Critical Conversations on Knowledge, Curriculum and Epistemic Justice

Margaret Blackie is Associate Professor at the Centre for Higher Education Research, Teaching and Learning at Rhodes University in South Africa. She holds a PhD in chemistry from the University of Cape Town and a PhD in education from Stellenbosch University. Having spent most of her career working in a chemistry department and balancing medicinal chemistry research and STEM education research she now works in higher education studies. Her current research interests are on the knowledge structures in tertiary STEM education and the development of appropriate assessment practices. She has written on decoloniality in STEM education. Her work primarily draws on critical realism, social realism and Legitimation Code Theory. Kathy Luckett is Emeritus Professor in the Centre for Higher Education Development, University of Cape Town and Honorary Professor in the Centre for Higher Education Research, Teaching & Learning, Rhodes University. Currently she teaches and supervises on CHERTL’s Higher Education Studies programme and serves as Executive Editor for the ‘Teaching in Higher Education’ journal. She worked recently as Researcher for Policy Development in the Institutional Planning Department, UCT and Director of the Humanities Education Development Programme, UCT. Her research interests are sociology of knowledge and curriculum studies with a focus on the Humanities, Africana, decolonial and postcolonial studies; higher education.

Introduction – Building knowledge for higher education: engaging with the legacy of Suellen Shay 1. Knowledge-building in higher education research: analysing the work of a South African scholar, Suellen Shay 2. Understanding educational development in terms of the collective creation of socially-just curricula 3. Not there yet: knowledge building in educational development ten years on 4. From affirmative to transformative approaches to academic development 5. Beyond epistemology: the challenge of reconceptualising knowledge in higher education 6. ‘The shadows of “boundary” remain’: curriculum coherence and the spectre of practice 7. Recontextualising professional knowledge: a view on ‘practical knowledge’ 8. Curricula under pressure: reclaiming practical knowledge 9. What knowledge matters in health professions education? 10. Disciplinary knowledge practices and powerful knowledge: a study on knowledge and curriculum structures in regions 11. Curriculum governance in the professions: where is the locus of control for decision-making? 12. Extending Shay’s double truth: toward a nuanced view of subjectivity and objectivity in assessment practices