Higher education research in African contexts: Reflections from fieldwork in flagship universities in South Africa, Mozambique and Ethiopia

This article is written with the recognition that, as higher education studies evolve as a multidisciplinary area of inquiry, there is a need to reflect on the theoretical and practical concerns emerging from conducting higher education research. This is especially the case for early-career researchers who enter this relatively new field of study. This article attempts to explore the fieldwork component of the research process considering our experiences as early-career researchers conducting PhD studies in four universities in southern and eastern Africa. The article focuses on issues related to ethics, gaining and negotiating access to the field, and dealing with positionality during fieldwork. While reflecting on these experiences, we also attempted to explore if there are any fieldwork dynamics that are peculiar to the African higher education context that may be considered during data collection. Reflecting on our experiences, we have argued that, in some institutions, necessary procedures for researching higher education need to be in place, while with the ones that have institutionalised mechanisms the procedures adopted need to be aligned with contextual realities and should focus on ethical considerations rather than protecting the reputation of universities

Doctoral supervision and COVID-19: Autoethnographies from four faculty across three continents

Doctoral students represent the fresh and creative intellectuals needed to address the many social, economic, political, health care, and education disparities that have been highlighted by the 2020 pandemic. Our work as doctoral student supervisors could not be more central nor vital than it was at the beginning of, during, and following the pandemic. Written during the pandemic of 2020, the purpose of this paper was to describe how four faculty from three continents navigated their relationships with doctoral students in the research and dissertation phase of their doctoral programs. Using a common set of prompts, four faculty members each wrote an autoethnography of our experience as doctoral student supervisors. Even though our basic advising philosophies and contexts were quite different, we learned about the possibility and power of resilience, empathy, and mentoring online. Our findings imply that new online practices could be closely examined and retained after the pandemic to expand the reach, depth and impact of doctoral education

English language in African higher education: A systematic review

One of the features of the internationalisation of higher education is the increasing use of the English language as a medium of  instruction  and research in higher education. This growing use of English spurs this article’s attempt at systematically reviewing literature focusing on African higher education systems. The analysis of the selected literature focuses on assessing the main themes, theoretical assumptions and core findings. As a result, 30 articles accessed through continental and international research databases were included in the final analysis after a five-step selection process using relevant keywords related to the topic and the context of the study. The findings indicate that research on the English language in higher education in African contexts overwhelmingly focuses on the language as a medium of teaching and learning. The other aspects, such as the role that the language plays as a medium of research and archiving knowledge, seem to be overlooked. The findings of the majority of both empirical and review papers seem to present critical and, at times,unfavourable views on the role English plays in the specific contexts studied. In light of these findings, the recommendation is that the role of the English language as a medium of instruction should be expanded to cover issues related to research, publication and archiving knowledge. This indicates that the continent’s higher education systems need more research on English language, which suggests that robust and pragmatic theoretical approaches might also be needed in future studies. A further observation is that the findings from the reviewed studies might be the result of using theories that are underpinned in traditions that are already critical of the use of the English language. Thus, more research attention could be given to strengthening the efficacy of using multiple theoretical perspectives to render the African contexts studied more intelligible