PLURA 2.0: Project Learning and Resource Platform Africa

Abstract

Abstract

The overarching goal of this project is to decolonize learning ‘about Africa’ in the classroom at schools in Germany. Both, in western societies and especially in classrooms, the construction of ‘Africa’ as an antithesis of ‘Europe’ is still dominant. The ideas and images are predominantly shaped by colonial discourses which are reproduced and still exist in textbooks, teaching materials and the perceptions of teachers and learners. Besides dominant narratives of ‘Africa’ as a continent dominated by conflicts, poverty and deficits as well as primitiveness and natural landscapes, the development of Africa, especially in terms of economic growth has gradually been considered. However, this perception is often based on a model of development which implicitly follows European norms. Study shows that most teachers are not even aware of these various facets of Eurocentrism and, furthermore, they do not have ideas of how to deal with them in classrooms. Based on different didactic approaches (e. g. constructive understanding of space, multi-perspective perceptions and representations, post-colonialism) we are analysing existing teaching materials and will prepare current research findings from the Cluster to contribute to a multi-perspective view, by including voices, narratives and concepts from ‘Africa’ to be used in the classroom. Therefore, the project PLURA 2.0 provides an online-platform, which will offer continuously new teaching materials about ‘Africa’, in order to contribute to a deconstruction and critically reflection of Eurocentric perceptions of ‘Africa’. The forerunner initially started in 2017 as part of the knowledge transfer strategy of the Bayreuth Academy of Advanced African Studies (funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, BMBF); the initial database was launched in May 2019, and is currently analysed and updated, in compliance with the outlined project methods.