November 24, 2006
8:30 a.m. – 4:30 p.m. | Neville Scarfe Building, Rooms 310, 308A and 304
Organized by Drs. Samson Nashon, David Anderson and Handel Kashope Wright and sponsored by and conducted through The David Lam Chair for Multicultural Education and the Centre for Culture, Identity and Education (CCIE).
This one-day symposium brought together leading and emerging scholars and experts who have undertaken research in areas that in one way or the other lend to understanding of the African learner. The central aim of the symposium was to examine African worldviews, ways of knowing and pedagogy, which shape African students’ knowledge construction processes and which in many respects are unique and in other respects have similarities with the Western paradigm of the education process. To this end, presenters at the symposium drew on their experience and research in African contexts to elucidate these culturally rooted constructs. This was done both in the form of formal paper presentation sessions which were followed by group discussions based on themes congruous with symposium focus, and through a keynote address. The keynote speaker was Professor Ali Abdi, who presented a paper on the problematic relationship between African world views and their attendant educational and epistemological system on the one hand, and the dominant European discourses that have attempted to negate the validity of those, both in historical and contemporary Africa, on the other. Professor Abdi’s paper was preceded by a response from Professor Kogila Adam-Moodley, which was followed by a presentation by Dr. Yvonne Brown on policy issues pertaining to Africa. The afternoon was comprised largely of group discussions which provided participants with a unique opportunity to share experiences and perspectives with the guidance and input of Africans and Africanists.
Keynote Address: Professor Ali Abdi
Response to the Keynote Address: Professor Kogila Adam-Moodley