Research plans of the SOTL @ UJ: Towards a socially just pedagogy team members
1
The impact of the programme design for nursing first year nursing students at UJ on their cognitive and behavioural adjustment
Erna Bruwer and Saramarie
Eagleton Department of Human Anatomy and Physiology; Faculty
of Health Sciences; University of Johannesburg.
First
year students registered for the BCur degree at UJ have different demographic
backgrounds which leads to different levels of preparedness for their programme.
As part of their programme they have to work in hospitals while also having to
attend lectures and practicals at university. This requires problem based
coping skills to manage cognitive requirements and emotional focused ways of
coping to manage behavioural demands. The students’ response to the stressors
they are exposed to could vary from procrastination to denial and avoidance.
Using
“False Hope Syndrome” as a lens we want to investigate the role of physical
(environmental), psychological (social adjustment) and psychosocial
(interpersonal) stressors on the ability of the first year nursing students to
cope with the stressors they are exposed to
2
Dr Maria Frahm-Arp
Judaism 101: Rethinking Teaching Approaches and Content
The way of teaching
Judaism at the undergraduate level in departments of religion studies has been
shaped largely around a historical focus on the development of the religion,
its festivals, rituals and theology.
This project seeks to reshape the teaching content and focus on teaching
Judaism to focus on ethical and social justice.
The research will examine how changes in the content and way of
teaching, which will highlight ethics and social justice, are taken up by
students and change students’ understanding of and personal development in
ethical and social justice thinking. The
project will run over 3 years tracking the how the teaching is reshaped. The research project will asked students at
the beginning of the semester what their understanding of social justice
is. They will then go through the
teaching module. At the end of the
module students will be asked to fill in the questionnaire again and we will
then evaluate how effective this teaching has been.
3
Roshini Pillay, Social Work, Wits
University
PhD supervisors: Professors Vivienne Bozalek and Denise Wood
Name
of PhD Project: Crafting a meso practice course for undergraduate social work
students: A mixed Methods Study
Although
there have been significant changes in teaching and learning practices over the
last ten years, social work education in South Africa continues to be
characterised by a transmission mode of instruction. The gap in knowledge that
the study addresses is that there have been few examples of the use of
innovative teaching and learning approaches designed to prepare social work
graduates for professional practice generally, and more specifically in meso
practice. This study addresses this gap through mixed methods research and aims
to explore alternatives in the
facilitation of meso intervention for the development of praxis with
South African social work undergraduate students. The need for this study is
particularly important, as meso practice is a core social work intervention
that considers how groups of people address common socio-emotional needs. The
strategic aim of this research project is to develop guidelines for course
design and to develop facilitation skills in social work education with
specific reference to the meso level of intervention to prepare students for
the profession. Therefore, the experiences of field instruction supervisors and
teachers will be sought to identify problem areas in meso practice education. The
problems and suggestions of the practitioners will be considered when
developing an authentic environment and task for meso practice to investigate
whether it can lead to improved qualitative learning outcomes in this course
and to investigate the potential of technology enhanced learning (TEL)
approaches designed to facilitate authentic learning experiences for students. A
four phased mixed methods research approach will be used: Phase 1 will consist of an analysis of
practical problems by the researcher, teachers and field instruction (FI)
supervisors and a review of the literature in order to generate relevant
questions; Phase 2 will consist of the development of an intervention to
address the research questions generated in phase 1; literature will be
consulted to develop theoretically informed design principles for the
intervention. Phase 3 will include iterative
cycles of testing, evaluation and refinement of the interventions. Phase 4 will
be a reflection on the entire
process to produce design principles which may inform future developments. Purposively
selected participants will include social work teachers of meso practice;
students registered for the second-year meso practice course at the University
of the Witwatersrand and field instruction (FI) social work supervisors. Social
constructivism and authentic e-learning principles will provide the theoretical
underpinnings for the study. Both qualitative and quantitative data collection
methods such as focus groups, interviews and a survey will be used. The data
will be analysed using thematic analysis, factor analysis and descriptive
statistics. Guidelines for course design, teaching and assessment will emanate
from the study.
4
Marlene de Beer, Social Work
Social Cohesion: Conceptual Development & Models Emerging
The research aims to:
clarify the conceptual meanings of social
cohesion (trace the concept and trajectory of social cohesion – its origins and
development and the different meanings associated with it)
identify philosophical and theoretical
underpinnings of the concept social cohesion
(economic, political, sociological)
identify and present emerging models around
social cohesion
develop a more integrated conceptual
framework for social cohesion
indicate/analyse the relation of social
cohesion to education
relate issues of social cohesion to higher
education (policy and transformation)
present possible alternative futures for
social cohesion conceptual and model development applicable for (higher)
education (policy and transformation).
5
Brenden Gray, FADA
“The Sandton City of UJ” or “The Art of
Accomplishment”: Exploring the relationship between social class, taste and
student achievement at FADA.
Many
studies have indicated that strong relationships exist between cultural capital
and student achievement in the general sphere of consumption and specifically
in formal and informal arts and design education. The art and design
disciplines, given their emphasis on individual, practical ‘making’ place a
high premium on the stylistic decisions that students make in producing cutting
edge cultural commodities for the market.
This means that what is often at stake in the assessment of the student’s
work is not so much the demonstration of competence - the application of
technical or procedural knowledge, or the reflexive grasp of conventionalized
knowledge structures - but the unconscious expression of appreciative
repertoires (taste structures internalized through ongoing exposure to various
genres, subjects, etc) and through it their dispositional orientations to legitimate
culture exemplified by the tastes of their lecturers. Given that the dispositional and appreciative
are closely linked to social class, social origin, position (and thus arguably
access to the ‘right’ cultural assets) this may mean that students who succeed
are those whose class habitus/ethos
are most ‘naturally’ aligned to the dictates of legitimate culture. The
implication here is that students without a “feel for the game” of dominant
culture may come to be subtly excluded in the educational process.
The study
ascertains whether a relationship indeed exists between student achievement in
and social class in the art and design fields. This is done by seeing if there
is strong or weak correlation between the third year student’s parent’s
occupation/school address (reductive indexes of social class) and results they
achieve in design subjects (indexes of
achievement) at the Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture. The study conducts
interviews with students with varying social origins (drawing on multiple
models of class analysis) about their experiences of studio peer critiques and
private consultations with lecturers in order to expose the classificatory
struggles at work in these situations. Analysis of interview data and survey
data is compared see what relationship exists between class habitus and student
achievement.
6
Laura Arnold,
Postgraduate Centre
Widening access: The role of postgraduate literacies tutorials in an Honours programme
The educational transition between high school and university has been extensively researched (Fergie, Beeke, McKenna, and Creme, 2011). Thus far, the transition between undergraduate and postgraduate level remains under-researched (Tobbell, O’Donnell and Zammit, 2010). In South Africa postgraduate studies is a particularly fraught area with the numbers of Honours students showing a marked decrease in 2005, and a longer completion time for Master’s students, three years on average, compared to students in developed countries (Council on Higher Education, 2009). While the explicit teaching of academic literacies is seen as a means to help students complete high-quality research in a shorter time period, academic literacies have been defined as a graduate outcome by SAQA since 1997 (Leibowitz, 2011). Since academic literacies are linked to a graduate outcome it is increasingly common for academics and support staff to be seen as jointly responsible for the teaching of academic literacies as part of the curriculum (Leibowitz, 2011). Both academic and support staff co-teach a B.Com Honours module aimed at preparing students to submit their research report. During the tutorials for this module students are explicitly taught academic literacies (required at postgraduate level) that are linked to a series of mini-assignments that form the basis for their research report. This research project will explore how literacies tutorials in a B. Com Honours module have shaped students´ approaches to thinking, reading and writing in an academic context. Students will participate in threaded discussions as part of their tutorial requirements, and will be invited to two focus groups that will take place mid-way through the module, and at the end of the module.
7
Vanessa -Jean (Ness) Merckel, PASD
Contemplating the heart of social justice in a Teacher Education Service Learning (TESL) module: A case study for using "troubling dialogues" to teach social justice
Problem: In
the preparation of teachers for practice, teacher educators in Higher education
must engage intentionally with how best
to teach social justice justly and ethically: by disrupting student knowledge without
perpetuating violence, silencing and marginalisation. As HE teachers, and
carriers of troubled knowledge, we must also be willing to subject our own
dogmas to scrutiny, just as we expect of our students to do. We must also
continually explore new ways of theorizing our practice to advance a social
justice agenda through critical classroom dialogues.
I taught a Teacher Education Service Learning (TESL) module for
in- and pre-service teachers, which was aimed at cultivating critically
responsive activist teachers. The specific pedagogy that I used in the module
to was work with dialogue about injustice and for
a more socially just world and was aimed at exploring our own perceptions about
ourselves in relation to others. Through utilising a pedagogy of discomfort and
notions of disrupting our “troubled knowledge” I wanted to encourage students
to go beyond just knowing about social justice but to also embody socially just
practices in their classrooms. During
the 5 years that I taught the module there were many challenges associated with
teaching the module, especially when engaging with painfully stories around
social justice. These included fostering dialogue about student’s perceptions
about their own identity in relation to those they consider ‘others’; the ethics of how to disrupt
students’ “troubled knowledge” without causing unnecessary harm; the generally
unacknowledged embodied experience of learning about issues of justice and how
the sharing of painful stories could potentially be educative.
As part of my doctoral study, I wish to present an account
of how students engaged with social justice through the use of troubling
dialogues and thereby provide insights for teaching practice and contribute to
literature about teaching social justice. I hope to do so providing a scholarly
account for the specific approach used to teach social justice in the TESL
module. I will trace students’ developing understandings of social justice
through
- Examining their assignments and retrospective
accounts of the module
- Establishing a systematic means for analysing
student’s understanding of social justice and transformation
And finally I will also examine the role of the teacher in
the process of teaching social justice via personal reflections and
insights.
The focus of my doctoral study is on how students experienced
learning about social justice in a TESL module when engaging in troubling
dialogues, underpinned by an epistemology of love, which is associated with coming
to know another, characterised by aspects such as gentleness, participation,
vulnerability and respect and supported by contemplative tools. Contemplative
scholarship is a relatively underutilised and potentially complimentary way of
practising anti oppressive education and deserves further study.
I will conduct an empirical inquiry into the Teacher Education
Service Learning (TESL) module as a single case study to address the central
research question: “How does a cohort of students experience learning about
social justice during and after engaging in troubling dialogues in a Teacher
Education Service Learning (TESL) module?”
I aim to develop some theories of general utility, which in this
instance is to investigate how students learn about social justice through
troubling dialogues when supported by an epistemology of love and contemplative
tools. My study will be have an auto
ethnographic component because I will also make reference to personal reflexive
insights and reflections I made during the time I taught the module. Primary
data will be gathered from the discursive contributions (utterances and
artefacts) of the larger sample group of students (n=173) to ascertain the
extent to which as a group, the students’ perceptions about social justice
changed. In-depth interviews will be conducted with a smaller sample of the
group (n=10-12) and a focus group interview will serve as a member check. Data will be analysed using content analysis
derived from intuitive experience and literature to search for recurring themes
and patterns. Content analysis using
Transana as a technical transcription tool to support video and image analysis
will also be used to analyse video clippings of students’ tasks.
I plan to collect data over the first half of 2015, and
complete the study by the end of 2016.
8
Mthuthuzeli Mvongo, Transformation Office
Exploring the
Experiences of First-Generation, Rural Students (PhD)
The study intends to give an account of the experiences,
perceptions, triumphs and challenges of black African, first year,
first-generation students in Faculty of Humanities of the University of
Johannesburg. . Using both Margaret Archers’ structure, culture and agency and
Nancy Walker’s theory of Participatory Parity as lenses to study their
experiences the goal is to understand how social structures operate in denying
social justice to some.
The study will be a longitudinal and
qualitative, making use of reflective diaries, digital stories/photo-voice and
semi -structured individual interviews.
9
Postgraduate Study in Unchartered Territory
In the context of rising global academicisation in higher education, academic staff are under increasing pressure to obtain doctoral degrees. Pursuing postgraduate qualifications in contexts where there is not a strong tradition of research presents opportunities as well as material, disciplinary and affective challenges for university staff that are not fully understood. The experiences of lecturers at UJ in professional or technically-oriented areas who are registered for Master’s or doctoral degrees is the focus of research that is aimed at deepening understanding of the implications of the new emphasis on credentialisation. It is anticipated that the findings will contribute to the growing literature on postgraduate study but also make a practical contribution by informing university management of what may be seen as reasonable expectations of performance and optimal conditions for success. The study will draw on data from an online survey, as well as on semi-formal interviews with academics and their supervisors. The data will be analysed with reference to the literature on academic identities, communities of practice, and knowledge structure, and the concepts of structure, culture and agency. The researchers, Brenda Leibowitz and Pia Lamberti (UJ), are also collaborating with Gina Wisker and colleagues (Brighton University, UK) in order to explore the similarities and differences between the experiences of South African and British academics who are pursuing higher degrees
10
Kibbie
Naidoo, PASD, Brenda Leibowitz, Faculty of Education, Razia Mayet, ADC
Exploring Scholarship of Teaching and Learning @ UJ
The
Scholarship of Teaching and Learning at UJ Project emphasises the need for a
socially just pedagogy which address inequities in the higher education system.
The project seeks to ‘develop a pedagogy of possibility and critical hope’ and
this necessitates practitioners and researchers who embody criticality and
critique. It requires academics to explore their own assumptions and change
these should the need arise. To this end the SoTL @UJ project has an explicit
transformative goal. The research that is proposed here aims to examine the
extent to which the SoTL @ UJ projectachieves this goal.
The research
will involve a case study of the project. The main question that drives the project
is:
To what
extent does the SoTL @UJ project facilitate transformation amongst
participants?
A
sub-question would be: what are the philosophical and pedagogical principles
that inform a community of inquiry based on a social justice approach?The aim of
the project will be to examine shifts in thinking about SoTL for social justice
amongst participants. This will involve exploring their experiences of the
project, the ways in which their involvement influences their practice as well
as their reflections on this. The
project is designed to facilitate a shift from purely theoretical to exploring
the connections between theory and practice. The research will explore the
extent to which this will help participants become more critical/reflexive about theory and practice in relation to social justice and more confident about
implementing change-oriented interventions.
In addition to this the research will examine the project in relation to
its influence, dissemination and reach.
This is a
qualitative, participatory research
project that proposes SoTL as a way of doing research. The main source
of data is the one on one interview. Additional data sources will be blog
entries, and seminar discussions. The research will be conducted in 2 phases. In
the first phase interviews will be conducted in pairs. The second phase will
occur 6 months later. Participants will be asked to reflect on their initial
responses (on paper/orally /in a seminar).
11
Puleng Motshoane, CAT
Institutional support for emerging supervisors
I am
looking at institutional support for emerging supervisors. My research question
is ‘What are the enablements and constraints in doctoral supervision support in
SA HE? I intend to look at three differentiated institutions to account for the
claim that over 80% of doctoral graduates are from the traditional
universities. The use of Archer’s social realism will allow me to look for
structural, cultural and agential constraints and enablements while the notion
of social justice will enable me to address the political ethics of care in
supervision development.
12
Pia Lamberti (Postgraduate
Centre) and Delia Layton (English Department)
Academic literacies transitions: senior undergraduate to postgraduate
The study will focus on
developments in students' academic writing as they make the
13
Bongani Mashaba (PASD)
Bongani Mashaba (PASD)
Curriculum Restructuring in Higher Education South
Africa: Is it socially just?
In
2013 the CHE released a discussion document with proposal to restructure the South
African higher education curriculum. The restructuring calls for all qualifications
to be extended by a year. Three years qualifications will become four years
while the four years will be five years without adding additional contents. Amongst
many reasons, the CHE (2013: 108) notes that the additional year is to create extra
curriculum space in order “to make provision for additional formal curriculum
time to allow for foundational and supportive provision in various forms and at
the different levels for all students who need it”
This
move follows an observation by a panel of experts that many of the students
entering higher education are not adequately prepared for a university study. The
articulation gap between high schools and HE is cited as one of the main
reason. Therefore, the restructuring attempts address this gap subsequently to
increase the sluggish graduation output.
The problem
So
far, many universities equally agree that the restructuring can indeed assist
to address the articulation gap. On the hand, Ball (1990); Inglis (1978) have
long argued that policies have a tendency to just mention the obvious while
what they actually mean or aim is not mentioned. Inglis (1978) in particular,
argues that they (policies) are embedded in the value assumptions of system
builders. What they advocate for as texts could be different from what they are
actually offering in practice (Ball, 1990). Thus, to really get a grasp of the
actual intention of a particular policy, Ball (1990) suggests that policies
should be carefully investigated at three levels; economic, political and
ideological. An investigation of this kind is likely to bring about clarity as
to whose interests; politically, economically and ideologically had been
catered for.
Aim of the study
The aim of this project
is to investigate the tabled proposal to ascertain whether there are silences
that need to be exposed before the proposal is considered or implemented
The study is socially
just as it seeks to understand whose interest the restructuring will be
serving. The finding will then give a clear indication of whether the
restructuring will be serving the interests of students as it is continuously
suggested in the document.
The document will be
analysed against the background of current ideas about academic literacy,
epistemological access and social justice.
No comments:
Post a Comment