Locating academic development within the decolonial turn in higher education: The affordances of systems thinking for decolonial practice

Abstract

The student protests of 2015 and 2016 (re)surfaced the call to decolonise South African higher education (HE), highlighting the alienation experienced by black students within historically white institutions. This article describes how an academic development unit at one such institution responds as part of its reconceptualisation process. We consider the interplay between policy, structure, and practice within our context, and the extent to which these enable decolonial work. We also show how approaches to decolonisation within HE work to reinscribe coloniality and argue that these must be holistic and intentional to transform exclusionary institutional practices and the structures that sustain them. Drawing on the area of support services, which is typically designed around individualistic approaches to help-seeking, we illustrate, through a case study, how systems thinking principles enable productive decolonial work within colonial structures, and their affordances to inform policy for an integrated and responsive student support system.