Redescubriendo el paradigma Ubuntu en educaciónContribuciones epistemológicas en Educación Comparada e Internacional

Abstract

This work raises the need to include alternative paradigms in the scenarios, both theoretical and methodological, typical of Comparative and International Education, which are less positivist, Eurocentric, classist and individualist. In the search for educational comparison, the hegemony of linear, unidirectional, credentialist analyses centred on global classification systems have characterized the scientific evolution of the field in question, an aspect that leads us to ask ourselves: What are we comparing? What theories are we using to understand educational processes? What educational policies and practices are being transferred? Thus here we defend the idea of a comparative epistemology that would entail holistic, humanistic, person-centred approaches to recognize the connections and interdependence among people, and to discuss the asymmetric relations between the West and the global South, as well as the results thereof. The aim of this communication is therefore the analysis of the Ubuntu philosophical paradigm regarding its meaning of shared humanity, as well as the place it occupies in education. Ubuntu is a worldview and therefore it presents itself as a collective frame of reference, useful in the definition of relationships in and between local and global borders, applicable not only in Africa but worldwide. We present the educational postulates of this paradigmatic model and try to establish a convergent research path which can contribute to the enrichment and epistemological renewal of comparative and international education. All this, at a time when comparative education continues to be the subject of intense debates, in which its meaning and orientation as a science is questioned, while at the same time highlighting the challenges it faces.