UWC Scholar Publishing Support (University of the Western Cape)
Not a member yet
1520 research outputs found
Sort by
Developing Scholarship of Teaching and Learning through a Community of Enquiry
Get PDFA growing interest in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) in higher education requires the seeking of opportunities for its development within and across disciplines and institutions. However, rewards for individual competitiveness in research publications, including the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL), tend to discourage collaboration, which could be highly conducive to the development of SoTL. This paper proposes the value of working together in a collaborative community of enquiry (CoE) in order to take forward SoTL in higher education. We draw on Cassidy et al.’s (2008) and Christie et al.’s (2007) model of seven elements of a CoE to explore our own experience of forming a CoE emanating from an inter-institutional professional course on teaching and learning, which assisted us to collaboratively contribute to SoTL. The above model was found to be useful, but could be enhanced through an expanded perspective, incorporating the affective turn
Flexible Learning and Teaching: Looking Beyond the Binary of Full-time/Part-time Provision in South African Higher Education
Get PDFThis paper engages with literature on flexible learning and teaching in order to explore whether it may be possible, within the South African context, to have flexible learning and teaching provide a third way which goes beyond the current practice of full-time/part-time provision. This binary classification of students is a proxy for day-time/after-hours delivery. The argument is made that effective, flexible learning and teaching requires a fundamental shift in thinking about learning and teaching in higher education that moves us beyond such binaries. The paper proposes that in order to ensure access and success for students, \u27common knowledge\u27 (Edwards, 2010) will need to be co-constructed which understands flexible learning and teaching in ways which will meet needs of a diversity of students, including working students. It will require \u27resourceful leadership\u27 (Edwards, 2014) within the university that recognises, enhances and gives purpose to the capability of colleagues at every level of the systems they lead. Also, it will require the building of \u27common knowledge\u27 between certain sectors of universities and particular workplaces
Promising Spaces’: Universities’ Critical-Moral Mission and Educative Function
Get PDFAttention has been drawn to reduction of universities’ purposes to serve economic interests only. This dissatisfaction has provoked thinking about how to reclaim a critical, moral role for universities in society. Inspired by contemporary utopian studies this paper brings together traditional ideas about how transmitting university knowledge connects to universities’ critical-moral functions, Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum’s capabilities approach adapted for education, and Basil Bernstein’s theories about knowledge distribution. Focusing on the educative function, the aim is to develop a theoretically-informed and practical vision of a university education which is both personally transformative and able to produce critical citizens and workers. Research evidence from two projects on university education reveals‘ promising spaces’ (Cooper, 2014)in which to realise these aims. I conclude that there is reason to believe that the transmission and acquisition of knowledge and understanding in specific fields is key to preserving and recreating a critical-moral mission for universities wherever they are in the world, even though current conditions are inclement and unequa
Reimaging reflexivity through a critical theoretical framework: Autoethnographic narratives on becoming a (de)colonised researcher
Get PDFThe theory and practice of reflexivity need to be reimagined. In the increasingly globalised world of medical education research, critical perspectives and methodologies for honest, powerful, and just reflexivity are needed. Autoethnography offers a compelling methodological approach to reflexivity, for it interrogates self and interpersonal interactions within socio-cultural contexts through retrospective autobiographical storytelling. Southern theory, decoloniality, and intersectionality together framed critical reflections on power inequalities at personal, contextual, and epistemological levels, throughout the qualitative research process. Reflective questions informed by these theories are included to practically guide individuals in their reflexivity. We are collectively responsible for epistemically- and socially-just research, which means the disruption of normative and hegemonic (i.e., White, Western, Eurocentric, and colonial) research and reflexivity practices; and the development of ethical research that does not reproduce inequalities but welcomes and amplifies other ways of knowing, doing and being
Escaping the Margins of Society: New Media and Youth Language Practices across the Rural Urban Divide in Kenya
Get PDFIn Kenya, among the youth, traditionally there were established language practice differences where youth in the rural areas would speak the domicile mother tongue while the urban youth re-designed their identity by creating and communicating in ‘Sheng’. This is no longer the case as the rural-urban language divide is linguistically flattening due to increased use of digital media, urbanization of rural spaces and globalization. This paper describes new digital media language trends among Kenyan urban youth and explains how globalization and digital media have become the unifying factor between rural and urban youth language practices. The paper contends that the narrowing of the urban-rural dichotomy in language use seems to have created semi-homogenous language practices among the youth in both rural and urban areas. This has been made possible by affordable internet which gives the rural youth access to urban culture and global trends. The paper also describes how urbanization of rural towns and rural-urban-urban-rural migration has created pathways that carry urban language practices to previously rural areas and created a form of African modernity and urbanity in these spaces
Language situation and language policy in-education in Zimbabwe: A perspective towards Tonga learners
Get PDFThis study examines the language situation in Zimbabwe with a bias towards the language policy in-education. It seeks to establish the effect of the language policy in-education in Zimbabwe on the academic performance of the Tonga learners. The researchers sought to establish how the use of either Shona or Ndebele as medium of instruction and the learning of these languages as subjects negatively impacted on the performance of Tonga learners in primary schools. Our analysis goes beyond understanding the academic performance of Tonga learners and also seeks to establish the impact of such a status quo on other aspects of the Tonga people’s lives such as culture and identity because whatever goes on in the classroom has a bearing on these social arenas. The data for this study were collected from native Tonga speakers, especially those that went to school before the language policy changed, that is, who were using Shona, Ndebele and/or English as medium of instruction in the education system in Zimbabwe at lower grades. The study established that the peripheralisation and marginalisation of Tonga in the education sector dealt a huge blow on the psyche, and self-confidence of the Tonga learners and their society at large in Zimbabwe. The study concluded that there is however, hope for the Tonga learners and community, ensuing from the official recognition of Tonga language, among other former marginalised languages, in the 2013 National Constitution and the subsequent amendment of the Education Act in 2020. These two critical developments will, without doubt, reverse the hegemony of Shona and Ndebele languages as medium of instructions in schools.
 
