UP Journals (Univ. of Pretoria)
Not a member yet
4792 research outputs found
Sort by
Experiences of health sciences students residing on campus during university recess: A photovoice study
No full textIn South Africa, health sciences students who live in university residence must often remain on campus during university recess to fulfil work-integrated learning obligations. Some of the observed challenges during this time are relocating to a temporary residence, having limited access to supplies and services as well as concerns about safety. These challenges were further aggravated by the Covid-19 pandemic. Yet, literature on factors and dynamics that affect student well-being and learning during these periods is sparse. The purpose of this study was therefore to explore the experiences of health sciences students residing on campus during recess at a specific university. Participatory research utilising the photovoice method was conducted. Four health sciences students volunteered to participate in three workshops to complete the research process. Captioned photographs and narratives were used to document their on-campus experiences during university recess. During a public photo exhibit, which concluded the project, essential stakeholders wrote anonymous reviews in the visitors’ book. Collaborative thematic data analysis was performed, leading to the identification of four themes: (1) sharing personal space, (2) support services and structures, (3) security, and (4) personal development. The findings revealed a sense of lost belonging due to inadequate support during recess, which could affect student learning and well-being. Remaining on campus during recess can have adverse effects on students’ learning and well-being, due to experiences of extreme loneliness and feelings of being out of place. At the same time, this period can create opportunities for quiet self-reflection and personal growth. Using methods such as photovoice to document these experiences can empower students to advocate for necessary institutional changes. Future research should include more participants from various disciplines and extended recess periods to better inform policies and guidelines.
‘Where are all these students coming from?’ History lecturers’ perspectives on the preconceived ramifications of compulsory school history in South Africa
No full textOn 5 May 2015, South Africa’s former Minister of Basic Education, Angie Motshekga, announced a proposed transformative policy to make history a compulsory subject through to Grade 12. While aimed at fostering historical awareness and critical thinking, this proposal would have significant implications for educators at both secondary and tertiary levels. University lecturers, in particular, would face challenges adapting to increased enrolment, diverse student backgrounds (cultural, ethnic, socio-economic and academic differences among students) and varying levels of academic preparedness. This paper offers insights into the broader educational and pedagogical implications of the proposed policy shift. To achieve this, we focus on the challenges associated with managing potential increased enrolment numbers, shifts in curriculum focus, one of the student requests during the 2015-2016 student protest, and the need for adapting teaching methods to meet students’ varied academic levels and interests. The research adopts a qualitative approach, employing semi-structured interviews to capture the perceptions of six lecturers from different universities regarding this proposed policy shift to make history a compulsory subject in the Further Education and Training Band. Through thematic analysis, the study identifies key patterns and insights related to the impact of making history a compulsory subject. The research findings are viewed from two dimensions. On the one hand, there is an opportunity for lecturers to engage a broader range of students in historical inquiry, fostering critical thinking skills and promoting historical consciousness across disciplines. On the other hand, concerns are raised about the strain on resources, larger class sizes and the potential dilution of academic rigour. While broader studies on policy shifts address resource allocation at a macro level, the urgent need for localised institutional strategies are recommended to sustain pedagogical quality amidst rising student numbers
Mafoko: Structuring and Building Open Multilingual Terminologies for South African NLP
No full textThe critical lack of structured terminological data for South Africa’s official languages hampers progress in multilingual NLP, despite the existence of numerous government and academic terminology lists. These valuable assets remain fragmented and locked in non-machine-readable formats, rendering them unusable for computational research and development. Mafoko addresses this challenge by systematically aggregating, cleaning, and standardising these scattered resources into open, interoperable datasets. We introduce the foundational Mafoko dataset, released under the equitable, Africa-centered NOODL framework. To demonstrate its immediate utility, we integrate the terminology into a Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) pipeline. Experiments show substantial improvements in the accuracy and domain-specific consistency of English-to-Tshivenda machine translation for large language models. Mafoko provides a scalable foundation for developing robust and equitable NLP technologies, ensuring South Africa’s rich linguistic diversity is represented in the digital age.
40 nights / 40 DAYS from the lockdown Conradie, Hanien and Higgins, John.
No full text40 nights / 40 DAYS from the lockdown is a series of 40 postcards with small mon-tage texts by John Higgins and watercolour paintings by Hanien Conradie inspired by photographs in old issues of National Geographic magazines. The texts are assemblages of fragments sourced from news coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic, and from books in Higgins’s own library: an offcut from a conversation between Elizabeth Warren and Dr Anthony Fauci (for example), jostles with a phrase from John Ruskin’s The Stones of Venice on a postcard with a painting of a waterfall
Barriers and opportunities in implementing climate change education in the FET Phase Geography curriculum in South Africa
Get PDFClimate change has disrupted economies and continues to affect lives in several communities and countries. The United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 13.3 urges all nations to take urgent action to combat climate change. Therefore, education is crucial in promoting climate change action because it helps people reduce their impacts and empowers them to mitigate and adapt to climate change. Currently, literature on the barriers and opportunities in implementing climate change education in South African secondary schools is limited. This study is based on the teacher training conducted by Fundisa for Change using the Teaching Climate Change manual. Archer’s (1995) morphogenesis theory was used to understand the barriers and opportunities in implementing climate change education in secondary schools in South Africa. Data were gathered through document analysis and semi-structured interviews with Fundisa for Change teacher participants and with Department of Basic Education officials in Gauteng Province, South Africa, and analysed using a thematic analysis approach. The study found the following opportunities in implementing climate change education: (1) climate change topics are included in the South African national geography curriculum in the Further Education and Training phase, (2) the participating teachers exhibited adequate knowledge of environmental sustainability education, and (3) common research tasks administered require learners to apply knowledge of climate change. However, schools are supplied with lesson plans, tests, and examinations that act as barriers to implementing climate change education, hindering teachers’ agency
What “global art” and current (re)turns fail to see: A modest counter-narrative of “not-another-biennial”
Get PDFWhat is the scope of “global art” and who drives its framing within the current climate of ‘corporate globalization’ (Demos 2009:7, emphasis in original)? In what ways do the recent global turn and curatorial turn underwrite meaningful global inclusivity and visibility, and to what degree does this globally shared art constitute mutuality? Does “global art”, including the accompanying process of biennialisation, allow for local narratives in a way that seriously accounts for a geopolitical view of contemporary art in the twenty-first century? While the inclusion of “new art worlds”2 in what Belting, Buddensieg and Weibel (2013) term “global art” is framed as a democratisation of contemporary art and the demise of the western art canon, it is important to raise questions regarding the blind spots of this supposedly global, post-1989 expansion. In this article I analyse the current discourse of “global art” as articulated in The global contemporary and the rise of new art worlds (Belting, Buddensieg & Weibel 2013), focusing on its origin, transcription, mapping, consumption and ultimately, I suggest, its emergence as a function of privilege. Challenging the charting of supposedly new art regions (Belting et al. 2013:100), which “writes-out” local narratives and counter-narratives, I argue for a logic of subtraction in place of a logic of addition. While the latter triumphantly implies that “new” art worlds have been added to the dominant core, the former is useful to a geopolitical perspective that strips away normative vision and actively seeks that which people often fail to see. In this paper I analyse the work of CAPE Africa Platform in South Africa, which, while briefly and erroneously used as “evidence” of biennialisation and global expansion in The global contemporary, was locally referred to as “not-another-biennial”. Discussing what some see as the shortcomings of the Cape 07 and Cape 09 exhibitions, I propose a reconsideration of measures of “success” and “failure”, suggesting that an embrace of “failure” can enable new ways of seeing the privilege of the contemporary art world. It is only when blanks, failures and things presumed not to exist are carefully regarded, that the goal of achieving mutually shared art on a global scale might become possible. Only then does it become apparent that the global south can have a certain edge over what is viewed as the prevailing art world
Impossible mourning: HIV/AIDS and visuality after apartheid
Get PDFIn her book, Impossible mourning, Kylie Thomas argues that although HIV/AIDS has been established as a central public discourse in South Africa during the last decade, the experiences of people living with HIV/AIDS remain largely invisible. Moreover, the manifold losses, sorrows and deaths owing to AIDS are publicly unmourned. For Thomas (2014:9), the failure to mourn the ‘1,000 people who die of AIDS in South Africa each day’ testifies to the fact that their lives were ‘as invisible within public memory as their deaths’
Editorial
Get PDFThe first issue of Image & Text for 2016 is an open issue and contains five articles that deal with current work by researchers from a number of South African tertiary institutions. Four articles deal with fine art from various critical stances, including public art, performance art, monuments and counter-monuments, and an investigation of ‘the curatorial’. The last article deals with gender identity in a contemporary video game. In addition to the research articles, there is a book review of Victor Margolin’s massive two-volume World history of design. This is followed by two conference reports from international conferences held in Amsterdam and Dublin. As always, there are common areas between the articles, and in this issue five of the authors are upcoming researchers; this aligns with Image & Text’s vision of encouraging and nurturing younger voices
When boys turn into women: a critical reading of postfeminist masculinity in The last of us
Get PDFVideo games play a significant role in promulgating dualistic gender roles and prescribing sexual identities. Situated within the broad theoretical framework of postfeminism, this explorative study analyses the distinctive articulation of masculinity in the post-apocalyptic video game, The last of us (2013 Naughty Dog). While it has been argued that video games are still firmly rooted in a distinctively patriarchal version of hegemonic masculinity and its attendant association with competition, domination, and aggression, we investigate the emergence of a different representation of a male protagonist as morally complex, intuitive, and emotional. In an attempt to gain a better understanding of this transformed representation of masculinity, we explore the ways in which disillusionment with patriarchal masculine values becomes evident in the post-apocalyptic setting of The last of us. We investigate the implications of this transformation of traditional heroic masculinity in video games for the negotiation of male identities in this sphere of visual culture