Richard Tabulawa is a Professor and former Dean of the Faculty of Education at the University of Botswana. He received his BA (Humanities) in 1985 from the University of Botswana. He then proceeded to the University of Manchester where he graduated with a Master in Education (Med, Curriculum Development) in 1989. He studied for his Ph.D. between 1992 and 1995 at the University of Birmingham, UK.
Botswana school children. Credit: USAID/Southern Africa. Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC 2.0). https://www.flickr.com/photos/usaidsouthernafrica/.
His career began as a teacher of English and Geography at a school in Botswana. He then moved into teacher education at the University of Botswana and led the redevelopment of Botswana’s secondary school Geography curriculum in 1999.
His research now focuses on pedagogy, curriculum, education policy, and the intersection of globalization and education. His work challenges the imposition of educational ideas from the global North on the global South, highlighting the role of international agencies (including aid agencies) in this process, and situating this as part of an agenda to produce capitalist consumers in the global South.
He explains that often such educational reforms fail because they are incompatible with local socio-cultural contexts, and so resisted by both teaching staff and pupils.