Seeking partnership: the state, community participation and the provision of social services: analysis of experiences from Tanzania and Zimbabwe

A lecture paper on the participation of the community in social services.As a notion, the words 'participation’ and participatory’ entered the development jargon during the late 1950s. The realization that the oppressed had not only failed to 'unfold like a flower from a bud’, but also that populations were kept out of all the processes related to the design, formulation and implementation of development programmes and projects led to the advocacy for the end of top-down’ strategies and the inclusion of participation and participatory methods as an essential dimension of development. As the 'Development Establishment’ also began to realize the fact that billions spent on development was not producing the expected results, a new consensus was forged among planners, NGOs and field workers that a change in the relationships between the different parties to the development activities was imperative

Beyond critique to academic transformation : reconceptualising rurality in the global south

Critique is taken to mean an analytical examination of a text or a situation whether political or economic or social. Although critique is commonly understood as fault finding and negative judgment, it can also involve merit recognition, and, in the philosophical tradition, it also means a methodical practice of doubt. This reasoned judgment or analysis, value judgment, interpretation or observation is different from the pragmatic imperatives to action, in this case policy action; and in the South African case transformative policy action. Where the academy is concerned there is a radical difference between critiquing the academy and finding practical solutions to endemic problems ingrained not only in the philosophy but in the cyclical practice that drives it and the disciplines that emerge from it. This article takes its cue from the urgent need to go beyond ideologies which are neo-colonial, Eurocentric, abstract or individualist, to a discourse which engages in sustained action beginning with the academy. Since the universities in Africa remain mired in fundamentally Eurocentric views and interpretations, we need to find deep analyses and come out with propositions that have the ability to transcend the battle between scholars and academic paradigms to transformative imperatives that can put pressure and raise the bar for the academy to consider changing its ways.peer-reviewe

Bons professores em um terreno perigoso: rumo a uma nova visão da qualidade e do profissionalismo

Ideas about what makes a good teacher are important in thinking about educational reform, and have come into focus recently. These ideas are contested and open to change. The first part of this paper traces models of the good teacher in Australia from the colonial-era good servant, through an ideal of the autonomous scholar-teacher, to contemporary lists of teacher competencies. The second part looks more closely at the incoherent but insistent way the good teacher is now defined under neoliberal governance by teacher registration authorities. The third part of the paper makes proposals for a new understanding of good teachers: based on understanding the labour process and occupational dynamics of teaching, the intellectual structure of Education studies, and the overall logic of education itself.Ideias sobre o que caracteriza um "bom professor" são importantes para se possa refletir a respeito da reforma educacional, e elas têm ganhado destaque recentemente. Essas ideias são controversas e estão abertas a mudanças. A primeira parte deste artigo examina modelos do que é considerado um "bom professor" na Austrália, desde os bons servidores da era colonial, passando pelo ideal do professor erudito autônomo, até as atuais listas de competências dos docentes. A segunda parte examina mais detalhadamente o modo pelo qual as autoridades responsáveis pelo registro e credenciamento de professores, em governos neoliberais, definem um "bom professor". A terceira parte oferece propostas para uma nova compreensão do conceito de "bom professor", baseadas no entendimento do processo de trabalho e da dinâmica ocupacional do ensino, na estrutura intelectual dos estudos sobre a Educação e na própria lógica da educação como um todo

Language endangerment and language documentation in Africa

Non peer reviewe

Rural people first: challenges for the 21st century: opening address to the Free State Sedimosang Rural Development Initiative

Free State Sedimosang Rural Development Initiative, Bloemfontein 29-31 March 1999Focuses on the challenge of mobilizing people's knowledge for purposeful economic and social development. Argues that one way to achieve this is to support the development of participatory action research

The centre-periphery in knowledge production in the twenty-first century

This paper examines the new configurations in global relations and the centrality of knowledge as the emerging currency in that relationship. Taking into account the vacuum created by the collapse of the Soviet Union, and especially the subduing effect that this has had on Marxist scholars and scholarship as the once core critical paradigm, the paper argues that the 'centre-periphery' fault line and dichotomy may be far less obvious to the younger generation than to the predecessors.

Compendium for first national conference on community colleges

Eskom Conference Centre; with reports on community colleges, 6-7 Jul

Further education and training institutions and communities at work: case studies of five community college models

It is hoped that the book contributes to building an understanding of the complexity of the challenges facing curriculum development in a sector that has been described as fragmented and without a common institutional character and identity (DoE, 1995). The educational task of designing, developing and implementing responsive programmes, needs a 'community of practice' that takes into account economic and labour market debates yet still defines responsiveness in terms that can be defended on curriculum grounds. This, in the end, is the strongest contribution that FET colleges1 can make towards realising the vision that guides current policy reforms. Notes: Vocational education and training (VET); technical and vocational education and training (TVET); technical and further education (TAFE); further education (FE) and further education and training (FET) are terms used in different countries to refer to more or less the same kind of educational provision, although FET in South Africa is only partially synonymous as it also covers senior secondary schooling. South Africa is currently changing from VET to FET and the two terms are used interchangeably