1,720,993 research outputs found
Curriculum-making in South Africa: promoting gender equality and empowering women (?)
No full textAuthor cannot archive publisher's version/PDF.The United Nations Millennium Development Goals (2000−2015) are clearly
embedded in South Africa’s education policy documents. However, they are not
adequately infused into the curriculum. This article focuses specifically on the
third Millennium Development Goal (MDG) − promoting gender equality and
empowering women − and the need to place this curriculum content at the
centre and not on the periphery, to achieve its goal. Qualitative document
research was used to explore the extent to which South Africa’s curriculummaking
has promoted gender equality and the empowerment of women during
the promotion of the 2000–2015 MDGs. The findings of this research show
potential intersections of poverty, age and worldviews with gender; a stronger
focus on human rights values; and concrete strategies to combat unhealthy
sexual behaviour. However, the curriculum continues to be saturated with
negative perspectives and binary perceptions of gender. There is also a lack of
attention to the world of work. The assumption underlying this seems to be that
gender equality and the empowerment of women are unattainable or that they are
unimportant. This article concludes by underlining the need for the curriculum to
be a genuine agent of change, which necessitates a new gender discourse in
curriculum-making.http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09540253.2014.946474http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/cgee20/curren
Teachers as Curriculum Leaders: Towards promoting Gender Equity as a Democracy Ideal
No full textCurriculum is a site of political, racial, gendered, and theological dispute. Teachers who acknowledge this and see the implications for democratic living embrace their teaching practice as curriculum leaders and participate in complicated conversations. With the focus on gender equity as a democratic ideal, this article explores the lived experiences of some South African female teachers. From the findings, it became evident that some teachers still experience their school contexts as pervaded with patriarchy and sexism, and often fear confronting these traditional discourses. Engaging with subject matter that is likely to cause conflict or confrontation is avoided by some teachers because they do not feel comfortable in such contexts. However, some teachers do emerge as activists for gender justice and create awareness of injustice. These teachers are curriculum leaders who advocate for social change. This article concludes by putting forward some suggestions for how teachers can promote social change through their teaching practices
Intersections of Gender, Religion and Culture in Adolesent girls' Narratives Curriculum Considerations for Religion Education (RE)
No full textMapping the curriculum-making landscape of religion education from a rights education perspective
No full textWith the advent of democracy in South Africa, religious education became a contested topic in the education sector. Contestation stemmed from the desire to embrace religious plurality rather than Christian National Education (CNE) that dominated the curriculum pre-1994. This contestation initiated the reconceptualisation of religion in curriculum-making. Together with other scholars, Roux, a scholar-activist, has played a seminal role in conceptualising religion in the curriculum as religion in education (RiE) and more recently, religion and education (RaE). In disrupting the boundaries of religion, she has also made human rights the departure point for engagement with RaE. The concomitant blurring of the boundaries between religion education (RE) and human rights education (HRE), has made it necessary to explore the complexities of the foundations of human rights. In response, this article uses Roux's work to extend the argument by exploring the possibilities of human rights literacy (HRLit) in curriculum-making for HRE. To conclude, this conception of HRLit is considered juxtaposed to Roux's most recent scholarship, which interrogates gender as a specific position within HRE. In engaging with this scholarship, this article takes a critical HRLit perspective so as to embrace Roux's work through an alternative theoretical lens
‘Othering’ non-normative sexualities through objectification of ‘the homosexual’: discursive discrimination by pre-service teachers
No full textHeterosexuality is associated with normative, ‘normal’ or ‘natural’ social and sexual relations. Concomitantly, those
who do not conform to heterosexual standards are ‘othered’. Conforming to normativity creates the “heterosexual
imaginary” (Ingraham, 1996) and perpetuates heteronormativity. This article focuses on the dangers of institutionalised
heterosexuality, particularly the objectifying of non-normative sexual and gender diversities as anti-humanist.
Snowball sampling was used to select 39 fourth-year pre-service teachers from three public South African
universities, and focus group discussions revealed that the responses of many of these have heterosexist and
homophobic undertones. The three main themes that emerged are objectification of ‘the homosexual’, conflation of
‘the homosexual’ and accommodation of ‘the homosexual’. In response to these findings, objectification and
discursive discrimination highlight the way in which language reinforces a binary logic and further perpetuates
heteronormativity. Possible ways of addressing discursive discrimination are suggested
Engaging with human rights and gender in curriculum spaces: a Religion and Education (RaE) perspective
Full text linkThe introduction of the Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS) and how it positions religion in the curriculum requires rethinking. This article first argues that Religion and Education (RaE) has the propensity to engage a broader perspective than Religion in Education (RiE) in curriculum inquiry. The opportunity to engage in RaE in curriculum spaces has its origins in debates on religion as private or public domain. The article explores how adolescent girls from diverse religious and cultural contexts experience gender issues in their communities and society. We report on adolescent girls’ voices, their experiences and how they value gender in their own religion and culture, as well as in that of others. This viewpoint is significant for RaE for two reasons. Firstly, using gender as the research focus provides an alternative form of inquiry to create a discourse in and
around RaE. Secondly, we consider how theoretical underpinnings of human rights, namely universalism and particularism, can inform thinking about RaE epistemologically. This article argues that one needs to think differently about RaE, to consider human rights and gender theories in order to prevent voices being silenced, curriculum restricted and oppression continuedalternation.ukzn.ac.za/Files/docs/20.7/05%20Sim.pdfhttp://alternation.ukzn.ac.za/Homepage.asp
Higher degree committee members' perceptions of quality assurance of Doctoral education: a South African perspective
Full text linkIn South Africa four key policy discourses underpin doctoral education: growth, capacity, efficiency, and quality discourses. This article contributes to the discourse on quality by engaging with quality assurance from the perspective of the decision makers and implementers of macro policy (national), meso (institutional), and micro (faculty/departmental) levels. We explore the perceptions that members of higher degree committees in the field of Education have of the quality assurance of doctoral education. Our data are drawn from a national survey questionnaire completed by these respondents at all public South African institutions that offer a doctorate in Education. The insights gained reside within four categories: positionality, policy, programmes, and people (stakeholders). Thereafter, we problematised the main results using academic freedom in a mode 3 knowledge production environment as a lens, which revealed thought provoking directions for future research about doctoral education
The centrality of the research question for locating PhD studies in the global knowledge society
No full textAlthough classified as a developing country, South Africa lags far behind other BRICS member countries. A cause for concern is that the number of PhD studies rather than what they contribute is often used to measure their quality. This article argues that a quality PhD study must engage with the global knowledge society. A critical meta-study was conducted to ascertain whether the PhD studies between 2005 and 2012 in South Africa did so. The chief process was the interrogation of the research question in each PhD study, and its links with the topic, the focus and the repositioning of the contribution declared by the study. An analysis of 240 qualitative PhD studies in the education field has revealed that PhD studies with strong internal links tend to have a coherent conceptual build-up and contribute to the global knowledge society. In the conclusion, guidelines for PhD education are presented
Human rights (education) in a posthuman world: thinking with curriculum inquiry / Simmonds Shan
No full textThe transformatory potential of human rights education lies in its ability to make visible the material-discursive complexities of human rights. Human rights education can provide a language to interrogate society and how it continues to normalize ways of living and being in the world. However, South Africa’s national curriculum remains “un-critical, monolithic, depoliticized and largely de-contextualised” (Zembylas, 2020:2). This is due to the liberal universalist and humanistic tendencies of human rights (education) in the curriculum. Posthumanism, understood as an opportunity for humanity to re-invent itself, can thus be embraced as one avenue to displace and dispose humanness as the presumed ground or anticipated outcome of education. In my intellectual work, I playfully enact the possibilities of posthumanism to (re)think human rights (education) with curriculum inquiry. I argue for the possibilities vested in posthuman rights as a generative space to reconfigure human rights (education) by shifting subjectivity and relationality. This image of critical posthumanism invigorates an affirmative ethics to create new assemblages in which zoe/geo/techno relations can be generative and enduring in ways that enable the becoming of all life (including pedagogical lives)
Blurring the boundaries between Photovoice and narrative Inquiry: A Narrative Photovoice Methodology for Gender–Based Research
Full text linkPhotovoice provides alternative ways of doing research with schoolgirls, who are vulnerable and often under-acknowledged research participants. It is particularly valuable in dealing with sensitive topics such as gender-based violence, poverty and HIV/AIDS and other chronic illnesses. Photovoice is thus widely employed in disciplines such as health, education, economics, sociology, anthropology, and geography. Up until now, however, it has been predominantly underpinned by participatory action research and other community-based participatory related methodologies. This article explores the possibility of blurring the boundaries between photovoice and narrative inquiry to create a narrative-photovoice methodology for gender-based research. In this study, South African schoolgirls participate as coresearchers employing narrative-photovoice and reflect on the value and limitations of this methodology for making meaning of gender (in)equity in their everyday lives. The main findings are categorized into the following themes: (a) superstition and suspicion: a gatekeeper to gaining access, (b) embracing creativity, (c) moving beyond the abstract, (d) digital versus disposable camera, (e) and having fun while learning. In the conclusion, the authors reflect on the participants’ experiences of doing narrative-photovoice and highlight particular considerations for using this methodology
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