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Crossing conceptual thresholds in doctoral communities

  • Authors: McKenna, Sioux
  • Date: 2017
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , article
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/66719 , vital:28986 , ISSN 1470-3300 , https://doi.org/10.1080/14703297.2016.1155471
  • Description: Pre-print , The traditional apprenticeship model of supervision in which the single scholar charts her individual research path is giving way to more collaborative learning environments. Doctoral programmes, in which communities of scholars work together, have become increasingly common. This study interrogated how being part of such a community enables the conceptual depth we expect at doctoral level. It draws on the notion of conceptual threshold crossing to make sense of the learning experiences of 28 education PhD scholars. Working in a community of doctoral scholars was found to have conceptual impact (i) when the community is supportive, (ii) encourages risk-taking and facilitates conversations across different issues and disciplines, (iii) when the scholars have to regularly articulate their position and (iv) because the programme structure enhances the likelihood of fortuitous encounters with theories and concepts.
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  • Date Issued: 2017

Death of the PhD: when industry partners determine doctoral outcomes

  • Authors: Frick, Liezel , McKenna, Sioux , Muthama, Evelyn
  • Date: 2017
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , article
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/66680 , vital:28981 , ISSN 1469-8366 , https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2017.1263467
  • Description: Pre-print , The PhD is the highest formal qualification and signifies a scholar’s rite of passage as a legitimate contributor of new knowledge in a field. Examiner reports make claims about what is legitimate in a thesis and what is not and thus articulate the organising principles through which participation in a field is measured. The authors analysed 39 examiners’ reports on 13 PhDs produced over a five-year period by scholars from the Higher Education Research doctoral studies programme at Rhodes University in South Africa. Drawing on aspects of Karl Maton’s Legitimation Code Theory (LCT), this study uses the dimensions of LCT:Specialisation and LCT:Semantics to explore what kinds of knowledge, skills and procedures and what kinds of knowers are validated in the field of Higher Education Research through the examination process. The study found that despite concerns in the literature about the a-theoretical nature of the Higher Education Studies field, examiners valued high-level theoretical and meta-theoretical engagement as well as methodological rigour. In addition, examiners prized the ability to demonstrate a strong ideological position, to use a clear doctoral voice, and to recognise the axiological drive of the field. The analysis showed that examiners were interested in strong contextualisation of the problem-spaces in higher education in South Africa but also commented positively on candidates’ ability to move from troubling an issue within its context to being able to abstract findings so as to contribute to the field as a whole.
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  • Date Issued: 2017

From contradictions to complementarities: a social realist analysis of the evolution of academic development within a department

  • Authors: Case, Jennifer M , Heydenrych, Hilton , Kotta, Linda , Marshall, Delia , McKenna, Sioux , Willliams, Kevin
  • Date: 2017
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , article
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/66752 , vital:28990 , ISSN 1470-1294 , https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2015.1045479
  • Description: Publisher version , Academic development is a recent project in the university, intended to enable the university to respond to the needs of a more diverse student body. In South Africa, such work arose during late apartheid, and has now moved to a more central institutional position advocating responsiveness in the light of the educational disparities that are the legacy of apartheid. The present study uses a social realist perspective to analyse the 25-year evolution of an academic development project within an engineering department at a South African university. The findings show that while academic development initially posed a contradictory logic to the department, the response was to reform the nature of this project into one that suited the other commitments of the department: a logic of complementarity. The department's relationships with industry were shown to have played a key role in fostering this form of change.
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  • Date Issued: 2017

Generic gold standard or contextualised public good? Teaching excellence awards in post-colonial South Africa

  • Authors: Behari-Leak, Kasturi , McKenna, Sioux
  • Date: 2017
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , article
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/66774 , vital:28992 , ISSN 1470-1294 , https://doi.org/10.1080/13562517.2017.1301910
  • Description: Publisher version , Teaching Excellence Awards have raised the profile of teaching as a scholarly project. There are however a number of questions about what constitutes teaching excellence and how ‘excellence’ is understood in current higher education. In a post-colonial South Africa, where significant injustices permeate our society, we question whether excellence can be understood in a generic manner. Furthermore, we argue that as universities are a public good, teaching excellence needs to explicitly attend to the ways in which universities contribute to broad goals of transformation and inclusivity. We analysed data from the national Teaching Excellence Awards and 13 South African universities’ awards to interrogate the discourses that underpin ‘excellence’ in this context of social inequality. We found that while the awards have gone some way to enhancing the position of teaching in institutions, ‘excellence’ was largely articulated in fairly generic ways which failed to take into account the enablements and constraints of the discipline and the institution. Furthermore, the guidelines and criteria privilege a decontextualised notion of excellence that seeks a ‘gold standard’ and validates performativity, rather than a contextualised response to the needs of the students.
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  • Date Issued: 2017

Student-generated content: an approach to harnessing the power of diversity in higher education

  • Authors: Snowball, Jeanette D , McKenna, Sioux
  • Date: 2017
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , article
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/66763 , vital:28991 , ISSN 1470-1294 , https://doi.org/10.1080/13562517.2016.1273205
  • Description: Publisher version , Internationally, classes in higher education institutions are becoming larger and more diverse. Support for ‘non-traditional’ students has often taken the form of additional remedial classes offered outside the main curriculum, which has met with limited success. Sociocultural theories of learning argue that the potential clash between the sociocultural context of disciplinary knowledge and the very different home contexts of many non-traditional students needs to be acknowledged. One way to achieve this is to use student-generated content, which allows teachers to bring student experiences and voices into the community of practice and acknowledges the importance of their prior experiences in knowledge production. Building on such sociocultural approaches to teaching and learning, this paper focuses on the use of student-generated podcasts as a means to harness the diversity of student experiences in a large (nearly 600 students) first-year Economics class at a South African University.
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  • Date Issued: 2017

The culture hut concept as curriculum innovation: Engaging the dialectic nature of heritage in Zimbabwean schools to support ESD learning

  • Authors: Zazu, Cryton
  • Date: 2017
  • Subjects: To be catalogued
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , book chapter
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/436895 , vital:73314 , ISBN 978-3-319-45989-9 , https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-45989-9_5
  • Description: Influenced by Zimbabwe’s cultural policy of 2004, the culture hut concept entails the establishment of a culture hut or village within schools as a curriculum innovation aimed at promoting the teaching and learning of culture within the country’s formal education system. The culture hut is representative of what can be viewed as a ‘mini cultural museum’ in which cultural ar-tefacts and objects are displayed. All schools in Zimbabwe are, therefore, as a matter of policy expected to have a culture hut; hence the culture hut concept itself as a curriculum innovation has, since 2004, became popular in the country. Despite its popularity, little research has been done to evaluate how this curriculum innovation is adding value to Zimbabwe’s education system. It is against this background that this chapter interro-gates the culture hut concept in Zimbabwe, pointing out some of the shortfalls in its current application and highlighting how, if carefully constituted, such curriculum innovation can foster the type of learning envisaged within the Education for Sus-tainable Development (ESD) framework. This chapter, as much as it provides a critique of how the culture hut concept is being used in Zimbabwean schools, also points to what could be done to reconstitute and use this curriculum innovation in ways that support more ESD learning.
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  • Date Issued: 2017

Introduction: the multilingual context of education in Africa

  • Authors: Kaschula, Russell H , Wolff, H Ekkehard
  • Date: 2016
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , book
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/174849 , vital:42515 , ISBN 978-0415315760 , https://www.amazon.com/Multilingual-Education-Africa-Practices-Routledge/dp/041531576X
  • Description: The common thread in this book is the exploration of innovative pedagogies in language teaching and language use in education. The greatest danger facing educators is one of complacency. Whether set in Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, South Africa or elsewhere in Africa, all the chapters in this book emphasise the imperative for educators to constantly revise curricula and teaching methods in order to find the most appropriate ways of teaching and using language in multilingual settings.
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  • Date Issued: 2016

LCT and systemic functional linguistics: Enacting complimentary theories for explanatory power

  • Authors: Maton, Karl , Martin, James R , Matruglio, Erika S
  • Date: 2016
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , book
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/66491 , vital:28955
  • Description: publisher version , Interdisciplinarity is the future. Such is the thrust of pronouncements repeatedly heard across the social sciences and humanities. Interdisciplinarity is often equated with intellectually and socially progressive stances and greater responsiveness to business and workplace needs. Yet such axiological and economic benefits are more often assumed or proclaimed than evidenced or demonstrated (Moore 2011). Moreover，what is declared to be 'interdisciplinary' often comprises the appropriation by literary or philosophical discourses of ideas from other fields rather than genuinely interdisciplinary dialogue. Nonetheless，to highlight the vacuity of much written in its name is not to dismiss the potential of interdisciplinarity itself. There are serious ontological and epistemological arguments for bringing disciplines together in substantive research (Bhaskar and Danermark 2006). Simply put，the social world comprises more than the phenomena addressed by any one discipline. Education，for example，involves at least knowledges， knowers， knowing， and the known, implicating insights from, among others，sociology，linguistics，psychology，and philosophy (Maton 2014b: 212-13). This is not to suggest a single study must encompass the disciplinary map in order to recreate reality in its entirety, Rather，it highlights that drawing on more than one disciplinary approach may offer greater explanatory power when exploring a specific problem-situation.
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  • Date Issued: 2016

LCT in mixed-methods research: evolving an instrument for quantitative data

  • Authors: Maton, Karl , Howard, Sarah Katherine
  • Date: 2016
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , book
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/66479 , vital:28954
  • Description: publisher version , A mantra of social science declares a fundamental divide between the quantitative and the qualitative that involves more than methods. According to this depiction, the two methodologies are intrinsically associated with a range of ontological, epistemological, political and moral stances. Each of these constellations of stances is strongly integrated, such that choice of method is held to involve a series of associated choices. Each constellation is also strongly opposed to the other, along axes labelled positivism/constructivism, scientism/humanism, conservative/critical, old/new, among others. These ‘binary constellations’ (Maton 2014b: 148-70) offer a forced choice between two tightly-knit sets of practices that are portrayed as jointly exhaustive and mutually exclusive. So widespread is this methodological binarism that many scholars ‘are left with the impression that they have to pledge allegiance to one research school of thought or the other’ (Johnson and Onwuegbuzie 2004: 14). A competing mantra disclaims this divide. Distinctions underpinning the picture of binary constellations have been regularly dissolved. Arguments that one deals with numbers, the other with words, one studies behaviour, the other reveals meanings, one is hypothetico-deductive, the other inductive, one enables generalization, the other explores singular depth, among others, have been repeatedly undermined (e.g. Hammersley 1992). Indeed, the death of the divide is frequently declared. Calls for ‘transcending’ (Salomon 1991) or ‘getting over’ (Howe 1992) the quantitative-qualitative debate and arguments for mixed-methods research (Brannen 2005; Johnson and Onwuegbuzie 2004) are recurrent. These calls highlight how the methodologies offer complementary insights for research and demonstrate that eschewing either methodology on principle is unnecessarily renouncing potential explanatory power. However, the call to mixed-methods research remains more breached than honoured. Methodological monotheism remains dominant – studies of education and society typically adopt either quantitative or qualitative methods. As we shall discuss, the former is typically associated with the influence of psychology and the latter is often claimed as emblematic of sociology. Studies utilizing the sociological frameworks on which Legitimation Code Theory (LCT) builds have echoed this pattern by overwhelmingly adopting qualitative methods. Accordingly, Part I of this volume begins by exploring how LCT concepts can be enacted in qualitative research (Chapter 2). However, LCT is not limited to one methodology and a growing body of mixed-methods research is engaging with both qualitative and quantitative data. In this chapter we illustrate how this research works and the gains it offers. For resolutely qualitative researchers, the prospect of reading anything quantitative, even in mixed-methods research, may be unenticing. However, it would be a mistake to pass over this chapter, for several reasons. First, we offer insights into research practice that might surprise such scholars. As Bourdieu argued, ‘methodological indictments are too often no more than a disguised way of making a virtue out of necessity, of feigning to dismiss, to ignore in an active way, what one is ignorant of in fact’ (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992: 226). Our aim is to contribute towards removing this reason for one-sidedness. We show, for example, how quantitative methods confound their common portrayal as neat, straightforward and procedural; they are complex and involved and require craft work and judgement. Our focus is, therefore, more practical than metaphysical. We shall not enter seemingly endless debates over whether the ‘quantitative-qualitative divide’ refers to paradigms, epistemologies or methods and whether these are complementary or incommensurable. Rather, we discuss the development of an instrument for enacting LCT concepts in quantitative methods and ground this account in real examples of mixed-methods research. Specifically, we trace the evolution of an instrument for embedding specialization codes within questionnaires through its creation for research into school music and then its development within studies of educational technology. Given that mathematics can be off-putting to the noviciate, we minimize discussion of statistics and explain measures in lay terms. Second, this is much more than a story of quantitative methods. The evolution of the instrument both shaped qualitative methods and was shaped by the data they generated, offering insights into how qualitative research can more fully engage with LCT. Its development also involved intimate dialogue with theory that shed fresh light on LCT itself, making explicit the ‘gaze’ embodied by the framework (Chapter 1, this volume). We shall highlight wider lessons learned about the craft of enacting LCT in research, lessons of direct relevance for studies using any methods. Third, we shall illustrate the explanatory power offered by using quantitative and qualitative methods together, such as providing a robust basis for detailed findings, identifying wider-scale trends typically inaccessible to qualitative methods that provide a context for their data, and facilitating knowledge-building through greater replicability across contexts and over time. For example, the technology studies built directly on the music studies to cumulatively develop the instrument and generated probably the largest data set in code sociology: 97,386 responses (83,937 student and 13,449 staff surveys) on the organizing principles of academic subjects, alongside 20 in-depth qualitative case studies of secondary schools. This offers a foundation of substantial breadth and depth for making claims about knowledge practices across the disciplinary map and a firm basis on which future research into disciplinary differences can build. Moreover, the quantitative instrument itself can be adopted or adapted in new studies, further enabling cumulative knowledge-building. Given these substantive, methodological and theoretical gains, it is perhaps surprising there exists any temptation to skip past discussion of mixed-methods research. This reflects the methodological character of the fields in which LCT emerged. We thus begin by briefly illustrating how the sociological frameworks on which the theory builds have become distanced from quantitative methods.
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  • Date Issued: 2016

Legal ethics education in South Africa: possibilities, challenges and opportunities

  • Authors: Robertson, Michael , Kruuse, Helen
  • Date: 2016
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , article
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/68941 , vital:29341 , http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02587203.2016.1210934
  • Description: Publisher version , The South African legal profession has been subject to harsh criticism in the last few years, leading to what some have called ‘an ethical crisis.’ Although this perception may or may not be warranted, there have been numerous calls for improved ethical legal practices by South African lawyers. This article seeks to contribute to a discussion about the importance of implementing legal ethics education in South African law schools. The authors (a) explore the meaning of ‘ethical legal practice’ by reference to the international literature; (b) examine the way in which legal ethics has so far been presented in the limited South African literature on the topic; (c) argue the need for a more thorough and critical literature on South African lawyers’ ethics, coupled with a commitment to developing a stronger legal ethics culture within the profession and the legal academia; and (d) suggest a possible approach for South African legal ethics education in the future, with reference to recent developments in other countries.
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  • Date Issued: 2016

Multilingual education for Africa: Concepts and practices

  • Authors: Kaschula, Russell H , Wolff, H Ekkehard
  • Date: 2016
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , book
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/174838 , vital:42513 , ISBN 978-0415315760 , https://www.amazon.com/Multilingual-Education-Africa-Practices-Routledge/dp/041531576X
  • Description: The common thread in this book is the exploration of innovative pedagogies in language teaching and language use in education. The greatest danger facing educators is one of complacency. Whether set in Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, South Africa or elsewhere in Africa, all the chapters in this book emphasise the imperative for educators to constantly revise curricula and teaching methods in order to find the most appropriate ways of teaching and using language in multilingual settings.
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  • Date Issued: 2016

Partnerships and parents–relationships in tutorial programmes

  • Authors: Layton, Delia M , McKenna, Sioux
  • Date: 2016
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , article
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/66699 , vital:28983 , ISSN 1469-8366 , https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2015.1087471
  • Description: The tutorial system is considered to be a useful pedagogical intervention to improve student retention, particularly in the context of a first-year student’s experience of entering university. For these novice students to achieve academic success, it is important that they are given access to the subject-specific knowledge and practices in their different disciplines, that is, that they acquire ‘epistemological access’. A recent study of the tutorial system in a South African university (Layton, D.M. [2013]. A social realist account of the tutorial system at the University of Johannesburg (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). Rhodes University, Grahamstown), sought to discover to what extent tutorials were discursively constructed as being about the enablement of epistemological access. This paper focuses on two discourses that emerged from the study – the parent discourse and the partnership discourse. Both discourses were concerned with relationships between key stakeholders in the tutorial programme. Given that tutorials are considered to be spaces in which more intimate learning can take place than in the anonymous environment of the large lecture hall, an interrogation of the relationships fostered in tutorials is important. The parent discourse, in which students were positioned as ‘kids’ needing care, was supportive of new students but ran the risk of being patronising and reductionist. The partnerships discourse, in which tutors and academics were seen to be working together towards the common goal of student success, was seen to be enabling of epistemological access. But it required a commitment to teaching endeavours that was in tension with the institutional focus on research. Through a social realist analysis of the two discourses constructing relationships in the tutorial system, we conclude that these discourses have the power to both constrain and enable the extent to which the tutorial system can be a site of epistemological access.
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  • Date Issued: 2016

Pedagogy for fostering criticality, reflectivity and praxis in a course on teaching for lecturers

  • Authors: Quinn, Lynn , Vorster, Jo-Anne E
  • Date: 2016
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , article
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/66590 , vital:28967 , https://doi.org/10.1080/02602938.2015.1066756
  • Description: publisher version , Using the concepts of criticality, reflectivity and praxis, the paper presents an analysis of our reflections on participants’ responses to the assessment requirements for a course for lecturers on teaching. The context in which the course is being taught has changed considerably in the last few years in terms of the mode of delivery, as well as the number and diversity of participants. Our analysis has generated insights into ways in which the course is not meeting all the learning needs of the participants, nor preparing them adequately to demonstrate, in writing, their learning. Using insights gained, we suggest pedagogic processes and strategies for ensuring that the course focuses on both writing to learn and learning to write; and for assisting participants to acquire the practices to demonstrate their learning in written assessment tasks, using the requisite literacy including criticality, reflectivity and praxis.
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  • Date Issued: 2016

The Guinea pigs of a problem-based learning curriculum

  • Authors: Reddy, Sarasvathie , McKenna, Sioux
  • Date: 2016
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , article
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/66730 , vital:28987 , ISSN 1470-3300 , https://doi.org/10.1080/14703297.2014.959542
  • Description: Publisher version , Participants in a study on learning the clinical aspects of medicine in a problem-based learning (PBL) curriculum repeatedly referred to themselves as ‘Guinea pigs’ at the mercy of a curriculum experiment. This article interrogates and problematises the ‘Guinea pig’ identity ascribed to and assumed by the first cohort of students who undertook a PBL curriculum. The article suggests that a range of issues may have come into play in the unfortunate events reported on here, and focuses on the participants’ reported experiences of marginalisation during their clinical education modules in the hospital wards. The impact of power differentials on identity formation was found to be exacerbated by the ‘Guinea pig’ characterisation.
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  • Date Issued: 2016

A review of three generations of critical theory: Towards conceptualising critical HESD research

  • Authors: Lotz-Sisitka, Heila
  • Date: 2015
  • Subjects: To be catalogued
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , book chapter
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/437136 , vital:73345 , ISBN 9781315852249 , https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781315852249-17/review-three-generations-critical-theory-heila-lotz-sisitka
  • Description: To begin a review of the purpose(s) of ESD research, we must first ask the basic question of the purpose of research generally. Definitions of research normally centre on it comprising sys-tematic investigation which contributes to knowledge or under-standing of phenomena or a problem. A distinction is common-ly drawn between pure or basic research which focuses on understanding phenomena and issues, and applied research where the primary emphasis is on research which contributes to the solution of problems or some systemic improvement ra-ther than knowledge for its own sake. Some commentators see action research as a third category as it is predicated on the researcher being part of the research process which itself is committed to personal or social change. ESD research as an area of interest is perhaps unusual because it accommodates and crosses these categories. It also engages in philosophic research regarding cultural, worldview and ethical dimensions of sustainability education – critically important dimensions of ESD research, but not within the scope of this chapter. Re-search on – say – the relative effect of different pedagogies, or how a learning environ-ment affects learning, may be thought of as basic research, but at another level, ESD research is often purposeful beyond the accumulation of understanding about educational processes.
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  • Date Issued: 2015

Absenting absence: Expanding zones of proximal development in environmental learning processes

  • Authors: Lotz-Sisitka, Heila
  • Date: 2015
  • Subjects: To be catalogued
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , book chapter
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/436939 , vital:73318 , ISBN 9781315660899 , https://www.routledge.com/Critical-Realism-Environmental-Learning-and-Social-Ecological-Change/Price-Lotz-Sistka/p/book/9780367597689
  • Description: In this chapter I demonstrate that indigenous knowledge practice is com mensurate with critical realist scientific practice. Critical realism under labours for Western scien-tific knowledge, helping to bring its practice in line with its theory. In this paper I similarly underlabour for indigenous knowledge. I use examples from the Eastern Coast of Tan-zania to suggest that the kind of knowledge that is gener-ated through indigenous pro cesses is based on retroduc-tive and retrodictive reasoning (as well as induc tive and deductive reasoning) and is thus grounded in the theory development principles of DREI(C)/RRREI(C) which, ac-cording to Bhaskar (1993), is the basis for all scientific knowledge. The chapter therefore creates a basis for indi-viduals, groups, organiza tions, and institutions that are involved in the field of environment and sustainability edu-cation and have an indigenous knowledge component, to use the DREI(C)/RRREI(C) for learning and research pur-poses. In this way, they can assume the commensurablity of both Western scientific knowledge and indigenous knowledge. This work substantiates the signifi cance of indigenous knowledge as science in its own right, which pursues specified scientific principles and procedures to inform practice or praxis in the coastal learning environ-ment in a manner that may enhance social learning. There already exists a body of literature that regards indigenous knowledge as ‘local science’ (Sillitoe, 2007). However, I hope to expand this view by more closely aligning this ‘lo-cal science’ with the same prac tices used by science in general, where this science is defined according to critical realist principles.
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  • Date Issued: 2015

Absenting the absence of parallel learning pathways for intermediate skills: The ‘missing middle' in the environmental sector in South Africa

  • Authors: Ramsarup, Presha
  • Date: 2015
  • Subjects: To be catalogued
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , book chapter
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/436964 , vital:73320 , ISBN 9781315660899 , https://www.routledge.com/Critical-Realism-Environmental-Learning-and-Social-Ecological-Change/Price-Lotz-Sistka/p/book/9780367597689
  • Description: Environment and sustainable development are recognized for: their significance for the future of South Africa’s well-being; their complex, transversal nature; and their associated ‘new-ness’ within South African education and training systems. In a sector with relatively new occupations without clear learning pathways into jobs and where occupational contexts are rapid-ly changing with evolving skill needs, the chapter explores a critical realist dialectical view of learning pathways across sys-tems of work and learning. It highlights the need to develop more sophisticated understandings of learning pathways, and the way in which work, education and training systems inter-face to support the transitions needed for particular forms of work and learning. The chapter also explores how critical real-ist dialectics can help to explain more fully the absence of in-termediate pathways in the environment and sustainable de-velopment ‘sector’ in South Africa. It highlights the absences within the post-school provisioning system and through this analysis raises the patterns of emergence that characterize environmental learning pathways. This then advances an edu-cational critique that assists in the development of deeper knowledge of the object of the study (elements constituting learning pathways) in order to understand possibilities for change and to present opportunities for creating more seam-less environmental learning pathways into green jobs, enhanc-ing social justice potential and public good concerns.
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  • Date Issued: 2015

Africa in global International relations: emerging approaches to theory and practice: an introduction

  • Authors: Bischoff, Paul, 1954- , Aning, Kwesi , Acharya, Amitav
  • Date: 2015
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , book
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/161662 , vital:40651 , ISBN 9781317437536
  • Description: This book investigates why Africa has been marginalised in IR discipline and theory and how this issue can be addressed in the context of the emerging Global IR paradigm. To have relevance for Africa, a new IR theory needs to be more inclusive, intellectually negotiated and holistically steeped in the African context. In this innovative volume, each author takes a critical look at existing IR paradigms and offers a unique perspective based on the African experience. Following on from Amitav Acharya and Barry Buzan’s work, Non-Western International Relations Theory, it develops and advances non-Western IR theory and the idea of Global IR.
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  • Date Issued: 2015

Bhaskar and collective action: Using laminations to structure a literature review of collective action and water management

  • Authors: Burt, Jane C
  • Date: 2015
  • Subjects: To be catalogued
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , book chapter
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/436978 , vital:73321 , ISBN 9781315660899 , https://www.routledge.com/Critical-Realism-Environmental-Learning-and-Social-Ecological-Change/Price-Lotz-Sistka/p/book/9780367597689
  • Description: This chapter describes the use of Bhaskar’s lamination to make sense of the vast literature on collective action. The liter-ature review in the chapter was part of a broader study that in-vestigated collective action as essential for attaining the princi-ples of equity and sustainability set out in the post-apartheid South African Water Act. A laminated analysis of the literature revealed important insights such as: when dealing with collec-tive action we need to appreciate that all the levels of reality are acting simultaneously on a given context and cannot be resolved in isolation; collective action is inhibited or con-strained at different levels and scales by different things; and collective action is not suspended in a fixed context and can-not be encouraged by following a set formula. These insights point to the importance of learning to adapt as a core principle of collective action. Drawing on this research and experience of how collective action can be supported or inhibited gives insight into understanding our current limitations in supporting collective action and in understanding the kinds of collective action encounters that are occurring in catchments in South Africa. These understandings have implications for how we consider learning, and the potential contributions of learning-led change.This chapter describes the use of Bhaskar’s lamination to make sense of the vast literature on collective action. The liter-ature review in the chapter was part of a broader study that in-vestigated collective action as essential for attaining the princi-ples of equity and sustainability set out in the post-apartheid South African Water Act. A laminated analysis of the literature revealed important insights such as: when dealing with collec-tive action we need to appreciate that all the levels of reality are acting simultaneously on a given context and cannot be resolved in isolation; collective action is inhibited or con-strained at different levels and scales by different things; and collective action is not suspended in a fixed context and can-not be encouraged by following a set formula. These insights point to the importance of learning to adapt as a core principle of collective action. Drawing on this research and experience of how collective action can be supported or inhibited gives insight into understanding our current limitations in supporting collective action and in understanding the kinds of collective action encounters that are occurring in catchments in South Africa. These understandings have implications for how we consider learning, and the potential contributions of learning-led change.
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  • Date Issued: 2015

Critical realism, environmental learning and social-ecological change

  • Authors: Price, Leigh , Lotz-Sisitka, Heila
  • Date: 2015
  • Subjects: To be catalogued
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , book
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/436952 , vital:73319 , ISBN 9781315660899 , https://www.routledge.com/Critical-Realism-Environmental-Learning-and-Social-Ecological-Change/Price-Lotz-Sistka/p/book/9780367597689
  • Description: The contemporary social-ecological condition is characterized by power-ful changes in the way that we relate to each other and to the environ-ment. This has led to increased ecological vulnerability, which is also ac-companied by ongoing, and increased societal vulnerability. Nevertheless there remain opportunities for developing new social-ecological rela-tions, and for social-ecological learning and change. This would seem to require a strong project of recovering ontology, and a challenging and broadening of dominant ways of knowing (Mignolo, 2000) that also tend to commit what Bhaskar describes as the ‘epistemic fallacy’, or the ‘the analysis or reduction of being to knowledge of being’ (Bhaskar, 2010, p. 1). In response, Bhaskar (ibid.) suggests critical realism as an alternative that embodies a ‘compatibility of ontological realism, epistemological relativism and judgmental rationality’. This includes a ‘re-vindication of ontology’ and the possibility of recognizing and accounting for structure, difference and change in the world in ways that escape ontological actu-alism and ontological monovalence or ‘the generation of a purely positive account of reality’ (ibid., p. 15).
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  • Date Issued: 2015
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