Abstract
Research has indicated that learners who receive education in a context they can relate to are more successful in acquiring knowledge and skills. For this reason, educators in Africa often explore the concept of Africanization as part of cross-cultural teaching and learning efforts. Africanization includes local and indigenous cultural considerations to instill African culture and identity in teaching and learning environments. This qualitative study investigates the perceptions of academic staff, focusing on the effectiveness of using an African case study to explain important theoretical constructs in an undergraduate Business Analysis and a Human-Computer Interaction course at a higher-educational institution. Thematic analysis performed on the results of in-depth semi-structured interviews involving academic instructors reveals seven main themes, with the theme on the relevance and interpretation of practical examples occurring most frequently. The findings suggest that the Africanization of content, using local and Afrocentric examples, can assist learners in acquiring relevant knowledge and skills and be useful in cross-cultural teaching and learning, as learners can relate the theory to their local context. However, the concept should be presented to learners before introducing new academic content.
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Acknowledgments
The research was supported in part by the National Research Foundation (NRF) of South Africa (grant number 132180) and the Research Professor Support Programme of the University of South Africa (Unisa). The grant holder acknowledges that opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in the article are those of the authors and that neither the NRF nor Unisa accepts any liability whatsoever in this regard. We also acknowledge valuable feedback received from the peer reviewers and editors.
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Eybers, S., Kroeze, J.H., van Staden, C.J. (2025). Enhancing Cross-Cultural Teaching and Learning: An Instructor’s View on Africanization. In: Hinkelmann, K., Smuts, H. (eds) Society 5.0. Society 5.0 2024. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 2173. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-71412-2_8
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