Community Mapping in One Rural Community in South Africa: Teacher Candidates Grapple With Colonizing Influences on Language and Literacy

Abstract

To deconstruct colonizing ideologies and expand our understanding of global meaning making (Tierney, 2018) in this chapter, we describe a qualitative study that explored how a cohort of teacher candidates (TCs) from a large Southwestern university in the United States made sense of a community mapping project as part of their international service-learning program in rural South Africa. The TCs observed, collected, and reflected on various literacy activities and artifacts. Findings suggest that the TCs grappled with colonizing perspectives and practices specifically related to language, literacy, and cultural hegemony. They identified and struggled with the power and privilege they noticed bolstering Western literacies and the English language in the local community to the extent that it overshadowed local languages and local cultural norms. They questioned the historically situated use of certain spellings in local texts and how such spellings are connected to Apartheid policies still influencing this rural community. By engaging in the community mapping project, the TCs also recognized that literacy is socially informed and is more than just reading and writing but employs a range of semiotic tools such as images, movement, and music. The transformative process of participating in the community mapping project helped TCs develop a deeper understanding of the relationships between community and school literacies and grapple with the broader impact of Western epistemologies in the Global South.

Citation

Assaf, L.C., O'Donnell Lussier, K. and Hoff, M. (2022), "Community Mapping in One Rural Community in South Africa: Teacher Candidates Grapple With Colonizing Influences on Language and Literacy", Assaf, L.C., Sowa, P. and Zammit, K. (Ed.) Global Meaning Making (Advances in Research on Teaching, Vol. 39), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 139-154. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1479-368720220000039009