Browsing by Author "Nkhoma, Nelson Masanche"

Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Producing relevant medical education through community-engaged scholarship
    (FIRE, 2018) Nkhoma, Nelson Masanche
    Some African higher education institutions (HEIs) were founded on the notion that they would serve the specific needs of African communities. Other HEIs have borrowed the concept of community-engaged scholarship (CES) from the USA as a strategy for achieving relevance. Nonetheless, African HEIs continue to be criticized as imitators of Western universities. Drawing on Bhabha’s (1985, 1994) concepts of “hybridity” and “resistance”, this paper explores Malawian faculty members’ perspectives on how they use CES as a strategy to make medical higher education relevant to their academic work. This study draws from postcolonial theory to show that faculty use CES to interpret truth claims around medical knowledge production and comply with the demands of a relevant and engaged university. The study also shows the complexities and paradoxes characterizing the ways in which academics strive to include subjugated knowledge or forge collaborations in higher education in order to promote multi-perspective. CES is oftentimes conceptualized as a hybridization of perspectives that are themselves caught up in crossfire of resistance. My research on CES noted that it is an important motivation to improving the relevance of higher education in Malawi in general and medical education in particular by bringing together the so-called ‘traditional knowledge’ and ‘biomedicine’, as well as interdisciplinary perspectives and knowledge from multiple actors. These were muddled intersections, which suggest a uniquely Sub-Saharan African (SSA) approach to CES and relevant medical education for Malawi. Therefore, the paper argues that faculty members resist the simplistic critique of their work as imitations of Western medical knowledge production as they perceive themselves as providing very complex and different ways of knowing in the field of medical education. Drawing from these faculty perspectives, the paper then concludes with two strategies that can enhance CES.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Service-learning as a higher education pedagogy for advancing citizenship, conscientization and civic agency: A capability informed view
    (Taylor & Francis Open Access, 2020) Mtawa, Ntimi N.; Nkhoma, Nelson Masanche
    Universities are criticised for overemphasising instrumental values. Instrumental values are important but universities risks undermining cultivation of humanity, critical consciousness and civic agency. Service-learning (SL) is practice that moves teaching and learning beyond the focus on technical skills and instrumental outcomes. Nonetheless, little is known about this role of SL in African and particularly South Africa context. Using a capability approach (CA) as developed by Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum, the article explores the contribution of SL in fostering students’ capabilities for citizenship, conscientization and civic agency. The findings indicate that through SL processes and activities, students develop citizenship capabilities of affiliation and narrative imagination, informed vision, social and collective struggle, and local citizenship but often not in the way the university intended. The paper contributes to the understanding of how SL can expand the conception of teaching and learning and fosters critical social values in the global South context.