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The crisis of COVID-19 and opportunities for reimagining education
Get PDFOur argument in this brief contribution is that Covid-19 has brought the experience of education to a crisis with respect to its practices and the theories which inform it. The practice crisis is about the glaring inequalities in peoples’ access to education. The theory crisis is about how we learn. Our contention is that our dominant cohort learning approaches fail to address the multiple differences children bring to the learning task. In response we make two key moves: firstly, to restore the centrality of cognition in all processes of teaching and learning, and, secondly to situate cognition in its full biopsychosocial complexity. With respect to the first move we begin our discussion of teaching and learning with a focus on cognition and particularly on executive function component of cognition. We provide the explanation of what it is, and with that move to our second to show the importance of new learnings about epigenetics which explain the relationship between the biological and the social to the cognitive process
A Critique of Modernist Approaches to Urban Dwelling
No full textApartheid planning approaches have significantly contributed to the lower quality of dwelling of marginalized groups and the continued betterment of dwellings of privileged minorities, on the other hand. This paper aims to critically review the socio – spatial manifestations of segregatory design approaches towards finding inclusive approaches that can benefit contemporary South African urban communities. The qualitative methodology compromises a literature review, and precedent studies of key precincts in the Durban CBD. This study is part of a Theory of Architecture III course, undertaken by a group of third year students, who are the authors of this paper, under the facilitation of Dr Yashaen Luckan at the School of Built Environment and Development Studies, University of KwaZulu Natal. The methodology importantly includes graphic analysis/drawing as a method of inquiry
Pervasive skills and accounting graduates’ employment prospects: Are South African employers calling for pervasive skills when recruiting?
Get PDFIn today’s global and digital accounting world, the role and skills required of accounting practitioners have evolved, resulting in pervasive skills coming to the fore. Various Interventions, including changes made to the accounting degree curricula for an added focus on pervasive skills, have been made by universities offering accounting programmes in South Africa. However, it remains unknown whether such interventions provide an incentive for accounting graduates in the job-seeking process. In as much as the possession of pervasive skills may be associated with employment success, it is not clear whether employers are actually calling for these skills. Through a content analysis of advertised online accounting vacancies, this quantitative study sought to investigate the importance of pervasive skills for accounting graduate employment prospects. The findings suggested that oral and written communication skills and critical thinking skills were the most sought after pervasive skills in accounting-related employment in South Africa.
 
“It was an oasis in a busy life, a busy city”: the Centre for Learning, Teaching and Development writing retreat
Get PDFA growing body of research literature indicates that writing retreats for academics are conducivefor the development of writer confidence and competence, and for increasing participants’ rate ofresearch publication. Can writing retreats also restore a sense of community and collegiality? Thispaper addresses this question by presenting a case study of a series of small-group, process-orientedwriting retreats held at an urban, research- intensive university in Johannesburg from 2011 to 2015.Data in the form of participants’ free writes and post-retreat written evaluations, as well asfacilitators’ reflective dialogues and observations were collected and analysed. Dirkx’s (2001)theory of transformative learning provides the main analytical lens. Key findings are that suchretreats restore the sense of community and collegiality that seems to be fast disappearing in thehigh stress university environment in which the retreat is located. The authors argue thatresidential, process-oriented writing retreats provide a safe, accountable and generative space forwriters to test their ideas and skills, and draw strength from the experiences of those around them.“To have time and focus. . . to retreat from all else and concentrate on writing.
“I see a drawing. I think it is. . .” Investigating visual ‘literacy’ among adult learners in KwaZulu-Natal
Get PDFAbstractThis article reports on a research project in KwaZulu-Natal which investigated how Zuluspeakingadults who attended literacy classes interpreted illustrations from health educationmaterials. Individual interviews were conducted in rural and urban areas, where participantsresponded to a range of pictures in order to assess the effectiveness of different approachesto communication. The research intended to discover whether dated guidelines onillustrating for readers with limited education are still useful, and to offer insights to guidethe future practice of illustrators in similar contexts.Patterns of interpretation were observed which suggested different levels of interpretationof the illustrations, revealing ways in which participants made and expressed meaning fromwhat they saw. These levels correspond with semiotic theories of visual communication.Semiotic approaches to visual analysis provide tools with which to explore the constructionof meaning. In this way the article theorises visual interpretation in the context of healtheducation materials designed for audiences with limited educatio
Towards a humanising pedagogy: an autoethnographic reflection of my emerging postgraduate research supervision practice
Get PDFAbstractPostgraduate supervision in South Africa is a fraught academic space. The ASSAF Report(2010) indicates that supervisor competence is a key contributing factor in student attrition.The coupling of autonomous student and competent supervisor is far from being the usualpattern in South African higher education. Furthermore, postgraduate supervisionworkshops and courses seldom focus on how particular practices are likely to result insocial exclusion, giving far more attention to technical aspects of supervision. This paperconsiders instead the unwitting ‘othering’ that has occurred in my history as a supervisorand gives an account of ideas and principles that have guided me in seeking to improve myown practice. I focus in particular on those elements or aspects of my practice that are likelyto (or do) alienate and marginalise my postgraduate students as I engage with supervisingtheir work. My paper records an ongoing exercise in self-reflexion, shapedmethodologically by the tenets of critical autoethnography, as a means to examinepotentially subjugating effects that I can identify in my practice as supervisor with adiversity of postgraduate students. In this paper I reflect on two important aspects ofsupervision: verbal critique and written critique. I probe these two aspects with a view toaltering my own trajectory of development in the direction of a more productive level ofself-awareness in my practice. I argue that a sustained, careful and considered approach tostudent supervision that understands and conceptualises writing as a process (rather than aproduct) has enormous potential for facilitating and developing student academic writingcompetence. A heightened sensitivity to the debilitating and demeaning effects of carelessfeedback commentary and embracing research supervision as humanising pedagogy havesignificant implications for helping students to negotiate the liminal space in which theymust master the threshold competences needed for success in advanced higher educationresearch
Hastening slowly: insights about teacher development from an evaluation of courses at the WCED’s Cape Teaching and Leadership Institute
Get PDFAbstractIn the area of teacher professional development, South African education administratorsface the challenge of reconciling two imperatives that have entirely different implicationsfor programme time frames and budgets. On the one hand, there is an urgent need toimprove the pedagogic content knowledge of many teachers to improve the overall standardof teaching and learning in the public school system. Considering the scale and urgency ofthe matter, centralised course-based in-service training seems to be the only affordablealternative. On the other hand, researchers have long warned that once-off course-basedtraining on its own has limited impact on teachers’ practice, and has to be accompanied byfurther professional support in the school and classroom, or be abandoned in favour of moreenduring professional learning communities. The Western Cape Education Department(WCED) has grappled with this dilemma in the Department’s various professionaldevelopment initiatives for teachers, a mainstay of which is the training offered by the CapeTeaching and Leadership Institute (CTLI). This paper presents some of the data andfindings from an external evaluation that ORT SA CAPE conducted in 2011–2012 ofcourses offered by the WCED at the CTLI. The hierarchy of INSET outcomes proposed byHarland and Kinder (1997) was applied to record changes in the practice of 18 teachers ateight schools. The progress of five of the teachers is discussed to illustrate the interplaybetween school-level factors and the experiences of individual teachers which influencedthe impact of CTLI training on their teaching.Introductio
The Healthcare Benefits and Impact of Artificial Intelligence Applications on Behaviour of Healthcare Users: A Structured Review of Primary Literature
Get PDFIntroduction: Artificial intelligence (AI) is one of the most considered topics of the current time. AI has the power to bring revolutionary improvements to the world of technology not only in the field of computer science but also in other fields like medical sciences. Objectives: This paper assumes the adoption of appropriate AI engineering principals in previous studies, and focusses on providing a structured review of the impact of AI on human society and the individual human being as a technology user. Additionally, it opens a window on how the future will look like in terms of AI and personalised medicine. Methods: The paper employed a qualitative research approach and data were collected through a structured literature review. Twenty-three peer reviewed papers were identified and analysed in relation to their relevance to the study. Results: Previous studies show a positive impact on users' behaviour is expected in supporting their healthcare needs especially in decision-making, personalised treatment and future diseases prediction, and that integrating users in studying AI impact is essential to test possible implications of the technology. Conclusion: Results indicate that without a clear understanding of why patients need AI, or how AI can support individuals with their healthcare needs, it is difficult to visualise the kinds of AI applications that have a meaningful and sustainable impact the daily lives of individuals. Therefore, there is an emerging need to understand the impact of AI technology on users' behaviour to maximise the potential benefits of AI technology
GUEST EDITORIAL: Special Theme Nurses and Midwives in eHealth
No full textDocument submitted as Editorial for Special Theme Nurses and Midwives issu