Examining developments in the history of education in Africa as a whole raises far-reaching philosophical, anthropological and historical questions about what Africa is and whether such a history is even possible "as such." The course of that history and its tributaries wend around social theories; its dominant issues, tensions and gaps…

Perhaps one of the most scathing critiques on school leadership and management literature in Africa is its reliance on western models that do not quite fit the context, hence a lack of relevance. In this article I present a postcolonial reading of the representation of school leadership and management literature in Africa. The analysis suggests…

Through the lens of an anticolonial (as opposed to postcolonial) analytical framework, this conceptual paper examines decolonising efforts (and failures) in Religious Education (RE) as a school subject in post-independent sub-Saharan Africa. It critiques the missionary/European epistemological hegemony that continues to render RE a colonial rather…

Catherine Priggs and her history department colleagues were increasingly concerned that their curriculum was too narrow. They feared that major areas of history were being left out and that many of their own pupils were not seeing themselves, in their various ethnic, cultural and world identities, in the past. Priggs and colleagues decided that a…

Reverend Father Professor Amechi Nicholas Akwanya is one of the towering scholars of literature in Nigeria and elsewhere in the world. For decades, and still counting, Fr. Prof. Akwanya has worked arduously, professing literature by way of teaching, researching, and writing in the Department of English and Literary Studies of the University of…

Since the 2000s there has been a growing global interest in policies that redefine, support, and monitor school leadership roles. Despite this, research knowledge on the international use of school leadership standards is limited, specifically on its relationship to various role demands (or imperatives) of school administration. Drawing from data…

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…

Open Access, is often understood as referring to the free circulation of research outputs from and to all parts of the planet. It is argued that this definition is deceptive because it ignores the fact that the imposition of the epistemological paradigm of the hegemonic culture on the indigenous people of Africa translates to the partial…

This paper is a critical conceptual exploration of the contribution of the "ukama" ethic in the context of "Philosophy for Children" (The "Philosophy for Children" movement is also variously known as "philosophy in schools," "philosophy with children" and "philosophical inquiry in the…

This study mapped the international knowledge base of educational leadership, administration and management (EdLAM) from a topographical perspective. Altogether 1651 publications from 18 peer-reviewed English journals published between 2007 and 2016 were reviewed. Combining bibliometric and content analyses, the authors identified 55 countries and…

Background: The colonial origins of schooling and the implications these origins have on leadership is missing from educational leadership literature. Indeed little has been published on decolonizing and indigenous ways of leading schools. Purpose: In this article, we synthesize the literature on indigenous, decolonizing education leadership…

Although the cradle of university education is traced to Africa, modern university education in Africa emanated from European systems which set the tone for their replication on the continent through colonialism. For ideological and other reasons, African universities were subjected to significant violations of their institutional autonomy after…

Does the imperative that we ought to try to understand one another make any sense? Presumably not--"if" it is "correct" that there are indeed different truths, and that the quest for objectivity is appropriate only in certain cultural contexts. After carefully mapping out the epistemological and ethical terrain, with special…

Sceptics of an Africanisation of education have often lambasted its proponents for re-inventing something that has very little, if any, role to play in contemporary African society. The contributors to this issue hold a different view and, through the papers included in this issue, arguments are proffered in defence of an Africanisation of…

In this critical discourse analysis of six high-school world geography textbooks, we explore how constructions and representations of North Africa and Southwest Asia have served to reinforce Orientalist discourse in formal curriculum. Visual and written representations in these textbooks were overwhelmingly confounded by a traditional/modern…