Education as Change

SADTU and the Struggle for Professional Unionism, edited by Michael Cross, Logan Govender and Ahmed Essop

Linda Cooper — 2023-08-21

University of KwaZulu-Natal Press. 2023. pp. 249.

ISBN: 9781869145224 / 1869145224

Education under Occupation in Palestine: Resilience and Resistance

Juman Quneis — 2023-10-16

A Commentary on Student Struggles, Violence and Organisational Weakness

Enver Motala — 2023-06-12

Commentary

Theory of Change and Theory of Education: Pedagogic and Curriculum Defects in Early Grade Reading Interventions in South Africa

Brahm Fleisch — 2023-08-10

Much of the field of educational change has focused on better understanding the theory of change, that is, what knowledge is needed to make substantial educational change, particularly improvement to learning outcomes at scale. This article suggests that the South African early grade reading study community may have been looking in the wrong place. The search for the optimal theory of change or theory of action is obviously very important, but could it not be that a key part of the problem is defects in our theory of education? It is argued that there may be something educationally unsound in certain aspects of the official pedagogy and curriculum. As such, the South African education system is unlikely to make much progress towards the goal of getting children to read for meaning by the time they are 10 years old if these defects are not addressed. To illustrate this argument, the article points to data from two examples in South African education policies on pedagogy and curriculum: the first relates to the Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS) Foundation Phase document’s under-specification and weak guidance with reference to the teaching of phonics with linked decodable texts; the second concerns the CAPS document’s privileging of an unworkable reading teaching methodology called Group Guided Reading. The article concludes that to achieve real knowledge breakthroughs, university academics working alongside researchers in government need to develop rigorous research programmes aimed at improving foundational learning outcomes.

“Doing Just Enough to Get By”: Voices of Black Women Early Career Academics on Navigating the Publish or Perish Discourse in South Africa

Mlamuli Nkosingphile Hlatshwayo — 2023-08-07

In this article, we focus on the narratives of black women early career academics (ECAs) who are confronting and negotiating the “publish or perish” discourse in their professional lives in the university. Through a qualitative interpretivist case study, we purposively recruited and interviewed 10 education academics in one research-intensive university in South Africa. We relied on Nancy Fraser’s social justice framework to think through and to theorise the complex positionality of black women academics in a South African university. The findings reveal that black women ECAs often have challenges when it comes to research and publication, with some of the participants rejecting the publish or perish mantra, questioning the usefulness of publishing, and to what extent their own research will make a societal impact. The findings also reveal the deeply embedded patriarchal and gendered nature of the publish or perish discourse in how it disregards the role of wife/motherly/societal care work that women academics often perform. We end the article with broader reflections on the emergence of the publish and perish discourse in the South African higher education system and its implications for the attraction, retention, and wellbeing of black women ECAs in the sector.

The Digital Story Teaching Method for Master of Nursing Specialist Students

Hua Zhao — 2023-07-03

As future healthcare professionals, Master of Nursing Specialist (MNS) students will play an important role in nursing and healthcare. MNS education emphasises the cultivation of students’ critical and clinical thinking. Traditional classroom methods often result in students being unable to combine theory with practice and reduce their ability to problem-solve within the scope of clinical or professional services. However, in economically underdeveloped areas with insufficient educational resources, it is difficult to use real clinical situations or virtual reality technology to carry out teaching. To fill this gap, we introduced the digital story teaching method into classroom teaching in Shanxi Province in northern China, which is an economically underdeveloped agricultural province. Real clinical cases were adapted into stories, with integrated digital media elements. A before-and-after study design was adopted to compare the differences between the digital story teaching method group and the traditional teaching method group. The results indicate that students engaged in learning with the digital story teaching method demonstrated more active learning styles, clinical problem-solving skills, and higher academic achievements in classroom performance and examinations. As a continuous and low-cost flexible education method, the digital story teaching method is a teaching mode suitable for popularisation in areas where clinical teaching resources are relatively scarce.

Advancing Innovation in Global Education: Reflective Experiences of Prospective Teachers as Difference Makers

Iman C. Chahine — 2023-05-22

This study investigates the reflective experiences of 13 undergraduate students as they engaged in a project-based learning environment in an undergraduate course on global and local issues in education. During the course, students’ journal reflections that consisted of internal reactions and learning were qualitatively analysed over several iterations using a multi-layered coding scheme of both inductive and open codes. Results of the study revealed three major themes embedded within levels of expressions through which students narrated their experiences during the course. At each level, students’ perspectives shifted as they negotiated and presented themselves in relation to others and to the course content. Theme 1 emerged at the lexical level: expressing distancing, involvement, and solidarity with topics and classmates. Theme 2 emanated at a textual/pragmatic level: dialogue as a vehicle to stress nuances of agentive positions and self- representations as capable educators, and theme 3 arose at the interactional/social level: chorality and an inherent sense that the voyage into the new land (education as a discipline) is essentially a collective enterprise. Through project-based experiential learning, students became invested in their local community while grappling with far-reaching global problems. In the process, they experienced firsthand how personal educational experiences are connected to universal ones.

Transformation of Higher Learning in South Africa: Perceptions and Understanding of Speech-Language Therapy and Audiology Undergraduate Students

Farieda Abrahams — 2023-05-11

The professions of speech-language therapy and audiology in South Africa developed under apartheid and historically consisted of and catered to a predominantly white English- or Afrikaans-speaking minority population. Over 25 years into democracy, there continues to be a stark incongruence between the demographic profile of the South African population and the speech-language and hearing (SLH) professions in terms of “race”, linguistic, and cultural diversity, and this has implications for training as well as clinical service provision within the South African context. This article explores undergraduate students’ perceptions and experiences of transformation within South African SLH university training programmes through a cross-sectional descriptive survey research design. A self-developed questionnaire was used to collect data from students enrolled in SLH programmes at South African universities. Thematic analysis identified two themes: 1) progress towards attainment of transformation and, 2) visibility of transformation. These findings highlight the need for diversity through inclusivity, redressing past injustices and incorporating local knowledge into current training and practice. These findings have global relevance for transformation in higher education, not just in the field of SLH. Implications for translation of theory and/or knowledge into practice, with more visible and deliberate application of policy in curriculum reform and institutional culture, are raised.

The Linguistic Landscape as an Identity Construction Site of a United States’ Higher Educational Institution in the Time of COVID-19

Jae-hyun Im — 2023-03-03

This study examines how the linguistic landscape of a university in the midwestern United States has changed since the COVID-19 pandemic, and how that change has discursively constructed the identities of the university and its community. The focus lies in the newly displayed semiotics that provides information about preventing the virus from spreading. By analysing public signs such as flyers, posters, and banners whose contents have to do with COVID-19, this study found the following five ways in which the institution and community express their identities and voices. The university’s identity has shifted to that of an agent that acts to encourage a united effort to protect itself and its community; a caring entity that cares about community members; a site for community members’ voice expression; a space creator to expand interaction from physical to online discourses; and an information deliverer for international members of the community. This study calls for research that investigates the global pandemic’s influence on the linguistic landscape.

A Social Semiotic Analysis of Gender Representations in Biology Textbooks for Upper Secondary Schools in China

Daihu Yang — 2023-03-02

The gender gap remains an issue in the biological education community. This study explores the extent to which an egalitarian gender ideology, encapsulated in five biological science textbooks for upper secondary schools in China, manifests through representational, interactive and compositional meanings of social semiotic theory. The findings reveal that females in the textbooks tend to be depicted as passive and inferior to males. More males are represented as playing pioneering and leading roles, as opposed to females, who are cast in assistant and subordinate roles in professional activities. The gendered messages delivered have the potential to disempower female students’ career aspirations and adversely regulate their perceptions and projections of gender identities in biological science.

Positioning the #FeesMustFall Movement within the Transformative Agenda: Reflections on Student Protests in South Africa

Luvuyo Ntombana — 2023-02-17

This article reflects on the successes and failures of student protests in transforming higher education in South Africa through a Marxist lens. The slow pace of change by the government in addressing structural and systemic inequalities has led to disgruntlement within the student body. In their quest to hasten the process, students engaged in protests across the country, inspired by the #RhodesMustFall movement. This article outlines the problematic areas that have led to the unrest and reflects on the #FeesMustFall movement: the lessons learnt and its impact on contemporary higher education. The reflection further unpacks what it means to be a student in South Africa and how the learning process shapes and is shaped by the student movements within universities. The study reviewed existing literature on the #FeesMustFall movement to better understand the influence of student protests on government policy and to evaluate whether any protest-based changes have occurred in higher education in South Africa.

“Only What’s Right”: Normalising Children’s Gender Discourses in Kindergarten (The Case of Montenegro)

Katarina Todorović — 2023-02-07

This article presents results from qualitative research on children’s dominant gender discourses in kindergarten and the influence of the socio-pedagogical aspects of kindergarten culture, transmitted via teachers’ gender discourses and personal epistemologies, on the construction of children’s gender discourses and identities. The main questions guiding our research were: What gender stories are narrated in a group, and under which influences do these stories become established as norms? Our understanding of gender is based on the feminist poststructuralist perspective. Our research in two Montenegrin kindergartens with 54 children and four teachers during a two-week period showed a dominance of the binary opposition discourse of “hegemonic masculinity” and “emphasised femininity”, with an emphasis on gender-stereotyped toys, games, role-play, and professions. Additionally, it has been found that the kindergarten culture strongly shapes and “normalises” children’s perception of “right” gender practices, by reflecting and mirroring teachers’ gender-typed expectations and a value system based on an objectivist personal epistemology that implicitly promotes “feminine” values of subordination, peace, silence and obedience. The findings suggest the need for research focusing particularly on the relationship between teachers’ epistemological theories and the dominant gender discourses in kindergarten. It is also recommended that Montenegro’s early childhood education policy and strategy documents consider and elaborate more thoroughly the concept of gender identity and gender-flexible pedagogies.

Article Title: “Universities and the Co-construction of Knowledge with Communities”

Na-iem Dollie — 2023-02-07