Coloniality or Cultural Pedagogy? The Hegemony of African Children-Youths in Social Development

ABSTRACT Decoloniality was adopted as a framework to unravel the societal and/or self-inflicted coloniality in a child’s development. This study is lensed under the Transformative Paradigm (TP), designed using Participatory Research (PR). Five lecturers and five teachers, who are also parents in a rural location in South Africa, were selected using the snowballing selection method. The participants were interviewed to share their experiences on the danger of culture and its effects on youths/students’ development. Socio-thematic Analysis (StA) was used to analyse the data. The findings showed that cultural history, elders’ self-righteousness, and stereotyping children as rebels are the challenges facing children’s social development. At the same time, the reorientation of students, parents and educators, restructuring teaching and learning strategies are the dimension of the liberation of children’s social development. This study recommends that teachers, parents, children and community elders be re-orientated while teachers/lecturers should restructure their teaching and learning process to accommodate children’s participatory skills in schools.