The study ascertained elementary school teachers' and supervisors' views about their role in the implementation of Sankofa (Go back and retrieve) in school music. Sankofa mandates the integration of distinctive Ghanian traditional values and practices with Western educational concepts in the school curriculum. In music, it calls for the fusion of multi-ethnic musics of Ghana with Western musical concepts in public school music instruction. Some concerns expressed by Ghanian music educators regarding teachers' negative attitudes toward Sankofa in public school music had prompted the study.

Encountering institutionalized forms of racism during high school in Saskatchewan, immigrant Black African female students experiences in dealing with assimilatory and hegemonic in kind learning environment have not been well understood or even explored. Having moved from Ghana as a young learner, this researcher discloses the processes of being silenced in classrooms incent on Euro-Canadian learning and the indifference to unique cultural contributions that “othered” learners could offer. Addressing the lack of acknowledgment, this researcher sought to find five kindred female learners to explore how each relied on her resilience to develop social resistance to hegemonic practices. While informed by regular treatise of individual interviews, this researcher employed Seidman’s (2006) interview method, Deka Wɔ Wɔ focus group discussion and Riessman’s (1987) core narrative research analysis. Furthermore, while grounding the research in antiracism theory and Black feminist thought, this researcher offers collective analysis that arrived at cultural foundation that spoke to strength and aspiration. Sankofa is an Akan culturally valued notion that allows individuals to take on cultural identity to take on responsibility to understand one’s past. The latter allowed the knowledge keepers to identify strength, and insights to resist the assimilatory measures while learning in largely Euro-Canadian context. Ultimately, this thesis used a strength based approach in exploring the students’ experiences, and introduces Sankofa as a theoretical concept that evokes resilience and social resistance. Such findings may well be one of the first ones in Canadian educational context. This researcher believes that discovery and unfolding strategies in developing resilience and social resistance are essential in diversifying the learning environment in Saskatchewan and elsewhere beyond the much favoured Euro-Canadian context.

There has been an increasing realization of the significance of Indigenous knowledge (IK) in achieving sustainability. Education is also considered a primary agent in moving toward sustainability. However, research that explores education focused on sustainability in Malawi is sparse, especially where the roles of IK and youth perspectives have been considered. This research draws on the concepts of uMunthu, Sankofa, and postcolonial theory to enable a “third space” (Bhabha, 1994) centred on culturally appropriate Malawian ways of knowing working in tandem with non-Indigenous knowledge and practice. Three main questions guide the study: (1) How do participants understand place and environmental sustainability in relation to knowledge and practice (both Indigenous and non-Indigenous)?; (2) Within the context of Chinduzi village, the Junior Farmer Field and Life Skills School (JFFLS) program, and its engagement with issues of environmental sustainability, what forms of knowledge and practice are evident (both Indigenous and non-Indigenous)?; and (3) What are participants’ views on how environmental sustainability should be further engaged in the JFFLS program in relation to knowledge and practice (both Indigenous and non-Indigenous)? Data collection methods included focus groups, place mapping, individual conversations, observations, and archival documents review. The data were coded using inductive analysis and the research employed aspects of participatory research and Indigenous research methodologies. The research findings reveal that while there is general consensus among the participants supporting youth learning IK in school, others are not supportive because they consider IK to be inferior. In considering place and environmental sustainability, the findings revealed that participating Elders describe their sense of place in terms of historical agriculture-related knowledge and practice. On the other hand, participating youth express their sense of place in drawings of their favourite places. The drawings revealed that youth are largely rooted in their social-cultural interactions within their community, but also influenced by global culture. The study results show that the JFFLS curriculum includes both Indigenous and non-Indigenous knowledge and practice in both agriculture-related and life skills lessons. To achieve environmental sustainability in the community, participants recommend all youth in the community learn local Indigenous knowledge and practices for protecting the environment.

Comment récupérer les legs du passé pour construire le présent sur un héritage traditionnel, en s’adaptant aux nouvelles réalités du présent et orientant le futur? Ce travail se penche sur une réponse propre à ce problème, celle des communautés akans du Ghana. Nous tenterons de montrer que c’est par une évaluation normative : « quels sont les bons et les mauvais éléments du passé? » que ces communautés ont entrepris de juger quels étaient les éléments méritant d’être récupérés. Les communautés akans ont conservé cette idée (de juger les évènements du passé selon une évaluation normative) dans la tradition notamment par le biais d’un idéogramme nommé sankↄfa dans la langue locale. Elle se retrouve au cœur de la culture et notamment par le biais des pratiques et rituels. Le politique est définit comme l’ensemble des actions humaines participant à la construction du système normatif, fondé sur une hiérarchisation collective dynamique des valeurs et canalisant les désirs et passions des êtres humains vers des possibilités d’action spécifiques. Les performances politiques (rituels et transmission de la tradition) contribuent à édifier, solidifier ou transvaluer l’autorité du système moral. Dans ce travail, nous soutenons que les communautés akans renforcent l’autorité politique de leur tradition par le biais de performances politiques. En déterminant ce qu’est le « Bien » et le « Mal », les Akans canalisent les possibilités d’action et orientent les comportements collectifs de leur communauté. Ce travail étudie un aspect de la relation entre culture et temps dans les communautés akans du Ghana. En analysant leur processus d’interprétation du passé, par lequel un héritage moral est récupéré pour être adapté au présent et orienter les actions futures des membres de leurs communautés, nous constatons qu’une tradition peut s’adapter à l’avenir tout en préservant les « bons » éléments du passé, et ce, comme suite d’un jugement moral continu, consistant en la discrimination morale des antécédents. Ce jugement continuel peut alors être considéré comme une pratique politique, et non seulement comme une pratique culturelle.

This essay attempts to discuss the decolonial memorialscape in Germany and Sierra Leone, bringing into focus the few existing examples. Coming from the visual arts, my wish is to bring art-practice into the communication for development feld. This means allowing associations, emotions and subjective observations to be part of the research on memorial-cultures, understanding images and layout as integral parts of a political-aesthetic thesis. The examples from Germany and Sierra Leone are not only understood in their national frameworks, but rather in their un/common coloniality. The essay explores at frst the material world of colonial-critical memorials, an undertaking that I deemed to be achievable in view of the limited number of memorials both countries have. The research feld is still very complex and therefore the essay itself is a condensed and fragmented frst step along peripheral paths. Listening to voices from Freetown as well as observing activities around a memorial in the German city of Bremen helped me gain an enlarged understanding of memorials. Communication aspects and performative approaches surrounding a sculptural form are able to give memorials living and discursive dimensions. The hypothesis that memorials could be helpful for the decolonialization of colonizing – as well as colonized - societies could not be fully answered as the examples described all have their weaknesses. If immaterial, sometimes ephemeral forms like writings, theatre, activism and spiritual ceremonies are included in the memorialscape, the answer is clearly positive, even though the majority in Germany would not be reached by these actions. In contrast to Germany, in Sierra Leone I found a millieux de mémoire (Pierre Nora) which might not be that active in the defnition of Aleida Assmann, but which, with the empowering impacts of the West African concept of Sankofa, is able to create creole realms of memory. Besides the image of the path along the fragmented, multilingual Dékolonεlízashɔn process, different bodies of water became powerful imaginations for decolonial memorials, connecting different times and places. The element of water itself is a palimpsest and at the same time an unchanging Mahnmal. A Mahnmal which is absent from the collective memory (Maurice Halbwachs) in Germany and can therefore be perceived as a void – unlike in the collective memory-culture of The Black Atlantic (Paul Gilroy). With reference to the examples described and analyzed, proposals are included and put forward for discussion.

This thesis questions what it was like for pre-service teachers registered in a Bachelor of Education program to experience Kpanlogo, a West African dance from Ghana. Over a period of two years, the primary researcher introduced this dance to her peers first as a pre-service teacher, and then as a graduate student in a variety of ways: 1) practicing it for a performance at a community building talent show on campus, 2) learning it through a professional development workshop, and 3) teaching it to intermediate students at a local school, on two different occasions. Five pre-service teachers responded to an invitation to participate in a phenomenological study about their experiences. The two research questions which guided the interviews were: 1) What was it like to experience Kpanlogo, a West African dance, as a pre-service teacher? 2) What was it like as a pre-service teacher to teach students Kpanlogo? The conceptual framework of Sankofa Cyclical Waves, situated in a collectivist African Worldview orients us to the philosophy of Ubuntu, which posits that humanness is found and cultivated within community. Sankofa, a Ghanaian proverb which encourages its people to go back, physically or spiritually, to retrieve what was once lost or forgotten was used as a particular path to analyze the lived experiences of the pre-service teachers. In this thesis the Sankofa Cyclical Waves provided a structure to identify their various levels of understanding Ubuntu. Experiences analyzed as being novice in nature were awkward at the start, then as the dancer moves towards the end of the continuum, towards Ubuntu, the dancer moves through a series of waves as they become more familiar with rhythms, movements, African dance attire, and becoming a part of the whole; the Other‘s community.

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Thesis (M.A.)--Miami University, Dept. of Theatre, 2005. / Title from first page of PDF document. Document formatted into pages; contains [1], iv, 57 p. Includes bibliographical references (p. 56-57).