Decoloniality and Language Policy for Journalism Education in Mauritius. A Post-Covid Analysis

Atchia S.M.

Rughoobur-Seetah S.

Purpose With the impact of COVID-19, the educational system across the world had to be reviewed and readapted. Both learners and tutors were forced to adopt the online teaching and learning mechanism. Learners had to cope with the drastic teaching mode. In all of these, the student’s level of satisfaction remains pivotal. Teaching and learning remain successful if the students are satisfied and engaged. Therefore, this study aims to identify and assess factors that influenced students’ level of learning from home satisfaction. Design/methodology/approach This study followed a mixed-method approach. Online focus groups were arranged to devise indicators for factors like the accessibility of lecturers, support from university and conducive home environment. A questionnaire was designed and disseminated through an online survey. A response rate of (N = 169) was received. The proposed framework was tested in two phases: confirmatory factor analysis and partial least square structural equation modeling. Findings The findings revealed that education/life balance and learners’ commitment have a positive and significant relationship with learning from home satisfaction. Accessibility of lecturers and a conducive home environment positively influenced education and life balance. Learners’ commitment was influenced by the accessibility of lecturers, education and life balance and support from the university. Support from university was positively influenced by the accessibility of lecturers and a conducive home environment. Originality/value Various studies focused on the quality of online teaching and learning, and very few studies paid attention to the day-to-day lives of learners at the tertiary level. This study has borrowed organizational factors and adapted them to the students’ lives with two theoretical foundations which will enable a better understanding of the students.

Aujla-Sidhu G.

Msimanga M., Tshuma L., Matsilele T.

The paper explores journalism pedagogy in selected Southern African journalism schools. It draws from two South African Universities: The Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT) Journalism Department and the School of Communication at the University of Johannesburg (UJ). From Zimbabwe, it draws on Journalism and Media Departments: The National University of Science and Technology (NUST) and Media and Society Studies at Midlands State University (MSU). The paper utilises the Domestication theory and Replacement model as theoretical paradigms to assess how the selected journalism schools reconfigured teaching and learning on their practical and theoretical subjects during the COVID-19 pandemic era. Semi-structured interviews are used with students and journalism educators to understand strategies adopted in the deployment of lectures. The study aims at understanding the teaching techniques that were adopted by journalism educators during the pandemic and how students adopted to virtual delivered education. Lastly, we solicit views from students who were already seeking or had been placed on attachment or work-related learning to establish how they readjusted, if at all. The study found that teaching practical courses was a challenge because, for example, editing suits for film and radio courses are housed on campus. For Zimbabwean universities, the challenge was that students were not given data by the University for online learning while lecturers’ data was not enough for their teaching. This is in contrary to South Africa were both lecturers and students were given data, laptops and other gadgets for online learning. Despite challenges faced during the COVID-19 pandemic, lecturers received training on how to conduct online lessons and restructured their syllabus to ensure that it meets the demands of the ‘new normal’.

Seetal I., Gunness S., Teeroovengadum V.

COVID-19 has caused a global rush of universities to transfer their courses online to maintain continuity in student teaching and learning. The study presented in this article investigated the preparedness of academics in Small Island Developing State (SIDS) universities for shifting to emergency online teaching. To examine the impact of preparedness and other factors on the efficacy of academic staff in performing their work duties during the pandemic, the research team collected data from 75 respondents who filled in a questionnaire. In addition, they conducted semi-structured online interviews with a subsample of 5 respondents. They found that most academics had the necessary tools and infrastructure to teach online, including access to reasonably fast internet connections. However, many of them lacked adequate training in applying the use of technology to teaching, which limited their preparedness for developing e-learning activities. Thus, the study found that, insufficient competence in using educational technologies and inadequate university support impacted academics’ work efficacy significantly. This impact was less pronounced for staff who had prior online teaching experience, which suggests that their pre-pandemic experiences lessened their dependence on support for online teaching when the sudden need arose. The authors’ thematic analysis similarly found academics’ uneven familiarity with technology and the need for more “at-the-elbow” technological support during crises to be significant, as well as a need for more leadership to deal with complex situations. Based on their findings, the authors conclude that greater preparedness for online teaching – and thus improved efficacy – might be achieved through a balanced mix of independent learning (by doing) on the part of academic staff and customised and targeted formal professional learning (through training provided by the university).

Wiehe E.

Teaching to students’ local experiences is a tenet of good teaching in many contexts. This study explores the ways eight educators use local meanings in discourse. Through ethnographic work in an elementary school in the township of Roche-Bois, Mauritius, I examine teachers’ words about students’ localities. Articulating critical discourse analysis with theories of space, I evaluate whether teachers’ place-based meanings perpetuate or transform long-standing historical patterns of racialization associated with the town. The analysis identifies how processes of racialization take shape through place-based discourse. I draw implications for a critical pedagogy of the local to support decolonizing teacher knowledge. 

Stein P.

Clémentin-Ojha C.

Pyndiah G.

Many Caribbean and Indian Ocean islands have a common history of French and British colonization, where a Creole language developed from the contact of different colonial and African/ Indian languages. In the process, African languages died, making place for a language which retained close lexical links to the colonizer’s tongue. This paper presents the case of Mauritian Creole, a language that emerged out of a colonial context and which is now the mother tongue of 70% of Mauritians, across different ethnic and linguistic backgrounds. It pinpoints the residual colonial ideologies in the language and looks at some creative practices, focusing on its oral and scribal aspects, to formulate a ‘decolonial aesthetics’ (Mignolo, 2009). In stressing the séga angazé (protest songs) and poetry in Mauritian Creole in the history of resistance to colonization, it argues that the language is, potentially, a carrier of decolonial knowledges.

Salverda T.

ABSTRACTWhite Africans are particularly associated with the troubles South Africa and Zimbabwe have faced throughout their histories. The story of the Franco-Mauritians, the white elite of Mauritius, and how they have fared during more than forty years since the Indian Ocean island gained independence, is much less known. However, their case is relevant as a distinctive example when attempting to understand white Africans in postcolonial settings. Unlike whites elsewhere on the continent, Franco-Mauritians did not apply brute force in order to defend their position in the face of independence. Yet the society that emerged from the struggle over independence is one shaped by dominant beliefs about ethnicity. As this article shows, despite a number of inverse effects Franco-Mauritians have benefited from this unexpected twist, and part of the explanation for their ability to maintain their elite position lies therefore in the complex reality of ethnic diversity in postcolonial Mauritius.

Leuprecht C.

This article investigates political demography as a predictor of the onset and prevalence of inter-communal conflict and different political outcomes in cases with conditions that are otherwise quite similar. Applying a most similar systems design, the article compares the Mauritius and Fiji to assess the currency of independent variables to which the article posits political demography as a complementary explanation. The article posits demographic equilibrium between groups in ethnopolitical conflict as favourable towards democratic consolidation; a demographic imbalance, by contrast, appears to have the opposite effect. Political demography distinguishes itself from commonplace ex post facto explanations since demographic trends can be projected into the future. The findings thus have implications for conflict prevention, especially in Small Island Developing States which are among the world's most conflict-prone societies.

de Robillard D.

L’auteur tente, à partir d’un corpus d’affichage plurilingue à l’Île Maurice, de réfléchir à la façon dont les langues sont catégorisées et spectacularisées, affirmées, selon des modalités différentes, ces modalités faisant partie de la façon dont est organisée la socialité. Il réfléchit également à partir de là, à la façon dont s’est imposée la notion dominante de langue (stable, décontextualisée, homogène), et en conclut que les scientifiques et les linguistes sont des acteurs sociaux comme les autres, ce qui leur confère des fonctions bien plus modestes que ce qu’on a l’habitude de leur attribuer. Enfin, il postule que ce qui est constitutif des langues, ce n’est ni leur matérialité, ni leur structure, mais la croyance dans leur existence, ancrée dans le besoin qu’elles existent.

Toussaint A.

Quelle fut la politique de l'administration britannique de l'île Maurice à l'égard de la langue française après la conquête en 1810 de cette île jadis française ? Rien n'indique qu'au début le Colonial Office ait sérieusement envisagé de substituer l'anglais au français. Entre 1834 et 1845 quelques gouverneurs voulurent imposer l'anglais. Le Colonial Office ne consentit à le rendre obligatoire que pour la rédaction des actes législatifs et dans les cours supérieures de justice (Ordres en Conseil de 1841 et 1845). Plusieurs protestations des colons contre ces mesures restèrent sans effet, mais en 1862 le gouverneur Stevenson tint à définir les limites de l'usage obligatoire de l'anglais. Plus tard d'autres administrateurs de l'île se prononcèrent contre toute tentative d'anglicisation. Aujourd'hui l'anglais est assez répandu mais, en vertu d'actes récents, le français n'est pas complètement exclu de la jurisprudence et de la législation de l'île.