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Abstract
Academics in high-income countries are increasingly launching development studies programmes through online distance learning to engage practitioner-students in low-income countries. Are such initiatives providing opportunities to critically tackle social injustice, or merely ‘mirroring’ relations of global inequality and re-entrenching imperial practices? Building on recent scholarship addressing efforts to ‘decolonise development studies’ and the complex power dynamics they encounter, we reflect on this question by analysing experiences of faculty and students in a United Kingdom-based online development studies programme, focusing particularly on perspectives of development practitioner-students working from Africa. We discuss barriers to social inclusivity – including the politics of language – that shaped participation dynamics in the programme as well as debates regarding critical development course content, rethinking possibilities for bridging counter-hegemonic development scholarship with practice-oriented approaches in a range of social contexts. Our analysis unpacks key tensions in addressing intertwined institutional and pedagogic dilemmas for an agenda towards decolonising online development studies, positioning decolonisation as a necessarily unsettling and contested process that calls for greater self-reflexivity.
Notes
1. Rhoden-Paul, “Oxford Uni Must Decolonise.”
2. Langdon, “Decolonising Development Studies,” 384.
3. Ibid., 384.
4. See Kapoor, “Psychoanalysis and Development,” 1128.
5. Gorski, “Good Intentions,” 515.
6. Andreotti, “Educational Challenges,” 101.
7. Salessi, “Postcolonial World,” 929.
8. Turner, “Finishing the Job,” 1193.
9. Tuck and Yang, “Decolonization,” 1.
10. Fanon, “Wretched of the Earth,” 36.
11. Andreotti, “Engaging the (Geo)political Economy”; and Belda et al., “Rethinking Capacity Building.”
12. Radcliffe, “Development Alternatives”; and Schuurman, “Critical Development Theory.”
13. Clarke and Oswald, “Why Reflect Collectively,” 1.
14. Mendler, Simon and Broome, “Virtual Development”; and Patterson et al., “Lessons.”
15. Rye, “Educational space,” 13.
16. Mubangizi, “Africa: ICT for Innovation.”
17. Mundkur and Ellickson, “Bringing the Real World,” 369.
18. Amutabi and Oketch, “Experimenting in Distance Education,” 57.
19. Edwards, “Different Discourses,” 241.
20. Selingo, “Demystifying the MOOC.”
21. Bose, “Technofetishism and Online Education,” 30.
22. Mansell, “Power and Interests.”
23. Kapoor, “Hyper Self-reflexive Development?,” 643.
24. Biccum, “Politics of Education”; and Andreotti et al., “Mapping Interpretations of Decolonization.”
25. Huish, “Dissent 101.”
27. White et al., “Study of UK Online Learning.”
28. Rye, “Educational Space.”
29. Hopkins, Todd and Occupation, “Occupying Newcastle University.”
30. Tannock, “Demand for Educational Equality.”
31. See “UK Immigration Debate Continues as New Legislation Passes into Law,” http://monitor.icef.com/2014/06/uk-immigration-debate-continues-as-new-legislation-passes-into-law/; and “English Universities Record First International Enrolment Drop in 29 Years,”
32. Walker, “International Student Policies,” 340.
33. Tait, “Distance and e-learning.”
34. Alexander and Mohanty, “Cartographies of Knowledge.”
35. Mbembe, “Decolonizing the University,” 32.
36. Langdon, “Decolonising Development Studies,” 395.
37. Belda et al., “Rethinking Capacity Building.”
38. Dibiase, “Is Distance Education Faustian?,” 130.
39. Koridze, “Equity, Justice, and Human Rights,” 127.
41. McNamara, “Language Assessments as Shibboleths.”
42. Two of the faculties operated waivers regarding certain countries where applicants have been taught and examined in English within the last 2 years. The third faculty has a waiver but requires Skype interviews for validation. Flexibility in this case was not a matter for debate about linguistic readiness but rather the nature of the proof.
43. Past degrees in English-speaking universities were starting to be taken as proof of English language proficiency only if the universities explicitly required the TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language), and many English-speaking universities in Africa do not require the TOEFL.
44. Only employer letters from institutions where the sole official language was English could be invoked here. This excluded several United Nations organisations where English is just one of several official languages used.
45. Walker, “International Student Policies.” Language requirements can be conceptualised as one dimension among others in growing debates about UK international student policies and colonialism.
46. Stein, “Rethinking the Ethics,” 5.
47. Mtebe and Raisamo, “Investigating perceived Barriers.”
48. Thompson, “ICT and Development Studies.”
49. Barraclough and McMahon, “US–Mexico Border Studies Online.”
50. Cooper, “MOOCs: Disrupting the University.”
51. Woolcock, “Higher Education, Policy Schools,” 57.
52. Andrews and Bawa, “Post-development Hoax?”
53. Jacoby and Kothari, “Introduction.”
54. Radcliffe, “Development Alternatives.”
55. Cornelius, Gordon and Ackland, “Towards Flexible Learning.”
56. Lewis, “Issues and Priorities,” 181.
57. Stein, “Rethinking the Ethics,” 12.
58. Ibid., 13.
59. Clegg, Hudson and Steel, “Emperor's New Clothes,” 51.
60. As the programme spanned development, environmental and health, students took courses in various orders, and the curriculum stimulated different learning paths.
61. Kothari, “Authority and Expertise,” 425.
62. Tait, “Planning Student Support,” 289.
63. Andreotti, “Educational Challenges,” 109.
64. Langdon, “Decolonising Development Studies,” 396.
65. Andreotti et al., “Mapping Interpretations of Decolonization,” 30.
66. Philip Warwick discusses intensifying xenophobia in 2016, international student visas ‘caught in the post-Brexit crossfire’ and the likelihood that UK universities will continue to expand their attention on global distance learning programmes in a post-Brexit era: http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=2,016,091,313,364,842
67. Amutabi and Oketch, “Experimenting in Distance Education.”