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Challenges of Vulnerable Immigrants: A focus on Refugees and Housing , Their Canadian Experience
Get PDFThe refugee and immigrant problem in Canada are gradually descending into a crisis. Women and elderly people are among the categories of people who experience differentiated integration processes and some forms of discrimination in society. A percentage of immigrants live in poverty, insecurity, and social exclusion, for these individuals, may be in great distress, itinerant, or living in precarious housing conditions. This dire situation made this research imperative to better understand the challenges and measures needed to address the housing challenges of these vulnerable groups. This paper examines the immigrant and refugees housing challenges in Canada. Immigrants and refugees find themselves under diminished capacity as an individual or group to anticipate, cope with, resist, and recover from the impact of the natural or man-made hazard. Qualitative research method was adopted, and data were generated by both primary and secondary sources. Focus groups and policymakers were also interviewed to come up with a logical conclusion on the topic of discussion. The study concludes that there are tripartite causes of housing challenges for refugees and migrants cannot be overemphasized, and it is interconnected to economic, political, and cultural systems. Also, that at best, what has been obtainable is ethnic-specific efforts targeted at some certain migrant groups, which further creates ethical dilemmas as different groups of refugees and different groups of immigrants receive different levels of assistance which is not sustainable, and also antithetical to recommendations from international organizations whose mandate is to ensure quality and adequate housing as a pressing human right issue. The study concluded that creating economic opportunities for migrants and refugees, making information, quality housing, more available and accessible. Also, when housing providers bring cultural agencies into social housing, it would go a long way in mitigating the challenges housing by immigrants and refugees in Canada.
Key words: Immigrants; refugees; housing challenge
Developing a supervisor identity through experiential learning
Get PDFOne of the critical tasks of academics in any research intensive university is the supervision of postgraduate students. Given the central role of this activity, how novice academics’ learn the supervision is significant. This paper was co-authored by three interdisciplinary novice academics in a research-intensive university, specifically in its school of education. The paper focuses on the novice supervisors’ learning of their supervision role. Through the narrative inquiry methodology, the narratives of the three participating novice supervisors, who are also co-authors of this paper, were solicited and examined. The study found the participating novice supervisors playing a proactive role in exploring different sources to harness knowledge pertaining to supervision. This proactive role was effective in enabling full control over their learning and cognition of themselves as supervisors, which in turn enhanced their ability to learn the role
Practical subjects in the vocational curriculum: A critical review of the literature
Get PDFThere is a growing number of studies in the field of vocational education and training, including studies on the practical training that takes place in vocational colleges to prepare students for successful transition into workplaces. There is need to review these studies for systematic knowledge building in the field, and to provide an evidence base for practical training in colleges. This is what this critical review of the literature on practical training in vocational colleges set out to do. The review identified theoretical, procedural, technical and contextual forms of knowledge in practical work, and found that different knowledge types underpin different kinds of practical tasks. Based on these findings, the study proposes a framework towards enhancing practical training in colleges
Personality and self-leadership of school principals as determinants of school performance
Get PDFSeveral determinants have already been linked to the performance of schools. Socio-economic conditions, infrastructure and sustainable teaching and learning are mentioned. However, leadership is one determinant that has been well researched. Aspects such as the leadership style of the principal, motivation and support are mentioned in this regard. This article argues that personality and self-leadership are determinants that play a role in the performance of a school. A qualitative, phenomenological study in the interpretivist paradigm was followed. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with eight principals in both performing and underperforming schools. This study found that the same types of personalities were observed for the principals of both performing and underperforming schools. Therefore, personality does not determine whether a school is performing or underperforming. Self-leadership occurred more naturally with the principals of performing schools than with the principals of underperforming schools. However, the self-leadership of principals in underperforming schools is suppressed due to their particular circumstances
African female university students’ experiences of online education at home during the COVID-19 pandemic
Get PDFFollowing the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, universities in South Africa introduced remote online learning to ensure the continuation of the teaching endeavour. However, learning from home during a pandemic may be a challenge, especially for female students. The purpose of this research was to examine how African female university students’ home environments in a pandemic impact their experiences of remote online education and was underpinned by an African feminist theoretical framework. Using a critical paradigm, qualitative approach and single case study design, the data was generated from questionnaires and metaphors. An inductive thematic analysis of the data showed that home environments play an important role in the education of African female students, particularly in a context characterised by gender inequities and inequities in material resources. However, a sense of agency, displayed by some participants, is suggestive of their determination to overcome the many forms of marginalisation and discrimination they experience
Community-based learning in higher education: A portal for knowledge production in the time of COVID-19
Get PDFThis article examines the curriculum for community-based learning in the context of community engagement in higher education. Using Bourdieu and Argyris and Schön as a theoretical framework, it draws on the findings of a qualitative study that sought to critically explore the epistemological experiences of third-year students undertaking a course in community-based learning at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. The findings revealed that non-traditional students bring epistemic value to university spaces that must be recognised and affirmed in generating new knowledge in the time of COVID-19. This is particularly critical in an institution like the University of KwaZulu-Natal that has a growing number of non-traditional students from previously disadvantaged communities. Both the institution and students have to embrace competing ways of knowing as producers of transformative knowledge.
 
Education lecturers’ perceptions of organising systematic online teaching and learning during COVID-19 pandemic conditions in 2020 at two selected universities in South Africa
Get PDFThis article focuses on epistemological access and teaching and learning online during COVID-19 pandemic conditions. A Survey Monkey questionnaire was used with two universities in South Africa who moved their teaching and learning online, to survey whether lecturers think the extent of epistemological access was affected when teaching and learning went online. Our findings indicate lecturers feel that the emergency teaching and learning has compromised their teaching, and while most used existing face-to-face materials online, formats of assessments used were changed. We argue that these, although understandable given pandemic conditions, do not necessarily constitute the kind of carefully designed, paced, and sequenced, and assessed online teaching and learning that also enhances epistemological access. We note if one is to accept that the “new normal” in education is one that will largely be online, then the quality assurance of online teaching and learning will be unavoidable
Using memory as a resource for pedagogy: fashioning a ‘bridging pedagogical moment’
Get PDFIn post-conflict societies teaching and learning happens in contexts that are heavilyinfluenced by incidents and atrocities of the past. In higher education, such pedagogicalcontexts are fraught with tensions and contradictions. These tensions and contradictions arein a sense unavoidable as they reflect what happens when multiple memories are brought tobear in a pedagogical space. In this article, I problematise my practice as a teacher educatoras I work with pre-service teachers of Business Education. In my attempt to trouble mypedagogic practice, I reflect critically on how I use memory as a pedagogic trigger inpreparing my students for the world of teaching. In particular, I reflect on how multiplememories (mine included) intersect in a sensitive, dynamic and scaffold pedagogic space, a‘bridging pedagogical moment’. Drawing on elements of self-study methodology, I attemptto interrogate my practice with a view to refining and exploring new possibilities forengaging with painful memories of the past that threaten to disrupt our future. Drawing onhooks’ (1994) “Engaged pedagogy” I explore how memory can be harnessed as apedagogical resource in the teaching of Business Education pedagogy. I explore howstudents, dehumanised and objectified by hegemonic race, class and gender regimes, canuse memory to decentre powerful social constructions and reposition themselves as ethicalsubjects in the social realm. As with any pedagogical strategy, there will be severaltensions that are likely to emerge that the teacher education pedagogue has to manage
Teacher support, preparedness and resilience during times of crises and uncertainty: COVID-19 and education in the Global South
Get PDFThe COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated existing education inequities, further marginalising those with poor and limited education opportunities, particularly in conflict, fragile and insecure contexts (Sayed & Singh, 2020). In the Global South, the COVID-19 pandemic compounds existing crises, frailties and inequities as the impoverished suffer food insecurity, physical conflict and crises of health and water. Drawing on research, commissioned by the Open Society Foundation and Education International, based on interviews with purposefully selected teachers’ union and government officials in eight African countries and a detailed desk-based review, the paper examines the role of teachers in education policy responses to the pandemic and the kinds of support (or lack thereof) availed to teachers. Using the conceptual framing of de Sousa Santos’ (2001,2014) sociology of absences and cognitive injustice, the paper demonstrates that teachers have been absent in policymaking processes, and have not been adequately provided with the necessary professional development and psychosocial support to navigate the uncertainties and pedagogical requirements imposed by the COVID-19 pandemi
Crises and disruptions: Educational reflections, (re)imaginings, and (re)vitalization
Get PDFCOVID-19 has illuminated and exacerbated inequities, yet, as a crisis, it is not exceptional in its effect oneducation. We start this critical essay by situating the crisis in its historical, economic, and political contexts,illustrating how crisis and violence intersect as structural conditions of late modernity, capitalism, and theireducation systems. Situating the current crisis contextually lays the foundation to analyse how it has beeninterpreted through three sets of policy imaginaries, characterised by the notions of learning loss and buildingback better and by solutions primarily based on techno-education. These concepts reflect and are reflective ofthe international aid and development paradigm during the pandemic. Building on this analysis, we present, inthe final section, an alternative radical vision that calls on a sociology of possibilities and pedagogies of hopethat we see to be central to a new people-centred education imaginary to disrupt current inequalities and providea new way of doing rather than a return to a business-as-usual approach in and through educatio