Abstract

Over the past 20 years, the South African higher education (HE) system has become increasingly regularised. All programmes offered at South African public universities have to be registered and accredited by the Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET); the Higher Education Quality Committee (HEQC) under the auspices of the Council on Higher Education (CHE); as well as the South African Qualifications Authority (SAQA). Such accreditation, registration and quality assurance is subject to a growing series of stringent regulatory frameworks that must be adhered to, chief amongst which are the Higher Education Qualifications Sub-Framework (HEQSF) and the Classification of Educational Subject Matter (CESM) manual and the later Addendum. Increased calls from both students and government for curriculum transformation and the decolonisation of HE require a critical review of the regulatory regime as one of the barriers to curriculum transformation at South African universities. The aim of this article is to present a conceptual analysis of the CESM and its regulatory context within a decolonial framework in order to show that the regulatory requirements for curricula have created a rigid and colonised conception of what universities may and may not teach. The CESM categories and their concomitant requirements have become the so-called invisible statues of colonisation based on narrow and morally decadent Western conceptions of academic disciplines in current university curricula.

摘要

在过去的20年中，南非高等教育（HE）系统变得越来越正规化。南非公立大学提供的所有课程都必须经过高等教育和培训部（DHET）的注册和认可；由高等教育理事会（CHE）主持的高等教育质量委员会（HEQC）；以及南非资格认证局（SAQA）。此类认证，注册和质量保证受制于一系列必须遵守的日益严格的监管框架，其中最主要的是高等教育资格子框架（HEQSF）和教育主题分类（CESM）手册和更高版本的附录。学生和政府对课程改革和高等教育非殖民化的呼声越来越高，这要求对监管制度进行严格的审查，这是南非大学课程改革的障碍之一。本文的目的是在非殖民主义框架内对CESM及其监管环境进行概念分析，以表明课程的监管要求对大学可能会或可能不会教的内容产生了僵化和殖民化的观念。在当前大学课程中，基于狭义和道德上Western废的西方学科学科概念，CESM类别及其伴随的要求已成为所谓的隐形殖民雕像。