Educational ideologies and national development needs: the ’African University‘ in Namibia

Although a new institution, the University of Namibia is facing the same problems of curriculum, funding, and access which hinder academic effectiveness elsewhere. Research on the future prospects for the university was facilitated by the senior authors prior involvement in the effort to construct a modern Namibia in the post-colonial period. Such involvement included several advisory assignments relating to the emerging university. This shared experience provided unusual access for in-depth and confidential interviews with national and university decision-makers. Based on these discussions and previous research, the authors outline a process for facilitating the government and academic leadership so crucial to evolving a responsive university. They discern that success for higher education in the Namibian context will require merging the roles of the University and the Polytechnic and transcending imported models to develop an institution responsive to Namibian needs.     

How private ‘everyday racism’ and public ‘racism denial’ contribute to unequal and discriminatory educational experiences

The study uses ethnographic research from four classes in secondary school as well as from two groups in upper secondary school, to examine everyday racism as an element of the daily institutional lives of students and teachers. The study is based on long-term participant observation and 89 interviews. These were all audio-recorded and transcribed. In Sweden the education of ethnic groups is couched in a discourse of integration and inclusion. However, the research presented shows that the aims of integration and inclusion were not achieved. Unequal and discriminatory educational experiences operated through two related actions: by private everyday racism and through public racism denial.     

Education policy and the ‘inter’‐regnum

In the UK, the vocabulary of public services is becoming infused with the prefixes ‘inter’‐, ‘multi‐’ and ‘co‐’. Public‐sector agencies are being encouraged to adopt ‘multi’‐ or ‘inter‐agency’ configurations; ‘workforce reform’ seeks to dissolve once‐impermeable professional boundaries; leadership is to be ‘distributed’. This tendency is referred to as the ‘inter’‐regnum in education policy. (This does not mean that we are dealing with an ‘interregnum’ in the sense that we are somehow between modes of governance.) The term ‘regnum’ is used to emphasise that this propensity for the ‘inter’ is asserting itself as a new ‘reigning philosophy’. Examples of the ‘inter’‐regnum are presented from the UK (mainly England), and these are located conceptually within an analysis of hierarchies, markets and networks. Thereafter the cultural, intellectual and economic contexts which allow for the ‘inter’‐regnum to emerge as policy are explored. The ‘inter’‐regnum draws its legitimacy from a number of sources. First, it resonates with the culture of consumerism, and it takes further that earlier market‐based regime of governance which was associated with the new public management. Second, it is functional for the ‘new capitalism’ as a new work order of affinity‐ and solution‐spaces. Third, it has important intellectual supports: that is, in addition to its association with recent marketing theory, it can appeal to emerging theory and research in organisational learning.     

‘Luring the academic soul’: promoting academic engagement in South African universities

There is widespread pressure that universities should become more responsive and accountable to multiple demands in their local, national and global contexts. Academics grapple to identify appropriate organisational responses to the pressures of state steering and incentive programmes. The empirical focus of the paper is a survey of academics' community engagement activities, mapping their interaction with external partners at five South African universities. The paper addresses a basic question: Who are the academics that engage, and what are their main academic influences? We argue that engagement is more likely to ‘lure the academic soul’ when it is driven by substantive growth in a disciplinary field and enhances reputations. The analysis seeks to identify how disciplinary, institutional and positional attributes are correlated with engaged activities. ‘Luring the academic soul’ through an understanding of the influences on academics' propensity to engage can facilitate more effectively targeted incentives and policies.     

Children’s Self‐documentation and Understanding of the Concepts ‘Healthy’ and ‘Unhealthy’

The present paper describes a study in which 13 children aged 9–11 years, of diverse ethnic, linguistic, and socio‐economic backgrounds, were asked to use a digital camera and small notebook to document the range of things they consider to be healthy and unhealthy. Using open‐ended interview questions, the children were then asked to explain each item, including what it was, why they chose it, and why they thought it was either healthy or unhealthy. The range of definitions of ‘healthy’ and ‘unhealthy’ invoked by the children was surprisingly broad, encompassing not only illness and proper nutrition, but also environmental health, mental health, cleanliness, and other meanings. Findings across all 13 children are displayed, and a case study of one child serves as a detailed example of the types of meanings children ascribe to the words ‘healthy’ and ‘unhealthy’, as well as the kinds of analyses being employed on these data. The theoretical implications of these results for research on children’s ideas about health, as well as implications for the design of health interventions, are discussed.     

‘They’ve got all the knowledge’: HIV education,gender and sexuality in South African primary schools

Drawing on data derived from two socially contrasting primary schools in Durban, this paper focuses on how gender and sexuality feature in the teaching and discussion of HIV/AIDS. A detailed analysis of two ‘life‐skills’ lessons in the two schools shows that, despite the social differences between the schools, discussions of gender and sexuality remain muted. Discourses of childhood innocence make it difficult for teachers to provide comprehensive knowledge of sex, sexuality and gender in the primary school ‘life‐skills’ lessons. Implications for teacher training are suggested briefly in the conclusion.     

Ideological alchemy: the transmutation of South African didactics (and fundamental pedagogics) into ‘apartheid education’

In his response to Krüger, Le Grange claims that: (1) the South African discourse of fundamental pedagogics was closely allied with Christian National Education and functioned as a powerful educational doctrine in the service of the South African policy of apartheid education; (2) fundamental pedagogics bracketed political discourse; (3) the connection between fundamental pedagogics and Christianity promoted an authoritarian approach to education; and (4) because didactic pedagogics and fundamental pedagogics were so intimately intertwined, South African didactic thinking also was used to serve and perpetuate the policy of apartheid education. This paper evaluates these claims and concludes that they are untenable in light of the history, nature, and purpose of South African fundamental and didactic pedagogical thinking. In his effort to link fundamental and didactic pedagogical thinking to apartheid education, Le Grange has lost sight of the profound influence of the tradition of European (Dutch/German) Didaktik on didactic thought in South Africa during the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s.     

Schools as (Dis)Organisations: the ‘breakdown of the culture of learning and teaching’ in South African schools

A prominent and problematical legacy of apartheid education, which requires transformation, is the poor functioning of a large number of previously black schools (commonly termed ‘the breakdown of the culture of teaching and learning'). While the causes of breakdown may be traced back to the years of opposition to apartheid and the resistance struggle waged within schooling from 1976 onwards, it is less clear what may be done to remedy the situation. This article explores particular organisational dimensions of school failure with a view to understanding how they have affected the operation of schools, why schools have broken down and what interventions may remedy this breakdown. It moves beyond rational theories of organisation to argue that perspectives derived from psychoanalytical approaches to organisation may be useful in planning strategies for intervention to transform teaching and learning in these schools.     

Teachers and the State: forming and re‐forming ‘partnership’

Teachers in the English and Welsh State education system have experienced a changing and turbulent relationship with the State in recent decades. This article adopts a historical analysis and argues that the concept of ‘partnership’ is key to understanding the relationship between teachers and the State in the period since the Second World War. Initially a partnership based on a commitment to welfarist values, professional autonomy and collective bargaining; this has been systematically dismantled and reconstructed as a ‘social partnership’ based on teacher union involvement in workforce reform coupled with a significantly more managerialist conception of professional accountability. Re‐engineering the terms of its partnership with teachers has been central to the State’s restructuring of public education along neo‐liberal lines.     

‘Structure’ in Educational Theory

This essay explores the contingency of music's value, and the significant ways that contingency qualifies (or should qualify) our understandings of the utility of instructional method. More specifically, it raises the possibility that the altruistic pursuit of methodological purity may serve ends dramatically different than those espoused by practitioners. Music making, music study, and music learning may be liberating, empowering, and educational; but they may also serve precisely opposite ends. More simply put, neither music nor its study is unconditionally or inherently good. The essay explores various ways nihilism may be manifest in musical/instructional practices, and advances alternatives grounded in agency, action, and the acceptance of resistance and responsibility.     

Educational Plasticity: Catherine Malabou and ‘the feeling of a new responsibility’

Abstract

This paper attempts to reintegrate the concept of plasticity into educational philosophy. Although John Dewey used the concept in Democracy and Education (1916) it has not generated much of a critical or practical legacy in educational thought. French philosopher, Catherine Malabou, is the first to think plasticity rigorously and seriously in a contemporary philosophical context and this paper outlines her thinking on it as well as considering its applicability to education. My argument is that her definition not only successfully reintroduces the concept in a way which is generative for contemporary educational philosophy and practice but that it also significantly extends the remit of educational plasticity as previously conceived by Dewey. This paper will examine the concept of educational plasticity as providing an opportunity as well as ‘the feeling of a new responsibility’ towards the plastic subject in philosophical approaches to education.