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"Dhunpath, Rubby"
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A meta-analysis on the effect of formal peer learning approaches on course performance in higher education
Peer learning is a distinct category of student support gaining popularity globally and in South Africa, although these are typically informal approaches which have not been sufficiently researched to examine their influence and impact. Some scholars have criticised the available research as patchy, inconsistent, and methodologically weak. Underpinned by the author's interest in peer learning in South Africa, this meta-analysis examines the outcomes of formal peer learning approaches on-course performance. The authors identified 1645 articles from four search engines which were published between 2010 and 2021. Of these, only 37 articles written in English, with a control and comparison group, reported effect sizes, were included in the analysis as they met the specified inclusion criteria. The analysis was conducted using R (version 4.0.0) and the metafor package (version 2.4.0). Effect sizes and their variances were computed within each study to allow comparability across studies using the common effect size metric, Hedges's g statistic. Our findings suggest a moderately strong relationship between peer learning approaches and course performance; however, its significance cannot be ignored. As such, universities should consider whether such moderate effects justify the money, time and effort invested in peer learning approaches. While this meta-analysis provides external validity, more experimental studies are required in South Africa to provide a more contextually robust evidence base to inform policy.
Journal Article
Disrupting higher education curriculum : undoing cognitive damage
Discomfort with the inappropriateness of university curricula has met with increasing calls for disruptive actions to revitalise higher education. This book, conceived to envision an alternative emancipatory curriculum, explores the historical, ideological, philosophical and theoretical domains of higher education curricula. The authors acknowledge that universities have been and continue to be complicit in perpetuating cognitive damage through symbolic violence associated with indifference to the pernicious effects of race categorisation, gender inequalities, poverty, rising unemployment and cultural hegemony, as they continue to frame curricula, cultures and practices. The book contemplates the project of undoing cognitive damage, offering glimpses to redesign curriculum in the 21st century. The contributors, international scholars, emergent and expert researchers, include different nationalities, orientations and positionalities, constituting an interdisciplinary ensemble which collectively provides a rich commentary on higher education curriculum as we know it and where we think it could be in the future. The edited volume is a catalytic tool for disrupting canonised rituals of practice in higher education.
Book
A snapshot of the chalkboard writing experiences of Bachelor of Education students with visual disabilities in South Africa
Background: South African higher education policy frameworks highlight renewed interest in equity, access and participation imperatives for students with disabilities (SWDs). However, students with visual disabilities continue to face barriers in their teaching practice school placements. Objectives: This article aims, firstly, to provide early insights into the barriers experienced by students with visual disabilities in their teaching practice school placements in under-resourced schools in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Secondly, it introduces learning communities and a teaching practice pre-placement booklet to enhance equity, access and participation in teaching practice school placements. Method: This study adopted a qualitative methodology using semi-structured interviews to elicit data from two Bachelor of Education students with visual disabilities, who were part of a teaching practice learning community managed by the Disability Unit at the University. Thematic analysis was used, using Tinto’s Learning Community Model which generated valuable evidence to argue for institutional commitment to achieve equity, access and participation for students with visual disabilities. Results: Through engagement with a teaching practice learning community and a teaching practice pre-placement booklet, two students with visual disabilities responded to and managed the chalkboard in ways that promoted teaching and learning in the classroom. These retention support trajectories provide evidence to support enhanced equity, access and participation. Given the stigma associated with disability and the need for equity at policy level, higher education institutions should seriously consider systemic mechanisms for access, participation and success outcomes in the teaching practice school placements of students with visual disabilities. Conclusion: Barriers to participation signal the need for accessible teaching and learning strategies for use by students with visual disabilities in their teaching practice school placements. Teaching practice assessors should be alerted to contextual differences in resourced and underresourced school settings and the diverse ways in which SWDs navigate these differences.
Journal Article
Student Academic Monitoring and Support in Higher Education: A Systems Thinking Perspective
This article interrogates an Academic Monitoring and Support system (AMS), which was designed to enhance first-year student progression at a South African University. Institutional research evidence produced through engagement with AMS practitioners and university leadership, analysed through the lens of Systems Thinking, reveals a well-intentioned system, whose efficacy is compromised by systemic incoherence. The data suggests that loosely defined roles and responsibilities of AMS practitioners, their level of preparedness to provide academic support, their conditions of employment and job profiles, all act in concert to compromise the intended outcomes of the programme. The authors contend that opportunities do exist to re-engineer the Academic Development system to provide coherent, effective and sustainable support for students ‘at risk’.
Journal Article
The development of disability-related employment policies in the South African public service
Worldwide, the employment of people with disabilities has been challenged by the slow development of ‘workplace specific’ disability employment policies. The focus has been on formulating legislation to overcome barriers and the implementation of national disability policies without ensuring that workplaces formulate such policies. While laws regarding disability have been on the statute books for two decades in South Africa, little is known about how effective they have been and their impact in the workplace. This article examines whether South African government departments have developed or reviewed employment policies for the benefit of people with disabilities, and determines whether policy makers were aware of the existence of the Disability Code (Republic of South Africa, 2002) and the Technical Assistance Manual (Republic of South Africa, 2005) when the policies were developed or reviewed. Human Resource Managers from 16 government departments in KwaZulu-Natal Province were interviewed. It was found that although HR policies were in place and some were being developed, very little has been done in terms of reviewing and/or developing disability employment policies. Furthermore, the existing prescripts were not extensively used as a resource during the development of disability-related employment policies. This has negatively affected the employment of people with disabilities in the public service. It is hoped that the results will assist management, HR practitioners as policy makers, and line managers to develop disability employment policies in order to attract and retain people with disabilities. The research also contributes to the existing body of literature on disability
Journal Article
Shifting the Language Policy Gaze: from Debates on Policy to a Dialogue on Practices
There appears to be growing consensus among policy analysts and language practitioners that there is little, if any, substantive attempt at institutionalising the conditions necessary to promote and sustain multilingualism in South African schools. In shifting the gaze from debates on policy, to a dialogue on practices, the research informing this article focussed on schools that had, or were receiving support from NGOs for language policy development and language curriculum innovation. The article explores schooling sites that demonstrate attempts to move their language practices closer to official policy and may, therefore, be regarded as exemplary. An analysis of practices shows that the majority of schools in this study were left largely to their own devices. However, schools supported by the Home Language Project (HLP) exemplify the benefits to be derived from a community-initiated impetus for multilingual teaching and learning. In evincing a move towards additive multilingualism as a resource, this NGO intervention underscores the reality that the imperative for multilingual implementation can no longer be left solely to the discretion of government. Instead, the hope for a multilingual future lies in individual schooling communities assuming leadership, using beacons such as those explored in this article.
Journal Article
Disrupting Higher Education Curriculum
\"Disrupting Higher Education Curriculum demonstrates, however, that it is in fact from those margins of the education enterprise that academics, teachers and learners can see more clearly how patterns of thought and action hold us back from placing and experiencing our African humanity at the centre of the curriculum.\" -- Jonathan Jansen, Rector and Vice Chancellor of the University of the Free State, South Africa.
eBook
Performing Problems on the Pavement: An Innovative Approach to Architectural Education in Post-Apartheid South Africa
In this article we interrogate the possibility and benefits of introducing alternative participatory pedagogies to architecture students at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, in order to mediate the gap between students' knowledge of the living environments they are expected to design and the authentic, lived realities of the inhabitants of those environments. Architecture students, assisted by applied theater students, devised participatory theater on the pavement of downtown Durban.
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This approach encouraged in situ engagement between students and the typically marginalized inhabitants of that area. Moreover, these participatory performances served as a catalyst to disrupt some commonly held perceptions around the notion of \"the expert\" and provoked a possible reimagining of an architectural pedagogy that was responsive to the South African context.
Journal Article
