Abstract
South African Public Universities are facing transitional challenges as they traverse uncharted
territory in decolonising knowledge. The idea of decolonising knowledge brings with it the need to
review curricula as well as the lecturer’s pedagogy. A cybernetic approach using conversation theory
is presented as a viable solution to inclusive and ethical contextual curricula design. Through
conversation, contextual enquiries can be achieved which are then used as reference points in
revising curricula. In this paper, a report back on a recent curriculum re‐design is presented. The
results of this process have been positive with students demonstrating increased participation,
personal responsibility, and higher motivation in performing assignments. Other positive features
are that students introduce new and relevant topics into the curriculum. These topics are
contextualized by the students (and teacher) allowing for student interpretations of the content in
terms of their daily lives, i.e. the students populate the curriculum with experiences they have had
within their communities. There is increased social engagement in the classroom with students also
dialoging in community with one another and the teacher. The abstraction of the curriculum is
reduced in turn increasing the familiarity and personalization of the module content areas. This
personalization effect was found to improve memory retention of the module content as the grades
were higher for the topics that were proposed by students.