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Learning to become entrepreneurial through a change laboratory methodology
Get PDFFollowing Clark’s early work, the concept of the entrepreneurial university has been circulating for a number of years. Being entrepreneurial entails that staff develop the sort of open-ended, problem-solving, and innovative solution-generating thinking underlying the concept. This manner of thinking may be important as an orientation to working life both inside and outside the university, not only in the commercial sense, but also in dealing with societal issues. Although there are guides as to what areas a university should develop to become entrepreneurial, there is little guidance as to how staff may explore and develop their own entrepreneurial thinking. This article suggests that the problem and solution generating approach of the change laboratory, underpinned by the theory of expansive learning (and transformative agency), may provide such guidance. Furthermore, forwarding this approach may support the critical developmental and transformative role that universities can play in society and so serve to balance out the more commercial thrusts often proposed by managing bodies
\u27Like Playing With Fire Under a Hut\u27 - You Will Get Burnt If You Do Not Adjust: Reflections of Social Work Students on Adjusting to University Life
No full textHigh dropout rates in first year and the enculturation into the academic literacies essential in promoting a successful academic adjustment are some of the challenges faced by many students when entering a higher education institution. The study aimed to understand some of the factors that contribute to student adjustment as social work students negotiate the higher education landscape from first to second year. The study explored the views of twelve first-year and seven second-year students utilising a qualitative research design where purposive sampling was used to recruit two focus groups. The results revealed that what both sets of students recognised as beneficial to their academic adjustment were the familiarisation of context, the use of effective time management skills, and positive attitudes. However, university-driven interventions aiming at assisting first year social work students with their academic life, such as the First Year Experience (FYE), were identified as too generic and not able to meet the unique needs of the participants. Recommendations emanating from the study included the development of discipline-specific academic development programmes that encourage social and academic adjustment. Additionally, collaboration between students within professional disciplines and the use of technology-enhanced learning could facilitate student adjustment
Using scaffolding academic literacy practices in tertiary classrooms: A South African case study
Get PDFAcademic development research supports embedding academic literacies development in disciplinary teaching. This enables students to experience reading and writing as disciplinary academic practices. However, few lecturers have the language knowledge and the pedagogical expertise to do this. The Reading to Learn pedagogy provides a scaffolded methodology that lecturers in higher education can adapt. We reflect on our own experiences of using these scaffolded academic literacy practices in three cases: with first year biology students, biochemistry Honours students and Masters in Education students. We argue that scaffolded academic literacy practices are useful because they emphasise both the reading and writing of texts in the discipline, provide an educational approach to plagiarism by modelling how to meaningfully paraphrase academic text, and support learner engagement. Additionally, the professional learning opportunities help academics to develop both knowledge of language and a clear methodology which can be adapted to a range of disciplines and levels
Creativity as care during COVID19: The domestic pedagogies of learning from home
Get PDFThis article reflects upon relationships between pedagogy and domesticity in relation to a creative teaching philosophy of ‘critical care’. Two contexts frame this discussion. The first: the socio- economic levers that, prior to the pandemic, were working hard to reposition creativity as a 21st century skill demanded by employers and commodified in languages of entrepreneurial innovation by Higher Educational institutions. The second: the home-schooling conditions of Sydney’s twin pandemic waves, which for many, merged the homespace and workplace in ways not yet fully understood. In using pedagogy to bridge the logics of homespace and workplace during lockdown, I invoke a series of frameworks invested in expanded notions of creativity. These are performed as ‘intermezzo’: offering intercutting, non-finished evocations of the disrupted and scattered self. The haiku poetry of a group collaboration timestamps modes of paying attention as one pathway that counterpoints the neoliberalisation of creativity with small acts of everyday world-building.
 
Building knowledge with theory: Unpacking complexity in doctoral writing
Get PDFThe use of theory to analyse and interpret empirical data is a valued practice in much social science doctoral research. A crucial aspect of this practice involves generating sophisticated theoretical understandings and critiques of phenomena in our social world. Despite the importance of theory, however, few concrete explanations of how to ‘theorise’ exist in literature. This paper addresses this gap by demonstrating how a set of conceptual tools can be used to unpack what the craft of theorising looks like in explicit terms, and to reveal how this ability develops over time during the drafting process of dissertation writing. It does this by drawing on select texts from a successful doctoral dissertation, as well as an earlier draft version. In doing so, the paper provides an in-depth explanation of an essential process of doctoral research that is inherently known by many supervisors, yet seldom unpacked in explicit terms
Demystifying student plagiarism in academic writing: Towards an ‘educational’ solution
Get PDFPlagiarism has become a recurrent challenge in higher education institutions, threatening the integrity of universities and their academic standards. The exacerbation of this issue can be largely linked to the escalating presence of online resources, which are easily accessible to knowledge and information communities worldwide. Many universities have thus instituted reactive measures that focus on detecting and policing plagiarism with little consideration of proactive and educational measures that can address the primary reasons for plagiarism and foster a community of academic integrity on their campuses. The purpose of this paper is, therefore, to interrogate the treatment of plagiarism in universities, and provide recommendations for better educational approaches to address this issue in proactive ways that also acknowledge the complex, contextual background of the South African higher education landscape. Understanding the primary reasons students plagiarise is critical in finding educational rather than punitive solutions to address the issue
Using agential morphogenesis to track professional identity development in higher education
Get PDFProfessional identity development (PID) is a growing focus for higher education researchers interested in graduate employability and workplace readiness. This raises the challenge of how to trace students’ identity shifts. This paper shows how Margaret Archer’s agential morphogenesis can be used to generate understandings of how students’ identities change during professional degree programmes. Archer’s theories of double and triple morphogenesis are applied to data collected through interviews and documentary research. The findings are presented as narratives about two final-year electrical engineering students who participated in employability-development focussed courses at a South African university. These narratives offer in-depth descriptions of the students’ identity shifts as they neared completion of their studies. The richness of the findings, which incorporate the constraints and enablements of the students’ professional identity development, leads to the paper’s argument that agential morphogenesis is a productive analytical tool for researchers wanting to better understand PID in higher education
Redress at a higher education institution: Art processes and image theatre as embodied and rhizomatic learning
No full textIn January 2019, a visual redress project was launched at Stellenbosch University, South Africa that introduced new artworks and contextualised existing statues around campus. However, it became clear that this dual installation and contextualisation did not sufficiently provide a means to address structural, systemic racial injustices inherent in the colonial and apartheid past; a more embodied way of engagement was needed. Therefore, workshops combining art and performance were introduced where lecturers, students and community members worked through social, political, and personal issues. This entanglement of art, performance, bodies, and space became a method that changed and evolved with each workshop. It was a dynamic, fluid, and relational process that could not be prescriptive as it depended on the elements constituting it. In this article, the various workshops are discussed, and it is shown how new topics and affective reactions at each workshop emerged through the art processes and practices
Re-imagining Curriculum: Spaces for Disruption
Get PDFQuinn, L. (ed.) 2019. Re-imagining Curriculum: Spaces for Disruption. Cape Town: Sun Medi