of film, 1950–1970," International Journal of Educational Development 60

Brown, E.J. and McCowan, T. (2018) Buen vivir’: reimagining education and shifting paradigms. Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education. 48(2) 317-323 DOI: 10.1080/03057925.2018.1427342


The information on this page is indicative of the module that is currently on offer. The University is constantly exploring ways to enhance and improve its degree programmes and therefore reserves the right to make variations to the content and method of delivery of modules, and to discontinue modules, if such action is reasonably considered to be necessary by the University. Where appropriate, the University will notify and consult with affected students in advance about any changes that are required in line with the University's policy on the Approval of Modifications to Existing Taught Programmes of Study.