Theoretical Frameworks and Indigenous Knowledge Systems

Abstract

The crux of this paper is that the role of philosophy in education is not just a matter of shaping the solidity of pertinent ideas, technical skills, cherished values, or expected attitudes that adhere to an e x act paradigm or that conforms to a set of ratified methodological rules. Instead, an influential philosophy in education has to enhance and adapt a continuum which is apposite in its nature, structure, and essence. An apt philosophy enhances concrete education by means of substantiating such education and shaping it with i n a specified theory. The implication is that such a theory is necessary to define education in terms of its nature, structure, and essence. A philosophical attempt to shape education using a theoretical framework is comparatively the rationale of this paper. As such, theory plays an important role in determining the nature of educational discourse, including teacher education in a relative perspective. It i s therefore necessary to determine the place of theory in the process of education practice, and also ascert a in the implication that theory as reflected in indigenous knowledge systems (Mwinzi, 2012:79). A crucial factor in the indigenous knowledge systems rests on the reality of existentialism, communalism, holisticism, preparationism, perennialism, and functionalism in African rationality