The students who take this module will have qualified for entry into a Bachelor’s degree in the College of Humanities. They will typically be post-school and entering into university for the first time. Students in the Humanities Foundation Programme will also be allowed to enrol for the module.

The content of the module should be developed by a multi-disciplinary team of academics and could include, inter alia:

Citizenship and human rights in South Africa

• Human rights/human dignity
• South African constitution
• Social policy and Equity

 Theoretical and Conceptual framework

• Critical social justice
• Africa(n/Black) feminist perspectives
• Critical race theory
• Culture
• Socialisation
• Discrimination
• Speciesism
• Oppression
• Power
• Ideology
• Discourses
• Social norms
• Identity/Positionality
• Intersectionality
• Inequality
• Patriarchy
• Decoloniality

Forms of discrimination and oppression

• Racism
• Ableism
• Classism
• Sexism/heterosexism
• Citizenship
• Xenophobia (various forms of discrimination and violence)

Social change, agency and participation

• Resistance
• Emancipatory practices

Application

• The above applied to specific social issues. Gender based violence will take central feature in the analysis of all issues.

This module is underpinned by the philosophy of critical pedagogy. Critical pedagogy acknowledges that education is neither neutral, nor apolitical. From such a perspective, students’ and educators’ understandings of their roles, and their positioning in the world in general, are informed by wider historical and socioeconomic contexts. Education is seen as a sphere in which oppressive power relations, that serve the interests of the dominant class, are reproduced. By understanding themselves as subjects of history, students and educators come to recognise not only that the origin of injustice is in the social actions of human beings and oppressive contexts, but that injustice can be transformed through social agency.

Critical pedagogy, therefore, strives to provide educators and students alike with the skills to recognise, and resist, the ways that ideology and hegemony mediate their experiences and practices.  Both “dialogue and conscientisation” are seen as critical educational practices that can inform both critical reflection and action. These concepts emerge from the work of Freire (1970). Dialogue roots students’ learning in their everyday experiences and engages them actively in the learning process, disrupting oppressive power relations. Conscientisation is the process through which people become aware of the ways in which their experiences are mediated by wider social processes, and motivated to change them.

A critical approach emphasises the need to foreground African and decolonial perspectives in the concepts and issues raised above.  In addition, it emphasises the need to link the content to the everyday lived experiences of students in the particular socio-cultural context in which they are embedded.  

Participatory approaches to teaching and learning will be used to encourage students to critically reflect on their own experiences, share information, learn from each other, and work together to solve common problems. The methods will include creative methodologies that include visual arts, music, drama and dance.

The overall assessment strategy is located within the continuous assessment format. The module focuses on assessment for learning that incorporates on-going guidance towards the acquisition of knowledge and skills with the goal of achieving the intended learning outcomes of the module. The module will encourage different disciplines within the College of Humanities to contribute towards the development of assessments that link the conceptual framework of critical social justice to the relevant discipline.

• What knowledge, attitudes, skills and values do you intend your students to learn in this module i.e. learning outcomes?
• What assessment criteria will be used to decide whether students have achieved the learning outcomes for this module?
• What overall approach and methods of assessment are used in this module?

Students who have achieved the learning outcomes for this module will:

• Demonstrate the ability to reflect on their own lived experiences and identify the ways in which their own development has been informed by the multiple and intersecting institutes in which they engage daily. This includes, but is not limited to, the family, religious institutes, educational institutes, cultural contexts, economic and political contexts.
• Demonstrate the ability to identify emancipatory practices that they can engage in to bring about social transformation within their immediate social contexts and their professional practices.
• Demonstrate an understanding of some of the key theoretical and philosophical ideas around issues of oppression and critical social justice.
• Demonstrate an understanding of the intersectionality of various forms of oppression, and their impact on individuals and society at large
• Demonstrate an understanding of gender-based violence and the factors that drive it, within the South African context specifically.
• Demonstrate insight into the importance of a critical social justice perspective and its significance for every-day and professional practices and the development of democratic citizenship.
• Demonstrate an ability to develop a creative awareness intervention.

Assessment will be continuous and developmental. The overall approach and methods of assessments include, inter alia, reflexive writing tasks, short questions and analysis of case-studies and multimedia interventions.

There will be a balance of individual and group interventions. 

A variety of discipline oriented assessments will be included.

Generic and detailed feedback is given to students. 

Based on the review of the assessed assignments, generic issues are identified and discussed with the entire class of students.

 Students are given detailed individual feedback on written tasks.