Books and Book Chapters (Scholarship of Teaching & Learning)

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    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.
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    Critical professionalism: a lecturer attribute for troubled times
    (SUN Press, 2012) Leibowitz, Brenda; Holgate, David
    This chapter describes the research-based project, Critical Professionalism, which gave rise to several of the chapters in this volume. We suggest that the concept of critical professionalism, with its strong value orientation, makes a foundational contribution to approaches to professional development for teaching for the public good in South Africa and other parts of the world. We use data generated from this project to tease out some of the characteristics of critical professionals, as well as some of the key ingredients necessary to support the emergence of academics as critical professionals. We begin by setting the scene for the study and explaining why, in the present era, academics’ sense of agency, criticality and professionalism might be threatened – to a fair degree by the rise of the audit culture and a strong managerial and prescriptive approach to steering the direction of higher education.
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    Designing the project: theoretical approaches
    (HSRC Press, 2012) Bozalek, Vivienne; Carolissen, Ronelle
    Education in South Africa is in crisis. Low literacy and numeracy rates, poor discipline, and a sense of despair pervade the education landscape. At the same time, educators are called upon to achieve more, with universities tasked to produce graduates capable of exercising responsible and reflective citizenship in a competitive and globalising world. However, universities face very complex demands and resource constraints. In this sobering context, this book provides an opportunity to learn from a bold experiment in teaching and learning taking place across two very different South African universities, one historically black, and one historically white and Afrikaans
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    Diffracting learning/teaching entanglements: A South African vice-chancellor’s perspective
    (Routledge, 2016) Bozalek, Vivienne; McMillan, Wendy
    This chapter considers data from interviews conducted with eight vice-chancellors from both historically advantaged and disadvantaged higher education institutions (HEIs) in South Africa, as part of a larger national project on professional development of teaching and learning. It hones in on one particular interview which was a ‘hot spot’ and which ‘glowed’ (MacLure 2013) during data analysis. The perspective of vice-chancellors on learning to teach is important for providing insights into the broader context in which the process of learning to teach takes place. This is because it is vice-chancellors who are affected by both past and current policies and discourses, while also being pivotal in affecting and being affected by institutional enablements and constraints regarding learning to teach. The material discursive in terms of past and present sociopolitical discourses and policies, as well as access to resources, deeply affect learning to teach at both a systemic and institutional level. Vice-chancellors find themselves at the interface between these national and international discourses, policies, and practices as part of their specific university environments where these discourses and policies are enacted. These entanglements dynamically reconfigure learning to teach in higher education.