SOTL @ UJ Mini-Conference 1 December 2015

The SOTL @ UJ: Towards a Socially Just Pedagogy project held a mini-conference on 1 December, attended by about 40 people. There were various highlights during the day. The first was the keynote by Michalinos Zembylas from the Open University of Cyprus.

His talk, entitled: Conceptualizing 'socially just pedagogies' through the lens of 'new pedagogy studies' and in the aftermath of the 'affective turn' was the first highlight. He shared some thoughts on new pedagogy studies, which highlight the importance of pedagogy as relational; the relationship of culture, pedagogy and power; and a focus on the public sites of pedagogy. For me an important issue he drew our attention to, is that normal pedagogies can have 'collateral damage'. If this is the case, we have no option but to pay attention to what we are doing in the classroom and beyond. An exciting dimension to the talk was the focus on what the affective turn has to offer. This focus ruptures the dichotomy between the social and the psychic. It discusses practices, individual experiences and historically situated affects. Psychic elements are relationally entangled with historical and internal developments (and if you want to read more, do go to Michalinos' papers or books, of which there are several!)

Some of us who stayed to the end of the day

A second highlight was the incredible participation of all present, in particular, the papers presented. These were on varied topics such as feedback to student writing and the ideas of Nancy Fraser on participatory parity; the importance of SOTL as a vehicle to advance socially just pedagogies; cognitive justice; postgraduate participation and equity and participation; dominant discourses of tutors; and perceptions of students about hand held devices in relation to issues of equity. We also deliberated our own draft conceptual framework about SOTL and socially just pedagogy. A key issue emphasized in that discussion is that socially just pedagogies are partly about process and deliberation - it is not something that is ever finalized. A related point was that if teaching and learning are about encouraging criticality, creativity and independent thought, then so should the environment be, in which academics engage with each other about matters of teaching and learning, the curriculum and their own development. This has important implications for a university to ensure that the climate for dialogue is open and encouraging of diverse opinions.

A third highlight was the closing session. Here Leila Kagee from the Faculty of Education concluded her comments by reading to us a beautiful poem, included here.
Finally Michalinos presented us with an important set of questions to challenge and trouble ourselves, and to ask, are our teaching interventions really an example of socially just pedagogies. Michalinos' opening presentation and closing response are provided at the end of this blog entry.

Encouraging words in the welcoming by the DVC Academic, Angina Parekh, were that the University recognizes the importance of SOTL and even the NRF is beginning to recognize this. She did point out, however that the field appears to be dominated by women, and that perhaps the issue of gender is one that should be taken up in further discussions. The SOTL @ UJ project will enter its third year in 2016. Given the focus on social justice (or the lack thereof) in higher education in South Africa, the deliberations in 2016 will be extremely important, and we hope to have many participants at the seminar series. (The plan for the 2016 series is available in the right-hand link on the blog).

Socially Just Pedagogies through the lens of 'new pedagogy studies' and in the aftermath of the 'affective turn' from Brenda Leibowitz

1 dec 2015 so tl@uj mini conference presentation-critical response to the papers_michalinos zembylas from Brenda Leibowitz

“Thank you for making race not feel like walking on eggs and for injecting humour” : teaching race at Stellenbosch

Rob Pattman seminar at the University of Johannesburg from Brenda Leibowitz

In this presentation Rob Pattman shared his approach to teaching race using a participatory pedagogy. One of the explicit goals that Rob set for the module was to engage with transformation more reflexively and coherently, against the backdrop of a predominantly white institution. He intentionally sought to critique the common tendency for transformation to be reduced to numbers and superficially ‘embracing diversity’. While recent student protests on institutional transformation attest to the importance of ensuring that institutions are representative of the broader society, focusing only on numbers can lead to the ‘fetishisation’ of race.

Rob Pattman

The strategy adopted was to invite students to become knowledge producers by making their own stories and lives as well as their own conceptualisations of race central topics in the module. In this sense he is able to encourage students to move beyond the black, coloured and indian student as ‘diverse other’ to compelling all students to be knowledge producers.  Using humour, provocation and asking seemingly naïve questions such as how would you describe race to an alien from another planet, he got students to problematize race and see the absurdity in the constructions of race. The notion of race as something that is constructed but also as something that produces us, resonates with us. This is useful because it provokes us to shift the focus from race as being something we have, to race as something we do (race as performativity). The performativity attached to race engenders in all participants in the module a sense of agency and more importantly it creates the space for those who experience racism to set the agenda.

Rob acknowledges that humour could result in trivialising and reproducing racial stereotypes if not dealt with sensitively. However, humour does help with engaging with ‘troubling topics’ and subverting categories which are normally reified and taken for granted.  The positive responses from students about the module are testimony to the value of the approach in extending and nuancing student understandings of race and racism. This enriched student understanding of, amongst other things, race as materiality; race as spatially differentiated (living and recreational spaces); race as a verb involving processes of identifications and dis-identification and race as troubling as well as something that should be troubled. By using movies such as Skin  and Luister as well as the stories of individuals such as Robertson and Wesley Rob skilfully illustrates the parallels between and intersectionality of race with gender, class, sexuality, age etc. in the social construction of student identifications and expressions of power and inequality.  

As all good presentations do, Rob’s approach to engaging with race left participants in the seminar with more questions. Questions relating to the theories that underpin this approach, the use of humour in productive ways, more details on learning tasks that encourage student to value their own experiences, create knowledge and to be agents of transformation were just some of them. We would like to invite other participants in the workshop and Rob to extend the dialogue.

Blog authors: Kibbie Naidoo and Vanessa Merckel

The First International Conference on Scholarship of Teaching and Learning

The Central University of Technology (CUT) held the 1st International Conference on Scholarship of

The conference opened with a song

Teaching and Learning on 1 - 2 October 2015. This was a lively and well attended conference, mainly by academics at the University, though with colleagues from several neighboring universities as well. There were 5 keynote speakers, also from CUT and outside. Jane McKenzie gave a valuable
presentation of how SOTL is encouraged at the University of Glasgow and Merja Alanko-Turunen from the Haaga Helia University of Applied Science in Helsinki spoke about how pedagogic and reflective practice are advanced at her institution. She had some novel ideas that are worth considering. I have  embedded my own presentation, which showcases the work of the SOTL @ UJ project, and argues for a strongly social justice perspective on SOTL.

   

The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning - A social justice perspective from Brenda Leibowitz


Yunnus Ballim, the Vice-Chancellor at the new Sol Plaatje university, gave a talk entitled, "Reflecting epistemological access and the analytical frameworks guiding institutional responses to student learning in South African higher education". He was strongly critical of the way the term 'epistemological access is used', and the extended curriculum initiative and the many assumptions this initiative contains that he holds to be illogical. This echoes points made in an article by Leibowitz and Bozalek:  Leibowitz, B. and Bozalek, V. (2015) Foundation provision - A social justice perspective, South African Journal of Higher Education, 29 (1) 8 – 25.  He also makes the point that transformation is about excellence, and that a university that graduates deeply racist students for example the creators of the Reitz video at Free State University "cannot call itself a university". I am sure this is not meant to cast aspersions on the present leadership or situation at UFS, but rather, to make a rhetorical point about the purpose of the curriculum and graduate outcomes. 


Isaac Ntshoe gave a talk entitled "Theorizing Curricula and Pedagogy of Professional and Sector Fields of Practice: Beyond a metatheoretical discourse". He made a call for advantaging our students by giving them access to powerful (and theoretical) knowledge.

James Swart, Jane McKenzie, Mabokang Monnapula-Mapesela, me, Merja Alanko-Turunen and Isaac Ntshoe

The first day was chaired by James Swart from the Engineering Faculty. Evidence of his enthusiasm for teaching and SOTL is the fact that this year he has received a commendation from the CHE/HELTASA National Teaching Excellence Awards (there are five awards and six commendations). 

There were 48 papers in parallel sessions. Although some presentations were from colleagues from other universities such as the University of Fort Hare and the new University of Mpumalanga, the overwhelming majority were by academics at CUT. These are the result of a concerted strategy at the university to encourage the SOTL. It is an impressive strategy launched by the Dean of Academic Development and Support at CUT, Mabokang Monnapula-Mapesela, who made a presentation about this project. The project is managed by Isaac Ntshoe. Key components of the strategy is that academics apply to become participants in the scheme; they are entitled to certain developmental opportunities; they are assigned to a mentor; there is a series of workshops; and there was this conference itself. A special issue of the CUT-based journal, New Generation Sciences, is to follow. This strategy makes use of Teaching Development Grant funds. - It might be one that other universities wish to follow? 

Boaventura de Sousa Santos, counter-hegemonic globalizations and cognitive justice - implications for teaching and learning

In the SOTL@UJ: Towards a Socially Just Pedagogy discussions we have considered many perspectives on social justice, critical theory and appropriate research methods, and have spent time - but possibly not enough - on the question of knowledge: whose knowledge, how do we approach knowledge for social justice, and what are the implications for teaching and learning? I recently came across the work of Bonaventura de Sousa Santos, who is Professor of Sociology at the University of Coimbra and Distinguished Legal Scholar at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. (Thanks to Sioux McKenna for a reference to his work.) His principal thesis is that western critical theory is 'tired', and that it has nothing new to offer. This clearly means we need to look elsewhere for inspiration - for example the global South, which rather than the geographic South, is a metaphor for wherever the disposessed live. The work of latin American writers who can show us the way forward are summed up in the concept of "nuestra America". de Sousa refers to the hegemonic globalization of western theories and knowledge as a form of 'epistemicide': in the academy and the capitalist knowledge economy we are destroying local and indigenous knowledges. It is worth listening to his talks, at:

http://www.havenscenter.org/vsp/boaventura-de-sousa-santos

An article I found which had lots of ramifications for social justice in higher education is:

Boaventura de Sousa Santos (2001) Nuestra America: Reinventing a subaltern paradigm of recognition and redistribution. Theory, Culture and Society, 18 (2-3) 185-217. (I have saved it in the project dropbox folder under "general readings: cognitive justice". )

The points that are particularly relevant for social justice in the higher education classroom are threefold:

The sociology of absences - rather than to continuously see the marginal classes as ignorant and dangerous, we have to be reflexively on the lookout for those silences and gaps imposed by the dominant knowledge practices. To me this has major implications for how we approach teaching and learning, and what we frequently talk about as 'epistemological access' - the knowledges to which our students do not enjoy access, and in whose thrall they are seen as ignorant.

The theory of translation - here one wants to see the mutual intelligibility between different concepts and struggles and oppressed groups, without homogenizing all struggles, or subsuming some under others.

The third step is manifesto practices,  or the principles of action that bring about alliances between different struggles. Significant here is the idea that there can be no recognition (achieved via a politics of difference) without redistribution (achieved via a struggle for equality). In the SOTL@UJ seminars last year we discussed the relationship of recognition and redistribution with reference to the writing of Nancy Fraser. This is a good point to bear in mind presently in South Africa, where on some campuses a struggle for recognition is more salient (e.g. Rhodes must fall) whereas at others, protests about access, fees and residence condition are more about a struggle for redistribution. There is a nice section in the article:

.. the notion of a fundamental meta-right: the right to have rights. We have the right to be equal whenever difference diminishes us; we have the right to be different whenever equality decharacterizes us (p. 193). 

This is a useful complementary view to that of the role of indigenous knowledge systems. We would need to think deeply of how we were to achieve this kind of listening, translating and recognizing of other worldview in our classes. Granted, our classrooms are not the same as the international arenas in which the struggles of the landless or oppressed are fought, but as the current tensions in South Africa that are playing themselves out at some of our universities are showing, our classrooms are by no means totally separated out from these broader societal struggles. If this is the case, how do we teach and research our teaching differently?

SoTL and socially just pedagogies in the graphic arts

On Thursday 27th August three presenters: Elmarie Costandius, Mocke J van Veuren and Brenden Gray shared their reflections on socially just pedagogies in the graphic arts discipline. Elmarie Costandius, who coordinates the MA in Visual Arts (Art Education) at Stellenbosch University, presented a paper titled “Socially just pedagogy and community interaction: A reflection on practice”.  

Elmarie Costandius

Elmarie explored how community interaction served to unpack the silences around painful historical experiences. The module provided powerful learning opportunities for students to critically engage with difficult knowledge and dialogues. She shared students’ experiences of mental and bodily discomfort when dealing with sensitive issues, such as forced removals, and other painful historical narratives. Evidence from her study suggests that discomfort is potentially a catalyst for initiating critical self-reflection and change. What was valuable about this presentation was that it highlighted issues of difficult knowledge and dialogues and how these are often suppressed.  What also emerged was the need to grapple productively with the narratives of difficult knowledge even when these are inconclusive, incomplete and still emerging. Another important insight is that while no single or simple answer to complex experiences exist, teachers need to carefully create safe spaces in which students can explore their assumptions without necessarily coming to one specific or common conclusion. Teachers themselves also need to be open to interrogate their own difficult knowledge and practices.

Mocke J van Veuren

Mocke J van Veuren, an independent artist, experimental filmmaker, researcher and educator based in Johannesburg reported on “The Angry Youth Workshop: Exercising a politics of space through critical arts pedagogy”. In this presentation, he interrogated the forces and structures that govern or ‘police’ our sense of belonging or alienation and action in everyday spaces which are sometimes clearly visible, but could be hidden in plain sight. Drawing on Jacques Rancière’s notion of “policing” (the invisible rules of structures that govern) and “politics” as the act of making visible these structures and forces, Mocke was able to show that despite  the perceived freedom of movement post-1994, there is still a form of invisible “policing” of space and place that is less often examined and contested. Through the use of visual, associative and performative methodologies as tools for reflection and active intervention, students took pictures of assumed public spaces that had policing elements, serving to foster discomfort. In so doing, students become more aware of the link between their personal values and narratives linked to histories of space and place and how these potentially serve to constrain. One example of such was the photograph of the student praying outside the church surrounded by barbed wire.

Brenden Gray

Brenden Gray is an artist, graphic design educator, art critic and researcher at UJ. Brenden shared his specific approach to social justice education through working with undergraduate modules in the BA Communication design course. Framed by a discussion of social justice pedagogy, he related knowing and knowledge in dynamic and dialectical ways as he unpacked and critically interrogated his own practice. Providing students with conceptual tools informed by the work of Bourdieu and other critical theorists, he encouraged students to explore, critique and widen their socio-political reasoning within the disciplinary context of arts education. For example, students were encouraged to theorize and problematize issues such as taste, status and artistic self-representation. Valuable in this exploration was that it encouraged students to draw from their lived experience and link it to social class theory. This afforded them the space to engage critically with disciplinary knowledge and share their personal creative artefacts in response to specific social justice themes.

Respondent, Michael Cross

While quite different from each other, each presentation highlighted a number of issues for us to grapple with in the domain of the scholarship of teaching and learning in higher education. Each raises important issues for interrogating disciplinary knowledge and the pedagogy used in higher education to advance multiple and nuanced notions of social justice. In one form or another, they encourage us to explore not only what we teach, but also how we teach, and perhaps as importantly why we teach.  The highly contested, embodied and emotional investment in the transformation of the self and broader society through education argued in these presentations, extended and refined our understanding of, and work towards issues of distribution, recognition and transformation as argued by Fraser (1998). The presentations also provoked an exploration of how, as teachers, we teach in more ethical and responsible ways, especially when working with discomfort: our own, as well as our students’. Furthermore, it highlighted the necessity to become increasingly aware of the silences (and gaps) in our knowledge, curricula, and pedagogies as we seek to transform teaching and learning in

Blog authors: Ness Merckel and Bongani Mashaba

higher education. Unique in these presentations are that they begin to move social justice debates away from the strictly normative domains towards the often neglected analytical domains. This provide opportunities for challenging hegemonies and ultimately serves to foster a greater theorising of our practices in a more socially just manner, as called for by the respondent, Michael Cross.

Approaches to knowledge UJ 23rd July 2015

John hannon solt@uj v3 from Brenda Leibowitz

Challenging dualism: shaping pedagogies for digital learning Dr John Hannon of La Trobe University

And

Construction and reconstruction in indigenous knowledge systems in Africa  Prof Lone Ketsitllile & Dr Uju Ukwuona

John Hannon fro La Trobe University

This was my first visit to the SOTL@UJ Seminar series. These two talks and the respondent’s (Prof Gert van der Westhuizen) unusual participatory turn in concluding), created elegant threads of questions, examples, arguments, and provocations.

I enjoyed John’s opening critique of ‘elevator words’ that don’t explain anything – such clichéd abstractions need to be materialised: take ‘teaching and learning’ – which have contested and competing theoretical traditions. (How nicely, I though this will tie in with the Indigenous Knowledge systems talk – which it did.)

Another bridging theme between the two talks is Dualism: subject/object; human/technology; virtual/real; theory/practice; bounded/unbounded spaces.  John asked: ‘How are knowledge practices enacted? There are ontological and methodological questions: knowledge needs to be practiced; things don’t exist by themselves …

 (And I thought of the dualisms tabulated by Ogunniyi (2004:293) of western knowledge and IKS – I have changed them slightly.)

Science Knowledge	IKS
Science is based on a dualistic worldview	IKs is based on a holistic worldview
Time is real and has a continuous irreversible series of duration. Time is commodified. Speed valued.	Time is continuous and cyclical.  Taking time is valued.
Matter is real and exists within time and space. The world exists ‘out there’.	Matter is real and exists within time, space and the ethereal realm. World is relational.
All events have natural causes	Events have both natural and unnatural causes
Scientific laws/generalizations are causal, logical, rational, impersonal and universal	Generalizations within the indigenous knowledge systems are relative statements which do not purport to have universal application
Language is not important to the workings of the natural world	Language is important as a creative force in the workings of both the natural and the unnatural worlds
Science is culture free	Indigenous knowledge is a critical part of culture

Lone Kesitlile and Uju Ukwuona

I was in the meantime being challenged to rethink spaces, enactments and realities. We pondered ‘Wicked’ vs ‘Tame’ issues and did not disagree that education was ‘rarely tame’.  John challenged us to consider how practices spread;  how connections are made; how technology is enacted as solutionism. (And I thought –I have a lot to consider! – I was in a privileged space of intellectual conversation.) I also later reflected on Gert’s conversational analysis saying that: “I say things because you say things.” And my internal conversation was certainly being shifted here.

There were more mental challenges in Lone and Uju’s  presentation on the need to include IKS in curricula. Reasons for including – or starting from an IK perspective in class - include social justice, redress, student-centred approaches and the decolonisation of the mind.  (Here I thought of the injunction of Millar 25 years ago that that scientific literacy needs to be socially defined -  to prevent disalienation.)  We have great IK policies in South Africa (but not in Botswana we were told). However, since the vision in Southern Africa of ‘People’s Education for People’s Power’ in the 1980s which included elements of indigenous knowledge (Prew, 2013), and the more recent IK focus from NRF, DOE and DST there is little creativity or will around implementation in schools. 

Continuing the conversation on IK – curricula integration may lead us to consider aspects of troublesome knowledge, patriarchy, local knowledge vs universal knowledge. It is interesting that many of the IK-curriculum ideals have been lost somewhere between theory and practice. A site for reconstruction indeed.

Gert van der Westhuizen

(Last thoughts…) I was jolted by Gert’s declaration that we have an epistemic responsibility “I say what I say to continue the conversation.”  I hope that I have done that.

References

Millar, R. (1989), “Constructive criticisms”. International Journal of Science Education, pp. 587-596.

Ogunniyi, M. (2004).  The challenge of preparing and equipping science teachers in higher education to integrate scientific and indigenous knowledge systems for learners. South African Journal of Higher Education. 18 (3) pp. 289-304.

Prew, M. (2013). ‘People’s Education for People’s Power’: The Rise and Fall of an Idea in Southern Africa. In Logics of Socialist Education. (pp. 133-153). Springer Netherlands.

The pace of transformation in higher education is very slow: Brickbats, bouquets and pearls from students

On the 29 May 2015, I had the opportunity to attend the bi-annual colloquium hosted by Wits Centre for Diversity Studies (WiCDS) in association with the Anti-Racism Network in Higher Education (ARNHE) called Transforming Transformation? The Changing Landscape of South African Institutions of Higher Learning that took place at the Emoyeni conference venue in Parktown, Johannesburg.

ARNHE began in June 2008 as a response to a painful, shameful and scary incident that occurred at the University of the Free State in the Reitz Residence. In this incident a group of white male students urinated in food given to elderly black female general workers at the university. Footage of the incident went viral on social media highlighting just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the challenges that face transformation in higher education including racism.

The purpose of the gathering was to explore how the transformation agendas of universities have been challenged by recent developments in the country and on its campuses and to produce a report from the deliberations. I will highlight some of the comments made by student leaders from higher education institutions in the country.

The programme began with a few words of welcome from Professor Melissa Steyn, the director of the Wits Centre for Diversity Studies, about the role of ARNHE- being a platform for stakeholders in higher education on the vital subject of transformation. Next participants broke into workshop commissions, covering areas such as institutional culture, staff experience, student experience, curriculum, leadership and governance.

I was the only teacher in higher education that chose the student experience and these are some of the brickbats, bouquets and pearls I gleaned from the local and international students at this commission.

Brickbats

·         Funding and financial problems were highlighted with some students saying, “money will buy you anything”. In addition some practical challenges of students receiving their National Students Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) book allowances after the university teaching had commenced was raised as this practice placed students at a compromised position

·         International students lamented about the struggles encountered in obtaining visas and study permits  

·         The underpreparedness of students in the first year and the poor academic throughput rate from students coming from resource scarce schools (Badat  & Sayed, 2014; CHE, 2010; Cross, Shalem, Backhouse, & Adam, 2009) was noted as an area of concern  

·         The lack of early warning systems in many higher education institutions to identify students who are a risk of failing and dropping out of the system. An example of an early warning system that was provided by one institution was that letters were sent to parents when the student failed the first test

·         The managerial style of interaction adopted by some of the university staff to address concerns of students when compassion is required

·         The culture at student’s residences that leaves students feeling alienated and not “at home” and extends to students being racially segregated. Students indicated that (more that 20 years post the dismantling of apartheid) there are still certain residences that are reserved for only white students. When the students questioned the reasoning behind these rules they received responses that it was being done for safety reasons

·         Feelings of being alienated from the curriculum in some courses were raised

·         The slow pace of transformation within the leadership of higher education institutions

·         Student leadership saw themselves as being in a vulnerable position due to issues of power dynamics and some members of the Student Representative Councils (SRCs) were disparagingly called the puppets of management

Bouquets 

·         NSFAS was praised for the opportunities granted to students to attend higher education institutions

·         Programmes that target talent and mentor students from school to university were seen as helpful. The Student Equity and Talent Management Unit (SETMU) at the University of the Witwatersrand was cited as an example

·         Students learning from being exposed to the cultural practices of others who were different from themselves by sharing food, song and dance was seen as helpful in addressing diversity issues

·         Support for student leadership and creating spaces for dialogue were positively regarded

·         Campus clinics that have extend services to members of the neighboring communities was seen as a best practice

·         Higher institutions that are marketing their programmes to the rest of Africa were supported and encouraged

·         Staff members from higher institutions who have committed their own funds to support students were praised

·         The development of a corruption hotline to raise issues anonymously was lauded  

·         The Leadership for Change Programme initiated by the University of the Free State that gives first year students international exposure to universities across the globe to encourage integration across the lines of colour, culture and language, was seen as a best practice

·         The provision of food for student who are hungry was regarded as essential

·         The practice at some institutions that allows international students to pay 75% of their fees at the beginning of the term instead of 100% offered some relief to students and their families

·         Assistance provided by some institutions to help international students with obtaining study permits and visas from the Department of Home Affairs

Pearls of wisdom

These were some suggestions made by students to improve aspects at higher education institutions:

·         Support staff need to be retrained so that they are better able to understand and support students when they begin at higher education institutions

·         Higher education institutions need to share best practices at various levels and have open conversations regarding issues of transformation

·         Students need to play a bigger role in monitoring transformation plans

·         First year programmes should be credit bearing and be better designed to develop responsible public good professional capabilities  (Walker & McLean, 2010) and should be discipline specific 

·         The students need to support and help each other to protect the rights of minorities and stand up against various forms of discrimination. Thus students can liberate each other and free others from oppressive and unjust actions and practices

·         There is a need to pay attention to not just the big picture of transformation but to also consider the small issues that stand in the way of transformation

Concluding comments

These brickbats, bouquets and pearls of wisdom indicate that issues around institutional culture and climate are not new and while there have been some structural changes there was a lack of agency expressed on the part of students. No doubt, there is a need for the student movement to be part of these uncomfortable discourses around transformation in higher education. Nevertheless, despite the challenges I am hopeful because the participants in this commission were not despondent and discussion flowed amicably. Matters raised did not only include the constraining factors. It is important for stakeholders to realize that the academic project is inextricably linked to the student project. I believe that higher educators need to hear the views of the people they teach in order to adopt a student-centred holistic social justice approach when working in the higher education space. I look forward to reading the report that emanates from this important event. Comments and additions to this list of brickbats, bouquets and pearls are most welcome.

References

Badat , S., & Sayed, Y. (2014). Post-1994 South African Education: The Challenge of Social Justice. The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 652(127), 127-148.

CHE. (2010). Access and Throughput in South African Higher Education :Three Case Studies HE Monitor No.9. Pretoria Council on Higher Education

Cross, M., Shalem, Y., Backhouse, J., & Adam, F. (2009). How undergraduate students 'negotiate' academic performance within a diverse university environment. SAJHE, 23(1), 21-42.

Walker, M., & McLean, M. (2010). Making Lives go better: University Education and 'professional capabilities'. SAJHE, 24(5), 847-869.

Roshini Pillay is an early career academic after being a social worker for more than 20 years. She teaches social work at the University of the Witwatersrand. She writes in her personal capacity as a member of SoTL@UJ