As a professional dancer, choreographer and lecturer my speciality and interests lie in choreographic compositional studies. I lecture in a dance programme at a performing arts department at a university in South Africa. Students enrolled in the dance programme predominantly come from historically marginalised groups[1] and engage with their studies from specific socio-cultural paradigms reflective of this historical marginalisation. It is important to be cognisant of the call for decolonisation of higher education in South Africa to be empathetic to the students’ experiences of historical marginalisation.

The South African #FeesMustFall student protests of 2015 and 2016 saw students call for free, decolonised education at tertiary level in an attempt to redress this historical marginalisation and to advocate for social justice in and through education (Prinsloo, 2016: 164). It is the call from South African students for decolonised education that prompted my research and to critically engage with the context of decoloniality that will enable decolonial teaching and learning strategies to be created within a university context. 

Creating teaching and learning strategies at a Univeristy requires an extensive examination of the diversity of the students being taught and negotatiating ways to faciliate teaching. In South Africa the student body is reflective of South Africa as it consists of cultural and linguistic diversity where students come from various social and cultural backgrounds.