Ruksana Osman

University of the Witwatersrand | wits · Vice chancellors office

Learners who experience learning challenges are at risk of not accessing equitable education opportunities in South African schools. This is despite teacher education and system reform initiatives towards more inclusive education. To discover what constrains inclusive teaching, we conducted a qualitative study at four schools in a South African cit...

This article reviews some key literature of Phenomenography and Variation Theory of Learning as an outline of a pedagogical framework for transforming higher education. Transformation implies change in ways that can deliver on the promise of social justice or what we call socially just pedagogies. It implies that one must understand what needs to t...

This paper contributes to an emerging debate on what it means to transform teaching and learning in higher education and to renew the social justice mission of universities. By focusing on the teaching and learning environment, we set the stage for the special issue, exploring the idea of socially just pedagogy, where it comes from and what it mean...

This chapter examines ideas pertaining to transforming learning in higher education. Starting with an introduction to a body of ideas as they have emerged and developed, we continue to a series of chapters which will take up a number of these ideas— conceptually and empirically—in a variety of contexts. In particular this chapter tackles some of th...

Universities face the prospect of becoming redundant unless the way teaching and learning takes place changes. This book explores the idea of transformation and pedagogy, In particular, it will highlight how universities are transformed through a set of pedagogical interventions and stances that integrate a sense of moral and ethical purpose to lea...

The present paper reports on early-career academics’ (ECAs) experiences of support for teaching in a research-intensive university in Africa. Through conducting a questionnaire and follow up in-depth interviews greater insight into how ECAs perceive and experience support for developing their teaching practice, is gained. Our analysis suggests that...

Orientation: There is a lack of research examining both positive and negative sex-based traits and sex role identities. Previous research has predominantly focused on positive sex role identities and their relationship to various outcome variables. Findings for such research have not always been consistent. It has been argued that research that onl...

This is an opinion piece for 'The Conversation'.

This is an opinion piece on schooling in South Africa.

This is an opinion piece written on "The promise and challenge of university based teacher education".

This is an opinion piece on education.

This article discusses access and throughput in South African higher education, showing how these continue to be racially skewed, and linked to an inequitable education system. We argue that attempts to address these inequities by some of the intervention programmes that are offered at tertiary level do not always achieve their intended goals, and...

This paper makes a case for a new impetus in creating a coherent research basis for childhood education and teacher education in South Africa. We are proposing a three-level – teacher educators, student teachers and practising teachers – research-led approach that integrates teacher education, schooling and early learning. The aim of the approach i...

This article aims to contribute to ongoing research and debate in the area of underpreparedness of university students, with particular reference to the literacy skills and cognitive strategies needed to cope with the demands of academic studies. After a review of the literature in the field ,the authors present the findings from a case study of a...

In introducing the special issue on Large Class Pedagogy: Opportunities and Challenges of Massification the present editorial takes stock of the emerging literature on this subject. We seek to contribute to the massificaiton debate by considering one result of it: large class teaching in higher education. Here we look to large classes as a problem...

This article explores the influence of university/college first-year student teachers' educational backgrounds and their beliefs about teaching on their performance, and identifies these as key indicators of student engagement in learning to teach in developing countries, with particular reference to Rwanda. Both quantitative data (students' marks)...

While current investments in school improvement occur in the context of the worldwide economic downturn, in the South African context, there is in addition widespread disparity in education provision and attainment related to pre-democracy race-based patterns. Despite the education sector receiving the largest national annual budget allocation (at...

This paper seeks to explore post-secondary student teachers' beliefs about teaching and the teaching profession in developing countries with reference to Rwanda. These beliefs indicate motivational influences to learning to teach. In most developing countries, teacher preparation at tertiary level combines candidates with professional preparation f...

Assessment in all its dimensions is a contested idea. Part of the contestation rests on the potential for assessment practices to exclude individuals, be it from work, from university and from schooling or, of course, from life opportunities. This contestation is sharpened when assessment of individuals on the basis of race is used to exclude indiv...

This paper seeks to explore post-secondary student teachers’ beliefs about teaching and the teaching profession in developing countries with reference to Rwanda. These beliefs indicate motivational influences to learning to teach. In most developing countries, teacher preparation at tertiary level combines candidates with professional preparation f...

This chapter deals with a self-reflective inquiry from my perspective as a policymaker and a Dean of a Faculty of Education in post-aparthed South Africa. It sugests three chronological waves of teacher educational (policy) reform: 1. the critique of the teacher education provisioning at the stage of the demise of formal apartheid: as a means of d...

Public engagement is one of the three legs which support and underpin a restructured and transformed post-apartheid higher education system in South Africa (along with teaching and research). This third sector role of higher education is widely implemented in South Africa and is described differently by different institutions and entails a diverse...

This article reports on findings pertaining to scholarship in teacher education drawn from a wider study on all education research in South Africa from 1995 to 2006. The study, which defined education research as broadly pertaining to teaching and/or learning, obtained extensive data from a wide range of sources: universities, non-government organi...

Becoming a teacher was written to help you answer the question as a first-year Education student. Inspirational and relevant, it provides a solid foundation to understanding educational theory and what it is to be a teacher. This book is practical and focused, covering the core knowledge and skills that you will need to work within a curriculum, to...

Including abstract, tabl., bibl. This article reports on findings pertaining to scholarship in education policy drawn from a wider study on all education research in South Africa from 1995 to 2006. This study, which defined education research as broadly pertaining to teaching and/or learning, obtained extensive data from a wide range of sources, in...

In this article we present findings from a small-scale qualitative study examining the understandings of research of a diverse group of 12 first-year Bachelor of Education (B.Ed) students in an urban, historically advantaged, higher education institution in South Africa. Our aim was to examine students’ understandings of research within the initial...

Incl. bibl., abstract

A fundamental mission of the International Gifted Education Teacher-Development Network (Iget-Network) is to bring gifted education best practices, particularly those relevant to the identification and nurturance of culturally diverse learners, to developing countries where gifted education is not included within education policies. We believe that...

National policy in higher education requires higher education institutions to widen access to adult learners alongside other previously excluded groups, yet gives few indications as to how this should be done. The assumption seems to have been that broadening access is sufficient in itself. In this article we argue that it is possible to construct...

University of the Witwatersrand ___________________________________________________________________________ This article reports on English second language (ESL) students' experiences of academic writing in a university setting. It draws on the notion of community of practice to explain that it is not sufficient for academic literacy courses to con...

In recent times there has been a proliferation of community service learning projects within universities. The aim of this paper is not to refute community service learning initiatives within higher education, but rather to draw attention to the ways in which power relations might be concealed within them, ultimately subjecting them to the very sam...

In this paper we offer fieldwork as an opportunity to move away from the more procedural and routine tasks of the teaching practicum to the more desirable focus on teaching as research and an inquiry-oriented practice (Hussein, 2006; Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1999; Zeichner & Teitelbaum, 1982). Moore (200331) points out that fieldwork “holds great pot...

Unlike research into access and success for school-leavers entering higher education (HE) in South Africa, very little research has been conducted into adult learners in HE. Apart from generalized, albeit extensive, socio-economic studies on poverty and inequality, including changing patterns of participation in education more generally (for exampl...

Policy on service learning is framed in the discourse of reciprocity, partnership and engagement. It is tasked with transforming higher education to bring about opportunities for integrating theory and practice, work-based learning and academic learning, so that higher education engages with knowledge created in other sites of practice. While polic...

South African universities have responded in a variety of ways to national policy directives to broaden access to mature adult learners. In this paper we examine the progress made by one institution—the University of the Witwatersrand—to open its doors to adult learners through the Centre for Part-Time Study, known as Wits Plus. We examine critical...

In this paper I have argued that if institutions undertake to recognise the prior learning of adult students, certain institutional variables play an important role and social justice on its own is an inadequate lever. National Policy has been rhetorical at best and the literature on institutional variables is diffuse and amorphous. I argue that le...

This article outlines three theoretical perspectives that have emerged in the literature on RPL and that are useful in understanding the complexities around prior learning, the human capital perspective, the liberal humanist perspective and the social constructivist perspective. Although each approach has its own blind spots and its own critics, it...

This article explores the potential of the portfolio process as pedagogy for adult students to recast themselves as producers of knowledge rather than mere conduits for reproducing dominant epistemologies within higher education in South Africa.

Interest in service learning is growing at a time of curriculum change in teacher education and institutional change in higher education in South Africa. This raises the question ";What models are available to guide institutions to develop service learning?"; This article outlines Pollack's typology of institutional responses to service learning in...

This case study examines the benefits and challenges of combining service learning with 'school experience' in pre-service teacher education. Lave and Wenger's theory of situated learning is used to illuminate the nature and process of learning through such coupling. Interviews with students and staff involved in a service learning project, and scr...

One of the charges levelled at RPL is that it is a ``soft option'' in higher education. It appears to offer easy access into higher education, and relatively undemanding ways of gaining credit. This article investigates these assumptions and identifies the demands of a portfolio develop ment approach in RPL.

The 'we' of this paper are two teacher educators who came together, almost by chance, through the one's research project and ended up redesigning and co-teaching the other's final year Bachelor of Primary Education module in cognitive education. We worked with the potential of teacher agency, and the possibilities at all levels for educators to eng...

The article is a descriptive and illuminative account of two recognition of prior learning (RPL) projects conceived within specific institutional contexts in higher education in South Africa. The two projects are treated as separate case studies in which a ``developmental'' model of RPL was piloted. Each case study provides a profile of the student...

Codeswitching is an important interactional resource in South Africa's multilingual and multicultural society. This article discusses the incidence of codeswitching in primary schools and examines the speakers' motivations for employing codeswitching. The data is drawn from conversations in both formal (classroom) and informal (playground) situatio...

This study assessed the effectiveness of Feuer-stein's Instrumental Enrichment and de Bono's CoRT thinking skill programmes in enhancing the creative thinking and attitudes of pre-service teachers in a disadvantaged South African community. Four groups of students (n = 20 each) were randomly constituted and taught, respectively , Instrumental Enric...