The recruitment and recognition of prior informal experience in the pedagogy of two university courses in labour law

Includes bibliographical references.This thesis explores the epistemological complexities associated with the long-standing principle in adult education that the experience of the adult student should be valued, taken account of and built upon in the pedagogic process, to the extent that it can even be 'recognized' for purposes of access or credit. It asks how prior experience is recruited and recognized in a higher education context where commitment to the adult student is espoused but the curriculum is non-negotiable . Multiple research methods are used to pursue this question in two courses in Labour Law at separate universities . One, a certificate course, had admitted students with Grade 10 or less. The other, a post-graduate diploma, had admitted students without degrees. The thesis opens with a discussion of the ways in which formal and informal knowledge have been constructed in various theories of knowledge and thought, as well as in discourses on the Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL). Thereafter, drawing on Bernstein, Dowling and Bourdieu , and in dialogue with the empirical data, a language of localizing and generalizing strategies is developed to identify various forms of informal and formal knowledge and to describe their interplay. The range and interrelationships of these strategies is shown in the form of semantic networks. Attention is paid to the structure of law and its sub-field labour law as fields of practice and of study and it is noted that both are characterized by a deductive relationship between formal and informal knowledge. The practice of law is essentially about the application of rules, concepts and principles to actual events (a deductive process) while the development of laws themselves is in response to social conditions (an inductive process). There is always the potential for inequity between the generality of the law and the particularities of an individual case. The courses differ in the extent to which they follow the deductive logic of the practice of law. It is argued that the higher level course which explores the complexities of labour law and its application to actual reported cases and events, is closer to that logic than the lower level course which presents the law in terms of sets of rules and procedures and tries to simplify its application by the use of the hypothetical. The postgraduate course also offers students an opportunity to recruit prior experience in assignments, even though it has to be researched and recontextualized for the purpose. The research finds that both lecturers and students use localizing strategies, including the recruitment of prior personal experience. Three different pedagogic styles are identified, with the recruitment and recognition of prior informal experience as a major feature of variation . The lecturers' localizations have a generalizing trajectory in that they are expressed in relation to general rules, principles or concepts or case law. The localizations of students who have mastered or submitted themselves to the recognition and realization rules of the courses have a similar trajectory. A few students show a localizing trajectory, limited to personalizing strategies often used to challenge the general rule by asserting the particularity and difference of personal experience. These localizing orientations are associated with very limited formal education but not exclusively so. They are also associated with expectations that prior informal experience is valuable in a formal educational context and will be recognized. This promise, engendered by discourses on RPL and adult education, obfuscates the transmission/acquisition purposes of a formal education programme. The theoretical contribution of the thesis lies with the language of description which it develops to analyse the interplay between the multiple dimensions of formal and informal knowledge. The research also has important implications for two theories of Basil Bernstein's. It shows that it is difficult to identify horizontal discourse empirically and to separate it from vertical discourse. The two are inextricably intertwined. The discussion of students' orientation to the local and the general shows the relevance of Bernstein's notions of elaborated and restricted codes to adult education. At the same time it exposes the crudity of these notions, showing, through fine-tuned analysis, the multiple different ways in which context-dependent and -independent knowledge is combined in practice. Finally, the research shows that students with limited formal education can and do succeed in formal education programmes. Factors influencing their achievement include the nature of their work experience and the extent to which it has exposed them to formal literacies, and dispositional factors including a willingness to accept pedagogic hierarchy, to assume an individual rather than collective identity and to expend symbolic labour

Changing gender profile of medical schools in South Africa

Background Higher education policy since 1994 is committed to equity of access for all irrespective of race and gender. Objectives We investigated progress towards these goals in the education of medical doctors, with an emphasis on gender. Methods Databases from the Department of Education (DoE), Health Professions Council of South Africa (HPCSA) and University of Cape Town (UCT) Faculty of Health Sciences were used to explore undergraduate (MBChB) trends at all eight medical schools and postgraduate (MMed ) trends at the University of Cape Town (UCT). Results Nationally women have outnumbered men at MBChB enrolments since 2000, reaching between 52% and 63% of at seven of the eight medical schools in 2005. However, the rate of change in the medical profession will take more than two decades for female doctors to outnumber male doctors. A study of UCT postgraduate enrolments shows females have increased to 42% of MMEd enrolments in 2005. However, female postgraduate students were concentrated in disciplines such as paediatrics and psychiatry and comprised no more than 11 % of enrolments in the surgical disciplines. Conclusions The study provides a basic quantitative overview of the changing profile of medical enrolments and raises questions about the career choices of women after graduating and the social factors influencing these choices

The PhD conundrum in South African academia

South African universities need more academics with PhDs, from historically disadvantaged population groups in particular, but they face a conundrum. In order to have more staff with PhDs, they need to produce more PhD graduates. But in order to produce more PhD graduates, they need more staff with PhDs to supervise. This article explores this conundrum by comparing academic qualifications with national policies and targets, by developing a quantitative profile of staff without PhDs and describing government and institutional measures to improve academic qualifications. An institution's supervisory capacity is found to be closely related to institutional history. Four main factors are identified: (a) whether or not the institution was originally established as a traditional university or as a technikon; (b) whether or not it was advantaged or disadvantaged under apartheid, which was closely related to the racial group for which it was established; (c) whether or not it was merged post 2004; and if so, (d) with what type of institution it was merged.The Australia–Africa Universities Network (AAUN)https://wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/hequ2019-10-01hj2019Education Management and Policy Studie

Doctors in a divided society: the profession and education of medical practitioners in South Africa

Many of the hopes and aspirations of South Africa’s new democracy depend upon the production of professionals who not only have globally competitive knowledge and skills, but are also ‘socially responsible and conscious of their role in contributing to the national development effort and social transformation’ (Ministry of Education 2001: 5). Furthermore, there is a dire need for more black and female professionals, not only to redress the inequities of the past, but also to broaden the consciousness of social formations that tend to be conservative everywhere in the world. In South Africa under apartheid, the professions reflected race and gender hierarchies, and to varying extents they still do. Whether the professions and their education programmes are managing to achieve these ideals is a moot point which the HSRC hopes to address with a series of studies on professions and professional education, of which this is the first. The studies are intended to explore the policy concerns stated above and also to raise issues that have not yet entered policy discourse. They will examine each profession through two theoretical lenses; the first being professional labour markets, both national and international, as well as the wider general labour market in South Africa, while the second focuses on the national and international professional milieu. this resource is useful for scholars, students, and members of the public interested in improving their knowledge on the role of policy in shaping the lives and attitudes of medical practitioners in South Africa

Doctoral rites and liminal spaces : academics without PhDs in South Africa and Australia

Academics without PhDs are common in developing countries and among lecturers from marginalised communities, yet the literature on doctoral education largely ignores them. This qualitative study aimed to address that gap by interviewing academics without PhDs in South Africa and Australia. Their narratives of betwixt and betweenness contribute to theories of liminality as well as doctoral education. Liminality is traditionally conceptualised as a linear, vertical process with clear rites of passage. However, in our study, the interviewees were not only facing a vertical trajectory between non-PhD and post-PhD status but also a lateral trajectory between staff and student identity. The research confirms the importance of distinguishing between transient and permanent liminality in an occupational context. For those who had given up studying, liminality was permanent. Liminality was also affected by dynamically interconnecting factors including age, gender, race, ethnicity, relations with supervisors, time and location.http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cshe202020-08-22hj2019Education Management and Policy Studie