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... In addition to limited enrollments, the curricula in African universities were limited at the time of independence. Despite African countries having attained independence, the effects of colonial limitations such as unequal access to ICT material resources, power relations, and structural racism are still evident in the higher education system [54]. The effects of the colonial past remain significant as discussions are made about the challenges faced by African higher education today that lead to stress among higher education students. ...
The objective of this study was to examine university students' technostress as it relates to their academic commitment in South Africa, in accordance with the technostress creators' model and the adapted organizational commitment model. Through an online survey, a closed-ended questionnaire was employed to collect data from a randomly selected sample of 199 first-year undergraduate students at a South African university of technology. The findings reveal that techno-complexity has a significantly direct negative relationship (-.74) with students' academic commitment. However, techno-uncertainty significantly positively (.42) impacts students' commitment. In addition, techno-invasion insignificantly positively impact (.11) on students' academic commitment. Interestingly, stu-dents' age negatively correlated with techno-complexity, with older students being less affected by the complexity of technology for learning. Surprisingly, time spend using information communication technologies is positively correlated with techno-uncertainty; thus, more time spent using information communication technologies is associated with more effect from techno-uncertainty. In addition, the findings revealed that gender differences significantly impacted on the differences in the levels of students' technostress, with techno-invasion being more highly perceived by male students. These findings may assist universities in implementing remote teaching and provide valuable insights for online and remote teaching for scholars. However, these findings have generalizability limitations as the study focused on one institution of higher education. Future longitudinal studies that include other universities are encouraged; such studies may determine technostress changes as the institutions migrate back to multimodal teaching and learning systems post-Covid 19.
... The educational system in Sub-Saharan Africa is sandwiched between contextual and systemic challenges (Bozalek & Ng'ambi, 2015;Leibowitz, 2012), but is not without boundless possibilities created by emerging technologies. South Africa as an independent nation is not immune to either challenge, created by and inherited from past colonial educational policies, but it does have access to the benefits presented by technologies in the 21 st century. ...
This study sought to explore the experiences of academics with the use of e-learning to support teaching and learning at a South African university. The theory underpinning the study was the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT). The study adopted a qualitative design using ten purposively selected academic staff and one IT specialist at a South African university. Semi-structured interview was used to gather the data that were used to answer the research questions. Data were analysed using thematic content analysis. The following themes resulted from the analysis: technical support and training for e-learning; Information Communication Technology infrastructure and internet accessibility; uptake of e-learning and the use of the Learning Management System; content development for e-learning; and evaluation of teaching effectiveness using e-learning. Based on the findings, periodic updates and training on the new changes should be made to the university’s e-learning platforms, provision of timely technical support to academics in order to sustain positive user experiences of e-learning were recommended.
... Students draw on common racialised euphemisms of culture as blackness when they use multi-culturalism as a positive institutional attribute. They believe that multi-culturalism will help them to work in integrated work settings, that is, work settings where there are also black people, after qualification (Carolissen 2012). On the other hand, many Stellenbosch students indicated a more derisory attitude towards UWC and also towards the higher education institution next door to UWC – the Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT), also indicating that they did not know much about the institution: I know that it's in Bellville and that its acronym is also known as the University of Wild Coloureds 2 and that Trevor Manuel 3 used to study there (Stellenbosch white psychology student ; 2008) Honestly I don't know much about UWC. ...
... In order to disrupt dominant discourses, it is important to engage with hegemonic views in the context of transformative pedagogical practices as opposed to avoiding its importance in the classroom. Many students who had done this course, acknowledged in an 18 months post completion evaluation, that the benefits of engagement across multiple boundaries and insight into their own positionalities, were much clearer after they had left the module, had opportunities for further reflection and had entered the workplace (Carolissen 2012). In order to disrupt dominant discourses, it is important to provide collaborative spaces to engage with student stereotypes about institutions that, in divided and unequal societies like South Africa, are inherently racialised, gendered and classed, and part of institutional cultures. ...
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.
... Work on learning and emotion by Zembylas (2015;, taken up in the South African context amongst others, by Leibowitz, Swartz, Bozalek, Carolissen, Nichols and Rohleder (2012), stresses that learning is not only cognitive: it is active and affective, and experiential (Michelson, 2015). The problem with the view that knowledge is most importantly theoretical, is once again that it is viewed as disembodied, and separated from process, context and experience. ...
This article is set against the backdrop of calls for the decolonisation of the curriculum in higher education institutions in South Africa. It is an attempt to contribute towards the debate on decolonising the curriculum, with a focus on the tasks of academics and academic developers. The first half of the article outlines several key aspects of current theorising about academic development or teaching and learning in higher education, informed by more general debates about education. These aspects limit the potential to imagine a more inclusive or socially just, decolonised curriculum. The second half of the article proposes cognitive justice as a useful concept to lead thinking about how to change the curriculum. It discusses what cognitive justice is and how this intersects with writing on decolonisation. It outlines some of the gaps in this conceptualisation, which would need more attention if this concept were to be useful to take the process of transforming teaching and learning forward.
... One of the challenges facing Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in South Africa is the contradiction in acknowledging and progressing beyond systemic contextual problems inherited from past educational policies (Bozalek & Boughey, 2012;Leibowitz, 2012;Soudien, 2012) to attain participatory parity (Fraser, 2008(Fraser, , 2009 and preparing future generations of students for "emerging technologies" 1 (Broekman, Enslin, & Pendlebury, 2002;Veletsianos, 2010). Although these challenges are contextual, they are not unique to South Africa. ...
In the last 20 years, the South African higher education has changed significantly, influenced by global trends national development goals and pressure from local educational imperatives, in the context of a digitally networked world. Shifts in technology enhanced pedagogical practices and in discourses around information and communication technologies (ICTs) have had varying degrees of influence in higher education. This paper takes a rearview of a 20-year journey of technology enhanced learning in South African higher education. An analysis of literature view is presented chronologically in four phases: phase 1 (1996–2000), phase 2 (2001–05), phase 3 (2006–10) and phase 4 (2011–16). In phase 1 technology was used predominantly for drill and practice, computer-aided instruction, with growing consciousness of the digital divide. In phase 2 institutions primarily focused on building ICT infrastructure, democratizing information, policy development and research; they sought to compare the effectiveness of teaching with or without technology. During phase 3 institutions began to include ICTs in their strategic directions, digital divide debates focused on epistemological access, and they also began to conduct research with a pedagogical agenda. In phase 4 mobile learning and social media came to the fore. The research agenda shifted from whether students would use technology to how to exploit what students already use to transform teaching and learning practices. The paper concludes that South Africa's higher education institutions have moved from being solely responsible for both their own relatively poor ICT infrastructure and education provision to cloud-based ICT infrastructure with “unlimited” educational resources that are freely, openly and easily available within and beyond the institution. Although mobile and social media are more evident now than ever before, teaching and learning practice in South African higher education remains largely unchanged.
... Her research deals with three aspects of the transition: lack of community of practice around teaching and research on teaching in the home department; lack of recognition of the value of research on teaching; and most significantly, the challenge posed by the jargon and writing practices that are associated with education as a discipline. A further complicating factor influencing transition, is that unequal provision of education exists in South Africa not only at the general school level, but at universities as well (Leibowitz 2012, Badat 2012, and Bozalek and Boughey 2012Students on the MPhil for Health Science Education have experienced all of these challenges of transition. The MPhil programme typically draws its students from the town in which the programme is located, Cape Town, with a significant further number of students from the rest of the country, and a significant minority from the rest of Africa and Asia. ...
This article reports on an action research study designed to stimulate the metacognitive awareness of the writing of assignments in English of a group of students from diverse language and educational backgrounds, studying health science education at masters level. In the study, students were required to give and receive feedback on a marked written assignment to a peer, and receive feedback from a consultant working at the Writing Lab. They were then required to submit a reflective report, which constitutes the key data source for this study. An analysis of the reflective reports revealed that the students claimed that they learnt about their writing habits, about good academic writing, and about the experience of giving and receiving feedback. The study suggests that although an intervention making extensive use of a variety of sources of feedback appears to be able to stimulate students' metacognitive functioning in relation to their writing of assignments, a number of issues require concerted attention. These issues include: power relations and emotion, perceptions of legitimate authority, and the central role of the lecturer as disciplinary expert and guide. The article concludes with a recommendation for enhanced attention to intersubjective relations of power, language and identity in relation to feedback on writing, especially when peer feedback is involved.
Higher education institutions (HEIs) located in conflict-affected regions face unique challenges in pursuing international accreditation, which plays a crucial role in ensuring academic quality and global recognition. This chapter explores the multifaceted challenges faced by HEIs in conflict-affected areas on their journey toward international accreditation, while also shedding light on the opportunities that can emerge from this endeavor. Drawing from case studies and empirical research, this study identifies key obstacles such as security concerns, resource limitations, infrastructure deficiencies, and academic isolation. By analyzing these challenges and opportunities, this chapter contributes to the discourse on higher education in conflict zones and offers insights for policymakers, educators, and accreditation bodies seeking to support the development of HEIs in such contexts.
This unique and timely book focuses on research conducted into the experiences of students from rural backgrounds in South Africa; foregrounding decolonial perspectives on their negotiation of access and transitions to higher education.
This book highlights not only the challenges of coming from a rural background against the historical backdrop of apartheid and ongoing colonialism, but also shows the immense assets that students from rural areas bring into higher education. Through detailed narratives created by student co-researchers, the book charts early experiences in rural communities, negotiations of transitions to university and, in many cases, to urban life and students’ subsequent journeys through higher education spaces and curricula.
The book will be of significant interest and value to those engaged in rurality research across diverse settings, those interested in the South African higher education context and higher education more widely. Its innovative, participatory methodology will be invaluable to researchers seeking to conduct collaborative research that draws on decolonising approaches.
Located in Nancy Fraser’s theory of participatory parity, this feminist qualitative study investigated how higher education pedagogies could be alert to students’ diverse and challenging contexts, draw on situated knowledges and lived experiences, and ignite a desire to tackle injustices and contribute to social change. The research site was two gender studies courses at UWC. Analysis of data showed the value of centering students’ lives and opening these up for dialogue and debate. Through theory, lectures and conversations, the pedagogies challenged students to see how they were both products of and implicated in reproducing injustices, fostering social activism for some. The study shows that teaching can raise awareness of and interrogate injustices to contribute to social transformation.
This chapter argues that in relation to developing and doing socially just pedagogies, emerging technologies in themselves cannot be seen as a panacea for addressing inequalities and access in higher education as many claim they do. Indeed, they may serve to deepen existing inequalities, as has been evidenced by the digital divide and the consequences that they have for access to knowledge and information. Nonetheless, despite the exclusion from the Internet and technological devices experienced by many people in southern contexts, there have been some indications that the emerging technologies together with transformative pedagogies can be used to work towards participatory parity in higher education. This chapter uses as its point of departure Nancy Fraser’s conception of social justice to understand the extent to which South African higher educators who use technologies are able to achieve participatory parity in their pedagogy. According to Fraser, participatory parity involves the ability to interact on a social level with peers on an equal footing. Participatory parity (or social justice) involves three dimensions—the economic, the cultural, and the political. In order for students to be able to interact on an equal basis in higher education, pedagogical arrangements, which affect each one of these dimensions, would have to be considered and these pedagogical arrangements can be considered either affirmative or transformative.
