Adopting social realism as a theoretical framework for critical scholarship of German foreign language teaching and

The call for a decolonised curriculum in the South African higher education context is particularly urgent and complex in disciplines such as German Studies which, by nature, is Eurocentric. In South African scholarship on German foreign language (GFL) teaching and learning, common research questions aim to provide students with epistemological access to disciplinary knowledge. Although epistemological access has become a term synonymous with notions of equality and empowerment, the term does take the validity of curricular knowledge for granted and therefore holds colonial knowledge structures in place. This paper puts social realism forward as a theoretical framework for critical curriculum research, in which both ontological and epistemological foundations of disciplinary knowledge are interrogated. The theoretical and methodological implications of social realist theory for research design are discussed in the context of both GFL curriculum and textbook praxis and the practical aspects of data collection and analysis.