Towards a decolonised framing and understanding of the historical thinking project in a Global South space

This study questions the uncritical application of a disciplinary approach to history education in a Global South settler-colonial and post-apartheid space. There is a vibrant debate about the question of teaching history through a disciplinary lens, even as this approach frames history education in many English-speaking Euro-Western countries (Cutrara, 2018; Keynes, 2021; McGregor, 2017; Thorp & Persson, 2020). This disciplinary approach, framed around historical thinking, has important aspects, involving critical thinking and engaging with historical concepts (Seixas & Morton, 2012; Wineburg, 2001). However, the abovementioned research argues that this approach is a Euro-Western imposition and is incompatible with settler-colonial realities. We engage with this position from a South African context, with a complex colonial and settlercolonial history, located in Africa, and in the Global South. What does the coloniality of power do to the approach to histories in a specific place, when that place is in the Global South? What gaze does historical thinking put on histories with other methods, other concepts of history, such as indigenous historians? We engage particularly with the idea of ‘reading like a historian’ (S. S. Wineburg et al., 2012) to problematize the universalisation that happens in this offshoot of historical thinking, as an example of the potential issues in historical thinking more generally. In exploring this we draw from our context as two lecturers in a South African teacher education program, where coloniality is still lived and breathed, into our students and ourselves. We explore the historical thinking project from a different contextual and epistemic perspective to challenge its imposed universality, and offer some thoughts on the possibilities that decolonisation itself might offer as a lens for history education.