Robert John Balfour

North-West University | NWU · Faculty of Education (Potchefstroom Campus)

This book reports on the fifth cycle of design-based research (DBR) (see Chapter 1). One of the design principles of the North-West University (NWU) work-integrated learning (WIL) excursions for first-year student teachers is based on cooperative learning (CL), where students work in heterogeneous groups to learn from each other. Another design pri...

This article explores the potential of transdisciplinarity through the use of theories of diffraction, and postcolonial feminist subjectivity. The authors foreground essentialist categorisations of race, gender and space and then interrogate these with reference to a reading of text and art-installation in terms of space and matter. The post-coloni...

The community engagement project described in this article took the form of the re-invention and re-interpretation of a historic symbol (Diana the elephant) on the Potchefstroom Campus of North-West University (NWU), South Africa. In 2015, the Faculty of Education Sciences invited staff and students to reinterpret the elephant (a symbol of educatio...

South Africa's history of segregation and the privileging of English and Afrikaans as the only languages of teaching and learning beyond primary schooling, make the post-apartheid period a complex one, especially in light of the Constitutional commitment to multilingualism in the 11 official languages. Research on literacy and language teaching con...

This essay inquires into the knowledge domains of teachers who teach English literature to first additional language learners in the Further Education and Training phase, namely Grades 10–12, in South Africa. We explore teachers’ perceptions about content and pedagogy, their knowledge of their students, as well as their knowledge and beliefs about...

Realisation of multilingual education as a right has remained a controversial issue in South Africa. This is despite the Constitutional and legislative frameworks that support multilingual education. While the controversy undermines linguistic diversity in educational institutions in general, as suggested by the exclusion of African languages in th...

Initial teacher education (ITE) programmes are expected to prepare teachers who have the capacity to develop conceptually strong, responsive and inclusive teaching practices. The extent to which ITE programmes have been successful in this endeavour has been questioned both internationally (e.g. Lancaster & Auhl, 2013) and within the South African c...

The scarcity of rural education research in South Africa parallels the relative absence of theory development emerging from the developing world. Education research is influenced by the paradigms in which it is located and draws from established (and Western) theories of psycho-social, geo-spatial, economic, and political development (Moletsane 201...

The South African Constitution (1996) recognises historical and structural inequalities pertaining to groups “based on perceived or ‘real’ differences” (de Vos, 2004, p. 185). Law thus has an important role to play “in reordering …power relations in ways which strive to ensure that all individuals are treated as if they have the same moral worth” (...

This article focuses on the representation of faith as conveyed by Naipaul in the course of four travelogues. Drawing on historical scholarship pertaining to Islamic societies in transition, and comparing this to a selection of the literary critical reception that Naipaul's writing about Islam has evoked, I argue for a revision of literary readings...

Popular music and indeed popular art forms struggle for critical attention in the academy (Larkin, 1992). Relegated to a focus on performance, or to peripheral sub-disciplines such as cultural studies, the study of popular art forms is risky terrain in higher education (Wicke, 1990). Instead, and particularly within the humanities, it has been clai...

The smell of old damp carpet and hot lights fills the tiny space…and wafting in from the dressing-room door comes a gentle breeze, carrying with it the stale smell of shoes just removed, cheap perfume and thickly applied make-up. There is a rustle of dresses and mincing queen; 1 the stylists, hair artists and emotional supporters are all cramped in...

This article presents analysed data from the first year of the Rural Teacher Education Project (RTEP 2007-2009) with a view to illustrating how a generative theory of rurality as education research was developed, and for which ends it might be utilised. The article suggests that data from projects in rural communities, which take the rural as conte...

Lifelong learning has become associated with participation in the digital age, affecting everything from access to information technology, to its use in teaching and learning. It is therefore inevitable that educationists turn to digital literacy practices to examine their contribution to, and influence on, learning. This article explores the digit...

The Project Postgraduate Educational Research (PPER) data indicate that case study is by far the most popular methodology among South African education masters and doctorate students in the period 1995-2004. This paper reflects on the reasons for the preference for case study by considering epistemological and contextual factors. It unpacks the lin...

This discussion piece focuses on possible strategies for taking action around some of the challenges teachers and schools in rural communities face in the context of larger systemic changes in southern Africa, and particularly in the context of HIV/AIDS. For this purpose we examine five key entry points, i.e. teachers’ lives, school leadership and...

What emerges repeatedly in research regarding language choice in South Africa is that people negotiate culture, face and identity through more than one language, and balance the need for modernity and the value of tradition, together with awareness that multiculturalism is normative in South Africa. South African scholarship focusing on bilingualis...

The University of KwaZulu-Natal approved its bilingual language policy in 2006 based on the framework of the National Language Policy for Higher Education of 2002. The guiding principles of this policy suggest that the university develops the use of isiZulu as a language of instruction and communication, in line with recommendations of the Minister...

JanMohamed (1992), in his work on the postcolonial literature of migrants, argues that their “positionality [as] specular border intellectuals” is not merely the combination of initial dislocation, together with a Western education that rules out the possibility of “gregarious acceptance” of any new home culture, but that “homelessness cannot be ac...

J. Z. Muller in his survey of capitalism’s development (The Mind and the Market, 2003) notes that there has long been a perception, owed in its origins to classical Greek conceptions of the well-governed polis, and in medieval Christianity’s notion of the moral ambiguity of wealth, that ‘profits from trade were regarded as morally illegitimate’, an...

In the first decade of the early twenty-first century, and despite the promises of globalisation, ideas about the value of labour, education, race and gender can still be gauged in terms of long-established conflicts. Walking down King Dinizulu Street in Durban (South Africa), one cannot help but read the signs. Wildly popular evangelical and Pente...

This article explores the disjuncture between discourses of equity, equality, and consideration as evident in the formal secondary schooling curriculum (DoE, 2003) and learners' physical and speech behaviour in two schools in KwaZulu-Natal between 1999–2005, despite critical literacy interventions in these schools. The article draws on Shefer, Shef...

This paper explores the impact of a specially designed programme of communicative strategies on English second language (ESL) development in a scaffolded case study that set out to promote teacher-guided, constructive learner talk in the outcomes-based education arts and culture classroom. The programme was implemented in a multilingual secondary s...

The merger of institutions of higher education in South Africa which has taken place in the last decade has presented several challenges to academic staff in Faculties of Education. The present article reviews the process of transformation in a particular school within Education at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. Colleagues from institutions where...

Language rights, language development and the need for a multilingual literate population in South Africa have been issues debated not only in public, but also among academics and other stakeholders in education in South Africa. There remains a need for a population proficient at least in some indigenous languages, but also able to access languages...

Naipaul’s work has been described as an examination of “the clash between belief and unbelief, the unravelling of the British Empire, the migration of peoples” (Donadio, 2005). Controversial both in terms of his perceptions of postcolonial nations (Said, 1978) and of postcolonial literary criticism (King, 1993), Naipaul, who won the Nobel Prize for...

This paper examines legislation concerning language policy and language choice in the UK and South Africa. In particular an account of the pressures and imperatives to which such policy development must respond is provided. The paper suggests that the comparison between South Africa and the UK is relevant and compelling, not least because both coun...

Bernstein's work on educational transmission provides a discourse for understanding classroom practice which can integrate elements as diverse as content and interaction, to enable a critical evaluation of how pedagogic transformation occurs. This article describes an intervention in an English classroom in rural KwaZulu-Natal in which the shift oc...

The article explores the interface between literature, gender, culture and language within an educational context. It examines the responses of Zulu boys and girls to the introduction of a new curriculum that integrated language and literary study in a rural school in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Specifically, it shows how reading can lead to a mor...