Currere from Apartheid to Inclusion: Building Culturally Responsive Pedagogies in Post-Apartheid South Africa

This volume demonstrates the instrumental use of Currere as a methodology to bring about Deracialisation through transformational learning by a white educator in Post-Apartheid South Africa.

Offering an honest and vulnerable recognition of privilege and exclusivity, it disrupts deep-seated racial bias and assumptions, unveils racial blind spots, and confronts the discourse that South African ＂white＂ educators are, overtly or covertly, perpetuating systemic racism within schools. Based on autoethnographic analyses of the author’s lived educational experiences within the Apartheid regime, it uses the theoretical concepts of Currere to initiate her journey towards Deracialisation and transform her current pedagogical practice. In doing so, the book demonstrates how critical self-examination of underlying beliefs that lead to actions, and how the past - in this case, being born, raised, and educated within the Apartheid era - can influence one’s teaching in ways that harm the educational development of culturally diverse learners.

Grappling with how autoethnographical experiences in a specific setting can inform current pedagogy, and be used to bring about professional and personal transformation, this book will be of interest to scholars, postgraduate students, and educational researchers with interests in curriculum theory, race and education, transformative learning, Deracialisation, and autoethnography.

Shani Steyn is Head of Education Faculty at Independent Institute of Education’s Varsity College Cape Town, South Africa.