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DOES AN INCLUSIVE HOUSING DEVELOPMENT DEPRESS NEIGHBOURHOOD HOUSE PRICES? A CASE STUDY OF COSMO CITY, JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA.
Full text linkSouth Africa joined the global world in building inclusive housing, known as Mixed Income Housing (MIH) as a way to integrate and transform residential markets previously distorted by the discriminatory apartheid regime. However, despite the benefits of MIHs in deconcentrating poverty while boosting housing supply, these inclusive neighbourhoods often experience amplified cases of ‘Not in My Back Yard’ (NIMBY) for various reasons. Thus, approval processes of these inclusive housing developments get to be highly contested in courts, which causes huge delays in their completion. The paper aims to investigate the effect of NIMBY on the price of houses in a mixed-income neighbourhood. The paper used a cross sectional hedonic model on houses sold in the neighbourhood of Cosmo City MIH. The limitation is that a typical and purposely selected Cosmo city case study may not be generalizable to South Africa at large. Results show that Cosmo City had negligible effects on neighbourhood house prices. This is rather surprising given the unfavourable perception encountered during its development. The practical implication is that improving infrastructure such as roads to reduce traffic congestion, building new schools, new hospitals, security services, and new shopping centers reduce pressure on available services and amenities making inclusive housing acceptable in its neighbourhood. The social implication is that inclusive housing developments default into supplying the much-needed social housing in South Africa. Scientifically measuring perception on accepting MIH development projects in well-established neighbourhoods does contribute to understanding the plight of housing shortage by thepublic in ways that accepts inclusivity from an investment point of view
Assessment and social justice: Invigorating lines of articulation and lines of flight
Full text linkThis article is a collective project. It is a rhizome-article that is an assemblage of five heterogeneous essays that trouble dominant practices of assessment, generally, but also within the current COVID-19 pandemic. The authors problematise standardisation, measurement, quantification and other technologies of performativity that dominate contemporary assessment practices in schools and universities. In the essays, the authors invigorate lines of flight from dominant assessment practices and do so in the interest of assessment that is more humane and socially just. They point out that, as with anything else, a rhizome-article also has lines of articulation/connection and invite readers to invigorate these as they read the essays. The authors of this article draw on the works of several scholars but do so to think with them rather than having their work framed by them.
Keywords: assessment, social justice, performativity, lines of articulation, lines of fligh
Reframing policy trajectory for inclusive education in Malawi
Full text linkThis qualitative study proffers ways of reframing the policy trajectory for inclusive education in Malawi. The study involved a document review of inclusive education policies and strategies and in-depth semi-structured interviews with mainstream teachers at a secondary school in Malawi. The results from the document review show that the framing of the education policies and strategies regarding inclusive education pedagogy as an educational practice is influenced solely by learners’ cognitive proficiencies. However, the analysis of the semistructured interviews points towards multi-scalar pedagogical responses to inclusive education. Therefore, I argue that the framing of inclusive education policies and strategies ignores crucial interactive schooling systems such as the onto-pedagogical framings of mainstream teachers and specialists that shape pedagogy in the context of inclusivity. The study concludes that inclusive education policy formulation and implementation requires interactions among and across schooling systems, such as mainstream and specialist teachers, and not merely attending to the epistemological needs of learners. I recommend a bio-ecological systems policyreframing that could help the Malawian and other southern African education systems to use different factors that influence inclusive education
Is education blithely producing unemployed graduates? A reflection based on a review of environmental skills initiatives (2016-2021)
Full text linkA statement from the president of the Black Business Council (BBC) that “our education system continues to produce the unemployed graduates” (NewZRoomAfrika Business@Prime, 2021) because “the courses they are doing are not required by industry” reflects the perennial perception that South Africa’s education system is a cause of unemployment. This paper explores aspects of this perception, through a meta-review of skills related initiatives in the environmental field. The review spans a five year period, from the South African Green Economy Learning Assessment (2016) to the Mid-Term Review of the Biodiversity Human Capital Development Strategy (2021). Data used in these studies include graduation trends based on higher education data, employer surveys, analyses of current and future skills needs in the workplace compared with inventories of courses offered, and case examples of career guidance, internships and teacher development. The findings are related, using an ecological-systems model, in a layered critical realist analysis, to national policies and the socio-cultural milieu in South Africa. The conception of relevant graduate education evident in the BBC’s statement is challenged
Rethinking The Architectural Literacy Of Higher Education Institutions: A Case Study Of University Of KwaZulu-Natal: Howard College
Full text linkUniversities campuses are composed of buildings with emotional, practical, functional and even spiritual meanings. The physical environment of a university campus is a place with distinct character. Apart from their functional requirements as places of learning and knowledge production, buildings and landscapes form a textual lens through which to examine higher education provisioning across time. This article discusses the chronological history of the Howard College campus of the University of KwaZulu-Natal through the lens of architecture. This article also argues that architecture can be viewed as a ‘text’ which can be a form of language that can be comprehended and interpreted through various architectural styles, elements, form and layouts. It discusses how university campus buildings are illuminating reflections of the political, cultural and educational landscape contexts of different periods within the physical development of a higher education institution. Four campus buildings established in different periods with different architectural styles and features were analysed in this article with a particular focus on colonial architecture and its influence on campus buildings. The article proposes “architectural literacy” as a construct to inform a qualitative historical insight into the changing landscape of the higher education system in South Africa and the university of KwaZulu-Natal. It also provides insight into the various transformations in the built environment of the university campus from its colonial inception to its evolving decolonised state through the campus buildings
Transforming teacher education: Using community mapping to read the word and world
Full text linkThe development of critical pedagogical approaches in teacher education (TE) in the South African context is imperative given the deepening crisis in the public schooling system in the country. Public discourse and debates amongst scholars suggest that education for critical citizenship and the development of substantive democracy are under threat. In order to advance education in support of substantive democracy, TE requires critical reflection and engagement with teaching practices that promote the development of citizenship for critical engagement and participation in the socio-economic transformation of South Africa.
This paper argues for the development and application of innovative approaches to teacher preparation that challenge the neoliberal attack on public education and the suppression of emancipatory practices amongst teachers. These approaches include a conscientious examination and application of community mapping as a pedagogical instrument that acquaint student-teachers with, and deepen their understanding of, the contextual realities of educational experiences in poor and working-class South Africa. Drawing on case studies of community mapping, this paper argues for critical engagement within the teaching academy with the theory and practice of teacher preparation towards transformative work and an exposure to educational praxes that better prepare student-teachers for a vocation that embraces the philosophies, methodologies and ethics of critical pedagogy. The main thesis of this paper is that community mapping is a critical and transformative pedagogical tool which should be integral to teacher preparation in South Africa
How the Teaching Development Grant was used (and the problem of common-sense understandings of teaching and learning)
Full text linkA professional qualification is required to teach at the primary and secondary level, but at the higher education level, all that is needed is content expertise. This may well contribute to South Africa’s low throughput and retention rates, in response to which, since 2004, the State has provided an amount of ZAR5.5 billion in the form of a Teaching Development Grant to address the slow completion rates. We present an analysis of the grant across the sector using a Social Realist framework. We suggest that many initiatives replicated issues identified in the literature as being of concern in that they rely on common-sense assumptions rather than theorised accounts. We also found that expertise in academic development was unevenly distributed. Given that the grant has continued, in the form of the University Capacity Development Grant, it is worth looking at how the grant has been used to ensure that future initiatives are effective
AN EARLY WARNING SYSTEM FOR MALARIA IN MOPANI DISTRICT: DIVERGENT OR CONVERGENT APPROACHES
Full text linkAbstract. Malaria is a tropical climate-change concatenated biological hazard that may, like any other hazard, leadto a disaster and requires a multidisciplinary divergent approach. This research was carried out in Mopani District ofSouth Africa. It sought find out whether the existing early warning system in Mopani District is adopting a convergentor divergent approach. Subsequently, this was to assist in developing a tool that covers the loopholes in the existingsystem to further mitigate malaria transmissions. The study took a mixed approach. Data was collected from 381selected participants through in-depth interviews, a survey, and a focus group discussion. Multiple sampling techniqueswere used in this study. In-depth interviews respondents were selected through snowballing, questionnaire surveyrespondents were sampled randomly, while for the discussants in the focus group discussion were purposivelysampled. The study applied constructivist grounded theory to analyse qualitative data and to generate theory.Results of the study show that people in Mopani District predict the malaria season onset by forecasting rainfall usingvarious indigenous knowledge-based indicators. The rainfall indicators mentioned by participants in the study wereused to develop an early warning system. In the design of the system, Apache Cordova, JDK 1.8, Node JS, andXAMPP software were used. The study recommends malaria management and control key stakeholders to adopt thedeveloped early warning system to further mitigate malaria transmission in Mopani District