Research in Social Sciences and Technology (E-Journals)
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Editorial: Education and the Quest for Educating in the Current and the Post-COVID-19 Era
Get PDFThis special issue contains quality, well-researched, and well-argued articles towards inter/multi-disciplinary understanding of the current and future state, manner, and disposition of social, educational, environmental, humanitarian, and technological perspectives of COVID-19 pandemic. Readers, academics, practitioners and students are provided with robust knowledge on the state and status of the COVID-19 pandemic in the world from its advent in 2020, its present state and future projections. We thank all colleagues involved in the editorial and publishing process for their supports, assistance and exceptional guidance. We are bold to say that the quality involved in the publication process of RESSAT Journal is second to none. To all our authors, your quality products remain part of the historical contribution to knowledge on the COVID-19 pandemic
The Effect of Strategic Collaboration Approach on the National Educational Standards Achievement and Service Quality in Basic Education at Local Government in Indonesia
Get PDFThis study measures the effect of strategic collaboration approach on the Educational National Standards (ENS) and the basic education service quality at local government in Indonesia The research used a quantitative method. We used 489 teachers and 271 school principals in primary and secondary schools. The data were collected through questionnaires for the quantitative data and analyze using a structural model. The research findings confirm strategic collaboration approach has a positive and significant effect on ENS and basic education service quality. Further, the educational national standards have a positive and significant effect on the basic education service. In this study, we found that the strategic collaboration approach may employ in basic education to perform basic education performance. We argue that to better implementation of strategic collaboration approach, the greater improvement of the achievement of ENS and basic education service quality at local government in Indonesia
Pathways to Mitigate Challenges of Learner Academic Performance in a Grade 10 Economics Class in South Africa
Get PDFThis paper aims to explore the pathways to mitigate challenges of learner academic (LAP) performance in a Grade 10 economics class in South Africa. The challenge of poor LAP has ushered a myriad of predicaments in schools globally. These predicaments include lack of teacher inclusion in decision making, inability to work cooperatively together, and lack of professional development opportunities geared towards LAP. The study was qualitative, with 15 participants chosen through purposeful sampling from one rural school in the Thabo-Mofutsanyane education district. This paper is couched in critical emancipatory research with emphasis on the emancipation of the teachers regarding pathways they can self-develop to mitigate the challenges of LAP. The focus group discussions were used to gather information regarding pathways to mitigate the challenges of LAP in schools. The study revealed that teachers possess a very equivocal and varying experience regarding the pathways to use to mitigate the challenges of LAP. The findings suggest that for successful implementation of pathways to mitigate the challenges of LAP, schools need to invest in training teachers for team-teaching and avail the necessary resources (both human and physical) to ensure effective quality teaching and learning exist in the school. The article recommends that schools should develop policy frameworks, together with relevant stakeholders, to guide novice teachers on the strategies they can use to mitigate the challenges of LAP in their classes
The Political Awareness and Participation of University Students in post-Apartheid South Africa
Get PDFBeing politically aware and participating in politics are essential determinants of a society’s democratic survival. One source of concerns for researchers of political behavior regarding post-apartheid South Africa is the low rates of youth’s political participation. There is however a dearth of empirical studies in the extant literature on the university students’ political awareness and their political participation in post-apartheid South Africa. This mixed-methods research was conducted to fill in this obvious gap. A study sample of 372 undergraduate students selected from one rural university in the Eastern Cape through the stratified random sampling techniques yielded the quantitative data, and the qualitative data were obtained from five (5) executive members of the Student Representative Council (SRC) who were purposively selected for semi-structured interviews. Both quantitative and qualitative data analyses were performed by employing simple descriptive and Pearson correlation statistics as well as a thematic content analytical approach. Results showed that nearly all the respondents demonstrated a high level of political awareness in terms of rights to vote and be voted for (99.4%), the importance of parliament, and the national constitution (99.1%) while the respondents’ levels of political participation appeared to be below average as only (49.2%) voted during the 2017 SRC election, whereas (30.4%) of them voted in the 2014 national elections. Students’ political awareness was found to be significantly correlated with their participation in political activities on-campus (r = 0.130) and off-campus (r = 0.185). In conclusion, the bivariate analysis indicated that there was a positive correlation between students’ political awareness and their participation in politics (P<0.001).
 
Educating Progressed Learners in Times of COVID-19: How Can Bricolage Help?
Get PDFThis paper discusses using bricolage to mitigate the struggles faced by progressed learners in rural KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, in the context of the global COVID-19 pandemic. Most progressed learners perform poorly in many subjects, especially sciences. Their struggle has stimulated the need to find ways to enhance their performance. Reinvented artefacts and processes can be used for emancipation, and to transform agendas for improving the performance of progressed learners. To collect data, we used participatory action research, which uses a thematic approach to make meaning of data. We created a WhatsApp group to enable focus group discussions for collecting data, to circumvent COVID-19 restrictions. The group had 14 members, among whom teachers and learners from rural schools. The study found that the factors that contributed to poor performance were a lack of teaching and learning materials, too few teachers, less than optimal teaching methods and learners’ attitudes towards science subjects. The main argument of the article is that, in this time characterised by the COVID-19 pandemic, embracing bricolage has the impetus to mitigate challenges relating to the education of progressed learners. Thus, it is important to emancipate teachers, so that they can bricolise the environment for teaching and learning
Lecturer Autoethnographies of Adjusting to Online Student Interactions during COVID-19
Get PDFIn 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic pushed South African historically disadvantaged institutions, that had not yet reached advanced levels of technology use in teaching and learning, to find immediate solutions to salvage the disrupted academic year. Interactions with students, which had predominantly been face-to-face, shifted to various online platforms for lecturers to adopt emergency remote teaching approaches. Most of the lecturers were unprepared or incapacitated to make the shift to online environment. Studies have looked at the online teaching and learning experiences of students and lecturers during the COVID-19 pandemic but very few have taken an autoethographic approach to their inquiry and situated experiences in historically disadvantaged institutions. In this article, as lecturers, we use autoethnographies to provide an account of adjusting to interacting with students online during national lockdowns at a historically disadvantaged institution. The Social Cognitive Theory (SCT) was applied to guide the study. This reflexive approach is valuable, as it captures professional encounters and reflections needed to understand the effects of rapid changes to teaching and learning in response to the pandemic. Given the education disparities that already existed between South African higher education institutions before COVID-19, the article contributes to the discourse on how historically disadvantaged institutions can advance higher standards of teaching and learning to serve students better. Our reflections point to the personal, technical and structural challenges of maintaining regular online interaction. Our findings show that different approaches and techniques were applied to adjust to virtual teaching and learning. As teaching and learning methodologies have the potential to ingrain social inequalities, we made recommendations on how to improve online interactions with students from historically disadvantaged contexts
The Relationship Between the Performance and the Perceived Stress of Employees
Get PDFThe study aimed to determine the relationship between the job performance of individuals working in the sports industry and their perceived stress. The sample of the study consisted of a total of 474 people including 361 male and 113 female that working in a private company operating in the sports industry in Istanbul, and they were selected by purposeful sampling method. After the data showed normal distribution; Independent t-test, ANOVA and Pearson Correlation analysis were used to analyse the data. According to the result of the analysis, there was no statistically significant difference found between the job performance and perceived stress levels of the participants according to their marital status and educational status. A significant difference was found in the perceived stress levels and job performances of the individuals according to their gender and working period in the workplace. Finally, it was found that there was a negative and low-level relationship between the perceived stress scale and job performance scale. As a result, it was determined that the stress perceived by the individuals and their job performance levels differed according to the socio-demographic characteristics of the individuals, and the higher the stress levels perceived by the individuals, the lower their job performance were
Together but Not Together: Challenges of Remote Learning for Students Amid the COVID-19 Pandemic in Rural South African Universities
Get PDFThe purpose of the study was to examine the challenges of remote learning that were faced by students in four rural institutions of higher learning amid the COVID-19 pandemic. It is well documented that in South Africa as well as globally, the COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the teaching and learning in higher institutions of education. A call was made by the Department of Higher Education and Training that mandated universities to adopt remote learning to save the academic year. That call was a blanket statement that did not consider the context of different universities, given the inequalities that existed prior to the outbreak of COVID-19 between the historically disadvantaged universities and the well-established ones. The study adopted a qualitative approach that made use of a desktop research methodology, as well as the media (Television, radio and newspapers), and social media as sources of data gathering to document the challenges. One of the key findings was that some students studying at rural institutions of higher learning experienced challenges of limited skills as well as the convenience of and access to technology and other tools of trade. The paper concludes that such students were proposing that, ‘we are together but not together”. The root of such grievance is that they were grossly affected by the geographical and historical position of the universities they were enrolled at and the situation was deepened and exposed by the COVID-19 pandemic. The paper recommends the equal redistribution of resources especially to previously disadvantaged Black universities. The paper further recommends that the Department of Education introduce online learning to students from as early as high school so that there will be continuity and ease in remoting learning
University Students’ Learning Disruption and Affordance in a Contested Learning Environment
Get PDFThis study investigates how university students engage with their learning affordances in a contested environment due to the Coronavirus pandemic. This qualitative research employed a case study approach involving 136 participants. Data analysis was conducted using qualitative analysis as a circular process to describe, classify, and perceive the phenomenon and how the learning, affordances, and society were interconnected. The main framework of the research was the theory of affordance and how it was available for university students in their learning environment that changed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Data were collected in the first semester of 2020 through an online survey on Google form. The findings indicate the importance of the social environment to provide affordance for the students to adjust with them. Four kinds of affordances emerged from the study; internet affordance, assignment affordance, domestic affordance, and distance learning affordance. The role of the social environment is definitive in changing how students manage their affordances
The Use of Technology in Accounting Classrooms During COVID-19: What Do Accounting Teachers in the Eastern Cape, South Africa, Have to Say?
Get PDFIt was mentioned that accounting classrooms must keep pace with rapidly changing technology, which is influencing all aspects of our daily lives. This study examined accounting teachers’ views on the use of technology in their classrooms during Covid-19. To this end, the researchers employed a qualitative approach and a case study. Data were obtained from accounting teachers through interviews, with the sample of ten participants having been purposively selected. The results indicated that allowing learners to bring their own personal technological devices to the classroom represented a contravention of the school’s constitution. Another result was that when technology is optimally used in the classroom, it makes available different forms of assistance which change the way learners learn. Researchers conclude that use of technology in accounting implemented compulsory if teachers want to keep up with changes accounting profession. Furthermore, schools’ constitutions need to be amended to promote the use of available technologies in the classroom, albeit in a highly structured, managed, and efficient way. Researchers recommend that learners be allowed to use their own personal devices in the classroom, to enhance learning. School principal be encouraged to develop school plans outlining how s/he would support use of technology in school