Chris Winberg

Cape Peninsula University of Technology | CPUT · Professional Education Research Institute

Partnerships between technical and vocational education and training (TVET) colleges and industry play an important role in enhancing the quality of TVET education, both in South Africa and globally. Effective college–industry partnerships enable TVET colleges to stay abreast of technological advancements and changing practices, ensuring their rele...

Change laboratories (CLs) are formative problem-solving initiatives that have been used extensively in Europe but have only recently been applied in African contexts. This review thus offers an original insight into their use and value in African contexts. The laboratories are classified into partial, classic, or augmented varieties-all of which ar...

The potential of renewable energy technologies to mitigate climate change while meeting the energy demand of future generations is recognised globally. In South Africa, occupations such as wind turbine technicians and solar photovoltaic installers are in high demand. In response to these needs, Renewable Energy Technologies (RET) subjects were deve...

Background: ‘Snack writing’ is a term coined to describe regular short bursts of writing on a larger academic writing task. There is extensive research on academic writing, but research on ‘snack writing’ is limited. Moreover, the idea of ‘snack writing’ in an online environment is not evident in the literature. Objectives: The study objectives we...

The roots of universities of technology can be traced back to technical colleges, which required compliance with industry standards, and the rule of labour markets. Universities of technology thus entered the university space, largely without an established critical tradition in teaching, learning, and research. This is the issue that we address in...

The potential of renewable energy technologies to mitigate climate change while meeting the energy demand of future generations is recognised globally. In South Africa, occupations such as wind turbine technicians and solar photovoltaic installers are in high demand. In response to these needs, Renewable Energy Technologies (RET) subjects were deve...

The increasingly complex socio-technical and economic challenges of our time place considerable pressure on engineering programmes. To ensure that graduates are well-prepared to address these challenges requires curriculum developers to select the appropriate knowledge for the engineering programme. A number of key theorists, notably from the socio...

There is a growing number of studies in the field of vocational education and training, but not many focus on the practical subjects that prepare students for transition to workplaces. This critical review of the literature on practical subjects in vocational colleges set out to contribute to debates on the relationship between theory and practice...

Technicians are largely invisible in everyday life, as are their contributions to science and engineering. In this study, I address the issue of technicians’ invisibility in engineering education. The laboratory plays a central and distinctive role in engineering education, but the role of laboratory technicians in educational contexts is largely a...

Background: There was growing recognition worldwide by professional engineering bodies, engineering faculties and researchers on the need to pay attention to engineering students’ emerging identities and how they were formed across the trajectory of undergraduate engineering programmes. An increasing number of research studies focused on engineerin...

The focus of this study is a development course for academic staff that is informed by activity theory and transformative agency. It is intended to help vocational and professional educators to link academic curricula to current work practices. The course content first helped the participants to develop a systematic understanding of the different p...

Universities are grappling with multiple shifts that have made the processes of supporting student learning and enabling the professional development of academic staff ever more challenging. Common sense approaches abound but do little to address the complexities of the issues being faced in our institutions. This book brings together a rich collec...

Kaizen-based work-readiness training originated in Japan and is based on the ‘lean’ production methods taught in Toyota factories in Japan and abroad. Kaizen-based training is rooted in the Kaizen principles of respect for others, the elimination of waste, continuous improvement, collaboration as the key to productivity and innovation as incrementa...

Background: The Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS), and similar international assessments, have consistently shown South African intermediate phase learners’ performance to be among the lowest worldwide. Of particular concern is the Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS) for Home Language in the Intermediate Phase a...

The COVID-19 pandemic and the South African government's response of a lockdown required the cessation of all clinical training. Virtual environments offered alternative methods of teaching and learning clinical skills in an attempt to mitigate the cancellation of first year students' clinical visits. The research question of how a simulated workpl...

A powerful set of projections has constructed post-apartheid higher education in South Africa. Among these is the expectation that technikons (institutions similar to the British polytechnics) would become universities of technology, with a mission to drive the technology of national reconstruction and development. In this paper, one of the new uni...

Universities of Technology in South Africa emerged relatively recently from technical college-like institutions, known as Technikons. Technikons had a distinct workplace-oriented identity, while Universities of Technology lack such clarity of identity. This paper thus explores the vexing question of what constitutes the identity of Universities of...

This publication is covered by a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. For further information please see: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. 'We teach them to be university students' The role of peer educators in the provision of ontological access to higher education Abstract In South Africa, we have been concerned wit...

Students enrolled in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) globally and in South Africa are generally not in a state of well-being. International and South African research studies show that undergraduate STEM programmes pose significant challenges to students and that many STEM programmes are marked by high attrition rates and po...

In this systematic review of the research literature on engineering employability, curricular and pedagogical arrangements that prepare graduates for work in the twenty-first century were identified. The research question guiding the review was: Which curricular and pedagogical arrangements promote engineering students’ employability? The particula...

Enrolments in STEM disciplines at universities are increasing globally, attributed to the greater life opportunities open to students as a result of a STEM education. But while institutional access to STEM programmes is widening, the retention and success of STEM undergraduate students remains a challenge. Pedagogies that support student success ar...

This article identifies potential threshold concepts in radiation physics, and explains their relationship to professional practice in radiation therapy (that is,. the practice of radiation treatment and care of cancer patients). Concepts such as how the radiation beam spreads out (beam divergence), and how the distance from the ionising source aff...

Contribution: This paper identifies key personal and academic factors in successful transfer to electrical, computer, and mechatronics (ECM) engineering programs. The findings support prior research on engineering transfer shows that successful students accumulate knowledge and behaviors in their sending institution that enable their progress in th...

This article reports on the role and value of social reflexivity in collaborative research in contexts of extreme inequality. Social reflexivity mediates the enablements and constraints generated by the internal and external contextual conditions impinging on the research collaboration. It fosters the ability of participants in a collaborative proj...

Writing for publication is essential for disseminating research findings, sharing initiatives and innovations with others, and developing the knowledge base of intellectual fields. This study explores the role of writing retreats in building knowledge and knowers in the field of Higher Education Studies, specifically within the area of higher educa...

The focus of this study is the emergence of distinctive graduate attributes in flagship programmes at Universities of Technology in South Africa. The theoretical framework chosen for this study, Legitimation Code Theory (Maton 2014), offers an explanation of the underlying knowledge principles that make different kinds of thinking, doing and being...

In this paper we study epistemological transitions across an intended engineering curriculum and recommend strategies to assist students in attaining the increasingly complex concepts and insights that are necessary for transition to advanced levels of study. We draw on Legitimation Code Theory [Maton, Karl. 2014, Knowledge and Knowers: Towards a R...

Teaching portfolios have become increasingly important to university teachers. Portfolio requirements for the appointment or promotion of academic staff recognize that the assessment of teaching practice requires more depth and detail than a candidate's academic CV generally affords. The focus of this study is the electronic teaching portfolios, de...

As research into teaching, learning and professional development has shifted beyond cognitive and individually focussed accounts (Fenwick & Edwards, 2016; Peseta, Kligyte, Smith & McLean, 2016), what begins to surface are the negotiations, interdependencies and collectives inherent in academic work environments. These emergent socialities can be an...

This paper assesses the impact of a new academic workload model on research and technology innovation in a new university of technology. The project was framed by understandings of "the innovation journey", as well as emerging understandings of "temporality" against the background of the intensification of academic work and shifts towards project-b...

The concept of a ‘learning transition’ is increasingly being used in higher education to identify key stages in student development, such as the transition from school to university, from introductory to more advanced concepts, and from undergraduate to postgraduate study. In professional education there are distinct transitions, such as the transi...

Postgraduate studies in business faculties pose particular challenges to candidates who have come from practically-oriented undergraduate programmes, particularly those that adopt a ‘technical-rational’ approach towards the improvement of business practices or organisational efficiency. Research studies in the applied business fields usually expect...

This article reports on an investigation into the role of academic identity within collaborative research in higher education in South Africa. The study was informed by the literature on academic identities, collaborative research and communities of practice. It was located within a multi-site study, with involvement of researcher collaborators fro...

South African higher education has, for the last twenty years, attempted to confront the legacy its past, particularly the lack of access to science, technology, engineering and mathematics-based (STEM) education by the vast majority of potential students. The current policy environment is dominated by a drive towards high skills jobs and innovatio...

Communication lecturers often find themselves in the position of having to do considerably more than teach communication practice in professional programmes, for example, they are commonly expected to provide a ‘service’ function to lecturers in other disciplines. When communication lecturers are ‘embedded’ in science, engineering and technology-ba...

This study features the concept of ‘context’ and how various macro, meso and micro features of the social system play themselves out in any setting. Using South Africa as an example, it explores the features that may constrain or enable professional development, quality teaching and the work of teaching and learning centres at eight universities in...

Book review: Academic freedom in a democratic South Africa: essays and interviews on higher education and the humanities, J Higgins

This paper reports on a year-long project in an architectural technology department, which studied students’ oral language development in plenary discussions in a first year History and Appreciation of Architecture course. Data was obtained by videotaping classroom activities, and by interviewing the lecturer and students who were participants in...

Universities of Technology (UTs) offer career-focused education in a wide variety of disciplines and fields. Traditionally, UTs recruited academic staff with relevant workplace experience, rather than academic qualifications. The result of this strategy was, while many lecturers possessed professional qualifications in their field, they did not hav...

Teachers of technical and professional writing in Science, Engineering and Technology (SET) Programmes need to understand the particular needs and social contexts of students for whom English is not a first language. The focus of this paper is on technical writing, and the paper presents the findings from four broad areas surveyed in a meta-analysi...

This chapter argues that a shift in educational practice is needed to adequately prepare practitioners for practice in medical imaging. Radiology is a rapidly changing, technology-driven field, requiring new forms of multidisciplinary practice. (Engel-Hills 2005) The content-based syllabus was effective as a guide for education programs that prepar...

This article reports on a research project that investigated the supervisory practices in Masters level interdisciplinary research projects that were undertaken in engineering education. The projects usually entailed an interdisciplinary thesis that addressed an educational issue within a specific engineering discipline, such as problem-based learn...

Academics in higher education institutions are members of disciplinary communities by virtue of their qualifications and research activities, and as teachers of particular disciplines (or professions) they are (or need to become) members of a community of educational practitioners. In this paper, I analyse the ways in which a small group of lecture...

This paper reports on an investigation into the incidence of plagiarism in the context of a new university of technology in South Africa. The findings indicate that plagiarism can take many forms, some of which are a result of dishonesty and academic misconduct, while others are related to the educational levels and cultural diversity of the facult...

Communication practices in workplace and related higher education sites in the fields of architecture, mechanical engineering, and radiography were studied and compared. A wide variety of communication practices was found in workplaces, each with specific purposes, audiences and contexts; a more limited range of communication practices was found in...

This paper offers a `genealogy' (Foucault 1984) of technical higher education in South Africa. Key concepts in technological education and research, namely careerfocused education and applied research, were investigated through a study of documents and through interviews with lecturers and researchers in universities of technology. The genealogy de...

The workplace is strongly present in Technikon/University of Technology (UT) programmes, both as a learning resource and as a site of knowledge production. Part of the traditional strength of UTs is that students are simultaneously acculturated into academic and workplace knowledge systems. But while there has been this acknowledgement of the role...

University–workplace partnerships are strategies increasingly called for in higher education. This article reports on collaborative knowledge production between employed professional chemical engineers (registered for higher degrees) and their university‐based supervisors (researchers in the field of chemical engineering). The study draws on a lang...

Processes of knowledge production by professional architects and architects-in-training were studied and compared. Both professionals and students were involved in the production of knowledge about the architectural heritage of historical buildings in Cape Town. In a study of the artefacts produced, observations of the processes by means of which t...

Special issue. Incl. bibl., abstracts in English and French

South African higher education institutions are increasingly under scrutiny to produce knowledge that is more relevant to South Africa’s social and economic needs, more representative of the diversity of its knowledge producers, and more inclusive of the variety of the sites where knowledge is produced. Only a small percentage of South Africans are...

The book gives detailed and theoretically-grounded practical advice on how to proceed collaboratively through the various stages of the action research cycle, including building a repertoire of literacy practices and activities for teachers and learners to draw upon in the research process. USWE funders, including International Cooperation of the G...

Traditionally, teachers try to promote reading by bringing texts on topics they feel are interesting to learners into the classroom, such as stories about young people, biographies of pop-stars, or books about sports or sporting personalities. We argue that such attempts by teachers to simulate middle class home based reading practices in working c...