Reimagining the purpose of VET – Expanding the capability to aspire in South African Further Education and Training students

This paper applies the capabilities approach to the broader debate of the role of vocational education and training (VET) in poverty alleviation. The capabilities approach provides an approach for conceptualising and evaluating VET which differs in orientation from dominant productivist conceptions. It does so by shifting the focus from economic development to human development. By placing the well-being of VET students at the centre of our concern it shifts the lens from income generation and with it employability to a lens on capability expansion which includes but is not limited to the capability to work. The paper is based on interviews with 20 South African Further Education and Training (FET) college students. The central argument is that VET has an important role to play in poverty alleviation, but only if located in a multi-dimensional view of poverty which understands poverty as capability deprivation across multiple human functionings. In this broader notion of poverty, the role that VET plays includes training for employability, but also includes the expansion of other important capabilities such as, and in the voice of a FET student interviewed in this study, ‘the ability to dream’, or in the language of the capabilities approach, the capability to aspire.     

Supporting Lesotho teachers to develop resilience in the face of the HIV and AIDS pandemic

HIV and AIDS threaten to erode the wellbeing of teachers who are faced with an increasing number of children rendered vulnerable by the pandemic. This article explores the usefulness of a supportive group intervention, Resilient Educators (REds), in supporting Lesotho teachers to respond to the HIV and AIDS-related challenges. A time-series pre- and post-intervention design was used to evaluate the programme. The findings indicate that the intervention led to an increase in the sense of agency of participating teachers both on a personal and community level. The findings have international significance for teachers working in similar contexts characterised by extreme adversity.     

Charter school authorizers and student achievement

In this paper we analyze the relationship between charter school authorizers and student achievement. We perform this analysis using a 10-year panel dataset from Minnesota, a state that permits four distinct types of authorizers—local school boards, postsecondary institutions, nonprofit organizations, and the Minnesota Department of Education. The results of the analysis indicate that there is no statistically significant relationship between charter school authorizing type and mean levels of student achievement. However, the analysis also reveals that schools authorized by nonprofit organizations exhibit substantially more variability in achievement than schools authorized by local school boards.     

Hierarchical Mentoring: A Transformative Strategy for Improving Diversity and Retention in Undergraduate STEM Disciplines

In the United States, less than half of the students who enter into science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) undergraduate curricula as freshmen will actually graduate with a STEM degree. There is even greater disparity in the national STEM graduation rates of students from underrepresented groups with approximately three-fourths of minority students leaving STEM disciplines at the undergraduate level. A host of programs have been designed and implemented to model best practices in retaining students in STEM disciplines. The Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Professors Program at Louisiana State University, under leadership of HHMI Professor Isiah M. Warner, represents one of these programs and reports on a mentoring model that addresses the key factors that impact STEM student attrition at the undergraduate level. By integrating mentoring and strategic academic interventions into a structured research program, an innovative model has been developed to guide STEM undergraduate majors in adopting the metacognitive strategies that allow them to excel in their programs of study, as they learn to appreciate and understand science more completely. Comparisons of the persistence of participants and nonparticipants in STEM curricular, at the host university and with other national universities and colleges, show the impact of the model’s salient features on improving STEM retention through graduation for all students, particularly those from underrepresented groups.     

Northern Ireland Special Educational Needs Coordinators creating inclusive environments: an epic struggle

A key role in the development of inclusive practices in schools and classrooms is that of the Special Educational Needs Coordinator (SENCO), a role that has changed most radically since the introduction of the Code of Practice in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Through interviews with SENCOs in primary and post‐primary schools in Northern Ireland, the present study sought to examine the extent to which they created inclusive environments. Specifically, it investigated the scope and main challenges of their work, the support received and how far initial teacher education and in‐service training underpin inclusion and, thereby, the SENCO’s role. The findings showed that the responsibilities, skills and attributes expected of the SENCO were numerous and that it was a core position, yet carried a substantial teaching load, that the role was strongly managerial and that there was fragmented support in practical terms. Despite expectations that the SENCO would initiate and implement improved inclusive strategies, many significant obstacles persisted and progress could be slow considering, for example, teacher knowledge of, and attitudes towards, special needs. A much sharper focus is needed on all phases of the teacher education continuum as they impact on inclusive cultures at whole‐school and classroom level. The SENCOs identified their own perceptions of key factors to make inclusion work.     

Staff involvement in the design of a key skills curriculum model: a case-study

This case-study follows a school as it struggles to prepare for the changes brought about by Curriculum 2000 and the new key skills qualification. It describes the curriculum debate within the senior management team as it balanced the conflicting needs of subject popularity and necessity. It relates how inherent structural flaws were uncovered in the proposed curriculum strategy, how this very failure was used as an opportunity to initiate staff involvement in the design of curriculum structures and how success was subsequently fashioned from the process. It is a story of failure, consideration, reflection and improvement, and offers some insight into the lessons learned by management and teaching staff as they reflect on the process of change and their own participation in it.     

The didactics tradition in South Africa: a reply to Richard Krüger

There has been a growing interest in the European Didaktik tradition as part of a process of ‘internationalizing’ curriculum studies. Krüger provides useful insights into some aspects of Didaktiek in South Africa. However, the essay does not contextualize this tradition within the broader history of South African education. This reply contends that Didaktiek was interwoven with ‘fundamental pedagogics’ and as a consequence played a role in reproducing apartheid ideology—it did not provide a language of critique or possibility. This is one reason why the tradition has seen its demise in post‐apartheid South Africa. I argue that curriculum theory, which crucially deals with the relationship between schooling and society and highlights the socially constructed nature of schooling, offers a more useful alternative for critiquing apartheid education policy and for charting a process of transformation of education in South Africa.     

Practical Knowledge,Performance, and Physical Education

This paper is based on the premise that physical education as a practical subject on an educational curriculum is often undervalued because the concept of practical knowledge is not sufficiently understood. Explanations that rely on either propositional knowledge or on practical reasoning are inadequate. A critique is given that exposes “knowing how” as an ambiguous concept. It is argued that the performance itself counts, judged against the public standards of excellence that a particular physical education activity demands. Practical knowledge, it is concluded, is a legitimate kind of knowledge where there will be evidence of intentional action and learning and where there will be an implicit, as well as an explicit, dimension.     

Participation Patterns in Higher Education: a comparative welfare and production régime perspective

This article considers the counter-intuitive observation that some of the wealthiest nations can feature low tertiary graduation rates (e.g. Austria, Germany, and Switzerland). It also considers the observation that many countries with high tertiary graduation rates show low levels of social equity, while many countries with low tertiary graduation rates show high levels of social equity. These observations are considered through the lenses of institutional perspectives, and specifically welfare and production régime theories. The analysis elaborates on educational attainment, patterns and key aspects of economic functioning and development, and educational attainment patterns and their relationship to social inequality.