The Social Roots of Disciplinary Knowledge Compartmentalisation by College Lecturers and Student-Teachers in Zimbabwe

This study explored the social causes of lecturers’ and student-teachers’ fragmented use of course knowledge in the Midlands Province, Zimbabwe, to identify strategies that can promote knowledge interdisciplinarity. It is undergirded by Antonio Gramsci’s cultural hegemony theory, which postulates that society uses social institutions, such as education, to perpetuate cultural domination. The study was conducted at three teacher training institutions and adopted a qualitative approach and a case study design involving 90 participants purposively sampled as the critical case. Structured interviews, document analysis, and observation methods were used to generate data. The findings are that disciplinarity, dominant, powerful subjects, and knowledge categorisation/ranking are the social forces influencing knowledge compartmentalisation by lecturers and preservice teachers. It also noted that animosity among staff members incite separate use of different forms of subject knowledge in teacher training institutions. The causes of stakeholders’ fragmented use of course content were established, which should be used holistically. The study recommends promoting interdisciplinarity in college course content to enrich the ideas and experiences of lecturers, student-teachers, and other stakeholders.