Researchers in Education

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    Local languages: good for the informal marketplace but not for the formal classroom?
    (Taylor & Francis, 2013) Desai, Zubeida
    The maxim that ‘Languages develop through use, particularly in high domains such as education and the courts’ was propagated by Neville Alexander. He was committed to ‘intellectualising African languages’. In the spirit of his legacy, this article makes a case for using local languages, also referred to as mother tongues, as mediums of instruction. In making this case, two interrelated perspectives on the role of African languages in the broader society, are critiqued. The first perspective argues that languages evolve on their own, and calls for a multilingualism from below. The second perspective is critical of the term ‘mother tongue’, and by implication mother-tongue education. The article also critically examines language in education developments in South Africa, in particular the 1997 Language in Education Policy. It argues that one of the reasons for poor learner performance is current language practices, where the language of instruction shifts abruptly to English at the beginning of Grade 4. Examples of learner performance are given from a study the author conducted in Khayelitsha in the Western Cape. The term ‘mother tongue’ is defined in relation to these critiques. The article concludes by stating that current practices in South Africa continue to privilege English- and Afrikaans-speaking pupils. Drawing on the work of Alexander and others, it argues that linguistic practices from below, regardless of how innovative they are, cannot change power dynamics in unequal societies such as South Africa. It is only when languages are used in high domains such as education that they develop fully.
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    Inducting BEd Hons students into a research culture and the world of research: the case of a research methods course in the BEd Hons programme
    (Unisa Press, 2013) Thaver, Beverley; Holtman, Lorna; Julie, Cyril
    It has become a policy imperative that the training of future researchers in Education should start at the Honours level. This training presents particular challenges as students entering the Bachelor of Education Honours (BEd Hons) programme have diverse professional backgrounds and personal motivations for pursuing the programme. Moreover, the majority of the students have fairly substantial experience in schools, one of the primary empirical sites for educational research. This diverse student profile yields several challenges in relation to the teaching of a Research Methods course. In this article, the authors reflect on their experiences of offering a BEd Hons course to induct students into research against the traditional, literature-renditioned components which comprise the practice of research in the Social Sciences. Working with the notions of critical aspects and encounters, the authors found that students experience a tension between their desire to solve their identified research problems in a common-sense way and a teaching interaction that moves them to an abstract/theoretical level. In light of this, the authors identify that students experience difficulty with shifting their strong beliefs about knowing the answers (in terms of their research), to notions of doubt. Each of these beliefs marks different academic cultures that respectively refer to, on the one hand, a teaching practice-supervisor and, on the other, a participant observer inquirer. The depth and richness of their experiences in the former tends to constrain the transition from predetermined answers to a curiosity driven mode.
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    The Ambivalence of Indianness in Ahmed Essop’s The Hajji and Other Stories
    (2021) Chetty, Rajendra
    This article explores the ambivalence of Indianness in Ahmed Essop’s debut collection of short stories, The Hajji and Other Stories, 1978, against the contested discourse of the nation. The article is underpinned by Bhabha’s theory of nation and narration, specifically the authenticity and context of cultural location and representation. The image of cultural authority, like that of the Hajji, is ambivalent because it is caught in the act of trying to compose a powerful and religious figure, but stuck in the performativity of typical South African racial, class and religious prejudice. Essop’s ambivalent narration evokes the margins of the South African space, the Indian minority; it is also a celebratory or self-marginalisation space. The ambivalence of the characters resonates across the collection—the insincerity of the Fordsburg community towards Moses and the two sisters; the deceitful Hajji Musa, the hypocrisy of Molvi Haroon seeking refuge with the perpetrator of blasphemy against the Prophet, Dr Kamal’s pretence of having virtues and the charade of the yogi. In essence, the characters display virtues of Indianness and Muslim/Hindu piety that they do not actually possess.
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    Humiliated consciousness in Ronnie Govender’s The Lahnee’s pleasure and Ben Okri’s In Arcadia
    (Routledge, 2021) Rajendra, Chetty; Curr, Matthew
    Ronnie Govender entitled both his major play (Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1977) and his later novel (Johannesburg: Jacana, 2008) The Lahnee’s Pleasure, articulating that life was, and still is, a pleasure ground for a privileged minority in South Africa. Over a period of three decades, spanning both the periods before and after apartheid, his assessment of political conditions in the country of his birth remains as valid. Lao, in Ben Okri’s In Arcadia, reveals how much of life in Europe today remains a “fairground for the favoured” (London: Head of Zeus, 2014, 108) and how little pampered and privileged people such as Jim, the director of the film project in this novel, see or comprehend of what is so often a secret ordeal for a person of colour. Okri writes of conditions and perceptions in contemporary Britain, while Govender writes of South Africa up to the present time; yet despite the many differences in their social contexts, their delineation of conditions that surround a person of colour living in British or South African society shows that interracial equality and brotherhood are still distant ideals in both countries. Both writers, however, do hold out a measured degree of hope in their depiction of Wordsworthian figures of humble labour: Mothie in Govender’s novel and the train driver in Okri’s.
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    Doctoral supervision and COVID-19: Autoethnographies from four faculty across three continents
    (2021) Stevens, Dannelle; Chetty, Rajendra; Jones, Tamara Bertrand; Yallew, Addisalem; Butler-Henderson, Kerryn
    Doctoral students represent the fresh and creative intellectuals needed to address the many social, economic, political, health care, and education disparities that have been highlighted by the 2020 pandemic. Our work as doctoral student supervisors could not be more central nor vital than it was at the beginning of, during, and following the pandemic. Written during the pandemic of 2020, the purpose of this paper was to describe how four faculty from three continents navigated their relationships with doctoral students in the research and dissertation phase of their doctoral programs. Using a common set of prompts, four faculty members each wrote an autoethnography of our experience as doctoral student supervisors. Even though our basic advising philosophies and contexts were quite different, we learned about the possibility and power of resilience, empathy, and mentoring online. Our findings imply that new online practices could be closely examined and retained after the pandemic to expand the reach, depth and impact of doctoral education.