PiE 2014 Volume 32 Issue 4

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http://hdl.handle.net/11660/2637

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Browsing PiE 2014 Volume 32 Issue 4 by Subject "Higher education"

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    Confronting contradiction: diversity experiences at school and university
    (Faculty of Education, University of the Free State, 2014) Wilson-Strydom, Merridy
    Transformation and the embracing of diversity remains a major challenge at South African universities. This article reflects on the contradictory nature of first-year university students’ experiences of diversity and highlights the difficult terrain that students need to navigate, often with hardly any preparation for the university environment based on their schooling experiences. Using the capabilities approach as the guiding theoretical framework, the article interprets these contradictory diversity experiences in the first year in light of data on encounters with diversity at high school. It draws on the results of a large-scale mixed methods study. Qualitative data, using focus group and visual methodologies, was collected from 270 first-year students in 2009 and 2010. In addition, a total of 2.816 high school learners selected from a diverse sample of 20 local schools completed a mainly quantitative survey that included various items about interaction with diverse peers and the broader community as well as engagement with complex and diverse ideas. The school-level data provides important contextual background for understanding and interpreting students’ experiences. Such understanding is critical if we are to confront and challenge the contradictory diversity experiences during the first year at university.
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    Education researchers as bricoleurs in the creation of sustainable learning environments
    (Faculty of Education, University of the Free State, 2014) Mahlomaholo, Sechaba
    Higher education has, to date, been unable to provide effective and lasting solutions to challenges of education, because large sections thereof continue to search for knowledge for its own sake. At best, they conduct responsive research, but on a small scale they reduce the complexity that is education to a neat unilinear process which can be studied by individual researchers in isolation. Hence, I propose the adoption of bricolage as the perspective that will better enable us to respond to the challenges mentioned above. I argue for a multi-layered and multi-perspectival research approach, conducted by teams of researchers in collaboration with participants who emerge from the research process as co-researchers. This research approach incorporates aspects of the eight moments in research, namely the traditional qualitative, modernity, blurred genres, crisis of representation, postmodernity, post-experimentalism, methodologically contested representation, and the current fractured futures. Using data from our research team, I show how we have operationalised bricolage. Based on the positive educational outcomes and findings of this project, I come to the conclusion that, as higher-education bricoleurs, we are better able to respond to the complexity of education in a coherent, logical, focused and original manner.
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    Group work as ‘terrains of learning’ for students in South African higher education
    (Faculty of Education, University of the Free State, 2014) Thondhlana, Gladman; Belluigi, Dina Zoe
    A common global perception of group work in the higher education context is that it has the potential to act as a platform which can enable student learning by means of interactions, shared diverse experiences, deep engagement with subject concepts and the achievement of tasks collaboratively. Indeed, in different socio-economic, historical and institutional contexts, group work activities have become levers by which deeper learning could be achieved. Drawing on perceptions and experiences of group work among environmental science students at a South African university, we investigate the ways in which group work could be more expansively viewed as ‘terrains of learning’ for students. The results in general indicate that students have positive perceptions and experiences of group work, though problematic elements are evident. This particular case study points to the attention that should be paid to understanding issues of background, ethnicity and various student personalities which could hinder or enable the desired student learning. Such an understanding could contribute to debates regarding the achievement of higher quality learning, given issues of diversity and transformation in the South African higher education context.