The Empowerment Approach to Parental Involvement in Education

South African journal of higher education, 2018

Citizenship and social justice have been explored from ethical and theoretical perspectives in education. Furthermore, alienation or belonging in institutional cultures, often invoking social locations such as gender and race, were explored. Little research, especially empirical research, exists at the nexus of narrative, citizenship, belonging and subjectivities. In contexts of ongoing inequalities and associated student protests, legacies of unequal histories come into conflict in the crucible of higher education. Narrative as theory-method may usefully provide ways in which citizenship and identity may be connected to socio-historical processes and justice in higher education. Narratives of student experiences have the potential to provide insight into the nuances of subjectivities in personal and collective stories of belonging and alienation. They may also highlight how universities can be spaces where students may engage in non-normative negotiations and reconstructions of sub...

Pan-African Conversations

The post-Apartheid and #FeesMustFall higher education landscape has created opportunities for universities in South Africa to foster in transformation as it pertains to gender, language, sexuality, disability, race and other minority markers. More so, the accessibility of the student and staff demographic has meant that in some cases, African women can emerge to various positions of power. This paper, through phenomenological reflections of five African women leaders in South African universities, considers the ways in which citizenship and belonging are navigated through the mapping of their leadership journey. Furthermore, this paper explores the possibilities within the African feminist scholarship to argue that African women leaders use their agency to determine humanizing institutional cultures.

Institutions of higher education are supposedly endowed with the responsibility of producing distinctions in modern society. In recent debates on caste discrimination in elite higher educational institutions, this responsibility of producing distinction is inverted. That is, these spaces produce non-synchronic forms of discrimination which are inherited rather than acquired.

The shift in Emancipation: visual Arts, Cohesion, Transformation, South Africa

JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY AND SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY, 2015

Educational Theory, 2006

Universities currently face new environmental demands and significant internal complexities that appear to challenge their traditional modes of work and organization -and thus their very identities. In this essay, Mark Considine argues that the prospect of such changes requires us to reflect carefully upon the theoretical and normative underpinnings of universities and to delineate the structures and processes through which they might seek to negotiate their identities. Considine re-theorizes the university as a higher education system composed by distinctions and networks acting through an important class of boundary objects. He moves beyond an environmental analysis, asserting that systems are best theorized as cultural practices based upon actors making and protecting important kinds of distinctions. Thus, the university system must be investigated as a knowledge-based binary for dividing knowledge from other things. This approach, in turn, produces an identity-centering (cultural) model of the system that assumes universities must perform two different acts of distinction to exist: first, they must distinguish themselves from other systems (such as the economy, organized religion, and the labor market), and, second, they must operate successfully in a chosen resource environment. Ultimately, Considine argues that while environmental problems (such as cuts in government grants) may generate periodic crises, threats within identities produce emergencies generating a radical kind of problematic for actor networks.

2015

Core debates in Higher Education are largely centred on the issues of formal access vis-àvis epistemic access. In South Africa, universities have managed the issue of formal access that is, by focusing on merely attaining entry into university without much of epistemic access (Cross 2004; CHE, 2010). Following Morrow (2009), there is currently, a growing interest in Higher Education about epistemological access that entails becoming a member of the academic practice, student achievement and eventual success. This interest seems to have been necessitated in part by the growing diversity of student composition in universities. As formal access broadens as a result of university transformation, it is not being matched with student success since it is accompanied by difficulties in adaptation especially 'nontraditional students' as they are known in South Africa. Like other institutions in the country, the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) is confronted with the dilemma of poor results which the students, particularly the undergraduates, achieve and the difficulties linked to their academic failure or success. Insomuch as the universities and, in particular Wits, have the onus to provide a rich and nurturing academic, social and cultural environment that promotes student achievement through non-discrimination, it is crucial to know how the student makes the best of this. Most of the current studies on student experiences emphasise formal access and epistemic access without paying particular attention to campus experiences leading to student social and academic development. The studies are about what institutions do and what students should do to achieve epistemic access without taking into consideration the contribution of student campus life. The problem with this is that the campus is changing. It is increasingly becoming an extension of the classroom: a social learning space. This study explored epistemic access vis-à-vis campus experiences. The study used a qualitative case study approach to explore the ways in which undergraduates students experience their lives on campus and what meaning they make of such experiences to position themselves for success in their early years of study. The qualitative approach allows me to elicit answers to address the 'why' question of student experiences which is scant in previous I wish to express my appreciation to the staff members in the Division of Educational Leadership and Policy studies, but especially to Professor Brahm Fleisch and Dr. Francine De Clercq who were instrumental financially through the provision of part time workvii jobs that brought food to the table for my family during my years of study. Professor Brahm, thank you again for trusting me with the position of a Project Manager for one of your mega and unique programme: Professional Certificate in Education Finance, Economics and Planning. Thank you Professor Jane Castle, Professor Eric Worby and Dr. Moyra Kean for the opportunity to attend the numerous Academic Writing Workshops and Writing Retreats that not only saw this work receive critical and conceptual suggestions but take shape and final completion. I also would like to thank Dr. Maxwell Kadenge for editing this thesis. This study could not have been possible without an array of the University of the Witwatersrand's funding support structures comprising of Supervisors research project funds (Professors Michael Cross' and Felix Maringe's); the 3 year Post Graduate Merit Award; the Post Graduate Merit Scholarship; the Post Graduate University Council school grant; the Post Graduate Completion grant and, the Fhun J. C. Carstens grant. Very special thanks to my husband Amasa for enduring the endless anxieties and frustrations emanating from the pressure experienced in the writing of this thesis-Gonyohori, zvakaonekwa, totenda. I also owe this thesis to my two sons, Tadiwanashe Philip and Nyasha Mhike and my only daughter Tafadzwa Glory aka Shakaina for encouraging me to soldier on against all odds. You rhetoric question: 'Mhamha mopedza riini?' gave me the strength to realise my dream. Thank you mother Pauline Marivo, siblings, relatives and friends for the encouragement. This section of my thesis cannot close without me giving praise and honour to the Almighty God through His son Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. The scripture in Philippians 4:13 that says, "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me", was the most powerful source of my strength in this endeavour. viii

JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY AND SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY

Ethics and Social Welfare, 2014

The Journal for Transdisciplinary Research in Southern Africa, 2008

South Africa’s post–apartheid governments have taken far–reaching policy measures to transform the system of higher education, do away with its strongly segregated character, and develop an efficient and internationally recognised system that provides equal chances for all ethnic groups. Since 2002 higher education has become the explicit target of a government policy, geared to cultural development and intervention, including the enforcement of a series of mergers between traditionally white and black universities and former technikons (currently universities of technology). This process has caused intense debate at the level of leadership and among policy makers in these institutions, but little is known of how this ideological battle over educational development has affected daily academic practice. This paper gives a first, somewhat tentative discussion on the current effects of the changes in higher education in South Africa, and in particular at one of the institutions affecte...