Open Journals@UKZN
Not a member yet
870 research outputs found
Sort by
Principals’ perspectives on key factors that contribute to sustainable quality education
Get PDFThis article reports on the perspectives of principals about factors, which have an influenceon their work to provide quality education for all children. Principals in the Western Capewere asked to rate key factors that contribute to sustainable quality education in theirschools. An online survey was implemented as the data collection instrument and the FREQprocedure was followed to analyse the raw data statistically. The results showed thatdedicated and well-qualified teachers who teach disciplined learners in a safe environmentshould receive priority in any action principals and Departments of Education take toimprove and sustain the quality of education in the Western Cape and possibly in all SouthAfrican schools
Critical agency in education: a Foucauldian perspective
Get PDFAbstractWhile the neoliberal order is associated with the economy, government and globalisation, asa form of governmentality it effects a particular subjectivity. The subject is the terrainwhere the contest of control plays out. The subject is drawn into the seductive power ofperformativity which dictates its agency, desires and satisfactions and from which escape isdifficult to imagine. Neoliberalism is particularly interested in an education which providesit with the much needed powers of production and consumption. This dependency of theneoliberal order on a particular kind of agential subjectivity is also its weakness because ofthe indeterminacy of the self. Within this openness of the human subject lies the possibilityto be different and to escape any form of subjectification. Foucault’s account of the criticalagent portrays a form of difference that opposes and transcends neoliberal ordering.Foucault finds the principle of practices of freedom in the Greco-Roman ethics of the carefor the self. It is an ethics where the subject gains control of itself through the ascetic andreflective attention in relation to available ethical codes and with the guidance of a ‘master’.Such as strong sense of the self is the basis for personal and social transformation againstneoliberal colonisation. The development of critical agency in education is subsequentlyinvestigated in the light of Foucault’s notions of agency and freedom. The contest of thesubject is of particular importance to education interested in the development of criticalagency. The critical agent is not only one who could identify and analyse regimes of power,but also one who could imagine different modes of being, and who could practice freedomin the enactment of an alternative mode of being. The educational implications are exploredin relation to the role of the teacher and pedagogical processes
Tele-sleep Medicine: An Opportunity in a Crisis
Get PDFThe countrywide lockdown in India has necessitated healthcare providers consider alternate options for providing care during the COVID-19 pandemic. While there has been a tremendous focus in coping with emergency and inpatient care for COVID-19 related illness, there is also an increasing need to address management of non-communicable disease. The pandemic and the associated lockdown have witnessed the onset or worsening of sleep disorders often related to changing lifestyle, including inactivity, fear of the disease, and generalised anxiety caused by the uncertainty of the future. We propose the term ‘Lockdown Sleep Syndrome’ to describe this grouping of signs and symptoms. The wide coverage and extensive use of smartphones and more importantly, the appropriately timed Telemedicine Practice Guidelines from the Government of India, have made telehealth an attractive option, particularly in specialities such as Sleep Medicine which involves minimal physical examination. The experience of restricting personal visits to the clinic and promoting teleconsultation during the initial fifty days of lockdown is described. It was observed that two thirds of consultations shifted to a telehealth platform, and this was effective in giving satisfactory care and valid prescriptions, including to those outside the city of Chennai. Telemedicine not only helped provide uncompromised care to existing patients but also helped in identifying and managing the onset of new sleep problems with a pattern of signs and symptoms which are described as “Lockdown Sleep Syndrome”
Developing an integrated, situated model for digital literacy in pre-service teacher education
Get PDFThis article draws on the findings of a qualitative case study of the digital practices and perceptions of four pre-service, English teachers in order to make the case for an integrated, situated approach to digital literacy which takes identities into account. The case study highlighted the ways in which the student teachers’ perceptions of their own digital proficiency and of the affordances of the digital acted as barriers within their classrooms. Drawing on insights from New Literacy Studies and Authentic Learning theorists, the article describes how the authors used these findings to inform subsequent curriculum design and pedagogy. It argues that in order for student teachers to engage meaningfully with the digital, they need to be provided with models and authentic tasks within the discipline that enable them to explore and reflect on how to use the affordances of the digital as a tool for learning in their classrooms
Visual participatory methodology as a prompt for agentic creativity: Revealing views and visions of a teacher learning journey
Get PDFAbstractBy using activities such as visual participatory methodologies, pre-service teachers and university staff membersare able to explore and extend their ideas of what it means to be a teacher. In this research project, I sought toprompt a visual dialogue between students and staff. The distance provided when using creative enquiryprocedures such as photo-voice, collage, and drawing allows participants, as members of a teaching community,to detach from their assumptions and view themselves, knowledge, and meaning making in more subtle ways.The aim of this creative participatory study was to explore dialogic engagement concerning the learning-toteachjourney of Bachelor of Education (B Ed) students at a South African university. The visual-basedinteraction of student teachers and staff is revealed, and the movements towards the goal of teacherness laidbare. I make an argument for the use of visual and creative approaches as a means of collaboratively bridgingcomplicated and difficult territory, moving beyond boundaries to spaces of creative action. An account of thepotential of artful portrayals as both disruptive and coalescing devices is a key contribution of this enquiry.Keywords: Visual participatory methodologies, agentic creativity, teacher learning, teachernes
Decolonising the university curriculum or decolonial washing? A multiple case study
Get PDFThis article reports on four case studies of how higher education institutions were grappling with the demands of decolonisation of their curricula. The cases differ in form and content, and the unique approaches to decolonisation that each one takes, and the similarities displayed, are described. An important similarity among the institutions were the use of extensive public lectures, seminars and workshops as a common strategy to deal with the calls for decolonisation of the curriculum. An overarching theme in the four cases suggests that decolonising of the curriculum is predominantly characterised by symbolism and euphemism/s as a way of catering for the diverse aspirations of stakeholders in the respective institutions. Pinar’s notion of complicated conversations was used as a framework to critically comment on the multiple case studies
The what and how in scripted lesson plans: the case of the Gauteng Primary Language and Mathematics Strategy
Get PDFLesson plans are advocated as useful forms of teacher support because they can expand a repertoireof teaching practices. But what kinds of scripted instruction can effectively guide and improveteachers’ instruction and how can lesson plans achieve that? This article examines the nature andpurpose of the scripted lesson plans (SLPs) used in the Gauteng primary education system and theninvestigates how teachers enacted these routinised SLPs. Through a review of the literature onteaching English language and on SLPs, the article assesses the opportunities and challengesafforded by the Gauteng Primary Language and Mathematics Strategy’s (GPLMS’s) lesson plansfor Grade 3 English as First Additional Language (FAL). Then, through an analysis of an EnglishFAL lesson taught differently by two teachers, it points to the many professional judgements madeby the teachers as they enact the prescribed teaching routine. Our analysis suggests, firstly, that theknowledge resources given to teachers need to be considerably more detailed and, secondly, thatteachers need strong subject matter knowledge to transmit the conceptual relations that underlie theteaching routines of the lesson plan
Bernstein and the Kantian antinomies of reason
Get PDFAbstractIn this paper I draw inspiration from Slavoj Žižek’s (1993) deployment of Kant in hisanalysis of ideology in order to show that Basil Bernstein’s theorising of education,specifically concerning the universal-particular dialectic, entails a series of discursivegestures that might productively be described in terms of Kant’s antinomies of reason. Theinscription of discursive resources akin to the Kantian antinomies in Bernstein renders thetheory necessarily open despite its apparently totalising intent. I believe that the approachused here is more productive than engaging in the polemical bating and name calling thatoften emerges in discussions of relativistic versus universalist approaches to the productionand uses of education theory
Critical agency in the post-apartheid education system
Get PDFAbstractThis paper looks at critical agency in the South African education system. There has been aconsistent linking of critical thinking with critical agency under apartheid, and that this wasconstructed by a ‘critical struggle’ (Touraine, 1985) against apartheid domination.However, this changed significantly in the post-apartheid moment, where compliance withthe newly elected government is emphasised, and could be viewed in terms of ‘positivestruggles’ (Touraine, 1986). These, however, limit critical agency in the post-apartheidformation. There is, nonetheless, evidence of critical agency being enacted in thepost-apartheid education system. The importance of highlighting those forms of criticalagency is crucial in order to enhance social justice in the post-apartheid educational systemand society. This paper also links critical agency in the post-apartheid situation with thepostcolonial and postmodern conditions because such conditions affect the possibilities ofcritical agency not only in South Africa but more generally