A social realist analysis of the professional identity formation of lecturers emerging from completing professional development at a South African research-intensive university
- Authors: Adams, Anthea
- Date: 2024-10-11
- Subjects: Identity (Psychology) in education , Academic development , Staff development , Social realism , Critical realism , Scholarship of teaching and learning , Education, Higher South Africa
- Language: English
- Type: Academic theses , Doctoral theses , text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/466372 , vital:76722 , DOI https://doi.org/10.21504/10962/466372
- Description: This doctoral study is part of a Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET) capacity development project, Phakamisa. Using Margaret Archer's Social Realism as a substantive theory and methodological tool and Roy Bhaskar's Critical Realism as a meta-theory, I was able to identify and explain the interplay between the structural, cultural and agential mechanisms within a professional development course that enabled or constrained the emergence of lecturers' professional academic identities. My research participants are fourteen lecturers who completed the Postgraduate Diploma in Higher Education (PGDip HE) at Rhodes University between 2007 and 2017. Social Realism's explanatory methodologies, analytical dualism, and the morphogenetic cycle allowed me to provide causal explanations and account for the historicity of the emergence of lecturers' professional academic identities as teachers. A qualitative research design involving case study research allowed me to search for generative mechanisms to understand and explain the conditioning influence of often unobservable phenomena and underlying mechanisms in developing lecturers' identities as teachers in a research-intensive university. As strong social actors imbued with power and material resources, university leadership should consider the constraining influence of contextual conditions, such as the hegemony of disciplinary research versus research in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL). The socio-cultural (S-C) interactions of the fourteen lecturers (agents) signal the possibilities for structural, cultural and agential morphogenesis when agents choose to exercise their agency, i.e., their personal emergent properties (PEPs) to mediate prevalent structural and cultural emergent properties (SEPs and CEPs) enabling or constraining their personal projects. Lecturers' personal projects are the courses of action they intentionally engage in as they strive to establish sustainable yet evolving practices as teachers in their disciplines. This thesis shows that exercising their PEPs involves subjective reflexivity and transforming from primary agents to corporate agents due to collective action and alliances with like-minded peers and colleagues to shape the teaching and learning agenda in their respective departments and the broader higher education context. Triple morphogenesis of lecturers' agency occurred through their realisation as social actors. It signified the formation of their professional identities as teachers and how they uniquely embodied and enacted their teacher roles. , Hierdie doktorale studie is deel van 'n Departement van Hoër Onderwys en Opleiding (DHOO) kapasiteitsontwikkelingsprojek, naamlik Phakamisa. Deur gebruik te maak van Margaret Archer se Sosiale Realisme ("Social Realism") as 'n substantiewe teorie en metodologiese instrument, en Roy Bhaskar se Kritiese Realisme ("Critical Realism") as 'n metateorie, was ek in staat om die wisselwerking tussen die strukturele, kulturele en agentiese meganismes binne 'n professionele ontwikkelingskursus te identifiseer en te verduidelik wat die ontstaan van dosente se professionele akademiese identiteite moontlik gemaak of beperk het. Die deelnemers in my navorsing is veertien dosente wat die Nagraadse Diploma in Hoër Onderwys (NGDip HO) aan Rhodes Universiteit tussen 2007 en 2017 voltooi het. Sosiale Realisme se verklarende metodologieë, analitiese dualisme en die morfogenetiese siklus het my toegelaat om oorsaaklike verklarings te verskaf en die historisiteit van die ontstaan van dosente se professionele akademiese identiteite as onderwysers te verantwoord. ’n Kwalitatiewe navorsingsontwerp wat gevallestudienavorsing behels het, het my toegelaat om na generatiewe meganismes te soek om die kondisionerende invloed van dikwels onwaarneembare verskynsels en onderliggende meganismes in die ontwikkeling van dosente se identiteit as onderwysers in ’n navorsingsintensiewe universiteit te verstaan en te verduidelik. As sterk sosiale rolspelers deurdrenk met mag en materiële hulpbronne, behoort universiteitsleierskap die beperkende invloed van kontekstuele toestande, soos die hegemonie van dissiplinêre navorsing versus navorsing in die Akademieskap van Onderrig en Leer (AvOL, of in Engels "Scholarship of Teaching and Learning", afgekort na SoTL) in ag te neem. Die sosiokulturele (S-K) interaksie van die veertien dosente (agente) dui op die moontlikhede vir strukturele, kulturele en agentiale morfogenese wanneer agente doelbewus kies om hul agentskap uit te oefen, dit wil sê hul persoonlike ontluikende eienskappe (in Engels "personal emergent properties", afgekort na PEPs) om heersende strukturele en kulturele ontluikende eienskappe te bemiddel (in Engels "cultural emergent properties", afgekort na CEPs) wat hul persoonlike projekte moontlik maak of beperk. Dosente se persoonlike projekte is die aksies wat hulle doelbewus aangepak het terwyl hulle daarna gestreef het om volhoubare dog ontwikkelende praktyke as onderwysers in hul dissiplines te vestig. Hierdie tesis dui aan dat die uitoefening van hul persoonlike ontluikende eienskappe ("PEPs") behels subjektiewe refleksiwiteit en transformasie van primêre agente na korporatiewe agente as gevolg van kollektiewe optrede en alliansies met eendersdenkende eweknieë en kollegas om die onderrigen leeragenda in hul onderskeie departemente en die breër hoëronderwyskonteks te beïnvloed. Drievoudige morfogenese van dosente se agentskap het plaasgevind deur hul verwesenliking as sosiale rolspelers. Dit het die vorming van hul professionele identiteite as onderwysers aangedui en die unieke manier hoe hulle hul onderwyserrolle interpreteer en uitleef. , Thesis (PhD) -- Faculty of Education, Centre for Higher Education Research, Teaching and Learning, 2024
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2024-10-11
- Authors: Adams, Anthea
- Date: 2024-10-11
- Subjects: Identity (Psychology) in education , Academic development , Staff development , Social realism , Critical realism , Scholarship of teaching and learning , Education, Higher South Africa
- Language: English
- Type: Academic theses , Doctoral theses , text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/466372 , vital:76722 , DOI https://doi.org/10.21504/10962/466372
- Description: This doctoral study is part of a Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET) capacity development project, Phakamisa. Using Margaret Archer's Social Realism as a substantive theory and methodological tool and Roy Bhaskar's Critical Realism as a meta-theory, I was able to identify and explain the interplay between the structural, cultural and agential mechanisms within a professional development course that enabled or constrained the emergence of lecturers' professional academic identities. My research participants are fourteen lecturers who completed the Postgraduate Diploma in Higher Education (PGDip HE) at Rhodes University between 2007 and 2017. Social Realism's explanatory methodologies, analytical dualism, and the morphogenetic cycle allowed me to provide causal explanations and account for the historicity of the emergence of lecturers' professional academic identities as teachers. A qualitative research design involving case study research allowed me to search for generative mechanisms to understand and explain the conditioning influence of often unobservable phenomena and underlying mechanisms in developing lecturers' identities as teachers in a research-intensive university. As strong social actors imbued with power and material resources, university leadership should consider the constraining influence of contextual conditions, such as the hegemony of disciplinary research versus research in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL). The socio-cultural (S-C) interactions of the fourteen lecturers (agents) signal the possibilities for structural, cultural and agential morphogenesis when agents choose to exercise their agency, i.e., their personal emergent properties (PEPs) to mediate prevalent structural and cultural emergent properties (SEPs and CEPs) enabling or constraining their personal projects. Lecturers' personal projects are the courses of action they intentionally engage in as they strive to establish sustainable yet evolving practices as teachers in their disciplines. This thesis shows that exercising their PEPs involves subjective reflexivity and transforming from primary agents to corporate agents due to collective action and alliances with like-minded peers and colleagues to shape the teaching and learning agenda in their respective departments and the broader higher education context. Triple morphogenesis of lecturers' agency occurred through their realisation as social actors. It signified the formation of their professional identities as teachers and how they uniquely embodied and enacted their teacher roles. , Hierdie doktorale studie is deel van 'n Departement van Hoër Onderwys en Opleiding (DHOO) kapasiteitsontwikkelingsprojek, naamlik Phakamisa. Deur gebruik te maak van Margaret Archer se Sosiale Realisme ("Social Realism") as 'n substantiewe teorie en metodologiese instrument, en Roy Bhaskar se Kritiese Realisme ("Critical Realism") as 'n metateorie, was ek in staat om die wisselwerking tussen die strukturele, kulturele en agentiese meganismes binne 'n professionele ontwikkelingskursus te identifiseer en te verduidelik wat die ontstaan van dosente se professionele akademiese identiteite moontlik gemaak of beperk het. Die deelnemers in my navorsing is veertien dosente wat die Nagraadse Diploma in Hoër Onderwys (NGDip HO) aan Rhodes Universiteit tussen 2007 en 2017 voltooi het. Sosiale Realisme se verklarende metodologieë, analitiese dualisme en die morfogenetiese siklus het my toegelaat om oorsaaklike verklarings te verskaf en die historisiteit van die ontstaan van dosente se professionele akademiese identiteite as onderwysers te verantwoord. ’n Kwalitatiewe navorsingsontwerp wat gevallestudienavorsing behels het, het my toegelaat om na generatiewe meganismes te soek om die kondisionerende invloed van dikwels onwaarneembare verskynsels en onderliggende meganismes in die ontwikkeling van dosente se identiteit as onderwysers in ’n navorsingsintensiewe universiteit te verstaan en te verduidelik. As sterk sosiale rolspelers deurdrenk met mag en materiële hulpbronne, behoort universiteitsleierskap die beperkende invloed van kontekstuele toestande, soos die hegemonie van dissiplinêre navorsing versus navorsing in die Akademieskap van Onderrig en Leer (AvOL, of in Engels "Scholarship of Teaching and Learning", afgekort na SoTL) in ag te neem. Die sosiokulturele (S-K) interaksie van die veertien dosente (agente) dui op die moontlikhede vir strukturele, kulturele en agentiale morfogenese wanneer agente doelbewus kies om hul agentskap uit te oefen, dit wil sê hul persoonlike ontluikende eienskappe (in Engels "personal emergent properties", afgekort na PEPs) om heersende strukturele en kulturele ontluikende eienskappe te bemiddel (in Engels "cultural emergent properties", afgekort na CEPs) wat hul persoonlike projekte moontlik maak of beperk. Dosente se persoonlike projekte is die aksies wat hulle doelbewus aangepak het terwyl hulle daarna gestreef het om volhoubare dog ontwikkelende praktyke as onderwysers in hul dissiplines te vestig. Hierdie tesis dui aan dat die uitoefening van hul persoonlike ontluikende eienskappe ("PEPs") behels subjektiewe refleksiwiteit en transformasie van primêre agente na korporatiewe agente as gevolg van kollektiewe optrede en alliansies met eendersdenkende eweknieë en kollegas om die onderrigen leeragenda in hul onderskeie departemente en die breër hoëronderwyskonteks te beïnvloed. Drievoudige morfogenese van dosente se agentskap het plaasgevind deur hul verwesenliking as sosiale rolspelers. Dit het die vorming van hul professionele identiteite as onderwysers aangedui en die unieke manier hoe hulle hul onderwyserrolle interpreteer en uitleef. , Thesis (PhD) -- Faculty of Education, Centre for Higher Education Research, Teaching and Learning, 2024
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2024-10-11
The morphogenesis of higher education leadership: a social realist exploratory journey
- Authors: Andrews, Ruth
- Date: 2023-10-13
- Subjects: Educational leadership South Africa , Education, Higher South Africa , Critical realism , Social realism , Educational change South Africa , Transformational leadership
- Language: English
- Type: Academic theses , Doctoral theses , text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/442897 , vital:74051 , DOI 10.21504/10962/442897
- Description: The purpose of the study underpinning this thesis was to explore the tensions experienced by university leaders as they balance politics, power and the academic project whilst pursuing their ultimate concerns in the world. Universities are undergoing constant change, particularly in the present time of hypercomplexity, where the discourses of globalisation and neoliberalism condition higher education institutions and their leaders. This predisposes universities to operate as a market economy rather than as a public good. University leaders are under immense pressure as they seek to reposition themselves and exercise their agency in steering their institutions in a landscape fraught with complexity and contestation about the very nature of the modern university. The study was located in a traditional university in South Africa, which added another layer of complexity given the history of Apartheid and, the use of education as a means of discriminating against the black majority population, and the subsequent attempts by the government to transform the system following the first democratic election of 1994. Bhaskar’s (1989) critical realism and Archer’s (1998, 2000) social realism were used to frame the study theoretically. Bhaskar argues for the understanding of the world as an ‘open system’ in which experiences and events emerge from the tendential interplay of mechanisms at a layer of reality not directly accessible to empirical observation. Archer’s (2000) social realism draws on critical realism to provide a set of tools that allows an exploration of the social world in more detail. This study draws on the tools of analytical dualism, or the temporary separation of structure, culture and agency for analytical purposes, and Archer’s (1998) morphogenetic framework, which allows for the exploration of change, or non-change, over time. The overarching goal of the study was to explore how leaders at one South African university were enabled and constrained as they exercised their agency in the pursuit of projects they had identified to address their ultimate concerns about the world more generally and higher education in particular. However, the study also sought to explore the construct of leadership itself in a specific context by using Archer’s (2007, 2012) theoretical work on reflexivity. The study drew on in-depth interviews with senior leaders at the institution, including two vice-chancellors. The interviews were subjected to analysis, and the inferential tools of abduction and retroduction were used to identify the interplay of mechanisms located at the level of the Real, the deepest layer of reality posited by Bhaskar (1978), which led to the events and experiences reported by leaders. A literature review was used to identify additional theories that were used in the processes of abduction and retroduction. The study revealed that change, or rather non-change, is often concealed in cultural rhetoric veiled in leadership practices in acts assimilating past ideology and codified rules and practices with new codified rules and practices. Leaders often draw on powerful relational networks as they reflexively exercise their agency, and these networks can also work to constrain change. , Thesis (PhD) -- Faculty of Education, Education 2023
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2023-10-13
- Authors: Andrews, Ruth
- Date: 2023-10-13
- Subjects: Educational leadership South Africa , Education, Higher South Africa , Critical realism , Social realism , Educational change South Africa , Transformational leadership
- Language: English
- Type: Academic theses , Doctoral theses , text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/442897 , vital:74051 , DOI 10.21504/10962/442897
- Description: The purpose of the study underpinning this thesis was to explore the tensions experienced by university leaders as they balance politics, power and the academic project whilst pursuing their ultimate concerns in the world. Universities are undergoing constant change, particularly in the present time of hypercomplexity, where the discourses of globalisation and neoliberalism condition higher education institutions and their leaders. This predisposes universities to operate as a market economy rather than as a public good. University leaders are under immense pressure as they seek to reposition themselves and exercise their agency in steering their institutions in a landscape fraught with complexity and contestation about the very nature of the modern university. The study was located in a traditional university in South Africa, which added another layer of complexity given the history of Apartheid and, the use of education as a means of discriminating against the black majority population, and the subsequent attempts by the government to transform the system following the first democratic election of 1994. Bhaskar’s (1989) critical realism and Archer’s (1998, 2000) social realism were used to frame the study theoretically. Bhaskar argues for the understanding of the world as an ‘open system’ in which experiences and events emerge from the tendential interplay of mechanisms at a layer of reality not directly accessible to empirical observation. Archer’s (2000) social realism draws on critical realism to provide a set of tools that allows an exploration of the social world in more detail. This study draws on the tools of analytical dualism, or the temporary separation of structure, culture and agency for analytical purposes, and Archer’s (1998) morphogenetic framework, which allows for the exploration of change, or non-change, over time. The overarching goal of the study was to explore how leaders at one South African university were enabled and constrained as they exercised their agency in the pursuit of projects they had identified to address their ultimate concerns about the world more generally and higher education in particular. However, the study also sought to explore the construct of leadership itself in a specific context by using Archer’s (2007, 2012) theoretical work on reflexivity. The study drew on in-depth interviews with senior leaders at the institution, including two vice-chancellors. The interviews were subjected to analysis, and the inferential tools of abduction and retroduction were used to identify the interplay of mechanisms located at the level of the Real, the deepest layer of reality posited by Bhaskar (1978), which led to the events and experiences reported by leaders. A literature review was used to identify additional theories that were used in the processes of abduction and retroduction. The study revealed that change, or rather non-change, is often concealed in cultural rhetoric veiled in leadership practices in acts assimilating past ideology and codified rules and practices with new codified rules and practices. Leaders often draw on powerful relational networks as they reflexively exercise their agency, and these networks can also work to constrain change. , Thesis (PhD) -- Faculty of Education, Education 2023
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2023-10-13
Learning to learn: a critical realist exploration into the home established learning practices of a marginalised community in Port Elizabeth
- Authors: Armstrong, Meredith
- Date: 2019
- Subjects: Minorities -- Education (Higher) -- South Africa , Readiness for school -- Social aspects -- South Africa , Inclusive education -- Social aspects -- South Africa , Marginality, Social -- South Africa , Critical realism
- Language: English
- Type: text , Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/93778 , vital:30939
- Description: This study was completed as part of a project exploring social inclusion and exclusion in South African higher education. In a globalised world, the achievement of a qualification from an institution of higher education is increasingly key to finding any sort of employment. This is particularly the case in South Africa where employment amongst black citizens is inordinately high. The aim of the research reported upon in this thesis was to better understand the construct of ‘epistemological access’ (Morrow, 1992), often used in relation to the needs of black working class students entering higher education, in relation to performance data (see for example, CHE, 2016) that repeatedly shows that black students fare less well than their white peers. Following what might be termed a ‘social’ approach to understanding access, this study begins long before most students have even heard of higher education and focuses on identifying the mechanisms that come into play at much earlier level of learning and literacy development. The study outlines the development of ‘ways of being’, or social practices, surrounding learning in a marginalised community in Port Elizabeth, in the Eastern Cape, South Africa. This was achieved by means of critical ethnography and it is therefore qualitatively based. The study shows how social structures enable or constrain a child’s school readiness and how they then go on to support or impede progress in school where the language and literacy needed for educational success are further developed. The study therefore aims to allow us to explain global data indicating that the single greatest indicator of a young person’s ability to access and succeed in higher education is the level of education of caregivers in their homes of origin. Examined from a critical perspective (i.e. with a concern for social justice), this study has made use of a framework using social, psychological and linguistic theory and more, particularly, the work of sociologist Margaret Archer (1995, 1996, 2003). The study makes particular use of Archer’s ‘morphogenetic framework’ which allows for an analysis of the way structure and culture impact on a child’s development over time. As I was concerned that my own social status might impact on the understandings I developed as a critical ethnographer, the study acknowledges my own experiences of learning and the way my own family sought to enhance them as enabling. In doing this, the study aims to better contribute to understandings of social justice in South Africa.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2019
- Authors: Armstrong, Meredith
- Date: 2019
- Subjects: Minorities -- Education (Higher) -- South Africa , Readiness for school -- Social aspects -- South Africa , Inclusive education -- Social aspects -- South Africa , Marginality, Social -- South Africa , Critical realism
- Language: English
- Type: text , Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/93778 , vital:30939
- Description: This study was completed as part of a project exploring social inclusion and exclusion in South African higher education. In a globalised world, the achievement of a qualification from an institution of higher education is increasingly key to finding any sort of employment. This is particularly the case in South Africa where employment amongst black citizens is inordinately high. The aim of the research reported upon in this thesis was to better understand the construct of ‘epistemological access’ (Morrow, 1992), often used in relation to the needs of black working class students entering higher education, in relation to performance data (see for example, CHE, 2016) that repeatedly shows that black students fare less well than their white peers. Following what might be termed a ‘social’ approach to understanding access, this study begins long before most students have even heard of higher education and focuses on identifying the mechanisms that come into play at much earlier level of learning and literacy development. The study outlines the development of ‘ways of being’, or social practices, surrounding learning in a marginalised community in Port Elizabeth, in the Eastern Cape, South Africa. This was achieved by means of critical ethnography and it is therefore qualitatively based. The study shows how social structures enable or constrain a child’s school readiness and how they then go on to support or impede progress in school where the language and literacy needed for educational success are further developed. The study therefore aims to allow us to explain global data indicating that the single greatest indicator of a young person’s ability to access and succeed in higher education is the level of education of caregivers in their homes of origin. Examined from a critical perspective (i.e. with a concern for social justice), this study has made use of a framework using social, psychological and linguistic theory and more, particularly, the work of sociologist Margaret Archer (1995, 1996, 2003). The study makes particular use of Archer’s ‘morphogenetic framework’ which allows for an analysis of the way structure and culture impact on a child’s development over time. As I was concerned that my own social status might impact on the understandings I developed as a critical ethnographer, the study acknowledges my own experiences of learning and the way my own family sought to enhance them as enabling. In doing this, the study aims to better contribute to understandings of social justice in South Africa.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2019
Conditions enabling or constraining the exercise of agency among new academics in higher education, conducive to the social inclusion of students
- Authors: Behari-Leak, Kasturi
- Date: 2015
- Subjects: Social integration -- South Africa , Students -- South Africa -- Social conditions , Educational change -- South Africa , College teachers -- South Africa , Education, Higher -- South Africa , Critical realism , Social realism , Agent (Philosophy)
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: vital:1333 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1020295
- Description: This study, which is part of a National Research Foundation project on Social Inclusion in Higher Education (HE), focuses on the exercise of agency among new academics, conducive to the social inclusion of students. Transitioning from varied entry points into higher education, new academics face numerous challenges as they embed themselves in disciplinary and institutional contexts. Given the complexity and contested nature of the current higher education landscape, new academics are especially vulnerable. Using Roy Bhaskar’s critical realism as meta-theoretical framing and Margaret Archer’s social realist theory, with its methodological focus on analytical dualism and morphogenesis, this study offers a social realist account of how new academics engage with enabling and constraining conditions at institutional, faculty, departmental and classroom levels. Through an analysis of six individual narratives of mediation, this study explicates and exemplifies the range of agential choices exercised by new academics to mediate their contested spaces. A nuanced social and critical account of the material, ideational and agential conditions in HE shows that the courses of action taken by these new academics are driven through their concerns, commitments and projects in higher education. Yet, despite the university’s espousal of embracing change, the current induction and transition of new academics is inadequate to the task of transformation in higher education. Systemic conditions in HE, conducive to critical agency and social justice, are not enabling. Bhaskar’s Seven Scalar Being, used as an analytical frame and heuristic, guides the cross-case analysis of the six narratives across seven levels of ontology. The findings highlight that, despite difficult contextual influences, the positive exercise of agency is a marked feature of new participants in HE in this study. This has immediate implications for ways in which professional and academic development, and disciplinary and departmental programmes, could create and sustain conducive conditions for the professionalisation of new academics through more sensitised practices. Using alternative research methods such as photovoice to generate its data, this doctoral study proposes that new research methodologies, located in the third space, are needed now more than ever in HE sociological research, to recognise the researcher and the research participants as independent, autonomous and causally efficacious beings. To this end, this study includes a Chapter Zero, which captures the narrative of the doctoral scholar as researcher, who, shaped and influenced by established doctoral practices and traditions in the field, exercises her own doctoral agency in particular ways.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2015
- Authors: Behari-Leak, Kasturi
- Date: 2015
- Subjects: Social integration -- South Africa , Students -- South Africa -- Social conditions , Educational change -- South Africa , College teachers -- South Africa , Education, Higher -- South Africa , Critical realism , Social realism , Agent (Philosophy)
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: vital:1333 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1020295
- Description: This study, which is part of a National Research Foundation project on Social Inclusion in Higher Education (HE), focuses on the exercise of agency among new academics, conducive to the social inclusion of students. Transitioning from varied entry points into higher education, new academics face numerous challenges as they embed themselves in disciplinary and institutional contexts. Given the complexity and contested nature of the current higher education landscape, new academics are especially vulnerable. Using Roy Bhaskar’s critical realism as meta-theoretical framing and Margaret Archer’s social realist theory, with its methodological focus on analytical dualism and morphogenesis, this study offers a social realist account of how new academics engage with enabling and constraining conditions at institutional, faculty, departmental and classroom levels. Through an analysis of six individual narratives of mediation, this study explicates and exemplifies the range of agential choices exercised by new academics to mediate their contested spaces. A nuanced social and critical account of the material, ideational and agential conditions in HE shows that the courses of action taken by these new academics are driven through their concerns, commitments and projects in higher education. Yet, despite the university’s espousal of embracing change, the current induction and transition of new academics is inadequate to the task of transformation in higher education. Systemic conditions in HE, conducive to critical agency and social justice, are not enabling. Bhaskar’s Seven Scalar Being, used as an analytical frame and heuristic, guides the cross-case analysis of the six narratives across seven levels of ontology. The findings highlight that, despite difficult contextual influences, the positive exercise of agency is a marked feature of new participants in HE in this study. This has immediate implications for ways in which professional and academic development, and disciplinary and departmental programmes, could create and sustain conducive conditions for the professionalisation of new academics through more sensitised practices. Using alternative research methods such as photovoice to generate its data, this doctoral study proposes that new research methodologies, located in the third space, are needed now more than ever in HE sociological research, to recognise the researcher and the research participants as independent, autonomous and causally efficacious beings. To this end, this study includes a Chapter Zero, which captures the narrative of the doctoral scholar as researcher, who, shaped and influenced by established doctoral practices and traditions in the field, exercises her own doctoral agency in particular ways.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2015
Constraints and enablements on quality improvement in higher education
- Authors: Browning, Leanne Elizabeth
- Date: 2021-10-29
- Subjects: Education, Higher Aims and objectives South Africa , Education, Higher Evaluation , Quality assurance South Africa , Educational evaluation South Africa , Self-evaluation , Critical realism
- Language: English
- Type: Academic theses , Doctoral theses , text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/294956 , vital:57273 , DOI 10.21504/10962/294956
- Description: This study contributes to the literature on quality improvement in higher education by examining the structural, cultural and agential constraints and enablements on a quality process at a university in South Africa. It examined four cases and developed an understanding of the complex interaction of structure, culture and agency and the mechanisms that enable or constrain quality improvement in higher education. The study drew on the literature on higher education quality for the theoretical basis for what is known contributes to the way in which quality assurance and improvement is implemented and its impact on the higher education context. Critical Realism provided the ontological framework and conceptual tools to understand and explore the complex social world within which the quality process took place. The literature on the morphogenetic approach provided the analytical framework for the data analysis and findings. The data consisted of a set of documents from a quality process that took place over a five-year period. The data analysis revealed that different departmental contexts impact on how mechanisms are activated. Each school context shapes the way in which people engage with the review process and consequently, processes and procedures are mediated in each context. This research therefore adds to the understanding of the way in which quality processes take place at a micro-level within an institutional context and informs the approach to quality improvement more broadly, nationally and internationally. The research contributes to the knowledge that will inform planning, policies and practices in quality improvement processes in higher education and the findings identify a number of factors (mechanisms) that should inform the way in which a quality process is facilitated, will enable effective self-evaluation and review processes, and consequently are more likely to lead to quality improvement. , Thesis (PhD) -- Faculty of Education, Centre for Higher Education Research, Teaching and Learning, 2021
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2021-10-29
- Authors: Browning, Leanne Elizabeth
- Date: 2021-10-29
- Subjects: Education, Higher Aims and objectives South Africa , Education, Higher Evaluation , Quality assurance South Africa , Educational evaluation South Africa , Self-evaluation , Critical realism
- Language: English
- Type: Academic theses , Doctoral theses , text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/294956 , vital:57273 , DOI 10.21504/10962/294956
- Description: This study contributes to the literature on quality improvement in higher education by examining the structural, cultural and agential constraints and enablements on a quality process at a university in South Africa. It examined four cases and developed an understanding of the complex interaction of structure, culture and agency and the mechanisms that enable or constrain quality improvement in higher education. The study drew on the literature on higher education quality for the theoretical basis for what is known contributes to the way in which quality assurance and improvement is implemented and its impact on the higher education context. Critical Realism provided the ontological framework and conceptual tools to understand and explore the complex social world within which the quality process took place. The literature on the morphogenetic approach provided the analytical framework for the data analysis and findings. The data consisted of a set of documents from a quality process that took place over a five-year period. The data analysis revealed that different departmental contexts impact on how mechanisms are activated. Each school context shapes the way in which people engage with the review process and consequently, processes and procedures are mediated in each context. This research therefore adds to the understanding of the way in which quality processes take place at a micro-level within an institutional context and informs the approach to quality improvement more broadly, nationally and internationally. The research contributes to the knowledge that will inform planning, policies and practices in quality improvement processes in higher education and the findings identify a number of factors (mechanisms) that should inform the way in which a quality process is facilitated, will enable effective self-evaluation and review processes, and consequently are more likely to lead to quality improvement. , Thesis (PhD) -- Faculty of Education, Centre for Higher Education Research, Teaching and Learning, 2021
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2021-10-29
Understanding the poverty-reducing livelihoods of child support grant caregivers in Riebeeck East, South Africa
- Authors: Chikukwa, Vimbainashe
- Date: 2015
- Subjects: Archer, Margaret Scotford -- Political and social views , Child caregivers -- South Africa -- Riebeek-Oos , Public welfare -- South Africa -- Riebeek-Oos , Grants-in-aid -- South Africa -- Riebeek-Oos , Poverty -- South Africa -- Riebeek-Oos , Critical realism , South Africa -- Social conditions -- 1994- , South Africa -- Economic conditions -- 1991-
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MSocSc
- Identifier: vital:3393 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1018196
- Description: In 1994, racial domination in the form of apartheid ended in South Africa and the first postapartheid government was elected through a non-racial and democratic franchise. The new government inherited an entrenched system of racial inequality as well as widespread poverty amongst the formerly oppressed population, and it sought to address these challenges through policies of redistribution based on a new progressive constitution which emphasised the realisation of socio-economic rights. At the same time, and despite its redistributive measures, the post-apartheid government has pursued a macro-economic strategy with pronounced neoliberal dimensions. One of its critical redistributive measures focuses on social assistance to poor blacks, and this has entailed the construction and expansion of a massive social grant system including the child support grant which is received by millions of black South Africans on a monthly basis. The objective of this thesis is to examine and understand the livelihoods of child support grant recipients (or caregivers) in the context of conditions of extreme vulnerability marked by poverty. It does so by focusing on the small town of Riebeek East located in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa. Though undoubtedly child support grant caregivers are victims of poverty, the thesis demonstrates that they are not without agency. They exist in structural conditions of vulnerability and poverty, but they nevertheless seek to manoeuvre and negotiate their way in and through their conditions of existence. This does not necessarily alleviate their poverty in any significant manner but it does show evidence of reflexivity, decision-making and responsibility in the pursuit of livelihood practices and outcomes. In making this argument, I draw upon the mega-theory of Margaret Archer (specifically, her morphogenetic approach) and the more middle-level perspective of the Sustainable Livelihoods Framework. Beyond contributing to the prevailing academic literature on the child support grant in South Africa, this thesis also hopefully makes a small contribution to controversies about structure and agency within sociology.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2015
- Authors: Chikukwa, Vimbainashe
- Date: 2015
- Subjects: Archer, Margaret Scotford -- Political and social views , Child caregivers -- South Africa -- Riebeek-Oos , Public welfare -- South Africa -- Riebeek-Oos , Grants-in-aid -- South Africa -- Riebeek-Oos , Poverty -- South Africa -- Riebeek-Oos , Critical realism , South Africa -- Social conditions -- 1994- , South Africa -- Economic conditions -- 1991-
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MSocSc
- Identifier: vital:3393 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1018196
- Description: In 1994, racial domination in the form of apartheid ended in South Africa and the first postapartheid government was elected through a non-racial and democratic franchise. The new government inherited an entrenched system of racial inequality as well as widespread poverty amongst the formerly oppressed population, and it sought to address these challenges through policies of redistribution based on a new progressive constitution which emphasised the realisation of socio-economic rights. At the same time, and despite its redistributive measures, the post-apartheid government has pursued a macro-economic strategy with pronounced neoliberal dimensions. One of its critical redistributive measures focuses on social assistance to poor blacks, and this has entailed the construction and expansion of a massive social grant system including the child support grant which is received by millions of black South Africans on a monthly basis. The objective of this thesis is to examine and understand the livelihoods of child support grant recipients (or caregivers) in the context of conditions of extreme vulnerability marked by poverty. It does so by focusing on the small town of Riebeek East located in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa. Though undoubtedly child support grant caregivers are victims of poverty, the thesis demonstrates that they are not without agency. They exist in structural conditions of vulnerability and poverty, but they nevertheless seek to manoeuvre and negotiate their way in and through their conditions of existence. This does not necessarily alleviate their poverty in any significant manner but it does show evidence of reflexivity, decision-making and responsibility in the pursuit of livelihood practices and outcomes. In making this argument, I draw upon the mega-theory of Margaret Archer (specifically, her morphogenetic approach) and the more middle-level perspective of the Sustainable Livelihoods Framework. Beyond contributing to the prevailing academic literature on the child support grant in South Africa, this thesis also hopefully makes a small contribution to controversies about structure and agency within sociology.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2015
Expanding learning in clergy leadership formation in an Anglican Church Province in Southern Africa: a critical realist study
- Authors: Chinganga, Percy
- Date: 2019
- Subjects: Leadership -- Africa, Southern -- Religious aspects -- Christianity , Church management -- Africa, Southern , Critical realism , Educational leadership , Anglican Church of Southern Africa
- Language: English
- Type: text , Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/92258 , vital:30704
- Description: The focus of this study was to investigate the kind of learning that happened when participants involved in clergy leadership formation programmes and activities in the Anglican Church of Southern Africa (ACSA) engaged in their responsibilities as a collective. Further, the research sought to explore collaborative and transforming practices in ACSA clergy leadership formation programmes and activities which could be expanded through learning. The study is premised on an investigation of the historical foundations of Christian leadership formation processes which sought to establish clergy leadership formation models relevant to ACSA (the context of the study) from inception (1848) to date (2017). This entailed investigating how the developments which have happened in the church from its inception in the New Testament times through the Medieval and Reformation periods, have contributed to the emergence of distinct Christian leadership formation models which have formed the basis of clergy leadership formation in ACSA. Accordingly, the study highlighted key issues relating to clergy leadership formation which are discernible in the different historical phases of the life and work of the church with the objective of establishing how ACSA, through expansive learning, could transform her current clergy leadership formation model(s) towards collaborative and transforming practices. The concept of expansive learning, drawn from Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT), was used in the study as a methodological tool to create an environment where research participants (formators) from several dioceses would engage in collective work activities which would surface contradictions relating to how clergy leadership formation programmes and activities were understood and facilitated in ACSA. In response to the surfaced contradictions, the study engaged research participants in Change Laboratory Workshops whose goal was to transform the organisation (ACSA) in two particular ways: empowerment of participants (formators) with conceptual tools relevant to their responsibilities in clergy leadership formation programmes and activities in ACSA, and improvement of organisational cultural practices, that is, the manner in which ACSA ought to conceptualise, design, plan, facilitate and manage clergy leadership formation programmes and activities. The latter brought into the discourse the need for participants (formators) to select and employ methodologies, methods, approaches and resources relevant to the southern African context where ACSA is located even though the study also acknowledged the influence of other Anglican Church contexts on what happened at the local level. In order to decipher meaning out of investigated phenomena about clergy leadership formation in ACSA, the study employed the critical realist “underlabouring” philosophy advanced by theorists such as Bhaskar to surface underlying mechanisms that exist at the level of the “real” in order to understand the causes of particular events and experiences as they manifest in the “actual” and “empirical” domains of the world, ACSA in the case of the study. In particular, the study engaged critically the opinion deliberated by critical realists concerning the interplay between structure and agency in relation to the responsibilities of the research participants (formators) in ACSA clergy leadership formation programmes and activities. For instance, the study had an interest in investigating why bishops (principal formators in ACSA) exercised their episcopal authority in the manner they do and why individual formators were concerned about particular issues which relate to the facilitation of clergy leadership formation in ACSA (agential reflexivity/subjectivity). The study observed that, in the case of diocesan bishops, critical realists would argue that, by virtue of the authority which comes with their responsibilities (agency), they have the power to influence transformation of practices in clergy leadership formation in ACSA at any given point in time. The flip side of the discourse was also taken note of: that some bishops, for reasons known to themselves and their predecessors, are often reluctant to embrace new ideas relating to clergy leadership formation practices in their dioceses. Further, through critical realist lens, the study concluded that Canons, Vision and Mission statements, Acts, and structures such as Synod of Bishops, Provincial Synod, ABoTE, Cott, and TfM structurally shape ACSA, thus providing the organisation with a stable ontology which ought to direct, regulate and control the manner in which clergy leadership formation programmes and activities were conceptualised, designed, planned, facilitated and managed. As such, the study had an interest in establishing what would happen, in relation to clergy leadership formation practices in ACSA, when these structures would have been activated? Beyond that, in view of the goal of the study, it was enquired how expansive learning processes could be helpful in responding to the research findings towards exploring collaborative and transforming clergy leadership formation practices in ACSA. Drawing from the conceptual framework which was carved in the study on the basis of the theoretical tools (critical realism and educational leadership theory) and methodological tools (CHAT orientated concepts) undergirded by the Vygotskian theorisation of human consciousness development, the study concluded that clergy leadership formation is a collaborative activity which calls for the recognition, appreciation and utilisation of available expertise in ACSA and provision of a platform where participants (formators) could engage collectively on issues relating to their work with the objective of building each other up in knowledge and skills (expansive learning) towards realisation of the goals and objectives of the organisation. Diverse understandings (contradictions) of what needed to be prioritised in the facilitation of clergy leadership formation in ACSA would be considered as a positive rather than a negative. Ultimately, through the use of inductive, abductive and retroductive modes of inference, the study modelled a transforming, transformational, transformative, embodied and incarnational model of clergy leadership formation which ACSA could consider using in future deliberations on the object of study particularly in relation to the key research findings across the case studies which were used in the study.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2019
- Authors: Chinganga, Percy
- Date: 2019
- Subjects: Leadership -- Africa, Southern -- Religious aspects -- Christianity , Church management -- Africa, Southern , Critical realism , Educational leadership , Anglican Church of Southern Africa
- Language: English
- Type: text , Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/92258 , vital:30704
- Description: The focus of this study was to investigate the kind of learning that happened when participants involved in clergy leadership formation programmes and activities in the Anglican Church of Southern Africa (ACSA) engaged in their responsibilities as a collective. Further, the research sought to explore collaborative and transforming practices in ACSA clergy leadership formation programmes and activities which could be expanded through learning. The study is premised on an investigation of the historical foundations of Christian leadership formation processes which sought to establish clergy leadership formation models relevant to ACSA (the context of the study) from inception (1848) to date (2017). This entailed investigating how the developments which have happened in the church from its inception in the New Testament times through the Medieval and Reformation periods, have contributed to the emergence of distinct Christian leadership formation models which have formed the basis of clergy leadership formation in ACSA. Accordingly, the study highlighted key issues relating to clergy leadership formation which are discernible in the different historical phases of the life and work of the church with the objective of establishing how ACSA, through expansive learning, could transform her current clergy leadership formation model(s) towards collaborative and transforming practices. The concept of expansive learning, drawn from Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT), was used in the study as a methodological tool to create an environment where research participants (formators) from several dioceses would engage in collective work activities which would surface contradictions relating to how clergy leadership formation programmes and activities were understood and facilitated in ACSA. In response to the surfaced contradictions, the study engaged research participants in Change Laboratory Workshops whose goal was to transform the organisation (ACSA) in two particular ways: empowerment of participants (formators) with conceptual tools relevant to their responsibilities in clergy leadership formation programmes and activities in ACSA, and improvement of organisational cultural practices, that is, the manner in which ACSA ought to conceptualise, design, plan, facilitate and manage clergy leadership formation programmes and activities. The latter brought into the discourse the need for participants (formators) to select and employ methodologies, methods, approaches and resources relevant to the southern African context where ACSA is located even though the study also acknowledged the influence of other Anglican Church contexts on what happened at the local level. In order to decipher meaning out of investigated phenomena about clergy leadership formation in ACSA, the study employed the critical realist “underlabouring” philosophy advanced by theorists such as Bhaskar to surface underlying mechanisms that exist at the level of the “real” in order to understand the causes of particular events and experiences as they manifest in the “actual” and “empirical” domains of the world, ACSA in the case of the study. In particular, the study engaged critically the opinion deliberated by critical realists concerning the interplay between structure and agency in relation to the responsibilities of the research participants (formators) in ACSA clergy leadership formation programmes and activities. For instance, the study had an interest in investigating why bishops (principal formators in ACSA) exercised their episcopal authority in the manner they do and why individual formators were concerned about particular issues which relate to the facilitation of clergy leadership formation in ACSA (agential reflexivity/subjectivity). The study observed that, in the case of diocesan bishops, critical realists would argue that, by virtue of the authority which comes with their responsibilities (agency), they have the power to influence transformation of practices in clergy leadership formation in ACSA at any given point in time. The flip side of the discourse was also taken note of: that some bishops, for reasons known to themselves and their predecessors, are often reluctant to embrace new ideas relating to clergy leadership formation practices in their dioceses. Further, through critical realist lens, the study concluded that Canons, Vision and Mission statements, Acts, and structures such as Synod of Bishops, Provincial Synod, ABoTE, Cott, and TfM structurally shape ACSA, thus providing the organisation with a stable ontology which ought to direct, regulate and control the manner in which clergy leadership formation programmes and activities were conceptualised, designed, planned, facilitated and managed. As such, the study had an interest in establishing what would happen, in relation to clergy leadership formation practices in ACSA, when these structures would have been activated? Beyond that, in view of the goal of the study, it was enquired how expansive learning processes could be helpful in responding to the research findings towards exploring collaborative and transforming clergy leadership formation practices in ACSA. Drawing from the conceptual framework which was carved in the study on the basis of the theoretical tools (critical realism and educational leadership theory) and methodological tools (CHAT orientated concepts) undergirded by the Vygotskian theorisation of human consciousness development, the study concluded that clergy leadership formation is a collaborative activity which calls for the recognition, appreciation and utilisation of available expertise in ACSA and provision of a platform where participants (formators) could engage collectively on issues relating to their work with the objective of building each other up in knowledge and skills (expansive learning) towards realisation of the goals and objectives of the organisation. Diverse understandings (contradictions) of what needed to be prioritised in the facilitation of clergy leadership formation in ACSA would be considered as a positive rather than a negative. Ultimately, through the use of inductive, abductive and retroductive modes of inference, the study modelled a transforming, transformational, transformative, embodied and incarnational model of clergy leadership formation which ACSA could consider using in future deliberations on the object of study particularly in relation to the key research findings across the case studies which were used in the study.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2019
Exploring Social Learning within the Context of Community-Based Farming : Implications for Farmers’ Agency and Capabilities
- Authors: Dirwai, Crispen
- Date: 2021-04
- Subjects: Crops and climate -- Zimbabwe -- Mutasa District , Livestock -- Climatic factors -- Zimbabwe -- Mutasa District , Social learning -- Zimbabwe -- Mutasa District , Community-supported agriculture -- Zimbabwe -- Mutasa District , Environmental education -- Zimbabwe -- Mutasa District , Climatic changes -- Social aspects -- Zimbabwe -- Mutasa District , Critical realism
- Language: English
- Type: thesis , text , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/174526 , vital:42485 , https://doi.org/10.21504/10962/174526
- Description: This thesis, ‘Exploring social learning within the context of community-based farming: Implications for farmers’ agency and capabilities’, provided an opportunity to investigate how community-based farmers engaged a social learning process in adjusting their practices to the observed climate change and variability risks and vulnerabilities. The social learning and pedagogic trajectory towards climate change adaptation, involved a multi-sectoral approach in a community of practice that was inclusive of extension service, developmental agencies, a university, climate change activists, a primary school, a university, the agro-industrial community, the urban open market and the local standards association. Social learning, in this community of practice, took place during field days, field tours, focus groups and observations in a multi-case study approach. The main research question addressed in this thesis was ‘How can and does social learning facilitate or constrain the conversion of resources into functionings and new adaptation capabilities of communal farmers in Muchena village in the face of increasing climate change and associated climate variability related socio-ecological risks and vulnerabilities?’ In order to address this main research question and its corresponding sub-questions, two main categories of climate change adaptive agricultural practices, crop and non-crop, were studied in the context of social learning and collective and individual capabilities and agency. The research ontology and epistemology were grounded in critical realism, with the epistemic work in the multiple case study being drawing on a constructivist approach where eleven Farmers’ Case Stories [FCS] from crop and non-crop community-based farmers were purposively followed throughout this thesis journey, while the ontological dynamics were pursued through critical realist depth ontological enquiry. The theoretical framework for this thesis encompassed Bhaskar’s (1998; 2016) dialectical critical realist MELD schema, which underlabours conversion factors from Sen’s (1993; 2005) capabilities theory mobilised via the six sequential moments of the pedagogic practice of social learning as articulated by Wals (2007). This gave the theoretical framework a multi-dimensional facet. In this multi-dimensional theoretical framework, the ontologically influential generative mechanisms identified at 1M, were droughts, food insecurity, economic poverty, poor farming methods, floods, pests, socio-political stress, socio-cultural and intergenerational knowledge transfer, government policies and market forces. Effort was made to absent these ills at 2E, through knowledge co-creation within the communities of practice, through individual and collective reflexivity and was guided by the six sequential moments of Wals’ (2007) social learning pedagogic trajectory and by the three capabilities conversion factors; personal, environmental and social. At 3L’s totalities (laminated) and false totalities and compromises, the community-based farmers came to realise, appreciate and utilised the benefits of individual and collective agency as knowledge generation. In the theoretical framework, the social learning process was a product of collective and individual agency, a product of co-creation, co-sharing and co-monitoring and mentoring of each other’s work in a non-linear process towards transformation at 4D. The thesis identified the following capability sets and their corresponding functionings: education with the new achieved functionings of knowledge on market oriented economy with more functionings such as apiary, dendrology, aqua-culture and horticultural practices, partnerships including contract farming and company registration; health as a capability set had the new functionings of improved people’s and soil’s health from organic and conservation production practices; nutrition as a capability set with new functionings of organic and conservation farming as well as, through testing of products and soils to ascertain nutritional parameters, nutritional functionings. These identified capability sets as valued beings and doings all attempted to absent climate change induced droughts, food insecurity and economic poverty through the social learning process. The new achieved functionings of knowledge on related market oriented economy, were used for food security as farmers were able to buy maize, the staple food, which has been constrained by climate change induced droughts and pests. The new capability sets and achieved functionings in alternatives to maize crop farming could be viewed in this thesis as a positive emancipatory cyclic movement in the community-based farmers from non-being to agency [1M to 4D]. The thesis found that for the social learning process to be transformative, the community-based farmers had to reflect as individuals and collectively as a community from T1 [social learning layer 1] to T00 [social learning as multi-layered and infinite]. Learning starts from T1 by engaging the ontological and epistemological question ‘what?’ and the pedagogical question, ‘how?’, in order to understand existing ills and how best to absent them. Tensions existed as the community still take maize meal as their staple food and yet maize production is less resilient to droughts in the absence of water harvesting for irrigation. Despite realising the nutritional value of small grains, the research findings claimed that small grains were difficult to process into a mealie-meal and so, could not replace maize as a staple food. Theoretical contributions from this thesis entailed both epistemological and ontological implications as the community-based farmers started to question positivism as the only benchmark for organic standards by sending what they self-perceived as ‘organic’ products and soils, for verification from observed laboratory tests. This might have indicated a recognised shift in the epistemology of the poor community-based farmer, who are widely viewed in literature, as non-being and subsistence, towards an organised transformative market oriented practice. In this regard, transformative social learning catalysed by the thesis, contributed towards an organic practice characterised by absenting synthetic fertilisers and certain heavy elements from the soils and from the products, thereby adapting and mitigating to global climate change at a micro-scale. The study, though small scale, might be viewed as having global policy implications. For SGD:2 FCS 1, VS absented hunger by transforming from zero tonnage in 2012 to an estimated harvest of four tonnes in 2017. For SDG:3, FCS 3, LN produced close to a tonne of organic peas that passed through laboratory testing for nutritional parameters and testing against heavy metals during the 2018 and 2019 farming season. SDG: 1 could be assessed and reflected through improved livelihoods from income raised under market gardening as shown in FCS 3, LN; FCS, 4 SM2; FCS 5 SS and FCS 6 JM2. Also from SDG 1, were alternatives to maize crop farming and climate change adaptation market oriented apiary practiced by FCS 7, LM2 & FCS 8, LM3 and market oriented dendrology from FCS, 10, VC & FCS 11, JC. FCS 10, VC, managed to register a small company while FCS 11, JC managed to get contracts from reputable tobacco companies in the country and he also managed to access bank loans to purchase a small truck to absent the transport ills that constrained the youths who finally moved out of the achieved functioning of dendrology. FCS, 3, LN and the group of youths valued sending their products and soils for laboratory tests, an indicator of the quality of education that they attained through Social learning process’ communities of practice engagement. By supplying part of their products as raw materials to an agro-industry, the newly achieved functioning of market oriented agriculture from FCS 3, LN and FCS 4, SM2 could be viewed as a move towards SDG: 9. In terms of SDG: 12, the farming practices studied in this thesis were deemed environmentally friendly, green and so were adaptations to climate change which could be read along with SDG: 13. The thesis findings thus could be viewed as those that could open up some ways of assessing and providing practical implementation pathways for some of the sustainable development goals as well as providing a platform to interrogate other ways of understanding critical realism’s underlying generative mechanisms as enablers and constrainers to shaping social learning and people’s measurable functionings in the context of education for sustainable development and the global action programme (GAP) and its immanent successor, the ESD Agenda 2030 framework. The research is therefore well poised to inform this agenda. The study concludes that in order to enhance community-based farmers’ social learning and agency towards climate change adaptation, extension service, the standards association institution, agro-industry, the university as well as the media, might need to engage pro-actively with the farmers’ capabilities and agency. The thesis also attempted to inform the university institution’s community engagement, thereby giving practical meaning to the whole institution approaches to ESD as promoted in the UNESCO ESD Global Action Programme, and the emerging ESD 2030 Agenda. The thesis therefore has potential to inform pedagogic practices at the formal, non-formal and the informal learning sectors. The thesis concludes that the social learning process, when coupled with critical realism and the capabilities theories, could facilitate the conversion of resources into new adaptive functionings. The social learning process is transformative, reflexive and recursive, but might have to start from 1M to 4D and from T1 to T00. Moreover, the thesis concludes that poverty remained one of the major disablers of the farmers’ capabilities and agency in this thesis. , Thesis (PhD)--Rhodes University, Faculty of Education, Education, 2021
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2021-04
- Authors: Dirwai, Crispen
- Date: 2021-04
- Subjects: Crops and climate -- Zimbabwe -- Mutasa District , Livestock -- Climatic factors -- Zimbabwe -- Mutasa District , Social learning -- Zimbabwe -- Mutasa District , Community-supported agriculture -- Zimbabwe -- Mutasa District , Environmental education -- Zimbabwe -- Mutasa District , Climatic changes -- Social aspects -- Zimbabwe -- Mutasa District , Critical realism
- Language: English
- Type: thesis , text , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/174526 , vital:42485 , https://doi.org/10.21504/10962/174526
- Description: This thesis, ‘Exploring social learning within the context of community-based farming: Implications for farmers’ agency and capabilities’, provided an opportunity to investigate how community-based farmers engaged a social learning process in adjusting their practices to the observed climate change and variability risks and vulnerabilities. The social learning and pedagogic trajectory towards climate change adaptation, involved a multi-sectoral approach in a community of practice that was inclusive of extension service, developmental agencies, a university, climate change activists, a primary school, a university, the agro-industrial community, the urban open market and the local standards association. Social learning, in this community of practice, took place during field days, field tours, focus groups and observations in a multi-case study approach. The main research question addressed in this thesis was ‘How can and does social learning facilitate or constrain the conversion of resources into functionings and new adaptation capabilities of communal farmers in Muchena village in the face of increasing climate change and associated climate variability related socio-ecological risks and vulnerabilities?’ In order to address this main research question and its corresponding sub-questions, two main categories of climate change adaptive agricultural practices, crop and non-crop, were studied in the context of social learning and collective and individual capabilities and agency. The research ontology and epistemology were grounded in critical realism, with the epistemic work in the multiple case study being drawing on a constructivist approach where eleven Farmers’ Case Stories [FCS] from crop and non-crop community-based farmers were purposively followed throughout this thesis journey, while the ontological dynamics were pursued through critical realist depth ontological enquiry. The theoretical framework for this thesis encompassed Bhaskar’s (1998; 2016) dialectical critical realist MELD schema, which underlabours conversion factors from Sen’s (1993; 2005) capabilities theory mobilised via the six sequential moments of the pedagogic practice of social learning as articulated by Wals (2007). This gave the theoretical framework a multi-dimensional facet. In this multi-dimensional theoretical framework, the ontologically influential generative mechanisms identified at 1M, were droughts, food insecurity, economic poverty, poor farming methods, floods, pests, socio-political stress, socio-cultural and intergenerational knowledge transfer, government policies and market forces. Effort was made to absent these ills at 2E, through knowledge co-creation within the communities of practice, through individual and collective reflexivity and was guided by the six sequential moments of Wals’ (2007) social learning pedagogic trajectory and by the three capabilities conversion factors; personal, environmental and social. At 3L’s totalities (laminated) and false totalities and compromises, the community-based farmers came to realise, appreciate and utilised the benefits of individual and collective agency as knowledge generation. In the theoretical framework, the social learning process was a product of collective and individual agency, a product of co-creation, co-sharing and co-monitoring and mentoring of each other’s work in a non-linear process towards transformation at 4D. The thesis identified the following capability sets and their corresponding functionings: education with the new achieved functionings of knowledge on market oriented economy with more functionings such as apiary, dendrology, aqua-culture and horticultural practices, partnerships including contract farming and company registration; health as a capability set had the new functionings of improved people’s and soil’s health from organic and conservation production practices; nutrition as a capability set with new functionings of organic and conservation farming as well as, through testing of products and soils to ascertain nutritional parameters, nutritional functionings. These identified capability sets as valued beings and doings all attempted to absent climate change induced droughts, food insecurity and economic poverty through the social learning process. The new achieved functionings of knowledge on related market oriented economy, were used for food security as farmers were able to buy maize, the staple food, which has been constrained by climate change induced droughts and pests. The new capability sets and achieved functionings in alternatives to maize crop farming could be viewed in this thesis as a positive emancipatory cyclic movement in the community-based farmers from non-being to agency [1M to 4D]. The thesis found that for the social learning process to be transformative, the community-based farmers had to reflect as individuals and collectively as a community from T1 [social learning layer 1] to T00 [social learning as multi-layered and infinite]. Learning starts from T1 by engaging the ontological and epistemological question ‘what?’ and the pedagogical question, ‘how?’, in order to understand existing ills and how best to absent them. Tensions existed as the community still take maize meal as their staple food and yet maize production is less resilient to droughts in the absence of water harvesting for irrigation. Despite realising the nutritional value of small grains, the research findings claimed that small grains were difficult to process into a mealie-meal and so, could not replace maize as a staple food. Theoretical contributions from this thesis entailed both epistemological and ontological implications as the community-based farmers started to question positivism as the only benchmark for organic standards by sending what they self-perceived as ‘organic’ products and soils, for verification from observed laboratory tests. This might have indicated a recognised shift in the epistemology of the poor community-based farmer, who are widely viewed in literature, as non-being and subsistence, towards an organised transformative market oriented practice. In this regard, transformative social learning catalysed by the thesis, contributed towards an organic practice characterised by absenting synthetic fertilisers and certain heavy elements from the soils and from the products, thereby adapting and mitigating to global climate change at a micro-scale. The study, though small scale, might be viewed as having global policy implications. For SGD:2 FCS 1, VS absented hunger by transforming from zero tonnage in 2012 to an estimated harvest of four tonnes in 2017. For SDG:3, FCS 3, LN produced close to a tonne of organic peas that passed through laboratory testing for nutritional parameters and testing against heavy metals during the 2018 and 2019 farming season. SDG: 1 could be assessed and reflected through improved livelihoods from income raised under market gardening as shown in FCS 3, LN; FCS, 4 SM2; FCS 5 SS and FCS 6 JM2. Also from SDG 1, were alternatives to maize crop farming and climate change adaptation market oriented apiary practiced by FCS 7, LM2 & FCS 8, LM3 and market oriented dendrology from FCS, 10, VC & FCS 11, JC. FCS 10, VC, managed to register a small company while FCS 11, JC managed to get contracts from reputable tobacco companies in the country and he also managed to access bank loans to purchase a small truck to absent the transport ills that constrained the youths who finally moved out of the achieved functioning of dendrology. FCS, 3, LN and the group of youths valued sending their products and soils for laboratory tests, an indicator of the quality of education that they attained through Social learning process’ communities of practice engagement. By supplying part of their products as raw materials to an agro-industry, the newly achieved functioning of market oriented agriculture from FCS 3, LN and FCS 4, SM2 could be viewed as a move towards SDG: 9. In terms of SDG: 12, the farming practices studied in this thesis were deemed environmentally friendly, green and so were adaptations to climate change which could be read along with SDG: 13. The thesis findings thus could be viewed as those that could open up some ways of assessing and providing practical implementation pathways for some of the sustainable development goals as well as providing a platform to interrogate other ways of understanding critical realism’s underlying generative mechanisms as enablers and constrainers to shaping social learning and people’s measurable functionings in the context of education for sustainable development and the global action programme (GAP) and its immanent successor, the ESD Agenda 2030 framework. The research is therefore well poised to inform this agenda. The study concludes that in order to enhance community-based farmers’ social learning and agency towards climate change adaptation, extension service, the standards association institution, agro-industry, the university as well as the media, might need to engage pro-actively with the farmers’ capabilities and agency. The thesis also attempted to inform the university institution’s community engagement, thereby giving practical meaning to the whole institution approaches to ESD as promoted in the UNESCO ESD Global Action Programme, and the emerging ESD 2030 Agenda. The thesis therefore has potential to inform pedagogic practices at the formal, non-formal and the informal learning sectors. The thesis concludes that the social learning process, when coupled with critical realism and the capabilities theories, could facilitate the conversion of resources into new adaptive functionings. The social learning process is transformative, reflexive and recursive, but might have to start from 1M to 4D and from T1 to T00. Moreover, the thesis concludes that poverty remained one of the major disablers of the farmers’ capabilities and agency in this thesis. , Thesis (PhD)--Rhodes University, Faculty of Education, Education, 2021
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2021-04
A social realist account of the way academic managers exercise agency in monitoring students’ academic success in South African higher education
- Dwayi, Valindawo Valile Medicine
- Authors: Dwayi, Valindawo Valile Medicine
- Date: 2024-04-05
- Subjects: Social realism South Africa Eastern Cape , Critical realism , New public management , Academic development , Academic achievement South Africa Eastern Cape , College students Rating of South Africa Eastern Cape , College student development programs South Africa Eastern Cape , Student adjustment South Africa Eastern Cape
- Language: English
- Type: Academic theses , Doctoral theses , text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/435863 , vital:73207 , DOI 10.21504/10962/435863
- Description: The roots of this thesis lie in discourses which promote the use of academic monitoring strategies for student success in South African higher education. Although access to higher education widened for black South Africans following the first democratic election, this ‘formal’ access (Morrow, 1993) has not been matched by success with annual cohort studies showing that, regardless of the university at which they are registered, the subjects they are studying and the qualifications they hope to attain, black South Africans fare less well than their white peers. Monitoring performance and referring students on to academic support and development structures thus became a strategy identified as having the potential to address patterns in performance data. The study reports on an attempt to introduce a strategy for Academic Monitoring for Integrated Academic Development at a historically black university in South Africa’s Eastern Cape province. It draws on a metatheoretical framework developed from Bhaskar’s (1978, 1998) critical realism and Archer’s (1995, 1996) social realism to do this. More specifically, it focuses on the way managers at the institution exercised their agency in relation to the strategy and identifies the way social and structural conditions, developed from the time colonial settlers first arrived on the continent, worked to constrain the exercise of this agency. Although the focus of the study was on agency, the study revealed a system of necessary contradictions (Archer, 1995, 1996), a system of conflicting beliefs exacerbated by a lack of resources, that led to the implementation of the strategy not being as successful as intended. The study not only illuminates the conditions at one South African university but also adds to the body of work on management in higher education and to critiques of ‘managerialism’. , Eyona ngxam yale thisisi kukuphendla iindlela zokukhuthaza ukusetyenziswa kwamaqhinga ezemfundo okuqwalasela impumelelo yabafundi kumaziko emfundo ephakamileyo aseMzantsi Afrika. Nangona emva konyulo lokuqala lwedemokhrasi abemi abantsundu baseMzantsi Afrika bethe bavuleleka ukuba bafikelele kwimfundo ephakamileyo, olu fikelelo 'lusesikweni' (Morrow, 1993) khange luhambelane nempumelelo yaba bafundi, nanjengoko uphando olujolise kwimpumelelo yabafundi ngonyaka ngamnye lubonisa ukuba aba bafundi bathi nokuba bafunda kweyiphi iyunivesithi, befunda ziphi iikhosi bekwafundela waphi amakhono, abafundi abantsundu basoloko berhuqeka emva xa bethelekiswa nabo bamhlophe. Ukuqwalaselwa kwenkqubela nokudluliselwa kwabafundi kumacandelo enkxaso nophuhliso kwimiba yemfundo kube liqhinga elithe lachongwa njengelunokukwazi ukujongana neepateni zendlela abaqhuba ngayo abafundi. Olu phando lunika ingxelo malunga nenzame yokuza neqhinga lokuQwalaselwa kwemiba yeMfundo ukwenzela uPhuhliso kwiyunivesithi eyayisakuba yeyabantsundu kwiphondo leMpuma Koloni laseMzantsi Afrika. Luqamele ngesakhelo semethathiyori esakhelwe kwi-critical realism kaBhaskar (1978, 1979) kunye ne-social realism kaArcher (1995, 1996). Eyona nto lugxile kuyo yindlela abalawuli neenkokeli zeli zikomfundo eziwasebenzisa ngayo amagunya azo ngokunxulumene neli qhinga, lukwachonga indlela iimeko zentlalo nezeziko, ezamana ziphuhliswa ukususela oko kwathi kwafika abarhwaphilizi kweli lizwekazi, ezasebenza ngayo ekunqandeni ukusetyenziswa kwala magunya. Nangona ugxiliso lolu phando belusemagunyeni, luthe lwaveza uluhlu lwemiba echaseneyo eyimfuneko (Archer, 1995, 1996), uluhlu lweenkolelo ezingqubanayo ezihlutshezwa kukushokoxeka kwezixhobo, nolukhokelele ekubeni ukufezekiswa kweli qhinga kungabiyiyo le mpumelelo ibilindelekile. Olu phando aluphelelanga nje ekugqamiseni iimeko zale yunivesithi yaseMzantsi Afrika, koko lukongeza kumsebenzi osele wenziwe kwimfundo ephakamileyo lukwaphendla ‘ezolawulo’. , Thesis (PhD) -- Faculty of Education, Centre for Higher Education Research, Teaching and Learning, 2024
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2024-04-05
- Authors: Dwayi, Valindawo Valile Medicine
- Date: 2024-04-05
- Subjects: Social realism South Africa Eastern Cape , Critical realism , New public management , Academic development , Academic achievement South Africa Eastern Cape , College students Rating of South Africa Eastern Cape , College student development programs South Africa Eastern Cape , Student adjustment South Africa Eastern Cape
- Language: English
- Type: Academic theses , Doctoral theses , text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/435863 , vital:73207 , DOI 10.21504/10962/435863
- Description: The roots of this thesis lie in discourses which promote the use of academic monitoring strategies for student success in South African higher education. Although access to higher education widened for black South Africans following the first democratic election, this ‘formal’ access (Morrow, 1993) has not been matched by success with annual cohort studies showing that, regardless of the university at which they are registered, the subjects they are studying and the qualifications they hope to attain, black South Africans fare less well than their white peers. Monitoring performance and referring students on to academic support and development structures thus became a strategy identified as having the potential to address patterns in performance data. The study reports on an attempt to introduce a strategy for Academic Monitoring for Integrated Academic Development at a historically black university in South Africa’s Eastern Cape province. It draws on a metatheoretical framework developed from Bhaskar’s (1978, 1998) critical realism and Archer’s (1995, 1996) social realism to do this. More specifically, it focuses on the way managers at the institution exercised their agency in relation to the strategy and identifies the way social and structural conditions, developed from the time colonial settlers first arrived on the continent, worked to constrain the exercise of this agency. Although the focus of the study was on agency, the study revealed a system of necessary contradictions (Archer, 1995, 1996), a system of conflicting beliefs exacerbated by a lack of resources, that led to the implementation of the strategy not being as successful as intended. The study not only illuminates the conditions at one South African university but also adds to the body of work on management in higher education and to critiques of ‘managerialism’. , Eyona ngxam yale thisisi kukuphendla iindlela zokukhuthaza ukusetyenziswa kwamaqhinga ezemfundo okuqwalasela impumelelo yabafundi kumaziko emfundo ephakamileyo aseMzantsi Afrika. Nangona emva konyulo lokuqala lwedemokhrasi abemi abantsundu baseMzantsi Afrika bethe bavuleleka ukuba bafikelele kwimfundo ephakamileyo, olu fikelelo 'lusesikweni' (Morrow, 1993) khange luhambelane nempumelelo yaba bafundi, nanjengoko uphando olujolise kwimpumelelo yabafundi ngonyaka ngamnye lubonisa ukuba aba bafundi bathi nokuba bafunda kweyiphi iyunivesithi, befunda ziphi iikhosi bekwafundela waphi amakhono, abafundi abantsundu basoloko berhuqeka emva xa bethelekiswa nabo bamhlophe. Ukuqwalaselwa kwenkqubela nokudluliselwa kwabafundi kumacandelo enkxaso nophuhliso kwimiba yemfundo kube liqhinga elithe lachongwa njengelunokukwazi ukujongana neepateni zendlela abaqhuba ngayo abafundi. Olu phando lunika ingxelo malunga nenzame yokuza neqhinga lokuQwalaselwa kwemiba yeMfundo ukwenzela uPhuhliso kwiyunivesithi eyayisakuba yeyabantsundu kwiphondo leMpuma Koloni laseMzantsi Afrika. Luqamele ngesakhelo semethathiyori esakhelwe kwi-critical realism kaBhaskar (1978, 1979) kunye ne-social realism kaArcher (1995, 1996). Eyona nto lugxile kuyo yindlela abalawuli neenkokeli zeli zikomfundo eziwasebenzisa ngayo amagunya azo ngokunxulumene neli qhinga, lukwachonga indlela iimeko zentlalo nezeziko, ezamana ziphuhliswa ukususela oko kwathi kwafika abarhwaphilizi kweli lizwekazi, ezasebenza ngayo ekunqandeni ukusetyenziswa kwala magunya. Nangona ugxiliso lolu phando belusemagunyeni, luthe lwaveza uluhlu lwemiba echaseneyo eyimfuneko (Archer, 1995, 1996), uluhlu lweenkolelo ezingqubanayo ezihlutshezwa kukushokoxeka kwezixhobo, nolukhokelele ekubeni ukufezekiswa kweli qhinga kungabiyiyo le mpumelelo ibilindelekile. Olu phando aluphelelanga nje ekugqamiseni iimeko zale yunivesithi yaseMzantsi Afrika, koko lukongeza kumsebenzi osele wenziwe kwimfundo ephakamileyo lukwaphendla ‘ezolawulo’. , Thesis (PhD) -- Faculty of Education, Centre for Higher Education Research, Teaching and Learning, 2024
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2024-04-05
Social-ecological resilience for well-being : a critical realist case study of Boksburg Lake, South Africa
- Authors: Fox, Helen Elizabeth
- Date: 2015
- Subjects: Boksburg Lake and Wetland project , Reservoirs -- South Africa -- Boksburg , Water -- Pollution -- South Africa -- Boksburg , Human ecology -- South Africa -- Boksburg , Social learning -- South Africa -- Boksburg , Critical realism
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: vital:6048 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1017872
- Description: This thesis is based on a case study of the degraded Boksburg Lake social-ecological system and an environmental education initiative that aimed to support its transformation. This initiative aimed to involve local people in reclaiming the lake’s social and ecological value, through a process of collectively reimagining possibilities, shaping identities, gaining knowledge and developing local human agency. The focus was on social learning processes in schools and churches to explore opportunities for co-engaged reflexivity that might produce transformation. Schools and Christian churches, two institutions that reflect modern, western socialecological worldviews also have the potential to bring about change. Critical Realism was chosen as my philosophical framework as it provided the tools to explore deeper mechanisms beyond empirical reality, both influencing the degrading trajectory as well as providing possibilities for transformation. It also legitimised case study research as a means to understand more generalised processes characterising modern social-ecological systems. The choice of Critical Realism informed the scope of my primary research question: What generative mechanisms constrain and enable the development of social-ecological resilience for well-being, in the modern social-ecological system of Boksburg Lake? The following three goals were formulated to address this primary question. Goal 1: Based on a multitheoretical perspective of social-ecological literature, develop conceptual tools that have explanatory power to probe generative mechanisms operating in the Boksburg Lake social-ecological system. Goal 2: Identify generative mechanisms driving the current degradation of the Boksburg Lake social-ecological system. Goal 3: Identify learning mechanisms that support transformation for greater social-ecological resilience of the Boksburg Lake social-ecological system. By addressing the primary question and research goals I aimed to gain insights into modern global socialecological systems, the mechanisms that drive high social-ecological risk and the requirements for and possibilities of global systemic change. Drawing on a broad reading of social-ecological literature from different vantage points, tools with explanatory power were developed to probe for generative mechanisms in the Boksburg Lake social-ecological system (goal 1). The human capacity for symbolic representation is identified as an emergent property of coevolving human-ecological systems. These symbolic representations become expressed in culture and worldviews, and influence patterns of identifying, types of knowledge and forms of agency. The nature of these will determine the degree that cultural systems are embedded within ecological reality and the extent of cultural-ecological coupling. A cultural system closely coupled with ecological realities is likely to value ecological systems and manage them for their health, while less coupled cultural-ecological systems are likely to lead to the opposite. Because of their integrated nature, the extent of ecological health and value will affect the decline or sustainability of cultural-ecological systems. There are numerous examples of the learning that can take place when cultural-ecological systems are facing decline. This learning can enhance or reduce biophyllic instincts that become encoded in patterns of identifying, types of knowledge and forms of agency. This in turn affects the strength of cultural-ecological coupling and the extent that human societies co-evolve with ecological systems. , Normalising ideologies is a concept coined in the thesis to refer to symbolic representations of reality that have become integral to a social fabric and determine meaning, while maintaining the domination of the powerful. These ideologies determine patterns of identifying, knowledge and agency and are recognised as having a fundamental influence on the resilience of social-ecological systems. Four normalising ideologies are identified that promote apparent human progress at the expense of ecological integrity and social equality and thus alienation with each other and the ecological world. These are human-ecological dualism, anthropocentrism, nature is mechanised and nature is to be controlled. There are also a number of ideologies promoting connectedness with the ecological world that, if they became normalised, would support greater social-ecological resilience for well-being. Generative mechanisms driving the current degradation of the Boksburg Lake socialecological system were identified (goal 2). Drawing on critical methodology, the main method adopted was document analysis of the Boksburg Advertiser archives, Boksburg’s local newspaper. Four generative mechanisms are recognised as most influential. Two of these have been named hegemonic symbolic systems. The primary symbolic system consists of the four normalising ideologies, mentioned above, that promote human progress at the expense of ecological health. The secondary, more explicit symbolic system, built on this, consists of the following normative ideologies: economic growth is imperative, unrestrained development is promoted, competition is the necessary means and consumerism is the good life. These two symbolic systems have had causal influence on the systematic erosion of ecological processes and biological diversity that has occurred in Boksburg, with the consequent undermining of social-ecological resilience for well-being. The third mechanism that constrains resilience is the power dynamics that have shaped Boksburg’s economic history and social-ecological system. This has resulted in a society built on inequality and injustice with all its associated social and environmental ills, expressed as externalities. The fourth mechanism resides in Boksburg’s political and municipal dynamics. These structures are not designed to tackle complex social-ecological problems and they hold considerable agential power, yet seem dysfunctional at present. Learning mechanisms that support transformation for greater social-ecological resilience of the Boksburg Lake social-ecological system were identified (goal 3). By adopting the role of a reflexive practitioner, supported by action research, case study and interpretivist methodologies, data on the empirical manifestations of the environmental educational initiative were collected. Methods included semistructured interviews, focus groups, document analysis and participant observation. Findings indicate that schools and churches are important institutions that can positively influence patterns of identifying, knowledge about and agency for Boksburg Lake and can thus play a role in transforming hegemonic normalising ideologies. Important learning mechanisms identified included: Learning reflexively together within communities of practice that provide opportunities for active rather than passive learning; involving the youth as they are a group of people with notable enthusiasm, vision, energy and motivation; learning through information acquisition, investigation, action and deliberation; learning about abstract concepts and theoretical knowledge but embedding this in local realities; and learning that provides reference markers for how things can be different.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2015
- Authors: Fox, Helen Elizabeth
- Date: 2015
- Subjects: Boksburg Lake and Wetland project , Reservoirs -- South Africa -- Boksburg , Water -- Pollution -- South Africa -- Boksburg , Human ecology -- South Africa -- Boksburg , Social learning -- South Africa -- Boksburg , Critical realism
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: vital:6048 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1017872
- Description: This thesis is based on a case study of the degraded Boksburg Lake social-ecological system and an environmental education initiative that aimed to support its transformation. This initiative aimed to involve local people in reclaiming the lake’s social and ecological value, through a process of collectively reimagining possibilities, shaping identities, gaining knowledge and developing local human agency. The focus was on social learning processes in schools and churches to explore opportunities for co-engaged reflexivity that might produce transformation. Schools and Christian churches, two institutions that reflect modern, western socialecological worldviews also have the potential to bring about change. Critical Realism was chosen as my philosophical framework as it provided the tools to explore deeper mechanisms beyond empirical reality, both influencing the degrading trajectory as well as providing possibilities for transformation. It also legitimised case study research as a means to understand more generalised processes characterising modern social-ecological systems. The choice of Critical Realism informed the scope of my primary research question: What generative mechanisms constrain and enable the development of social-ecological resilience for well-being, in the modern social-ecological system of Boksburg Lake? The following three goals were formulated to address this primary question. Goal 1: Based on a multitheoretical perspective of social-ecological literature, develop conceptual tools that have explanatory power to probe generative mechanisms operating in the Boksburg Lake social-ecological system. Goal 2: Identify generative mechanisms driving the current degradation of the Boksburg Lake social-ecological system. Goal 3: Identify learning mechanisms that support transformation for greater social-ecological resilience of the Boksburg Lake social-ecological system. By addressing the primary question and research goals I aimed to gain insights into modern global socialecological systems, the mechanisms that drive high social-ecological risk and the requirements for and possibilities of global systemic change. Drawing on a broad reading of social-ecological literature from different vantage points, tools with explanatory power were developed to probe for generative mechanisms in the Boksburg Lake social-ecological system (goal 1). The human capacity for symbolic representation is identified as an emergent property of coevolving human-ecological systems. These symbolic representations become expressed in culture and worldviews, and influence patterns of identifying, types of knowledge and forms of agency. The nature of these will determine the degree that cultural systems are embedded within ecological reality and the extent of cultural-ecological coupling. A cultural system closely coupled with ecological realities is likely to value ecological systems and manage them for their health, while less coupled cultural-ecological systems are likely to lead to the opposite. Because of their integrated nature, the extent of ecological health and value will affect the decline or sustainability of cultural-ecological systems. There are numerous examples of the learning that can take place when cultural-ecological systems are facing decline. This learning can enhance or reduce biophyllic instincts that become encoded in patterns of identifying, types of knowledge and forms of agency. This in turn affects the strength of cultural-ecological coupling and the extent that human societies co-evolve with ecological systems. , Normalising ideologies is a concept coined in the thesis to refer to symbolic representations of reality that have become integral to a social fabric and determine meaning, while maintaining the domination of the powerful. These ideologies determine patterns of identifying, knowledge and agency and are recognised as having a fundamental influence on the resilience of social-ecological systems. Four normalising ideologies are identified that promote apparent human progress at the expense of ecological integrity and social equality and thus alienation with each other and the ecological world. These are human-ecological dualism, anthropocentrism, nature is mechanised and nature is to be controlled. There are also a number of ideologies promoting connectedness with the ecological world that, if they became normalised, would support greater social-ecological resilience for well-being. Generative mechanisms driving the current degradation of the Boksburg Lake socialecological system were identified (goal 2). Drawing on critical methodology, the main method adopted was document analysis of the Boksburg Advertiser archives, Boksburg’s local newspaper. Four generative mechanisms are recognised as most influential. Two of these have been named hegemonic symbolic systems. The primary symbolic system consists of the four normalising ideologies, mentioned above, that promote human progress at the expense of ecological health. The secondary, more explicit symbolic system, built on this, consists of the following normative ideologies: economic growth is imperative, unrestrained development is promoted, competition is the necessary means and consumerism is the good life. These two symbolic systems have had causal influence on the systematic erosion of ecological processes and biological diversity that has occurred in Boksburg, with the consequent undermining of social-ecological resilience for well-being. The third mechanism that constrains resilience is the power dynamics that have shaped Boksburg’s economic history and social-ecological system. This has resulted in a society built on inequality and injustice with all its associated social and environmental ills, expressed as externalities. The fourth mechanism resides in Boksburg’s political and municipal dynamics. These structures are not designed to tackle complex social-ecological problems and they hold considerable agential power, yet seem dysfunctional at present. Learning mechanisms that support transformation for greater social-ecological resilience of the Boksburg Lake social-ecological system were identified (goal 3). By adopting the role of a reflexive practitioner, supported by action research, case study and interpretivist methodologies, data on the empirical manifestations of the environmental educational initiative were collected. Methods included semistructured interviews, focus groups, document analysis and participant observation. Findings indicate that schools and churches are important institutions that can positively influence patterns of identifying, knowledge about and agency for Boksburg Lake and can thus play a role in transforming hegemonic normalising ideologies. Important learning mechanisms identified included: Learning reflexively together within communities of practice that provide opportunities for active rather than passive learning; involving the youth as they are a group of people with notable enthusiasm, vision, energy and motivation; learning through information acquisition, investigation, action and deliberation; learning about abstract concepts and theoretical knowledge but embedding this in local realities; and learning that provides reference markers for how things can be different.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2015
The transformative potential of intersecting arts-based inquiry and environmental learning in urban South Africa: a focus on socio-ecological water pedagogies
- Authors: James, Anna Katharine
- Date: 2022-04-08
- Subjects: Environmental education South Africa , Water conservation Study and teaching South Africa , Art in environmental education South Africa , Social learning South Africa , Educational sociology South Africa , Water-supply Social aspects South Africa , Critical realism , Socio-ecological education
- Language: English
- Type: Academic theses , Doctoral theses , text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/290660 , vital:56772 , DOI 10.21504/10962/290660
- Description: In this study I explore and explain transformative potential in arts-based environmental learning with a focus on water pedagogy. The study took place over a period of four years, where approximately 40 school pupils between the ages of 10 and 17 years-old were engaged in participatory arts-based inquiries into water located across unequal neighbourhoods in Cape Town, South Africa. Educators, school learners, citizens and decision-makers hold different historical, cultural, political and spiritual perspectives on water. These play a role in shaping what is termed in this research the ‘hydro-social cycle’. Yet, due to dominant ideas of what counts as knowing and truth, educators in educational settings struggle to account for the complexity of water, limiting educational encounters to a partial knowing leading mostly to limited unimaginative framings of problems and solutions. My focus on transformative potential in learning is derived from a concern for how environmental education encounters and the sense-making they enable, are infused by socio-economic, political, and historical elements, specifically colonialism, capitalism, and white supremacist racism. The connections between the multiple layers of capitalist crisis and the ever-urgent environmental crisis are not adequately made in mainstream forms of water education. The research explores how arts-based pedagogy could enable a productive meeting of critical environmental education with ecological literacies. Within this positioning, transformative potential considers how educational engagements position questions about water within the social life of participants/learners and inform learning that leads to fuller and more nuanced greater knowledge. Theoretically, I work with an interrogation of critical education theory, underlaboured by critical realism which enabled me to rigorously consider how claims to knowing are shaped by their accompanying assumptions of what is real. Drawing on recent debates in critical education theory, I resist the notion of critique as ideology and engage instead in the craftsmanship of contextual and responsive inquiry practice. This has enabled me to articulate processes and relationships in water education encounters with meaningful understandings of the effects of simultaneous crises rooted in racial capitalism and environmental crisis. My methodological approach is arts-based educational research with a directive to reflect upon educational encounters in an integrated way. It includes two parts informing the facilitation and analysis of open-ended learning processes. One component was arts-based inquiry practice developed for exploring complexity, drawing on the thinking of Norris (2009, 2011) and Finley (2016, 2017). The second part holds reflective space for these encounters guided by the practice of pedagogical narration inspired by the Reggio Amelia approach, demonstrated by Pacini-Ketchabaw, Nxumalo, Kocher, Elliot and Sanchez (2014). Clarifying the intellectual work of a responsive educator-researcher, pedagogical narration brings multiple theoretical lenses into conversation with emergent dimensions of educational process. In practice, in order to transgress the dominance of colonial white supremacist knowledge frames of water, I needed to be curious, to be confounded, to expect the unexpected in the educational encounters with participants and this mirroring of practice was emulated by the participants as they followed their own questions about water in Mzansi (South Africa). In our work together we came up against assumptions we had previously not questioned as individuals. Together we explored the implications of this by, for example, questioning who is responsible for saving water. These explorations required bringing together science knowledge and everyday knowledge at multiple scales: the household, catchment, government and global. It required us to be critical of how language and images are mobilized in public communication and school curriculums; for example, representations of water are infused with history and power in a way that impacts how we know and teach about water. The transformative potential of this pedagogical space is generated through acts of creative expression which are seen as acts of absenting absence, for example exhibiting through play how water use in the household interconnects with gender and age relationships. As such, creative expression through multiple mediums or more-than-text enables a deeper understanding of water as well as openings for interdisciplinary engagement with learning about water. My research found that in bringing together the contributions of critical education and environmental education in practice, two shifts are needed: environmental educators need to view ecological literacy as inseparable from the social and political. The knowledge that is shared about water in the classroom has social and political implications. On the other hand, critical educators need to better locate justice concerns in the material and ecological world at scale. Arts-based inquiry, as a kind of scaffolding for pedagogical process, has the potential to enable these shifts by opening up fixed analytical frames. Making these shifts requires a reflective practice on the part of the educator to navigate the inherited blind spots in environmental learning and critical education, such as dualities. One way to do this is for the educator to identify absences, as articulated in the Critical Realist tradition, and consider how these absences might be absented. This differs from a simplistic process of critique in the possibilities it opens up for collaboration between different schools of thought rather than further polarisation and alienation between educators and knowledge keepers on social ecologies. These insights have relevance for many sites of environmental education practice, such as natural science lecturers, school teachers or community activists. It is knowledge-learning work emergent from and responsive to complex ecological crisis, which requires everyone to rethink and open up to new ways of being, seeing and doing around these issues. The transformative potential of this work is that the thinking and transforming at all scales can be catalysed and grounded through the arts based educational encounters with the participants. , Thesis (PhD) -- Faculty of Education, Education, 2022
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2022-04-08
- Authors: James, Anna Katharine
- Date: 2022-04-08
- Subjects: Environmental education South Africa , Water conservation Study and teaching South Africa , Art in environmental education South Africa , Social learning South Africa , Educational sociology South Africa , Water-supply Social aspects South Africa , Critical realism , Socio-ecological education
- Language: English
- Type: Academic theses , Doctoral theses , text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/290660 , vital:56772 , DOI 10.21504/10962/290660
- Description: In this study I explore and explain transformative potential in arts-based environmental learning with a focus on water pedagogy. The study took place over a period of four years, where approximately 40 school pupils between the ages of 10 and 17 years-old were engaged in participatory arts-based inquiries into water located across unequal neighbourhoods in Cape Town, South Africa. Educators, school learners, citizens and decision-makers hold different historical, cultural, political and spiritual perspectives on water. These play a role in shaping what is termed in this research the ‘hydro-social cycle’. Yet, due to dominant ideas of what counts as knowing and truth, educators in educational settings struggle to account for the complexity of water, limiting educational encounters to a partial knowing leading mostly to limited unimaginative framings of problems and solutions. My focus on transformative potential in learning is derived from a concern for how environmental education encounters and the sense-making they enable, are infused by socio-economic, political, and historical elements, specifically colonialism, capitalism, and white supremacist racism. The connections between the multiple layers of capitalist crisis and the ever-urgent environmental crisis are not adequately made in mainstream forms of water education. The research explores how arts-based pedagogy could enable a productive meeting of critical environmental education with ecological literacies. Within this positioning, transformative potential considers how educational engagements position questions about water within the social life of participants/learners and inform learning that leads to fuller and more nuanced greater knowledge. Theoretically, I work with an interrogation of critical education theory, underlaboured by critical realism which enabled me to rigorously consider how claims to knowing are shaped by their accompanying assumptions of what is real. Drawing on recent debates in critical education theory, I resist the notion of critique as ideology and engage instead in the craftsmanship of contextual and responsive inquiry practice. This has enabled me to articulate processes and relationships in water education encounters with meaningful understandings of the effects of simultaneous crises rooted in racial capitalism and environmental crisis. My methodological approach is arts-based educational research with a directive to reflect upon educational encounters in an integrated way. It includes two parts informing the facilitation and analysis of open-ended learning processes. One component was arts-based inquiry practice developed for exploring complexity, drawing on the thinking of Norris (2009, 2011) and Finley (2016, 2017). The second part holds reflective space for these encounters guided by the practice of pedagogical narration inspired by the Reggio Amelia approach, demonstrated by Pacini-Ketchabaw, Nxumalo, Kocher, Elliot and Sanchez (2014). Clarifying the intellectual work of a responsive educator-researcher, pedagogical narration brings multiple theoretical lenses into conversation with emergent dimensions of educational process. In practice, in order to transgress the dominance of colonial white supremacist knowledge frames of water, I needed to be curious, to be confounded, to expect the unexpected in the educational encounters with participants and this mirroring of practice was emulated by the participants as they followed their own questions about water in Mzansi (South Africa). In our work together we came up against assumptions we had previously not questioned as individuals. Together we explored the implications of this by, for example, questioning who is responsible for saving water. These explorations required bringing together science knowledge and everyday knowledge at multiple scales: the household, catchment, government and global. It required us to be critical of how language and images are mobilized in public communication and school curriculums; for example, representations of water are infused with history and power in a way that impacts how we know and teach about water. The transformative potential of this pedagogical space is generated through acts of creative expression which are seen as acts of absenting absence, for example exhibiting through play how water use in the household interconnects with gender and age relationships. As such, creative expression through multiple mediums or more-than-text enables a deeper understanding of water as well as openings for interdisciplinary engagement with learning about water. My research found that in bringing together the contributions of critical education and environmental education in practice, two shifts are needed: environmental educators need to view ecological literacy as inseparable from the social and political. The knowledge that is shared about water in the classroom has social and political implications. On the other hand, critical educators need to better locate justice concerns in the material and ecological world at scale. Arts-based inquiry, as a kind of scaffolding for pedagogical process, has the potential to enable these shifts by opening up fixed analytical frames. Making these shifts requires a reflective practice on the part of the educator to navigate the inherited blind spots in environmental learning and critical education, such as dualities. One way to do this is for the educator to identify absences, as articulated in the Critical Realist tradition, and consider how these absences might be absented. This differs from a simplistic process of critique in the possibilities it opens up for collaboration between different schools of thought rather than further polarisation and alienation between educators and knowledge keepers on social ecologies. These insights have relevance for many sites of environmental education practice, such as natural science lecturers, school teachers or community activists. It is knowledge-learning work emergent from and responsive to complex ecological crisis, which requires everyone to rethink and open up to new ways of being, seeing and doing around these issues. The transformative potential of this work is that the thinking and transforming at all scales can be catalysed and grounded through the arts based educational encounters with the participants. , Thesis (PhD) -- Faculty of Education, Education, 2022
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2022-04-08
Exploring learners’ engagement with literacy in a book club
- Authors: Jamieson, Vuyokazi
- Date: 2022-04-08
- Subjects: Book clubs (Discussion groups) South Africa Makhanda , Literacy South Africa Makhanda , High school students Books and reading South Africa Makhanda , Books and reading South Africa Makhanda , Reading, Psychology of , Service learning South Africa Makhanda , Critical realism
- Language: English
- Type: Academic theses , Master's theses , text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/263601 , vital:53642
- Description: This study observes the literacy engagement of a group of learners enrolled in Grades 8–10 in Nombulelo High School, a poorly-resourced school in the city of Makhanda in the Eastern Cape, South Africa. The learners participated in a book club hosted and run by St Andrew’s College, a privileged independent school, as a community engagement initiative. The idea of extending literacy engagement and engagement with written texts beyond textbooks used in schools is critical for learners with ambitions to enter higher education. Studying at a university requires a lot of reading, and if reading has not been taken up as a practice that involves more than ‘text consulting’ (Geisler, 1994) students will be unlikely to read the number of texts required of them. Studies (see Geisler, 1994 for an overview) have shown how the literacy of the university is very different to school based literacies. The assumption behind the study on which this thesis reports is that engagement with fictional texts might promote reading and bring about understandings of this activity as enjoyable and not a task only associated with schooling. The study is underpinned by a critical realist philosophy which allowed for the identification of structures and mechanisms that led to the emergence of literacy events in learners’ lives and to their experiences and observations of those events. The study was guided by the following questions: How do learners from a poorly-resourced high school engage around fictional texts in the context of a book club? What enables or constrains this engagement? The study was impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic in that lockdown requirements meant that learners from St Andrew’s College could not participate in the book club as much as anticipated initially as they had been forced to return home to pursue online learning. Learners from Nombuelo High School were, however, granted access to College premises, where they met in the school library following strict Covid protocols. The study draws on in-depth interviews, observations and document analysis of five learners from Nombulelo High School who participated in the book club, as well as on book reviews they wrote for the book club website. The critical realist analysis allows for the identification of mechanisms in learners’ homes and communities that enable literacies, including those that are screen-based such as using a computer, mobile phones and other technologies. This study found evidence of challenges regarding school based texts, reading fictional texts and viewing it as an enrichment of the school project. Because of children were African the emergence of communal practices and story telling is woven throughout the results section. However, is an example of the complexity of social and economic challenges facing South African marginalised schools. , Thesis (MEd) -- Faculty of Education, Centre for Higher Education Research, 2022
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2022-04-08
- Authors: Jamieson, Vuyokazi
- Date: 2022-04-08
- Subjects: Book clubs (Discussion groups) South Africa Makhanda , Literacy South Africa Makhanda , High school students Books and reading South Africa Makhanda , Books and reading South Africa Makhanda , Reading, Psychology of , Service learning South Africa Makhanda , Critical realism
- Language: English
- Type: Academic theses , Master's theses , text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/263601 , vital:53642
- Description: This study observes the literacy engagement of a group of learners enrolled in Grades 8–10 in Nombulelo High School, a poorly-resourced school in the city of Makhanda in the Eastern Cape, South Africa. The learners participated in a book club hosted and run by St Andrew’s College, a privileged independent school, as a community engagement initiative. The idea of extending literacy engagement and engagement with written texts beyond textbooks used in schools is critical for learners with ambitions to enter higher education. Studying at a university requires a lot of reading, and if reading has not been taken up as a practice that involves more than ‘text consulting’ (Geisler, 1994) students will be unlikely to read the number of texts required of them. Studies (see Geisler, 1994 for an overview) have shown how the literacy of the university is very different to school based literacies. The assumption behind the study on which this thesis reports is that engagement with fictional texts might promote reading and bring about understandings of this activity as enjoyable and not a task only associated with schooling. The study is underpinned by a critical realist philosophy which allowed for the identification of structures and mechanisms that led to the emergence of literacy events in learners’ lives and to their experiences and observations of those events. The study was guided by the following questions: How do learners from a poorly-resourced high school engage around fictional texts in the context of a book club? What enables or constrains this engagement? The study was impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic in that lockdown requirements meant that learners from St Andrew’s College could not participate in the book club as much as anticipated initially as they had been forced to return home to pursue online learning. Learners from Nombuelo High School were, however, granted access to College premises, where they met in the school library following strict Covid protocols. The study draws on in-depth interviews, observations and document analysis of five learners from Nombulelo High School who participated in the book club, as well as on book reviews they wrote for the book club website. The critical realist analysis allows for the identification of mechanisms in learners’ homes and communities that enable literacies, including those that are screen-based such as using a computer, mobile phones and other technologies. This study found evidence of challenges regarding school based texts, reading fictional texts and viewing it as an enrichment of the school project. Because of children were African the emergence of communal practices and story telling is woven throughout the results section. However, is an example of the complexity of social and economic challenges facing South African marginalised schools. , Thesis (MEd) -- Faculty of Education, Centre for Higher Education Research, 2022
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2022-04-08
Museums for the Planet: Critical Realist Philosophy and the Possibility of an Eco-decolonial Museology
- Authors: Jeffery, Thomas Carnegie
- Date: 2021-10-29
- Subjects: Museums Management , Critical realism , Ontology , Decolonization , Organizational change , Social ecology , Eco-decolonial
- Language: English
- Type: Doctoral theses , text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/192692 , vital:45251 , 10.21504/10962/192692
- Description: This study introduces dialectical critical realism into museology as a philosophical underlabourer for the development of new theoretical potentials for the transformation of museum practice. The idea of the museum is in a moment of fluidity evident in emergent decolonial and ecological perspectives and in the International Council of Museum’s process of redefinition of the museum. The potential to reimagine the museum lacks a coherent philosophical and theoretical foundation. The persistence of museological dualism separates the social from the ecological and absents the emergence of relational modes of thinking and practice. This study conceives an ecological-decolonial or eco-decolonial mode of museology that is disruptive of dualism and generative of relationality, and is thus generative of agency for deeper, more effective and enduring social-ecological justice. The core of this thesis is the development of the eco-decolonial mode of museology through the DCR onto-axiological chain or ‘MELD’ schema. At 1M a depth ontological analysis augmented by interviews with key informants establishes a dialectic of society and ecology in the museological context. 1M surfaces capitalism and the implicit neoliberal ontology of museology as deep causal mechanisms of the 2E persistence of museological human-nature dualism. The paradox of ‘emancipatory neoliberalism’ is a policy-practice contradiction that absents potentials for transformation of the museum and that is held in place by the grounding ontological activity of museology, collection. The 2E perspective on absences enables the emergence of new transformative pathways towards the 3L vision of the eco-decolonial mode of museology as a (4D) new way of thinking and working to resolve neoliberal restrictions. The fundamental 4D change envisioned for museum philosophy, theory and practice is an ontological transformation from traditionalist human-nature dualism to a progressive human-nature dialectic. A case study considers instances where museum workers exercised the agency to expand practice in this way. Future work using the expansive learning methodology of Change Laboratories will develop and implement the potentials generated by the onto-axiological chain for the eco-decolonial mode to bring real change to traditional, dualist museum practice, in order to ensure the relevance and the agency of the museum as a social structure in and for a changing world. , Thesis (PhD) -- Faculty of Education, Education, 2021
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2021-10-29
- Authors: Jeffery, Thomas Carnegie
- Date: 2021-10-29
- Subjects: Museums Management , Critical realism , Ontology , Decolonization , Organizational change , Social ecology , Eco-decolonial
- Language: English
- Type: Doctoral theses , text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/192692 , vital:45251 , 10.21504/10962/192692
- Description: This study introduces dialectical critical realism into museology as a philosophical underlabourer for the development of new theoretical potentials for the transformation of museum practice. The idea of the museum is in a moment of fluidity evident in emergent decolonial and ecological perspectives and in the International Council of Museum’s process of redefinition of the museum. The potential to reimagine the museum lacks a coherent philosophical and theoretical foundation. The persistence of museological dualism separates the social from the ecological and absents the emergence of relational modes of thinking and practice. This study conceives an ecological-decolonial or eco-decolonial mode of museology that is disruptive of dualism and generative of relationality, and is thus generative of agency for deeper, more effective and enduring social-ecological justice. The core of this thesis is the development of the eco-decolonial mode of museology through the DCR onto-axiological chain or ‘MELD’ schema. At 1M a depth ontological analysis augmented by interviews with key informants establishes a dialectic of society and ecology in the museological context. 1M surfaces capitalism and the implicit neoliberal ontology of museology as deep causal mechanisms of the 2E persistence of museological human-nature dualism. The paradox of ‘emancipatory neoliberalism’ is a policy-practice contradiction that absents potentials for transformation of the museum and that is held in place by the grounding ontological activity of museology, collection. The 2E perspective on absences enables the emergence of new transformative pathways towards the 3L vision of the eco-decolonial mode of museology as a (4D) new way of thinking and working to resolve neoliberal restrictions. The fundamental 4D change envisioned for museum philosophy, theory and practice is an ontological transformation from traditionalist human-nature dualism to a progressive human-nature dialectic. A case study considers instances where museum workers exercised the agency to expand practice in this way. Future work using the expansive learning methodology of Change Laboratories will develop and implement the potentials generated by the onto-axiological chain for the eco-decolonial mode to bring real change to traditional, dualist museum practice, in order to ensure the relevance and the agency of the museum as a social structure in and for a changing world. , Thesis (PhD) -- Faculty of Education, Education, 2021
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2021-10-29
Investigating and expanding learning in co-management of fisheries resources to inform extension training
- Kachilonda, Dick Daffu Kachanga
- Authors: Kachilonda, Dick Daffu Kachanga
- Date: 2015
- Subjects: Fishery management -- Study and teaching -- Malawi , Environmental education -- Malawi , Social learning -- Malawi , Community-based conservation -- Malawi , Learning -- Philosophy , Critical realism , Education -- Social aspects -- Research
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: vital:2053 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1018659
- Description: This study investigates and expands learning associated with the co-management of fisheries resources to inform extension and training in the fisheries sector in two case study sites in Malawi. The study was located in the field of environmental education with a specific focus on community learning, agency and sustainability practices in co-management of fisheries resources. It focuses on how fisheries stakeholder learning can be mediated through expansive social learning processes to inform extension and training in the Malawi fisheries sector and aims at understanding learning as an emergent, agency centred process of change through social learning models that are said to have power to mobilise community agency for change. The empirical research for the study was conducted in two Malawian fishing communities: in Lake Malombe and the south-east arm of Lake Malawi using qualitative case study research design. The two sites were selected because they were the first sites in Malawi to implement fisheries co-management programmes following the failure of centralised management of fisheries resources. Data was generated through interviews, focus group discussions, document analysis, observations and change laboratory workshops in both sites. The two sites fall under one administrative office based in Mangochi where the two important institutions of the sector – the Fisheries Research Unit of the Department of Fisheries and the Fisheries College (a government institution responsible for the training of extension services) are also based. Both sites have implemented new governance structures named Beach Village Committees which are community-based organisational structures that function in parallel with traditional authorities to manage the fishery. Contextual and literature review work showed that extension services and programmes over the past hundred years, as observed in the fisheries sector in Malawi and in extension services elsewhere, have co-evolved with approaches to natural resources management. Early approaches to natural resources management involved traditional management (associated extension services and programmes were community based); later fisheries governance practices changed to centralised management and associated extension approaches were mainly top-down involving command and control or technology transfer. These early approaches have been problematic as resource users were pushed away from their own resources and were viewed as poachers. This resulted in loss of ownership among resources users. Recently in Malawi, after the change of government to democracy in 1994, fisheries management policy focused on co-management and/or adaptive co-management approaches, an approach that has also been adopted in other African water bodies. This has implications for extension service programmes in the fisheries sector that are not yet well defined. The study’s literature review revealed that co-management approaches assume collaborative learning, or co-learning, also termed social learning, or approaches that promote the engagement of different actors who are working on shared practice. They also assume a new form of agency among co-management stakeholders and extension workers. However, the theoretical foundations for establishing co-learning or social learning approaches in support of co-management policies are not well established in the fisheries co-management sector in Malawi, nor are the practices of how to support co-learning amongst diverse stakeholders in the fisheries co-management in the Lake Malawi context. This study sought to address this gap in knowledge and practice.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2015
- Authors: Kachilonda, Dick Daffu Kachanga
- Date: 2015
- Subjects: Fishery management -- Study and teaching -- Malawi , Environmental education -- Malawi , Social learning -- Malawi , Community-based conservation -- Malawi , Learning -- Philosophy , Critical realism , Education -- Social aspects -- Research
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: vital:2053 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1018659
- Description: This study investigates and expands learning associated with the co-management of fisheries resources to inform extension and training in the fisheries sector in two case study sites in Malawi. The study was located in the field of environmental education with a specific focus on community learning, agency and sustainability practices in co-management of fisheries resources. It focuses on how fisheries stakeholder learning can be mediated through expansive social learning processes to inform extension and training in the Malawi fisheries sector and aims at understanding learning as an emergent, agency centred process of change through social learning models that are said to have power to mobilise community agency for change. The empirical research for the study was conducted in two Malawian fishing communities: in Lake Malombe and the south-east arm of Lake Malawi using qualitative case study research design. The two sites were selected because they were the first sites in Malawi to implement fisheries co-management programmes following the failure of centralised management of fisheries resources. Data was generated through interviews, focus group discussions, document analysis, observations and change laboratory workshops in both sites. The two sites fall under one administrative office based in Mangochi where the two important institutions of the sector – the Fisheries Research Unit of the Department of Fisheries and the Fisheries College (a government institution responsible for the training of extension services) are also based. Both sites have implemented new governance structures named Beach Village Committees which are community-based organisational structures that function in parallel with traditional authorities to manage the fishery. Contextual and literature review work showed that extension services and programmes over the past hundred years, as observed in the fisheries sector in Malawi and in extension services elsewhere, have co-evolved with approaches to natural resources management. Early approaches to natural resources management involved traditional management (associated extension services and programmes were community based); later fisheries governance practices changed to centralised management and associated extension approaches were mainly top-down involving command and control or technology transfer. These early approaches have been problematic as resource users were pushed away from their own resources and were viewed as poachers. This resulted in loss of ownership among resources users. Recently in Malawi, after the change of government to democracy in 1994, fisheries management policy focused on co-management and/or adaptive co-management approaches, an approach that has also been adopted in other African water bodies. This has implications for extension service programmes in the fisheries sector that are not yet well defined. The study’s literature review revealed that co-management approaches assume collaborative learning, or co-learning, also termed social learning, or approaches that promote the engagement of different actors who are working on shared practice. They also assume a new form of agency among co-management stakeholders and extension workers. However, the theoretical foundations for establishing co-learning or social learning approaches in support of co-management policies are not well established in the fisheries co-management sector in Malawi, nor are the practices of how to support co-learning amongst diverse stakeholders in the fisheries co-management in the Lake Malawi context. This study sought to address this gap in knowledge and practice.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2015
Can expansive (social) learning processes strengthen organisational learning for improved wetland management in a plantation forestry company, and if so how? : a case study of Mondi
- Authors: Lindley, David Stewart
- Date: 2014
- Subjects: Mondi Group , Wetland management -- South Africa , Wetland conservation -- Study and teaching (Continuing education) , Employees -- Training of -- South Africa , Action theory , Critical realism , Social learning , Environmental education -- South Africa
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: vital:2003 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1015661
- Description: Mondi is an international packaging and paper company that manages over 300 000 ha of land in South Africa. After over a decade of working with Mondi to improve its wetland management, wetland sustainability practices were still not integrated into the broader forestry operations, despite some significant cases of successful wetland rehabilitation. An interventionist research project was therefore conducted to explore the factors inhibiting improved wetland management, and determine if and how expansive social learning processes could strengthen organisational learning and development to overcome these factors. In doing so, the research has investigated how informal adult learning supports organisational change to strengthen wetland and environmental sustainability practices, within a corporate plantation forestry context. How individual and/or group-based learning interactions translate to the collective, at the level of organisational change was a key issue probed in this study. The following three research questions were used to guide the research: 1. What tensions and contradictions exist in wetland management in a plantation forestry company? 2. Can expansive learning begin to address the tensions and contradictions that exist in wetland management in a plantation forestry company, for improved sustainability practices? 3. Can expansive social learning strengthen organisational learning and development, enabling Mondi to improve its wetland sustainability practices, and if so how does it do this? Cultural historical activity theory (CHAT) and the theory of expansive learning provided an epistemological framework for the research. The philosophy of critical realism gave ontological depth to the research, and contributed to a deeper understanding of CHAT and expansive learning. Critical realism was therefore used as a philosophy to underlabour the theoretical framework of the research. However CHAT and expansive learning could not provide the depth of detail required to explain how the expansive learning, organisational social change, and boundary crossings that are necessary for assembling the collective were taking place. Realist social theory (developed out of critical realism by Margaret Archer as an ontologically located theory of how and why social change occurs, or does not) supported the research to do this. The morphogenetic framework was used as a methodology for applying realist social theory. The expansive learning cycle was used as a methodology for applying CHAT and the theory of expansive learning; guiding the development of new knowledge creation required by Mondi staff to identify contradictions and associated tensions inhibiting wetland management, understand their root causes, and develop solutions. Through the expansive learning process, the tensions and contradictions become generative as a tool supporting expansive social learning, rather than as a means to an end where universal consensus was reached on how to circumvent the contradictions. The research was conducted in five phases: • Phase 1: Contextual profiling to identify and describe three activity systems in Mondi responsible for wetland management: 1) siviculture foresters; 2) environmental specialists; 3) community engagement facilitators. The data was generated and analysed through through document analysis, 17 interviews, 2nd generation CHAT analysis, and Critical Realist generative mechanism analysis; • Phase 2: Analysis and identification of tensions and contradictions through a first interventionist workshop. Modelling new solutions to deal with contractions, and examining and testing new models in and after the second interventionist workshop; • Phase 3: Implementing new models as wetland management projects and involved project implementation. This included boundary crossing practices of staff in the three activity systems, reflection and re-view in a further five progress review/interventionist workshops, and a management meeting and seminar; • Phase 4: Reflecting on the expansive learning process, results, and consolidation of changed practices, through nine reflective interviews and field observations; • Phase 5: Morphogenic/stasis analysis of the organisational change and development catalysed via the expansive social learning process (or not). The research found that expansive social learning processes supported organisational learning and development for improved wetland management by: 1) strengthening the scope, depth, and sophistication of participant understanding; 2) expanding the ways staff interact and collaboratively work together; 3) democratising decision making; 4) improving social relations between staff, reducing power differentials, and creating stronger relationships; 5) enhancing participant reflexivity through deeper understanding of social structures and cultural systems, and changing them to support improved wetland and environmental practice of staff, and developing the organisational structures and processes to strengthen organisational learning and development; and 6) using the contradictions identified as generative mechanisms to stimulate and catalyse organisational learning and development for changed wetland/environmental management.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2014
- Authors: Lindley, David Stewart
- Date: 2014
- Subjects: Mondi Group , Wetland management -- South Africa , Wetland conservation -- Study and teaching (Continuing education) , Employees -- Training of -- South Africa , Action theory , Critical realism , Social learning , Environmental education -- South Africa
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: vital:2003 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1015661
- Description: Mondi is an international packaging and paper company that manages over 300 000 ha of land in South Africa. After over a decade of working with Mondi to improve its wetland management, wetland sustainability practices were still not integrated into the broader forestry operations, despite some significant cases of successful wetland rehabilitation. An interventionist research project was therefore conducted to explore the factors inhibiting improved wetland management, and determine if and how expansive social learning processes could strengthen organisational learning and development to overcome these factors. In doing so, the research has investigated how informal adult learning supports organisational change to strengthen wetland and environmental sustainability practices, within a corporate plantation forestry context. How individual and/or group-based learning interactions translate to the collective, at the level of organisational change was a key issue probed in this study. The following three research questions were used to guide the research: 1. What tensions and contradictions exist in wetland management in a plantation forestry company? 2. Can expansive learning begin to address the tensions and contradictions that exist in wetland management in a plantation forestry company, for improved sustainability practices? 3. Can expansive social learning strengthen organisational learning and development, enabling Mondi to improve its wetland sustainability practices, and if so how does it do this? Cultural historical activity theory (CHAT) and the theory of expansive learning provided an epistemological framework for the research. The philosophy of critical realism gave ontological depth to the research, and contributed to a deeper understanding of CHAT and expansive learning. Critical realism was therefore used as a philosophy to underlabour the theoretical framework of the research. However CHAT and expansive learning could not provide the depth of detail required to explain how the expansive learning, organisational social change, and boundary crossings that are necessary for assembling the collective were taking place. Realist social theory (developed out of critical realism by Margaret Archer as an ontologically located theory of how and why social change occurs, or does not) supported the research to do this. The morphogenetic framework was used as a methodology for applying realist social theory. The expansive learning cycle was used as a methodology for applying CHAT and the theory of expansive learning; guiding the development of new knowledge creation required by Mondi staff to identify contradictions and associated tensions inhibiting wetland management, understand their root causes, and develop solutions. Through the expansive learning process, the tensions and contradictions become generative as a tool supporting expansive social learning, rather than as a means to an end where universal consensus was reached on how to circumvent the contradictions. The research was conducted in five phases: • Phase 1: Contextual profiling to identify and describe three activity systems in Mondi responsible for wetland management: 1) siviculture foresters; 2) environmental specialists; 3) community engagement facilitators. The data was generated and analysed through through document analysis, 17 interviews, 2nd generation CHAT analysis, and Critical Realist generative mechanism analysis; • Phase 2: Analysis and identification of tensions and contradictions through a first interventionist workshop. Modelling new solutions to deal with contractions, and examining and testing new models in and after the second interventionist workshop; • Phase 3: Implementing new models as wetland management projects and involved project implementation. This included boundary crossing practices of staff in the three activity systems, reflection and re-view in a further five progress review/interventionist workshops, and a management meeting and seminar; • Phase 4: Reflecting on the expansive learning process, results, and consolidation of changed practices, through nine reflective interviews and field observations; • Phase 5: Morphogenic/stasis analysis of the organisational change and development catalysed via the expansive social learning process (or not). The research found that expansive social learning processes supported organisational learning and development for improved wetland management by: 1) strengthening the scope, depth, and sophistication of participant understanding; 2) expanding the ways staff interact and collaboratively work together; 3) democratising decision making; 4) improving social relations between staff, reducing power differentials, and creating stronger relationships; 5) enhancing participant reflexivity through deeper understanding of social structures and cultural systems, and changing them to support improved wetland and environmental practice of staff, and developing the organisational structures and processes to strengthen organisational learning and development; and 6) using the contradictions identified as generative mechanisms to stimulate and catalyse organisational learning and development for changed wetland/environmental management.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2014
Mechanisms conditioning the implementation of an integrated quality assurance and enhancement approach at a South African University of Technology
- Authors: Mabote, Ntele Emily
- Date: 2023-10-13
- Subjects: Quality assurance , Tshwane University of Technology , Transformative learning , Critical realism , Social realism , Quality (Philosophy)
- Language: English
- Type: Academic theses , Doctoral theses , text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/431576 , vital:72787 , DOI 10.21504/10962/431576
- Description: Literature related to quality in higher education argues that achieving an integrated approach which balances improvement and accountability in a single quality assurance (QA) system, is not easy. In response to the literature, I decided to conduct a realist study to identify mechanisms that can enable or constrain the implementation of an integrated approach in a single quality assurance system at the Tshwane University of Technology (TUT). The scope of my study was limited to teaching and learning as one of the University’s core functions. An integrated approach encouraged a deliberate focus and attention on transformative learning and teaching. The main research question, “what mechanisms enable or constrain the implementation of an integrated approach to quality assurance and enhancement at the Tshwane University of Technology,” underpinned this study. I used Bhaskar’s critical realist philosophy as an underlabourer for the study and Archer’s social realism as an analytical framework to enable me to seek answers to the research questions. The study took the form of a case study at TUT. Data was generated through document analysis and thirty-five semi-structured interviews with agents from across the various levels and campuses of TUT. In keeping with a social realist study, I used Archer’s concept of analytical dualism to analyse structure, culture, and agency separately, and their interplay. My findings indicated that compliance and accountability are related cultural mechanisms and were dominant in the University’s cultural system. This signalled a strong emphasis on quality assurance (QA) rather than quality enhancement (QE). In addition, the findings showed that the University has established sufficient structural and agential enablements to assure the quality of learning and teaching. However, there is a need to integrate transformative cultural mechanisms into the University’s QA system. Furthermore, there were limited structural, cultural, and agential enablements to encourage enhancement. In this regard, I recommended mechanisms that should be in place for an integrated QA and QE approach to be successful at TUT. My main argument is that an institutional context that encourages structural, cultural, and agential QA and QE mechanisms to work in tandem can enable an integrated QA and QE approach. , Thesis (PhD) -- Faculty of Education, Centre for Higher Education Research, Teaching and Learning, 2023
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2023-10-13
- Authors: Mabote, Ntele Emily
- Date: 2023-10-13
- Subjects: Quality assurance , Tshwane University of Technology , Transformative learning , Critical realism , Social realism , Quality (Philosophy)
- Language: English
- Type: Academic theses , Doctoral theses , text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/431576 , vital:72787 , DOI 10.21504/10962/431576
- Description: Literature related to quality in higher education argues that achieving an integrated approach which balances improvement and accountability in a single quality assurance (QA) system, is not easy. In response to the literature, I decided to conduct a realist study to identify mechanisms that can enable or constrain the implementation of an integrated approach in a single quality assurance system at the Tshwane University of Technology (TUT). The scope of my study was limited to teaching and learning as one of the University’s core functions. An integrated approach encouraged a deliberate focus and attention on transformative learning and teaching. The main research question, “what mechanisms enable or constrain the implementation of an integrated approach to quality assurance and enhancement at the Tshwane University of Technology,” underpinned this study. I used Bhaskar’s critical realist philosophy as an underlabourer for the study and Archer’s social realism as an analytical framework to enable me to seek answers to the research questions. The study took the form of a case study at TUT. Data was generated through document analysis and thirty-five semi-structured interviews with agents from across the various levels and campuses of TUT. In keeping with a social realist study, I used Archer’s concept of analytical dualism to analyse structure, culture, and agency separately, and their interplay. My findings indicated that compliance and accountability are related cultural mechanisms and were dominant in the University’s cultural system. This signalled a strong emphasis on quality assurance (QA) rather than quality enhancement (QE). In addition, the findings showed that the University has established sufficient structural and agential enablements to assure the quality of learning and teaching. However, there is a need to integrate transformative cultural mechanisms into the University’s QA system. Furthermore, there were limited structural, cultural, and agential enablements to encourage enhancement. In this regard, I recommended mechanisms that should be in place for an integrated QA and QE approach to be successful at TUT. My main argument is that an institutional context that encourages structural, cultural, and agential QA and QE mechanisms to work in tandem can enable an integrated QA and QE approach. , Thesis (PhD) -- Faculty of Education, Centre for Higher Education Research, Teaching and Learning, 2023
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2023-10-13
Reimagining Culture and Creative Industries: Developing Career Connected Pathways
- Authors: Macklin, Scott
- Date: 2022-04
- Subjects: Critical realism , Sustainable development , Cultural industries
- Language: English
- Type: Master's theses , text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10948/57726 , vital:58227
- Description: Culture and Creative Industries (CCI) have an enormous potential to impact society’s socio-economic development. The approach of this study argues for the possibility of developing progressive social transformation and stands in distinction to those who argue against this possibility and casts doubt on the concept of development entirely. This study offers a hopeful alternative path navigating through overly optimistic and cynical viewpoints in the concept of a CCI ecosystem. The intent is to shift the discourse to consider creativity and culture as contributing to cross-sector dialogue and understanding, as well as allowing participants to take charge of their own development and providing the foundation for inclusive and sustainable capacity building and innovative progress. This study makes the development case that co-creating staged generative pathways with participants is critical for shifting societal circumstances away from “extractive” processes and towards more “complementary” actions leading to a desired state of inclusive well-being. Furthermore, it contends that scholarship that views Culture and Creative Industries (CCI) as self-contained or apart from the economy and society is ineffective. Due to its multi-sector, emergent and complex nature, a mixed methods research strategy drawing upon Margaret Archer's (1995) Morphogenetic Approach rooted in the Critical Realist meta-theory, was used in this research. Data was gathered and mined from a citywide situational survey, semi-structured questionnaires and co-sector focus group sessions. Transformative Scenario Planning (Kahane, 2012) was implemented to articulate a cross-sector and co-created account of the make-up, actions, and interrelationships of the facets and mechanisms that are responsible for shaping CCI as a significant contributor to a desired quality of life and well-being of a community. This research study sought to understand how, for whom, when and in what ways the powers, liabilities, dispositions, and resources found in the creative sector can be understood to raise engagement and strengthen the results of socio-economic initiatives. It is limited to a situational analysis of CCI in Seattle, Washington. ix Based on the findings, a case for capacity building through integrated career-connected learning pathways has been created and offered as a research-informed, adaptable, and adoptable Creative Exchange Learning Co-Lab (CELCL) curriculum. This staged development process is designed whereby the implications for individual and organisational revitalisation are intended to occur simultaneously. Creative actions, cultural expressions, learning opportunities, and business strategies are exposed, and opportunities arise through this collaborative development process, engaging transformative actions that generate activity around the needs, assets, and interests of particular communities of practice in Seattle. It is recommended that this process be implemented in order to move towards a more sustainable, connected, and equitable CCI ecosystem. , Thesis (MA) -- Faculty of Business and Economic science, 2022
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2022-04
- Authors: Macklin, Scott
- Date: 2022-04
- Subjects: Critical realism , Sustainable development , Cultural industries
- Language: English
- Type: Master's theses , text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10948/57726 , vital:58227
- Description: Culture and Creative Industries (CCI) have an enormous potential to impact society’s socio-economic development. The approach of this study argues for the possibility of developing progressive social transformation and stands in distinction to those who argue against this possibility and casts doubt on the concept of development entirely. This study offers a hopeful alternative path navigating through overly optimistic and cynical viewpoints in the concept of a CCI ecosystem. The intent is to shift the discourse to consider creativity and culture as contributing to cross-sector dialogue and understanding, as well as allowing participants to take charge of their own development and providing the foundation for inclusive and sustainable capacity building and innovative progress. This study makes the development case that co-creating staged generative pathways with participants is critical for shifting societal circumstances away from “extractive” processes and towards more “complementary” actions leading to a desired state of inclusive well-being. Furthermore, it contends that scholarship that views Culture and Creative Industries (CCI) as self-contained or apart from the economy and society is ineffective. Due to its multi-sector, emergent and complex nature, a mixed methods research strategy drawing upon Margaret Archer's (1995) Morphogenetic Approach rooted in the Critical Realist meta-theory, was used in this research. Data was gathered and mined from a citywide situational survey, semi-structured questionnaires and co-sector focus group sessions. Transformative Scenario Planning (Kahane, 2012) was implemented to articulate a cross-sector and co-created account of the make-up, actions, and interrelationships of the facets and mechanisms that are responsible for shaping CCI as a significant contributor to a desired quality of life and well-being of a community. This research study sought to understand how, for whom, when and in what ways the powers, liabilities, dispositions, and resources found in the creative sector can be understood to raise engagement and strengthen the results of socio-economic initiatives. It is limited to a situational analysis of CCI in Seattle, Washington. ix Based on the findings, a case for capacity building through integrated career-connected learning pathways has been created and offered as a research-informed, adaptable, and adoptable Creative Exchange Learning Co-Lab (CELCL) curriculum. This staged development process is designed whereby the implications for individual and organisational revitalisation are intended to occur simultaneously. Creative actions, cultural expressions, learning opportunities, and business strategies are exposed, and opportunities arise through this collaborative development process, engaging transformative actions that generate activity around the needs, assets, and interests of particular communities of practice in Seattle. It is recommended that this process be implemented in order to move towards a more sustainable, connected, and equitable CCI ecosystem. , Thesis (MA) -- Faculty of Business and Economic science, 2022
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2022-04
On locating the experiences of second year science students from rural areas in Higher Education in the field of science: lived rural experiences
- Madondo, Nkosinathi Emmanuel
- Authors: Madondo, Nkosinathi Emmanuel
- Date: 2020
- Subjects: Science students -- South Africa , Rural college students -- South Africa , Science -- Study and teaching (Higher) -- South Africa , Curriculum change -- South Africa , Learning -- Evaluation , Social justice and education -- South Africa , Action research in education -- South Africa , Participant observation -- South Africa , Critical realism , Ethnoscience -- South Africa , Focus groups -- South Africa , Bernstein, Basil
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/145758 , vital:38464
- Description: This study was designed to investigate the experiences of Second Year Science students who come from rural backgrounds within a Higher Education context. The purpose of the study was to understand the enabling and/or constraining factors that influence the teaching and learning of Second Year Science students who come from rural contexts. Given this purpose, the participants that were considered relevant to answer the question: What are the enabling and constraining factors that influence teaching and learning of second year Science students who come from rural backgrounds at a South African University? were students from rural areas enrolled in the Faculty of Science at the research site, academic teachers and senior leaders’, and roles in providing enabling and/or constraining teaching and learning environment. The phenomenon under investigation was thus, the extent to which the teaching and learning environment, in the field of science, enable or constrain access to the Discourse of science for students who come from rural areas. To generate data, the study used focus group discussions, Participatory Learning and Action (PLA) tools as part of Participatory Action Research (PAR), digital documentaries, as well as academic teachers’ rich descriptions of the rationale for the design and delivery techniques of their modules by means of focus group interviews, as well as curriculum review documents. The purpose of Action Research (AR) in this study was to enable change by way of advancing a self-consciousness, envisaged to yield some action based on the enablements or constraints identified by the participants involved. Archer’s (1995, 1996) analytical dualism was used as the analytical framework to identify the interplay of structural, cultural and agential mechanisms shaping the emergence of, and practices associated with students’ experiences of the science curriculum and academic teachers’ observations of these experiences. Bernstein’s pedagogic device was also used to explain the options that academic teachers have to shape the curriculum, a curriculum that would reflect the experiences of the heterogeneity of the student cohort when designing their course guides, for example. The analysis thus used Archer’s (1995, 1996) Morphogenesis/Morphostasis framework through which change or non-change can be observed over time. The work of Bhaskar (1975, 1979) was important in this regard because it allows us to separate what we see, experience and understand (in the transitive world) from what is independent of our thoughts and experiences (the intransitive world) when conducting scientific enquiry, so that we are able to deduce the ‘real’ factors that enable and constrain the events and experiences being studied. Since there are multiple mechanisms operative that can act to include or exclude students in Science classrooms, particularly those who come from lower class, including those who come from rural areas, this study focuses on curriculum as one mechanism that can be at play in the problem of exclusion. In this study, I argue, the University and its structures like curriculum are not neutral but are historical, cultural, political and social, which is why persistent apartheid legacy and coloniality were seen as playing a role in how the curriculum is designed and thus enacted. This is the reason, a decolonial gaze was adopted in order to engage with social justice issues and in the process tease out the social relations of knowledge practices. A decolonial gaze provided a way to re-describe the structuring of the curriculum and the contradictions it sets up for black students, particularly those who come from lower class backgrounds, including those from rural areas. Findings reveal that the way in which the science curriculum (and/or teaching and learning) is structured, and thus enacted, tends to favour certain worldviews to the exclusion of others. Also, findings show that when students are presented with knowledge that seems completely separate from them, their identities, their heritage, their backgrounds and value systems, accessing that knowledge can seem inordinately difficult. Consequently, students from rural contexts are often alienated, because the “world” they bring and know is often not considered part of the starting point, neither is it seen as relevant when teaching the science curriculum. There is therefore a clear need to bring something ‘from home’ into our teaching as a means of reassuring students that all is not foreign and that what they already know is valuable.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2020
- Authors: Madondo, Nkosinathi Emmanuel
- Date: 2020
- Subjects: Science students -- South Africa , Rural college students -- South Africa , Science -- Study and teaching (Higher) -- South Africa , Curriculum change -- South Africa , Learning -- Evaluation , Social justice and education -- South Africa , Action research in education -- South Africa , Participant observation -- South Africa , Critical realism , Ethnoscience -- South Africa , Focus groups -- South Africa , Bernstein, Basil
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/145758 , vital:38464
- Description: This study was designed to investigate the experiences of Second Year Science students who come from rural backgrounds within a Higher Education context. The purpose of the study was to understand the enabling and/or constraining factors that influence the teaching and learning of Second Year Science students who come from rural contexts. Given this purpose, the participants that were considered relevant to answer the question: What are the enabling and constraining factors that influence teaching and learning of second year Science students who come from rural backgrounds at a South African University? were students from rural areas enrolled in the Faculty of Science at the research site, academic teachers and senior leaders’, and roles in providing enabling and/or constraining teaching and learning environment. The phenomenon under investigation was thus, the extent to which the teaching and learning environment, in the field of science, enable or constrain access to the Discourse of science for students who come from rural areas. To generate data, the study used focus group discussions, Participatory Learning and Action (PLA) tools as part of Participatory Action Research (PAR), digital documentaries, as well as academic teachers’ rich descriptions of the rationale for the design and delivery techniques of their modules by means of focus group interviews, as well as curriculum review documents. The purpose of Action Research (AR) in this study was to enable change by way of advancing a self-consciousness, envisaged to yield some action based on the enablements or constraints identified by the participants involved. Archer’s (1995, 1996) analytical dualism was used as the analytical framework to identify the interplay of structural, cultural and agential mechanisms shaping the emergence of, and practices associated with students’ experiences of the science curriculum and academic teachers’ observations of these experiences. Bernstein’s pedagogic device was also used to explain the options that academic teachers have to shape the curriculum, a curriculum that would reflect the experiences of the heterogeneity of the student cohort when designing their course guides, for example. The analysis thus used Archer’s (1995, 1996) Morphogenesis/Morphostasis framework through which change or non-change can be observed over time. The work of Bhaskar (1975, 1979) was important in this regard because it allows us to separate what we see, experience and understand (in the transitive world) from what is independent of our thoughts and experiences (the intransitive world) when conducting scientific enquiry, so that we are able to deduce the ‘real’ factors that enable and constrain the events and experiences being studied. Since there are multiple mechanisms operative that can act to include or exclude students in Science classrooms, particularly those who come from lower class, including those who come from rural areas, this study focuses on curriculum as one mechanism that can be at play in the problem of exclusion. In this study, I argue, the University and its structures like curriculum are not neutral but are historical, cultural, political and social, which is why persistent apartheid legacy and coloniality were seen as playing a role in how the curriculum is designed and thus enacted. This is the reason, a decolonial gaze was adopted in order to engage with social justice issues and in the process tease out the social relations of knowledge practices. A decolonial gaze provided a way to re-describe the structuring of the curriculum and the contradictions it sets up for black students, particularly those who come from lower class backgrounds, including those from rural areas. Findings reveal that the way in which the science curriculum (and/or teaching and learning) is structured, and thus enacted, tends to favour certain worldviews to the exclusion of others. Also, findings show that when students are presented with knowledge that seems completely separate from them, their identities, their heritage, their backgrounds and value systems, accessing that knowledge can seem inordinately difficult. Consequently, students from rural contexts are often alienated, because the “world” they bring and know is often not considered part of the starting point, neither is it seen as relevant when teaching the science curriculum. There is therefore a clear need to bring something ‘from home’ into our teaching as a means of reassuring students that all is not foreign and that what they already know is valuable.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2020
An exploration into the conditions enabling and constraining the implementation of quality assurance in higher education: the case of a small comprehensive university in South Africa
- Authors: Masehela, Langutani Meriam
- Date: 2015
- Subjects: University of Venda -- Evaluation , Education, Higher -- South Africa -- Evaluation , Universities and colleges -- South Africa -- Auditing , Quality assurance -- South Africa , Quality assurance -- Standards -- South Africa , Universities and colleges -- South Africa -- Evaluation , Educational accountability -- South Africa , Education, Higher -- Standards -- South Africa , Educational evaluation -- South Africa , Critical realism , Social realism
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: vital:1334 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1020312
- Description: At an international level, demands for accountability in respect of the quality of teaching and learning in higher education are increasing. This is also the case in South Africa. The response to these demands has taken the form of the introduction of quality assurance systems to higher education. In South Africa, a formal national external quality assurance was introduced to the higher education system in 2001 as a result of the establishment of the Higher Education Quality Committee. The Higher Education Quality Committee is a standing committee of the South African Council on Higher Education. Like other quality assurance agencies across the world, the Higher Education Quality Committee has the responsibility for i) auditing institutions of higher education and ii) accrediting learning programmes. The first cycle of institutional audits ran from 2004 until 2011. As quality assurance was introduced to the higher education system and the first cycle of institutional audits began, universities in South Africa developed policies and procedures intended to assure quality in three areas of their core functioning: research, teaching and learning and community engagement. The University of Venda, which is the focus of the study on which this thesis is based, was no exception. As a practitioner in the Centre for Higher Education Teaching and Learning at The University of Venda, it was my observation that the policies and procedures intended to assure quality in teaching and learning were not always implemented by academic staff members. This was in spite of poor student performance data which raised questions about the quality of the teaching and learning processes in place. The study underpinning this thesis was designed to explore this phenomenon. More specifically, it aimed to identify the conditions enabling and constraining the implementation of policies and procedures in two Schools in the University: the School of Health Sciences and the School of Human and Social Sciences. In order to explore these conditions, I adopted Roy Bhaskar’s Critical Realism as an under-labouring philosophy for the study. Critical realism posits a view of reality comprising three strata, none of which can be reducible to the other. The first of these strata is termed the level of the Empirical and consists of the experiences and observations which become apparent to us through the senses. The second layer, the Actual, consists of events from which these experiences and observations emerge. Underpinning both of these layers is a further layer, the Real, which is not accessible by empirical means and which consists of structures and mechanisms which generate both events at the level of the Actual and experiences and observation at the level of the Empirical. The design of my study sought to reach this deepest layer of reality to identify these mechanisms. Bhaskar’s critical realism is philosophy which needs to be operationalized using substantive, or explanatory, theory. For this purpose, I drew on Margaret Archer’s social realism. The design on my study drew on case study methodology and involved in-depth interviews with members of the two Schools which each formed cases within the more overarching case of the University itself. In addition to these interviews, I analysed a range of institutional documents related to the assurance of quality in teaching and learning. The exploration of enabling and constraining conditions at the level of the Real allow me to make a series of recommendations in the final Chapter of my thesis intended to enhance the quality assurance system introduced to the University.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2015
- Authors: Masehela, Langutani Meriam
- Date: 2015
- Subjects: University of Venda -- Evaluation , Education, Higher -- South Africa -- Evaluation , Universities and colleges -- South Africa -- Auditing , Quality assurance -- South Africa , Quality assurance -- Standards -- South Africa , Universities and colleges -- South Africa -- Evaluation , Educational accountability -- South Africa , Education, Higher -- Standards -- South Africa , Educational evaluation -- South Africa , Critical realism , Social realism
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: vital:1334 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1020312
- Description: At an international level, demands for accountability in respect of the quality of teaching and learning in higher education are increasing. This is also the case in South Africa. The response to these demands has taken the form of the introduction of quality assurance systems to higher education. In South Africa, a formal national external quality assurance was introduced to the higher education system in 2001 as a result of the establishment of the Higher Education Quality Committee. The Higher Education Quality Committee is a standing committee of the South African Council on Higher Education. Like other quality assurance agencies across the world, the Higher Education Quality Committee has the responsibility for i) auditing institutions of higher education and ii) accrediting learning programmes. The first cycle of institutional audits ran from 2004 until 2011. As quality assurance was introduced to the higher education system and the first cycle of institutional audits began, universities in South Africa developed policies and procedures intended to assure quality in three areas of their core functioning: research, teaching and learning and community engagement. The University of Venda, which is the focus of the study on which this thesis is based, was no exception. As a practitioner in the Centre for Higher Education Teaching and Learning at The University of Venda, it was my observation that the policies and procedures intended to assure quality in teaching and learning were not always implemented by academic staff members. This was in spite of poor student performance data which raised questions about the quality of the teaching and learning processes in place. The study underpinning this thesis was designed to explore this phenomenon. More specifically, it aimed to identify the conditions enabling and constraining the implementation of policies and procedures in two Schools in the University: the School of Health Sciences and the School of Human and Social Sciences. In order to explore these conditions, I adopted Roy Bhaskar’s Critical Realism as an under-labouring philosophy for the study. Critical realism posits a view of reality comprising three strata, none of which can be reducible to the other. The first of these strata is termed the level of the Empirical and consists of the experiences and observations which become apparent to us through the senses. The second layer, the Actual, consists of events from which these experiences and observations emerge. Underpinning both of these layers is a further layer, the Real, which is not accessible by empirical means and which consists of structures and mechanisms which generate both events at the level of the Actual and experiences and observation at the level of the Empirical. The design of my study sought to reach this deepest layer of reality to identify these mechanisms. Bhaskar’s critical realism is philosophy which needs to be operationalized using substantive, or explanatory, theory. For this purpose, I drew on Margaret Archer’s social realism. The design on my study drew on case study methodology and involved in-depth interviews with members of the two Schools which each formed cases within the more overarching case of the University itself. In addition to these interviews, I analysed a range of institutional documents related to the assurance of quality in teaching and learning. The exploration of enabling and constraining conditions at the level of the Real allow me to make a series of recommendations in the final Chapter of my thesis intended to enhance the quality assurance system introduced to the University.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2015
Becoming and being: a critical realist study into the emergence of identity in emergency medical science students, and the construct of graduate attributes
- Authors: Millar, Bernadette Theresa
- Date: 2014
- Subjects: Critical realism , Emergency medical personnel -- Psychology , Emergency medical services
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: vital:1327 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1013175
- Description: This critical realist thesis seeks to understand how student, graduate and professional identities emerge in Emergency Medical Science (EMS) students at a South African University of Technology (UoT) as well as in professional paramedics in the Emergency Medical Care Services (EMCS). It further considers the construct of graduate attributes (GAs) and its relationship to emergence of identity and influence on curriculum design. The research design is that of a case study. The theoretical framework is critical realism whose depth ontology posits three domains of reality. Causal powers and generative mechanisms exist in the Real domain which cause events or phenomena to emerge in the Actual domain that are experienced in the Empirical domain. Using retroduction one may come to explore some of the causes for the event. Using Bhaskar’s concepts of identity, the self, absence and emergence, ontology and four-planar social being, a Bhaskarian explanatory framework of identity to explore the emergence of identity has been created. In exploring graduate attributes, a critical realist question is posed: “What must the world be like for GAs to exist” to explore the possibilities of the existence of GAs. It was found that student identity emerges diachronically in three moments, while professional paramedic identity starts to emerge during the third year of study mainly through the structure, culture and agency of workplace-based learning. In answer to the critical realist question it was found that GAs emerge from the neoliberalist commodification of universities. In seeking an alternative to GAs, traits and attitudes were explored. It was found that these emerge from curriculum, interplay of departmental structure, culture and agency of and from students’ being which makes them ontologically radically different from GAs. This study concludes that student, graduate and professional identities emerge from a person’s core constellational identity diachronically within four-planar social being and the interplay of structure, culture and agency. GAs cannot be related to the emergence of identity and curriculum design because of their ontology; however, if traits and attitudes are substituted for GAs, a close relationship does exist between emergence of identity, traits and attitudes and curriculum design.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2014
- Authors: Millar, Bernadette Theresa
- Date: 2014
- Subjects: Critical realism , Emergency medical personnel -- Psychology , Emergency medical services
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: vital:1327 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1013175
- Description: This critical realist thesis seeks to understand how student, graduate and professional identities emerge in Emergency Medical Science (EMS) students at a South African University of Technology (UoT) as well as in professional paramedics in the Emergency Medical Care Services (EMCS). It further considers the construct of graduate attributes (GAs) and its relationship to emergence of identity and influence on curriculum design. The research design is that of a case study. The theoretical framework is critical realism whose depth ontology posits three domains of reality. Causal powers and generative mechanisms exist in the Real domain which cause events or phenomena to emerge in the Actual domain that are experienced in the Empirical domain. Using retroduction one may come to explore some of the causes for the event. Using Bhaskar’s concepts of identity, the self, absence and emergence, ontology and four-planar social being, a Bhaskarian explanatory framework of identity to explore the emergence of identity has been created. In exploring graduate attributes, a critical realist question is posed: “What must the world be like for GAs to exist” to explore the possibilities of the existence of GAs. It was found that student identity emerges diachronically in three moments, while professional paramedic identity starts to emerge during the third year of study mainly through the structure, culture and agency of workplace-based learning. In answer to the critical realist question it was found that GAs emerge from the neoliberalist commodification of universities. In seeking an alternative to GAs, traits and attitudes were explored. It was found that these emerge from curriculum, interplay of departmental structure, culture and agency of and from students’ being which makes them ontologically radically different from GAs. This study concludes that student, graduate and professional identities emerge from a person’s core constellational identity diachronically within four-planar social being and the interplay of structure, culture and agency. GAs cannot be related to the emergence of identity and curriculum design because of their ontology; however, if traits and attitudes are substituted for GAs, a close relationship does exist between emergence of identity, traits and attitudes and curriculum design.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2014