This course is delivered as a hybrid virtual learning experience that combines structured online learning with facilitated live virtual sessions. Participants complete a guided online learning plan at their own pace.
All live virtual sessions will be led by Dr. Ann Divine and Professor David Divine.
These sessions are intentionally designed to move beyond content review. Dr. Ann Divine and Professor David Divine will guide participants through deeper dialogue, applied case discussions, and critical reflection grounded in lived experience, scholarship, and community knowledge.
Their facilitation ensures that learners not only understand Afrocentric concepts intellectually but also engage with them in ways that strengthen professional practice, cultural awareness, and responsible leadership.
Participants are expected to attend and actively engage in each virtual session after successfully completing every three online modules. These sessions are a required component of the course and essential to successful completion.
Participants are introduced to an Afrocentric lens that challenges the dominance of exclusively Eurocentric perspectives in professional practice. Relying on a single narrative can reinforce bias, limit empathy, and marginalize lived experience. This course affirms that multiple narratives must be understood and respected to build equitable systems and meaningful relationships.
Through independent study and collaborative virtual dialogue, participants gain a holistic understanding of Afrocentricity and its influence on cultural identity, history, politics, education, and contemporary global issues.
Hybrid Learning Structure:
Self-Directed Online Learning + Instructor-Led Sessions
This option combines independent online learning with live, facilitated sessions and is offered as a scheduled event through the NSCDA Learning HUB.
When you register for the event, you will:
- Receive access to the whole online course (all 13 modules) in the HUB
- Be enrolled in five live virtual Zoom sessions with a facilitator
- Complete three modules between each live session
- Participate in a small group format (maximum 25 participants)
- Participants complete online modules that include readings, recorded lectures, reflection activities, and applied exercises.
- After every three successfully completed modules, participants attend a live virtual session.
- Virtual sessions focus on facilitated discussion, case studies, practical application, and guided reflection.
- Successful completion of both the online modules and corresponding virtual sessions is required for course completion.
This structure ensures learners do more than absorb information — they integrate, question, apply, and strengthen their understanding through dialogue and shared learning.
Course Objectives
This course introduces learners to ways of understanding rooted in African-centred values, histories, and lived experiences.
The course begins by examining the enduring impacts of enslavement and racial oppression, and how people of African descent have resisted harm, preserved culture, and reclaimed identity across generations. Afrocentricity is explored not only as a response to injustice but as a meaningful framework for healing, self-understanding, leadership, and collective strength.
As learners progress through the modules and virtual discussions, they examine how Afrocentric ideas shape:
- Culture and storytelling
- Education systems
- Media and representation
- Justice and restorative practices
- Health and wellness
- Leadership and governance
- Economic development and community sustainability
The NSCDA partnered in the development of this course through the combined expertise of Dr. Ann Divine and Dr. David Divine, and Lillian Symonds Searl. There is a particular focus on Nova Scotia and Canadian examples and their historical and contemporary contributions.
Throughout the course, learners engage with key Afrocentric principles such as:
- Ubuntu – interconnected humanity and shared responsibility
- Ma’at – balance, truth, justice, and harmony
- Sankofa – learning from the past to build the future
- Ujamaa – cooperative economics and collective prosperity
Participants reflect on how these principles offer alternative and often more holistic approaches to justice, leadership, well-being, and community development.
By the end of the course, learners will be able to:
- Understand Afrocentricity as a theoretical framework and methodology.
- Examine the histories and lived experiences of people of African descent, particularly in Nova Scotia.
- Apply Afrocentric thought to education, media, public policy, and community development.
- Promote cultural reclamation, critical thinking, and social justice within their professional practice.
- Integrate Afrocentric principles into leadership and decision-making processes.
This hybrid model ensures learners engage deeply, reflect critically, and move beyond surface-level awareness toward meaningful understanding and responsible action.
