Teacher as learner: a personal reflection on a short course for South African university educators

Higher education is understood to play a critical role in ongoing processes of social transformation in post-apartheid South Africa through the production of graduates who are critical and engaged citizens. A key challenge is that institutions of higher education are themselves implicated in reproducing the very hierarchies they hope to transform. In this paper, I reflect critically on my experiences of a course aimed at transforming teaching through transforming teachers. In this paper, I foreground my own positionality as a white female educator as I draw on feminist theorising to reflect on my experiences as a learner in the Community, Self and Identity course. I suggest that we need to teach in ways that are more cognisant of the complexities of the constraints on personal freedom in the past if we are to contribute to the development of social justice in the future.IS

Bridging skills demand and supply in South Africa: the role of public and private intermediaries

Demand-led skills development requires linkages and coordination between firms and education and training organisations, which are major challenges considering that each represents a ‘self-interested’ entity. The need for a ‘collaborative project’ involving government, firms, universities and colleges, and other bodies is thus increasingly recognised. However, the crucial role of intermediaries has been largely overlooked. The article addresses this gap by investigating the main roles of public and private intermediaries across three case studies: sugarcane growing and milling, automotive component manufacturing, and the Square Kilometre Array sectoral systems of innovation. The research highlights the need for a move towards systemic thinking, to bridge across public and private objectives. It shows that private intermediaries play a larger role than is recognised in policy; that public–private intermediaries play crucial roles in coordination; and the potential for public intermediaries to contribute more effectively to systemic functioning

A snapshot of early childhood care and education in South Africa: institutional offerings, challenges and recommendations

This article draws from a research report on the Project for Inclusive Early Childhood Care and Education (PIECCE), which surveyed attitudes, training strategies, materials and entrance requirements across most relevant higher education institutions (HEIs), non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and technical and vocational education and training colleges (TVETs). The aim of this study was to identify what institutions were offering in terms of training teachers in the birth-to-four age group, to identify the challenges and provide recommendations based on the findings

Youth marginalisation as a faith-based concern in contemporary South African society: Introducing a research contribution

The aim of this article is to introduce a special collection of articles focused on the topic ‘Youth marginalisation as a faith-based concern in contemporary South African society’. In meeting this aim the discussion begins by alluding to an international research project known under the acronym YOMA (Youth at the Margins: A Comparative Study of the Contribution of Faith- Based Organisations to Social Cohesion in South Africa and Nordic Europe) as the source that inspired the undertaking of the collection. This recognition thereupon leads the article in subsequent sections to give some more detailed recognition to the YOMA project but also to a larger corpus of recent scholarly contributions as the most evident manifestations to date of an emerging South African research engagement with the topical focus under discussion. From this vantage point the article then proceeds to present the current special collection as a concerted attempt to give further momentum to the emerging focus. Importantly, however, this is done by presenting a more elaborate argument about the imperative of interdisciplinary engagement within the topical focus and how such engagement defines the nature and scope of the present collection. This finally leads the discussion to conclude with a summary of the contributing articles

Contextualising school readiness in South Africa: Stakeholders’ perspectives

Preparing children for mainstream school occurs in systems that act as an overarching context. The perspectives of stakeholders influence how they prepare children for mainstream education.The aim of this study was to develop an understanding of the contextual factors that affect school readiness as identified by stakeholders. School readiness was conceptualised as a function of contextual influences and connections between individual and systemic factors enabling the child to benefit from the curriculum

Speaking with a forked tongue about multilingualism in the language policy of a South African university

As part of a broader student campaign for ‘free decolonized education’, protests over language policies at select South African universities between 2015 and 2016 belied widespread positive appraisals of these policies, and revealed what is possibly an internal contradiction of the campaign. The discourse prior to the protests (e.g. “excellent language policies but problematic implementation”), during the protests (e.g. silence over the role of indigenous African languages in the “Afrikaans must fall” versus “Afrikaans must stay” contestations), and after the protests (e.g. English becoming a primary medium in some institutional policy reviews) warrant attention to critical literacy in language policy scholarship. Based on a theoretical account of speaking with a forked tongue, this article analyzes the language policy text of one South African university. The analysis suggests, simultaneously, why similar policies have tended to be positively appraised, why students’ calls for policy revisions were justified, but why the changes clamoured for arguably amount to complicity in self-harm

Statement on ethical research and scholarly publishing practices

1 pag