Building Communities of Peace: The South African Experience

While political conflicts in many countries have resulted in large-scale destruction and loss of life, South Africa has been successful in avoiding a violent conflict following the demise of apartheid. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) has been seen as an important mechanism contributing to South Africa's successful management of its political challenges. Yet, the legacy of apartheid continues beyond the work of the TRC, and several social problems such as poverty, unemployment, crime, and substance abuse continue to affect many South African communities. Psychology is uniquely poised to assist in addressing these social problems and in contributing to the development of a community of peace. Academic psychology departments have responded by implementing an undergraduate programme aimed at training professional counsellors to respond to community needs in post-apartheid South Africa. This paper surveys the present political landscape in South Africa, examines the work of the TRC as a psychological change catalyst and peace building mechanism, and calls attention to the role of psychology in contributing to national development.     

A Bourdieusian approach to academic reading: reflections on a South African teaching experience

As in many other parts of the world, ‘academic literacy’ has emerged as both a concern and a contested concept in South African universities. In this article we focus specifically on academic reading, which we argue is a relatively underemphasized aspect of academic literacy. This article is the product of reflections on academic reading during and subsequent to the development and presentation of a postgraduate module presented at Stellenbosch University. It briefly explores the literature on academic literacy; develops the Bourdieusian perspective on academic reading that we used to develop the module; and concludes with a discussion of the module. Our intention was to make ‘reading as social practice’ more visible to students. Bourdieu's concepts of ‘competence’, ‘habitus’ and ‘field’ set the scene for a discussion of the role of reading in different disciples and more generally within the social sciences and humanities.     

Towards a Slow scholarship of teaching and learning in the South

ABSTRACT

Although the concept of a scholarship of teaching and learning (SOTL) has emanated from the global North, it is a relevant and useful concept in the global South. The concept was initiated in the 1990s in the US. The original emphases in the seminal Boyer Report, on the integration of various forms of scholarship, the importance of intellectual thought and the collaborative nature of teaching have been subject to various distortions, in part due to the depredations of neoliberalism and performativity. We argue that Slow scholarship, which has resonances with Boyer's notions of the scholarship of teaching and learning provides much potential for reconceptualising SOTL in the South. These claims are explored via a case study set in South Africa, where academic developers at eleven higher education institutions covering the range of institutional types were interviewed.     

#Fallism and alter-globalisation: South African student movements as multi-institutional responses to globalisation

ABSTRACT

The South African student movements collectively referred to as #Fallism or #MustFall were more than resistance to fee increases. They were, and continue to be, movements targeting multiple institutions of Western coloniality and globalisation in tertiary education to establish economic and social equity, placing #Fallism within the broader global backlash against neoliberalism, neoconservativism, and Westernisation. This article makes three core claims: (1) modes of domination in globalisation are multi-institutional, thus alter-globalisation movements are also multi-institutional, (2) The goals of #Fallism in South Africa were, in part, related to alter-globalisation, and (3) #Fallism should be considered as a multi-institutional, alter-globalisation movement.     

The international performance of the South African academic institutions: a citation assessment

This article reports the results of an investigation to identify the disciplinary strengths and the international standing of the higher education institutions in South Africa. Even though comparative assessments provide valuable information for research administrations, researchers and students such information is not available in South Africa currently. The Essential Science Indicators database of the Institute for Scientific Information is utilized for the investigation and six South African universities are identified to be included in the top 1% of the world’s institutions cited in the international scientific literature. The identified institutions are University of Cape Town, University of Pretoria, Orange Free State University, University of Witwatersrand, University of Natal and University of Stellenbosch. Analysis of the scientific disciplines in which the South African institutions meet the threshold requirements for inclusion in the database shows that the country has citation footprints in only nine of the 22 broad scientific disciplines. The article identifies the international standing of the South African universities in the various scientific disciplines, and elaborates on the consequences relevant to higher education and science and technology policy.     

To be or not to be an academic: South African graduate students’ vocational choices

In the post-apartheid era, South African universities are striving to attract and retain diverse faculty, as mandated by the 1998 Employment Equity Act (EEA). While the focus on faculty is critical to the transformation agenda, it is informative to step back and consider the factors that influence graduate students’ decisions regarding joining the academy. This qualitative study explores the educational experiences and vocational decisions of 50 masters and doctoral students from the EEA's “designated groups,” who are poised to become academics. Factors influencing graduate students’ vocational choices should be taken into consideration as universities strive to attract more diverse faculty.     

The Digitally Disadvantaged: Access to Digital Communication Technologies among First Year Students at a Rural South African University

Considering the importance of digital skills in university education, this article reports on a study which examined access to technology among first year students at a rural South African university. The study focused on the digital readiness of students prior to their admission to the university, since many universities provide access to computers and the internet. The survey of 156 first year students revealed that 73 per cent of the students had no access to computers at their high schools and 82 per cent of students from rural high schools had no computer access and internet at their schools. Most students from rural areas used a computer for the first time when they were 19 years and older. Many students gained access to computers and the internet for the first time at the university. As a result, they enter the university digitally disadvantaged. Solutions that involve initiatives to provide access to technology are required in addition to digital literacy for educators at high schools.     

Parental choice without parents: families,education and class in a South African township

From the 1980s and 1990s, governments around the world began to champion ‘parental choice’ over schooling. Much of the existing scholarship has been based on examples taken from the global North. In such settings, where nuclear families are common, a major theme has been the privileged educational strategies and outcomes of middle-class families. Yet this South African study gives attention to gender and family dynamics in helping to explain and understand the large number of schoolchildren travelling to attend historically better-funded schools. It argues that in a setting where the nuclear family accounts for a minority of households, it is necessary to distinguish between the financing of a child’s education and the social organization of schooling, including the caring of the child. It contributes to two literatures. First, to Western-centred educational choice literature that has tended to overemphasise nuclear families; second, to South African literature, which is yet to adequately bring into the same analytical frame the marketisation of education and gendered family dynamics.     

Reflections on the History of South African Student Counseling Services: Achievements,Challenges, and a Way Forward

Student counseling services are a recognizable feature of higher education institutions locally and abroad. This article reviews the sociohistorical development and evolution of student counseling services in South African institutions of higher learning, with an emphasis on systemic influences, achievements, and contemporary challenges. This article considers the progress that has been made thus far with respect to the development of the service within higher education, while also attending to issues that require continued reflection and investigation. These include the current status and position of the service in South African higher education, the evolving roles of student counselors, as well as their relationship with institutional stakeholders and the broader South African community. In so doing, this article hopes to augment existing historical perspectives on student counseling by encouraging a critical reappraisal of student counseling’s past, its present, and its future in a dynamic South African and global context.     

South African teachers’ ability to argue: The emergence of inclusive argumentation

This paper explores the argumentation ability of ten science teachers in two South African schools on opposite ends of the resource spectrum. Toulmin's model is used to analyse individual contributions in six group discussions. The findings show that levels of argumentation improve with teachers’ involvement in the development of teaching resources and the closeness of the argumentation task. The nature of the arguments is permeated by inclusiveness, thus precluding the use of rebuttals, traditionally a requirement for high-quality arguments. Based on the ubuntu worldview, a model of inclusive argumentation is proposed with implication for teaching and a scheme of assessable levels of argumentation.     

The “A” factor: Coming to terms with the question of legacy in South African education

This paper attempts to offer an alternative framework for assessing education delivery in South Africa. Its purpose is to develop an analytic approach for understanding education delivery in South Africa in the last 11 years and to use this framework to pose a set of strategic questions about how policy might be framed to deal with delivery. The paper begins with a quick review of the country's achievements and challenges in education and shows that a failure to produce a high quality education system remains the country's primary challenge. The broad approach that is taken is to suggest that dominant approaches for understanding this lack of performance underplay the specificity of the country's context and specifically so its apartheid legacy. This legacy, it is argued, continues to be determinative in shaping, and accounting for the character of current social behaviour in the country, including the performance of children in schools.     

Gender,dialogue and discursive psychology: a pilot sexuality intervention with South African High-School learners

Good-quality sexuality education can be effective in reducing sexual health risks, but may also be disconnected from the lived realities of learners’ lives and reinforce gendered stereotypes. In line with the trend towards ‘empowerment’ in and through sexuality education, we implemented a pilot sexuality intervention with Grade 10 participants following a rigorous consultation process. Nine weekly group dialogues were held with 11 participants, with 2 follow-up sessions the next year. Freirian principles of critical consciousness and dialogical pedagogy, infused with discursive psychological understandings, were used to foreground gendered/sexual norms and to provide recognition for participants in a variety of gendered and sexual subject positions. Sessions were recorded, the facilitator kept a diary, and participants were asked to evaluate the intervention. The dialogical format of the group generated curiosity and engagement, and some participants took up a ‘responsible’ sexual subject position in a reflexive manner. A partial normalisation of some ‘hidden’ aspects of sex was enabled, and critical consciousness around some gendered inequities was promoted. We argue, first, that it is not so much sexuality education that young people need, but sexuality dialogues, and second, that a discursive psychology framework provides a nuanced and fruitful dimension to Freirean inspired ‘empowerment’ sexuality interventions.     

Unpacking (white) privilege in a South African university classroom: A neglected element in multicultural educational contexts

Multiculturalism currently aims for the political accommodation of difference instead of the subversion of the resulting privileges of difference. In the South African context such a distinction is especially important since the economic and symbolic subjugation of the majority of Black South Africans continues despite political transformation, and is exacerbated by an unwillingness to reflect on privilege and inequality. Drawing on Biko and Soudien’s critique of multiculturalism and vision for anti-racist education, this paper describes a classroom activity set for 164 nationally and culturally diverse second year sociology students at a university in Cape Town, South Africa. The activity tasked students to reflect on texts by Peggy McIntosh and Khaya Dlanga (one canonical, the other contextual) and reports on these students’ nuanced understandings of personal biography, experiences of privilege and self-reflexivity that connects personal experience to social structure and historical contexts. It concludes by offering modest implications for moral education in a multicultural university classroom.     

A review of challenges in South African education and possible ways to improve educational outcome as suggested by decades of research

Despite many positive developments in South Africa (SA), the education system and educational outcome face many challenges and require further improvement. This is reflected by elevated school dropout rates and suboptimal annual pass rates in various grades (Grades 7–12). Over the years, a plethora of studies has identified methods through which academic performance/educational outcome can be improved. However, from a practical point of view it might be difficult to implement these methods in for example a classroom or school, particularly because these methods are mainly discovered upon thorough online literature searches, and therefore published methods to improve educational outcomes are not always within reach of schools or teachers. Our aim is thus to provide a review paper that contains a collation and overview of the possible methods that can be used by various education stakeholders in order to contribute to better educational outcome. Essentially, we are attempting to answer the questions, “What does decades of research tell us about possible ways in which educational outcome can be improved in SA? Can we use these methods in the classroom or school?” This review therefore demonstrates (1) demonstrates various ways education stakeholders/influencers (teachers, learners, parents, government, non-governmental organisations and school governing bodies) can contribute to improved educational outcome, and (2) provides a useful overview of these methods that can be used within or without the classroom.     

Cognitive Effects of College: Differences Between African American and Caucasian Students

In this longitudinal study of African American and Caucasian students from eighteen 4-year institutions, objective tests were used to estimate the cognitive effects of race in college, while applying statistical controls for an extensive set of confounding influences including precollege and background traits, institutional characteristics, and academic and social experiences. Evidence from the study suggests that in the first 3 years of college Caucasian students scored higher than their African American counterparts on seven standardized tests measuring critical thinking skills, knowledge of mathematics, reading comprehension, science reasoning, and writing skills. Implications for future research are discussed.     

‘Kasi curriculum’: what young men learn and teach about sex in a South African township

ABSTRACT

Sex education within the formal bounds of school curricula or clinic consultation is traditionally conceived as age-appropriate and accurate information, delivered by a sanctioned adult such as a nurse or teacher. This article explores another kind of curriculum – taught and learned among young men themselves in the kasi (township) in which they live. Findings are based on primary data gathered during interviews and research workshops with boys and young men (aged 14–22), including focus group discussions and participatory research exercises. In exploring young men’s sexual ideas, practices, hopes and fears, it focuses on three themes: (i) consent and coercion; (ii) pleasure and risk; and (iii) advice and authority. We examine diverse perspectives on these themes, and trace the tensions and ambiguities that surface within young men’s accounts. We focus in particular on contradictions between what is learned about sex through formal curricula, and what is learned through peers and older men, including within ulwaluko (a rite of passage of traditional initiation and circumcision for Xhosa men).     

University teaching and social cohesion in the age of AIDS: A South African case study

In the context of ongoing social divisions, lack of coherent leadership by government, and even divisiveness over medical advances and public health mandates, how might universities respond? What university actions can support social cohesion in a society splintered by class, race, gender, colonial legacies, the history of apartheid, and HIV/AIDS? More specifically, what approaches to university teaching of HIV/AIDS might foster social cohesion? During 2006, I interviewed 22 instructors at the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) at three campuses. The interviewees were faculty members in education, sociology, history, psychology, theology, gender studies, and theater. I observed numerous classes that focused on HIV/AIDS and interviewed approximately 40 undergraduate, honours (4th year), and graduate students. I found that the curriculum and teaching went beyond the technical, individualistic, rational, self-interested assumptions and approaches (such as how to distribute information and condoms) typical of much safe-sex education. The courses explicitly critiqued assumptions, beliefs, and stereotypes that contribute to social divisions and stigma. The teaching efforts consciously included cultural understandings, specifically Zulu cultural understandings of health, community responses, and individuals within communal relationships. The approaches explicitly connected HIV/AIDS with social divisions and inequities of power. The teaching promoted an awareness that public health initiatives (and church or counseling responses) are fraught and controversial. Thus, the teaching tried to place its own ideas within history and society, offering a post-colonial/critical understanding of knowledge, theories, and social “solutions.” In foregrounding social divisions in relation to AIDS, these programmes promoted a critical-edged social cohesion.     

Sexuality education in South African schools: deconstructing the dominant response to young people’s sexualities in contemporary schooling contexts

ABSTRACT

South African schools are tasked with providing sexuality education through the Life Orientation curriculum as a means of challenging continued high rates of HIV, unwanted pregnancy and gender-based violence. While in theory schools are well positioned to provide appropriate knowledge for reproductive health and navigating sexual challenges within a gender justice framework, research on sexuality education in South African schools indicates that this is not the reality in practice. This paper draws on a growing body of qualitative studies, with both educators and learners in South African schools, to understand the issues undermining the goal of a critical and social justice pedagogy of sexuality in Life Orientation classrooms. We argue that sexuality education has been deployed to regulate and discipline young sexualities, reinforce and perpetuate gender binarisms and heteronormativity, re-establish global northern family values of the nuclear family within a pro-family discourse, and represent continued assumptions of adult authority in a civilising mission over young people. We suggest that the failure to make critical use of Life Orientation is linked to the dominance of ‘expert’-based didactic pedagogy, and argue the possibilities of sexuality education as a productive space for young people’s active participation and agency in making meaning of gender and sexualities.