Chapters in Books (Curriculum Studies)
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- ItemUniversity-school partnerships in initial teacher education(Elsevier Ltd., 2023) Robinson MaureenThe chapter provides an overview of core issues in research on university-school partnerships in initial teacher education, including their purpose and intended benefits. The chapter shows how the notion of university-school partnerships can be understood in several ways, with varying permutations and models of partnership relationships. Concepts underpinning partnerships are outlined, as well as implications for teacher pedagogy and key considerations for universities and schools. The chapter highlights the need for partnerships to be founded on a sense of mutual benefit and collaboration by all involved.
- ItemThe impact of COVID-19 on chess in South Africa(CSSALL Publishers, 2020) Esau, OmarIn this chapter I address the question of the way that the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic with its new normal and social distancing, impacts the sport code of chess in South Africa. This pandemic has already drastically altered the fixtures of numerous sport codes including the planned events and outcomes of some elite professional leagues. Chess as an Olympic sport code, although more amateur in South Africa, offers benefits across the socio-economic spectrum in terms of administrators, players, coaches and referees (arbiters). I employ an auto-ethnographic case study methodological approach, which enables one to draw on ‘personal and experiential data,’ for example, my own observations and experiences as a chess player and administrator. Amidst the uncertainty of the future and in anticipation of perhaps a large-scale devastation, the COVID-19 pandemic imposes the need for innovative and creative thinking to keep future aspirations of chess alive. Drawing on my lived experiences, I employ an auto-ethnographic approach to inspire hope for the future.
- ItemTowards a pedagogy of possibility: Teaching and learning from a ‘social justice’ perspective(AFRICAN SUN MeDIA, 2009) Leibowitz, BrendaThis chapter takes the argument of Waghid (this volume) on higher education as a public good as its starting point and sketches the challenges presented in relation to this, by the educational biographies of learners and educators from varied social backgrounds. It considers what education as a public good would be like, especially if higher education were to ensure participatory parity for all learners. With reference to a study on educational biographies of 100 students and 64 lecturers at one South African university, it discusses the three dimensions of social justice posited by Fraser (2009), namely distribution, participation and recognition. It further considers the interrelationship of structure, agency and responsibility, and how this interrelationship impacts on the task of higher education to facilitate the potential for the successful learning of all students. The chapter concludes with a model, depicting the responsibilities of the key role-players for realising higher education as a social good. The model also contains references to research and findings on innovations by researchers and educators, whose work serves as examples of what can be done to realise this pedagogy of possibility.
- ItemThe university in a contemporary era: reflections on epistemological shifts(AFRICAN SUN MeDIA, 2009) Le Grange, LesleyThe contemporary university is an institution that is transforming rapidly. In an age of supercomplexity it too must become supercomplex and expand its epistemologies so as to engage with the challenges of a changing world. In this chapter I critically discuss epistemological transformations occurring in the contemporary university as a consequence of both inside-out pressures and outside-in pressures. I examine traces of these shifts in post-apartheid higher education policy in South Africa, and in practices at both a systemic and institutional level. I argue that even though it appears as if transformations that the modern university is undergoing mark the end of the pursuit of universal reason and the ideal of a liberal education, globalisation affords new spaces for reclaiming some lost ground.
- ItemImprovement-oriented evaluation of undergraduate science programmes and the quality of student learning(AFRICAN SUN MeDIA, 2009) Botha, JanThe quality of student learning is considered by many as a key area in the study of higher education as student learning gain seems to be one of higher education’s critical contributions to society. In this chapter insights gained from the internal evaluation of 17 undergraduate programmes in the sciences conducted by Stellenbosch University during 2007 and 2008 are reported and analysed with a view to the possible impact of these programmes on the enhancement of the quality of student learning. For the purposes of the analysis those improvement plans related to the achievement of student-centred learning and teaching are considered to have the best potential to have an impact on the quality of student learning. The authentic improvement plans devised by lecturers and students in the sciences give an indication of the shift towards student-centred learning and teaching which is gradually taking place. An important conclusion is that the evaluation of formative undergraduate programmes can be an effective instrument to improve student learning, particularly because such evaluations consider the academic activities from the students’ perspective, namely the programme, and not the individual modules of different disciplines offered by different departments.