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Ideological illusions, human rights and the right to education: the in(ex)clusion of the poor in post-apartheid education
Get PDFAbstractAgainst the background of global concern about the political and social consequences ofhuman rights, this article uses an ideological lens to explore the (non)existence of the rightto education in South Africa. We argue that post-apartheid education actively(re)normalises the in(ex)clusions of the poor in education within neo-liberal capitalisthuman rights frameworks. Data from the NRF funded project Human Rights Literacy: Aquest for meaning (Roux, 2012) indicate that student-teachers are aware of the ideologicalillusion presented in the Real and contrasting educational realities. We conclude by arguingfor the need to assume common responsibility for the in(ex)clusions of the poor ineducation. The importance of human rights literacies cannot be underestimated in thisregard. Human rights literacies open spaces in which student-teachers in commonresponsibility can engage with issues such as poverty and in(ex)clusions in education
Contextualising Digital Health Contributions to Fighting the COVID-19 Pandemic
Get PDFThe COVID-19 pandemic has catalysed numerous changes worldwide in healthcare systems and service delivery practices, many relying on biomedical technologies including digital health. The rapid development and widespread adoption of these changes has led to many being reported on extensively in grey literature and public media, but not yet in the conventional scientific peer reviewed literature. In particular, digital health contributions have received much attention but the main topics of reporting have been prominent public perception issues, with technical aspects being largely ignored. This perspective paper therefore responds to the need for a systematic contextualisation framework to describe digital health contributions to the current COVID-19 pandemic situation. The framework recommends four focus areas or “dimensions” for contextual settings: clinical processes, health system, stakeholder and technology. Two examples are used to motivate these dimensions: mobile phone tracking, and telehealth consultations. It is suggested that use of the framework in presenting digital health innovations more broadly and in context using these example cases, will convey a more informative understanding of the nature of such contributions now and in the post-COVID-19 period
Telemedicine and Online Platforms as an Opportunity to Optimise Qualitative Data Collection, Explore and Understand Disease Pathways in a Novel Pandemic Like COVID-19
Get PDFThis article explores digital technology used in the health sector today. There are several ways digital technology is being used for quantitative study aims during the current COVID-19 Pandemic e.g. online symptom checkers. The knowledge gap in COVID-19 as in all novel conditions, consist of both quantitative and qualitative attributes. Digital tool use is prevalent during the COVID-19 Pandemic but most of the data being collected is quantitative in nature. We therefore recommend taking advantage of this telemedicine era and explore optimisation of qualitative data collection, for the purpose of gaining a better understanding of the phenomenon
Partnerships in action: establishing a model of collaborative support to student and mentor teachers through a universityschool partnership
Get PDFAbstractSouth African universities have a crucial role to play in helping reduce inequalities inschooling by preparing teachers for working across diverse school contexts. This articleexamines a pre-service teacher collaborative support programme generated through a twoyearaction research process. The programme was designed to support student teachers andtheir school-based mentors during Teaching Practice through an existing university-schoolpartnership. Using a qualitative analysis of journal entries and separate focus groupdiscussions with student and mentor teachers we describe students’ and mentors’ responsesto the collaborative support programme. The findings of the study suggest that acollaborative support strategy pitched at both the university and school is critical to supportstudent teachers during their pre-service teaching, especially in socially and educationallychallenging contexts. Joint responsibility for initial teacher development requires a reconceptualisationof the role of the mentor teacher, and a shift towards the distribution ofmentoring functions from a few designated mentor teachers to include a wider range ofteachers at the school
Hopefulness and suspense in the autoethnographic encounters of teaching in higher education
Get PDFI remember hearing far off the sound of the tires of a car on the gravel of thelong, straight, open road that my family always referred to as the ‘mainroad’. This main road is some distance from our farm yard, connected byanother long and very straight and open lane way. No trees or bushes oranything to block the view of the prairie expanse. For several minutes there issuspense. The tires offer a hopeful sound, breaking the silence, and breakingthe monotony of the long summer day of a little girl who longs for something,anything, to happen. First the car is quite a way off. Then it sounds like it isslowing down – and I see that it is turning into our lane way. It stops there,and at that moment I am lost in anticipation. I don’t recognize the car. Is itgoing to come up the lane or is the driver just turning around? Will there bethe sound of the wheels speeding up, kicking up a little dust as it heads backdown the main road towards town, or will the vehicle slowly make its way upthe narrow passage of the lane way, towards the barn and house
Maton, K. Knowledge and knowers. Towards a realist sociology of education. London: Routledge. ISBN 978-0415-47999-8
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Building conceptions of teaching: Students’ perceptions expressed through artifacts
Get PDFTeacher education researchers have been grappling with the question of how students perceive teaching, an issue complicated by inadequate schooling conditions. This paper reports on an intervention used in a campus-based programme at the ANON School of Education that involved first year students producing artifacts which included statues or posters to depict their conceptions of teaching. Students drew on their schooling experiences and foundational knowledge of learning theories to formulate their ideas. Our intention was to provide multimodal opportunities for first year student teachers to articulate their views and ‘perform’ their understanding of teaching through visual and written forms. We wished to explore how students, working in groups, developed the capacity to represent their conceptions as they designed an artifact to depict the role of South African teachers. Interesting findings emerged from our analysis of their outputs, not just about theories of learning like behaviourism and cognitive constructivism that underpin and influence student thinking, but also about the power of representing ideas visually in combination with written reflections. We argue that the exclusive use of traditional written methods of eliciting student teachers’ conceptions of teaching, limit creative and critical possibilities for students to extend and challenge their common-sense assumptions
Impact of funding on academic performance: An exploration of two South African universities
Get PDFEmpirical evidence on the relationship between student funding and academic performance is unclear. Some studies have found a positive relationship and others have suggested a negative one, whilst even others, suggest no relationship. Acknowledging that a range of factors, other than funding, impact on student success, this paper contributes most explicitly to a small, but emerging, literature on the relationship between student funding and academic performance, proxied by the average individual academic mark for the year. Descriptive and inferential statistics were applied on data of a sample of 29 619 students registered at two South African universities for the 2018 academic year. Results suggest overall that there is a moderately positive and significant relationship between the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) bursary funding and average scores. At institutional level however, we find that this relationship is no longer significant, and negative at one and weak at the other university. The results also show that the extent of the effect of other variables on academic performance differs across institutions and when funding types are taken into account. Relevant policy consideration from the findings are highlighted
The othering of teacher training in Lebowa bantustan: A historical perspective
Get PDFThis paper focuses on the history of teacher training for Africans in the former Lebowa Bantustan. The discussion of teacher training in the former Lebowa Bantustan is based on the concept of 'othering', which captures various prejudices such as tribalism, segregation, marginalisation and racism. Textual data which included unpublished material, Lebowa Department of Education reports, memoranda, administrative documents, newspaper articles and journals housed in Limpopo Provincial Archives, Polokwane were examined to elicit meaning and gain understanding about 'othering' of teacher training in Lebowa. This paper has established that certain components of the curriculum for teacher training colleges in Lebowa Bantustan were used to 'other' African teachers. Further, segregation and marginalisation played a critical role in the institutionalisation of 'othering' by channeling resource distribution inequitably across racial groups. Lastly, student teachers were denied access to adequate knowledge and technology which barred them from acquiring specialised subject knowledge required to teach in different school phases