Through evaluating dominant MOOC platforms created by Western universities, I argue that MOOCs on such platforms tend to embed Western-centric epistemologies and propagate this without questioning their global relevance. Consequently, such MOOCs can be detrimental when educating diverse and complex participants as they erode local and indigenous…

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the challenges that present obstacles to equitable learning and development in higher education in various parts of the world. African higher education and Student Affairs and Services (SAS) are faced with a set of challenges that are in part related to the resources within the institutions and in part due the…

Education is often perceived in policy agendas as playing a transformative role in realising sustainable development and the SDGs on the continent. The assumption is based, however, on an insufficiently critical understanding of the historical role of education in supporting unsustainable development. The article provides a critical account of the…

Access to schooling and special education services remains a challenge for many children with disabilities around the world. In the United States, much attention has focused on disproportionality--the over- and underrepresentation of student groups within special education. In this study, to contextualize and better understand the scope and…

Action learning is extending its reach internationally and is increasingly used in distinct cultural settings. This paper explores action learning in an African context and examines how action learning as a cultural product is biased towards Western values and practices. We draw attention to the political, cultural and social encounters of…

In Africa women are underrepresented in higher education (HE) agricultural programs, despite the fact that they make up half of the agricultural labor force. This article discusses the reasons for women's low enrollment in HE agricultural programs, focusing on socio-cultural norms and gendered perceptions of agriculture. Moving beyond access, it…

This article has been excerpted from "Perspectives on the Sign Language Factor in Sub-Saharan Africa: Challenges of Sustainability" (Lutalo-Kiingi and De Clerck) in "Sign Language, Sustainable Development, and Equal Opportunities: Envisioning the Future for Deaf Students" (G. A. M. De Clerck and P. V. Paul (Eds.) 2016). In this…

This book brings an international group of writers together to offer an authoritative state-of-the-art review of, and critical reflection on, educational ethnography as it is being theorized and practiced today--from rural and remote settings to virtual and visual posts. It provides a definitive reference point and academic resource for those…

This article has been excerpted from "Introduction: Sign Language, Sustainable Development, and Equal Opportunities" (De Clerck) in "Sign Language, Sustainable Development, and Equal Opportunities: Envisioning the Future for Deaf Students" (G. A. M. De Clerck & P. V. Paul (Eds.) 2016). The idea of exploring various…

This article relates the authors' experience in a course that they have co-taught periodically called Honors Africans in Film. It is an upper-level, undergraduate course that engages honors students in watching and analyzing mainly Hollywood movies that are set in Africa. The challenge they present to their mostly U.S. American students is to…

Few systematic studies of play in foragers exist despite their significance for understanding the breadth of contexts for human development and the ontogeny of cultural learning. Forager societies lack complex social hierarchies, avenues for prestige or wealth accumulation, and formal educational institutions, and thereby represent a contrast to…

Given polarizing popular-media narratives of immigrant youth from West African countries, we construct an interdisciplinary framework engaging a Sankofan approach to analyze education research literature on social processes of navigating identities and engaging civically across immigrant youth's heritage practices and Indigenous knowledges. In…

Purpose: To explore why substantial agricultural information gaps persist in African smallholder farming communities and how to reduce them. Design/methodology/approach: Using conservation agriculture (CA) as a case study, we deeply explore with 29 smallholder farmers why they are yet to obtain sufficient information to enable practice evaluation.…

Offering contributions from international leaders in the field, this volume builds on empirically informed meta-analyses to foreground relationship-based aspects of parental involvement in children's education and learning. Chapters explore how factors including parent-child communication, cultural and parental expectations, as well as…

In this paper I address educational matters that challenge academic and scholarly "givens" so as to enrich knowledge. This acts in two ways to alert educators to the Eurowestern enculturization of knowledge and to propose some useful insights. Firstly, I make a personal scholarly narrative about the situation of the un-named native…