UWC Centres and Institutes

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A place to feel free: Digital storytelling research report
(University of the Western Cape, 2024) Kayser, Naythan; Palm, Selina
The research report titled "A Space to Feel Free? Digital Storytelling Around Gender-Based Violence at UWC" presents findings from a student-led investigation conducted in 2022 at the University of the Western Cape (UWC). Authored by Dr. Selina Palm, this study is part of the Gender Equity and Empowerment Project (GEEP) and aims to enhance understanding of gender-based violence (GBV) through the perspectives of UWC students. Utilizing a qualitative and participatory methodology, the research involved seven Digital Storytelling Ambassadors who shared their insights via voice notes, capturing diverse experiences related to GBV on campus. The report identifies key themes such as types of GBV, safety perceptions, gender norms, and institutional responses, emphasizing the importance of student voices in shaping effective interventions. The findings aim to inform UWC's programming and contribute to broader discussions on GBV within South African higher education institutions.
ABET and development in the Northern Cape province: Assessing impacts of CACE courses, 1996-1999
(Centre for Continuing and Adult Education (CACE), University of the Western Cape, 2001) Kerfoot, Caroline; Geidt, Jonathan; Alexander, Lucy; Dayile, Nomvuyo; Groener, Zelda; Hendricks, Natheem; Walters, Shirley
This study presents the results of an investigation into the impact of CACE courses for adult educators, trainers and development practitioners. The report describes how the courses affected the training practices and lives of past students. Case studies document and analyse the problems and successes of implementing capacity-building ABET training in the Northern Cape.
Academic games in validation events: A study of academic roles and practices
(University of the Western Cape, 2018) Khanna, Rebecca; Savin-Baden, Maggi
This paper presents the results of a three-year study that examined academics' espoused and actual practices in validation or approval events of UK degree courses. The study used narrative inquiry to explore academics' accounts. The paper provides a literature review and then presents the findings which indicate that often procedural processes interrupt the process of curriculum making. The paper uses scenarios to illustrate the ways in which procedural processes can result in subverting and subversive practices during the validation process. It is, therefore, argued that academics take up particular stances, defined here as positional identities, which may help or hinder the validation process. The paper argues that by ignoring staff experiences, the risk is that dominant discourses of regulation become accepted without question and the spaces available for dialogue about professional futures, alongside creation of flexible curricula to address these needs, are crowded out by the performative requirements of the process.
The academic transitional experiences of masters’ students at the University of the Western Cape
(AOSIS OpenJournals, 2012) Hoffman, Jeffrey C.; Julie, Hester
Transition has been a major focus of educational institutions. However, most of the research into student transition focuses on the challenges related the transition from high school to university. Not much emphasis has been placed on the transition from undergraduate to postgraduate studies, despite the steadily increasing postgraduate enrollment rates in higher education institutions. The discrepancy between the enrollment and completion rates is an indication that postgraduate students are facing transitional challenges when engaging with postgraduate studies. The aim of this research study was to describe the academic transitional experiences of masters’ students in the Faculty of Community Health Sciences at the University of the Western Cape. The objectives were to determine the academic preparedness of postgraduate students, to explore their primary motivations for pursuing postgraduate studies, and to assess their utilisation of the available support services at UWC. A quantitative, exploratory, descriptive research design was employed. A cross-sectional survey was conducted with masters’ students during 2009, using convenience sampling. Data was statistically analysed using the SPSS to provide descriptive statistics. The majority of the sample indicated a lack of academic preparedness, even though most of them had a bachelor’s degree. The primary reasons listed as motivation for master’s study were to improve knowledge and reaching self-actualisation. The majority is still eager to complete their studies. Most support systems were utilised and students rated these services as a positive experience that facilitates smooth academic transition. However, concerns are that not many students utilised the academic writing centre and those who did, rated the overall service as average. One of the main recommendations was that a research culture needs to be established at undergraduate level, as this would give students greater exposure to research activities.
Access and barriers to post-school education and success for disadvantaged black adults in South Africa: Rethinking equity and social justice
(University of the Western Cape, 2022) Groener, Zelda
Widespread national higher education student protests against proposed fee increases and demands for free higher education in South Africa that arose towards the end of 2015 drew international attention to disadvantaged students’ socio-economic conditions and the barriers that deter access to higher education. Adults’ experiences of socio-economic barriers to accessing post-school education are similar. Drawing on theoretical frameworks and secondary data, I conceptualise a distributive justice perspective on access for disadvantaged black adults premised on the relationships between interrelated equality rights and socio-economic rights, principles of social and economic justice, and redistributive policies.
Acknowledging privilege through encounters with difference: Participatory Learning and Action techniques for decolonizing methodologies in Southern contexts
(Taylor and Francis, 2011) Bozalek, Vivienne
Participatory Learning and Action (PLA) research techniques can contribute to decolonising methodologies by alerting participants to privilege and marginalisation through encounters across difference. Consciousness of privileges is often obscured and naturalised as part of normative expectations of everyday living. This paper contends that no one is exempt from interrogating their positionality and their beliefs, and that PLA research techniques can provide the means by which people can be confronted with privileges and marginality through encountering the ‘other’. A case study conducted across Higher Education Institutions in South Africa is presented to show how PLA techniques can make a substantial contribution to processes of research. The case study shows how PLA research techniques make it possible to bring people together to confront differential privileges, thus giving people the opportunity to become both insiders and committed outsiders in their interactions across differences.
Addressing dualisms in student perceptions of a historically white and black university in South Africa
(Taylor & Francis, 2017) Carolissen, Ronelle; Bozalek, Vivienne
Normative discourses about higher education institutions may perpetuate stereotypes about institutions. Few studies explore student perceptions of universities and how transformative pedagogical interventions in university classrooms may address institutional stereotypes. Using Plumwood’s notion of dualism, this qualitative study analyses unchallenged stereotypes about students’ own and another university during an inter-institutional collaborative research and teaching and learning project. The project was conducted over 3 years and 282 psychology, social work and occupational therapy students from a historically black and white institution in South Africa, participated in the study. Both black and white students from differently placed higher education institutions display prejudices and stereotypes of their own and other institutions, pointing to the internalisation and pervasiveness of constructions and hegemonic discourses such as whiteness and classism. It is important to engage with subjugated student knowledges, in the context of transformative pedagogical practices, to disrupt dominant views and cultivate processes of inclusion in higher education.
Adult education and learning access: Hope in times of crisis in South Africa
(University of the Western Cape, 2022) Groener, Zelda; Land, Sandra
The call for chapters for this book was inspired by the shock of COVID-19 impacting on the adult and community education sector in our country. However, the proposals for chapter after chapter that landed in our inboxes underscored the reality that people active in this field are constantly buffeted in the waves of a whole range of crises, and that they lack protections taken for granted by many practitioners in other sectors. Consequently, this book offers a collection of chapters describing a wide range of crises that affect both learners and educators in adult and community education. Written by people working in this sphere, it makes available practitioners’ firsthand experiences of the impact of some of the more sudden and acute crises, as well as their experiences of dealing with more enduring and enervating problems.
Adult learning within lifelong learning: a different lens a different light
(Wayne Hugo, 2006) Walters, Shirley
Adult learning is located within a lifelong learning framework both as a lens for looking back and for projecting forward. The competing views of adult and lifelong learning are discussed and a preliminary overview of what has been achieved within adult learning in the last 10 years in South Africa is given. Lifelong learning and the learning region are suggested as frameworks for providing a ‘connected up’ approach to human development, and a possibility for finding ‘troubled spaces of possibilities’ (Edwards and Usher, 2005) to create new solutions to old problems.
Advances made by the University of the Western Cape in the support of remote online teaching and learning for student success and access
(University of the Free State, 2023) Dankers, Paul; Stoltenkamp, Juliet
During the COVID-19 pandemic, ongoing advances were made by higher education institutions (HEIs) to support remote online teaching and learning for student success and access, which are increasing areas of research. The major objective of this paper is to address the shift to remote teaching and learning practices that Covid precipitated in higher education. We report on literature that captures the ongoing shift to remote teaching and learning practices. The response of the University of the Western Cape (UWC) to the crisis of the pandemic will be highlighted. Various themes related to the pedagogical value of emergency remote teaching (ERT), online learning, and continual post-pandemic support are discussed. We examine how challenges presented new opportunities for curriculum innovation and transformation at the UWC. The focus is the importance of a continual professional academic support structure and post-covid awareness campaigns in order to sustain fully online and hybrid teaching and learning approaches. Recommendations highlight that departments across faculties need to focus on training and support with regard to the attainment and effective application of eSkills and eTools; and that there is a need to intensify this, especially as part of the broader curriculum transformation agenda. More research that focuses on ongoing advances in the support of remote online teaching and learning for student success and access during a pandemic is necessary.
African history in context: Toward a praxis of radical education
(Taylor & Francis Group, 2018) Benson, Koni; Gamedze, Asher; Koranteng, Akosua
This chapter reflects on the context, process, and challenges of the Know Your Continent (KYC) popular education course which we ran in Cape Town in the second half of 2015. KYC brought together people from local high schools, community activist networks, universities � both students and academics, and others into conversations emerging from themes and debates in African history and their relevance and relationship to our own contemporary contexts of struggle. First, the chapter examines the KYC�s historical context. Second, it looks at how KYC was deliberately rooted in the contemporary questions posed by the urgent political project of decolonisation � questions concerning how to decentre the university, how to liberate knowledge from the hierarchies that bind it, and how to imagine and practice collaborative radical education. The third part speaks to some of the contradictory potentialities of doing radical work in, or in affiliation to, a university. Through a reflection on the successes and limitations of KYC, we hope to contribute to conversations about the potential for different kinds of engagement, and different kinds of solidarity between the often-segregated spaces of schools, universities, and activist organisations.
Aligning clinical assessment with course elements in prosthodontic dentistry: a South African case
(American Dental Education Association, 2013) Maart, Ronel Deidre; Bitzer, Elias M.
Clinical tests were introduced and implemented as an additional clinical assessment tool in the Prosthodontic curriculum of the fourth year undergraduate dentistry program at one South African university. This study compared the relationship between the students’ performance in the clinical tests and daily clinical grades on the one hand with their theoretical performance on the other. It also explored the perceptions of the academic staff on the validity of clinical tests as a clinical assessment tool. An analysis of the test results of fourth-year dental students showed insignificant relationships between students’ clinical daily grade assessment marks and their marks for assessing theory. However, clinical assessment via tests is well accepted by the course staff and they perceived them to be more reliable than daily clinical grade assessment methods. The findings of the study support other reported studies which concluded that the daily grade of Dentistry students poorly correlate with their competency exams module. The findings also relate well with the lecturers’ views that clinical tests were more reliable as a clinical assessment tool than students’ daily clinical mark.
Analysing the professional development of teaching and learning from a political ethics of care perspective
(Routledge, 2014) Bozalek, Vivienne; McMillan, Wendy; Marshall, Delia; November, Melvyn; Daniels, Andre; Sylvester, Toni
This paper uses Tronto’s political ethics of care as a normative framework to evaluate a model of teaching and learning professional development. This framework identifies five integrated moral elements of care – attentiveness, responsibility, competence, responsiveness and trust. This paper explicates on each of these elements to evaluate the piloting and implementation of a teaching and learning professional development model at a South African higher education institution. The political ethics of care was found to be a useful normative framework for a group of higher educators to reflect on the process of engaging in teaching and learning professional development in that it revealed the importance of differential power relations, the importance of working collaboratively and being attentive to the needs of both caregivers and care receivers.
Application of Lazarus's cognitive transactional model of stress-appraisal-coping in an undergraduate mental health nursing programme in the Western Cape, South Africa
(AFAHPER-SD, 2014) Martin, Penelope D.; Daniels, Felicity M.
This article describes how the cognitive transactional model of stress-appraisal-coping can be applied in the sense making process for students working in the challenging mental health care environment. Primary and secondary literature was searched by means of computer-assisted data bases using key words. An overview of emotions, emotion functioning and regulation is alluded to, to give credence to the application of the transactional model of stress and coping as purported by Lazarus & Folkman. The model is cognitive because it is based on the assumption that students' thinking processes, memory and the meaning that those events have for the student experiencing them - will act to mediate in determining stress and coping resources. The definition of stress emphasises the subjective responses in the relationship between the student and the mental health care environment. Coping, on the other hand, refers to the cognitive and behavioural attempts made by students to manage the demands of the mental health care environment but are appraised as exceeding the resources they possess. The central assumption of this theory is that the interaction between an individual and the environment creates stress experienced by the individual. In order to contextualise the discussion theoretical perspectives on emotions are alluded to. A simplistic example is given to show how undergraduate mental health nursing students may appraise an encounter with a mentally ill person and the outcome of that appraisal within the students' sense making process.
At-risk student teachers’ attitudes and aspirations as learners and teachers of mathematics
(AOSIS, 2015) Moodley, Trevor; Adendorff, Stanley A.; Pather, Subethra
This study explored foundation phase first year student teachers’ perceptions about mathematics. The focus on their attitudes towards mathematics in two roles – (1) as learners of mathematics, based on their prior experiences at school and (2) as aspirant teachers of mathematics for children in the early grades. Data sources were students’ drawings/collages as well as written interpretations and elaborations of the drawings/collages. The findings indicated that participants had generally negative attitudes towards the learning of mathematics. Factors such as the transition from primary to high school, teacher qualities and mathematics-related anxiety contributed to the shaping of their attitudes. It was encouraging to note that over half the participants expressed positive attitudes in their roles as future teachers, with all expressing the desire to provide better mathematics experiences to their future learners.
Attending to the affective: exploring first year students� emotional experiences at university
(South African Journal of Higher Education, 2018) Bharuthram, Sharita
This study engaged students at the affective level in order to acquire a better understanding of their emotional experiences at university with the ultimate aim of improving teaching and learning. A qualitative research study was undertaken whereby students wrote about their feelings at that particular moment, on two different occasions in a semester. The data reveals that students used mostly negative descriptors to express their emotions some of which included feelings of self-doubt, alienation, loss of identity and not belonging to the university and their disciplinary community. The feelings expressed by students show that their emotions constitute the very core of their being and are therefore intertwined with the way they perceive their studies and themselves as students and as individuals. Hence, it is argued that emotional factors cannot be disentangled from teaching and learning and that spaces need to therefore be created in the curriculum for the inclusion of the affective domain.
Attitudes of undergraduate nursing students towards E-learning at the University of the Western Cape
(African Association for Physical, Health Education, Recreation and Dance, 2015) Akimanimpaye, Furaha; Fakude, Lorraine
The development of the Internet has provided an opportunity for offering e-learning as a new addition to modern education. Substantial evidence indicates that many universities across the world are offering study programmes through a variety of e-learning methods. Although e-learning environments are becoming popular, there is limited research on learners’ attitudes toward online learning environments. Past research has identified a variety of factors affecting user attitude in relation to e-learning. It is against this background that this article seeks to determine the attitudes of undergraduate nursing students toward e-learning at the University of the Western Cape. A survey was conducted among 213 undergraduate nursing students to assess their attitudes toward e-learning. The study employed a survey methodology based on the questionnaire that was distributed randomly to students to assess their attitudes towards e-learning, and to establish whether any existing demographical factors impacted on the students’ use of e-learning. From a valid response rate of 86%, the statistical analysis revealed that learner satisfaction was influenced by perceived ease of use, gender, and study-year level of respondents. The findings demonstrate a favourable attitude towards e-learning among nursing students at the University of the Western Cape.
Authentic learning for teaching reading: Foundation phase pre-service student teachers’ learning experiences of creating and using digital stories in real classrooms
(AOSIS, 2016) Moodley, Trevor; Aronstam, Shelley
Teaching and learning, an evolving endeavour, is associated with many factors, with advancements in technology, playing an ever-growing role in the classroom. It is therefore important to include the use of interactive communication technologies (ICTs) in university curricula of teacher education programmes. Universities ought to be creative in advancing autonomous learning among their students by providing opportunities for integrated and rich learning experiences. Accordingly, the purpose of this study was to intentionally integrate ICTs in the planning and delivery of foundation phase reading lessons. This was achieved by providing authentic learning opportunities to final year foundation phase student teachers through the provision of training in the creation of digital stories (DS), collaborating within communities of practice (COP) (peers and other relevant parties), and then using their creations in ‘real-world’ classroom contexts. The aims of this study were to explore student teachers’ perceptions and experiences of developing DS in groups with minimal formal initial input and their use of DS during foundation phase (FP) reading lessons in real-class settings during teaching practice. Data were collected via focus group interviews and participants’ reflection essays. The study’s findings indicate that the creation of their own DS provided rich, rewarding multidimensional learning experiences to student teachers. Participants reported that they found the ‘assignment’ to be of real value, since it was directly linked to classroom practice, and despite the cognitive demands of the assignment; the nature of the task nurtured, an agentic disposition towards their own learning. Participants further reported that the DS provided enthusiasm among young learners during the delivery of lessons and were of pedagogical value, despite experiencing some challenges in using DS during reading lessons. Participants were of the view that the use of DS in advancing reading and literacy holds much pedagogical promise, because it resonates with the this generation of digital natives, the present generation of learners who have been born into a world where they interact with digital technology from an early age.
Authentic professional development: Key to quality sevice delivery
(Actuarial Society of South Africa (ASSA), 2014) Lowther, Michael; McMillan, Wendy
The Actuarial Society of South Africa ('Actuarial Society') requires its members to honour their professional promise to deliver specialist and up-to-date actuarial expertise that is ethical and subject to professional oversight. The purpose of this study is to investigate how the Actuarial Society can encourage its members to develop and maintain the capability to deliver this professional promise through continuing professional development ('CPD'). Current concepts of and approaches to professional development were identified from the literature and various professions' CPD requirements. Thereafter, the opinions of South African actuaries on the insights from the literature were sought by means of an online survey. Analysis of the literature indicates that CPD is most effective when it takes place through a development cycle of planning, action, results and reflection. Further, professional development is associated with competently completing tasks that are required in the workplace. Data from the survey supported these insights. It is concluded that the Actuarial Society's CPD requirements should be designed to encourage members to develop and maintain their capabilities, and it is therefore suggested that members be required to engage in work-based development cycles.
Being and becoming a university teacher
(Taylor & Francis, 2016) McMillan, Wendy; Gordon, Natalie
This study examined how one academic framed the enablements and constraints to her project of being and becoming an academic. Complexity facilitated reflection in that it provided a visual representation of data, which was used to generate a concept map, which represented as equal all the component parts of her landscape. Five spaces with emancipatory potential to assist the academic in her professional development emerged, namely: communities of practice, academic freedom, position statements, development opportunities and a supportive environment. Rather than suggesting any generalisability in the findings, the authors argue that the significance of this study is theoretical and methodological. Complexity theory has the potential to help academic development practitioners understand the landscapes in which their academics operate, and guide appropriate development opportunities.

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