Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education is increasingly viewed as a ve... more Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education is increasingly viewed as a vehicle for global dominance and a panacea to economic downturns, environmental challenges, and food security. However, divergences in STEM education agendas at regional and national levels imply disparities in policy formulation and implementation in the Global North and Global South. This study sought to explore what informs the drivers of STEM education in the two geo-economic blocks with a view to understanding contextual factors that inform practice. A focus on STEM education in the Global North and Global South becomes necessary, given the widespread calls for collaborative work, for example, shared interests in addressing sustainable development goals, and research on the COVID-19 pandemic. A theoretical approach, based on a review of relevant literature, was adopted. Ideology critique informed the analysis and was used to make sense of the salient themes. In the Global North, STEM education is historically driven by ambitions of political dominance, the need to curb economic slumps and address critical skills shortages, and growing desire for extra-terrestrial colonization. Within this context we argue that a neoliberal agenda drives the STEM education enterprise. In the Global South, massification with equity dominates policy formulation and implementation as countries battle to redress past colonial imbalances. The Global South countries generally sign up to regional and global STEM education agendas but financial constraints compounded by an unabated brain drain result in stagnation at policy adoption at vocational level. Convenient partnerships are increasingly fashionable as countries in the Global North seek to exploit the geographical advantage of those in the Global South in order to fully utilise the extra-terrestrial space, resources for biomedical science and indigenous natural resources, among others. Collaboration endeavors between the Global North and Global South need to be mutually beneficial. The Global North needs to redistribute the aspects of power it holds in relation to STEM to move towards more equitable policies and practices across these geopolitical realms. We recommend greater vocationalisation of STEM education hinged on STEM integration with the humanities in the Global South and balanced, mutually beneficial STEM collaboration endeavors with the Global North countries.
abstract Sexual assault is a serious and urgent concern at university campuses. The fear of sexua... more abstract Sexual assault is a serious and urgent concern at university campuses. The fear of sexual assault is widespread and expressed almost exclusively by women. This briefing explores female students’ fears about sexual violence and the spaces within which they feel vulnerable while at university, with a view to planning effective interventions to address their fears. This was done by working with them towards understanding the nature and extent of sexual violence, how to deal with it when it occurs and, most importantly, how to prevent it. The analysis draws on the responses of 133 female students at a university in KwaZulu-Natal, who participated in an online survey titled ‘Safer learning environments’, which comprised of closed- and open-ended questions. The findings reveal that the fear of sexual assault is widespread, especially amongst women living in university residences. The people most feared are outsiders and male students. Given the powerful ways in which female students’ activities on campus are shaped and constrained by their fear of sexual violence, it is important to gain their perspectives on how sexual violence is understood, how it is reported, and how it can be addressed. Comprehensive interventions that include and move beyond strengthening security measures and punishment are critical. These have to actively engage students in reflecting on and challenging social and cultural norms that normalise violence against women.
PONTE International Scientific Researchs Journal, 2017
Teaching and learning by engaging learners in practical work in science is regarded as useful in ... more Teaching and learning by engaging learners in practical work in science is regarded as useful in linking theory to practice. Practical work is linked to inquiry based learning, and is seen as a route to learning how to apply the scientific method. Within the South African context, where learner performance in Science and Mathematics has been dismal based on international and national evaluative tests, the importance of practical work has received greater attention. A large amount of the work that has been done about practical work in science classrooms focusses on practicing or pre-service teachers. Little attention has been directed to what learners say about practical work. We address this paucity by exploring learners' views about practical work, through the following question: "What are learners' views about the effectiveness of practical work in Natural Sciences classrooms? Why do learners hold these views?" In order to respond to these questions we designed a qualitative study within an interpretivist paradigm. We purposively selected grade nine Natural Sciences learners who participated in individual and focus group interviews. Our findings reveal that all the participants valued practical work for four reasons. First, practical work enabled learning of science process skills; second, it deepened conceptual understanding; third, it made science fun and enjoyable and finally, it enabled them to relate classroom science to activities in daily life. These findings are significant to science teachers and policy makers who determine the scope of practical work.
Cognitive injustice, which nourishes and sustains current political, social and economic injustic... more Cognitive injustice, which nourishes and sustains current political, social and economic injustice, has been at the centre of the knowledge production enterprise since the colonisers embarked on their project of dispossession and plunder. In order to achieve global justice, the quest for epistemic justice needs to be brought to the centre of curriculum discourses. The postcolonial critique of the canonical corpus of Euro-Western knowledge demands a change in our locus of enunciation. We seized this zeitgeist to repaint the education curriculum canvass in science professional teacher development. We leveraged theoretical constructs from Southern theory, by adopting a decolonial epistemic perspective and privileging a dialogic dynamic. Six purposefully selected, practising science teachers, who were registered to study an Honours in Education module, were engaged to generate qualitative data to respond to the following question: How do science teachers leverage indigenous knowledge to...
South African academic institutions and the government have recognized the importance of Indigeno... more South African academic institutions and the government have recognized the importance of Indigenous Knowledge Systems (IKS) in the development of the country. The role of traditional kings, traditional chiefs and medicinal healers in the social, economic and political development of communities and the environment are recognized for their value in society. While there are new developments of IKS research in South Africa (SA), little has been done in academia to bridge the gap between students and lecturers at the tertiary level, to link them to the local community on an equal footing. This paper explores through interviews and dialogues with chiefs (amakhosi), headmen (izinduna), diviners-spiritualists (izangoma) and diviners-herbalists (izinyanga) their concerns about the state and future of IKS, and their aspirations for the inclusion of IKS into formal societal structures like universities. More specifically, the paper explores their experiential knowledge that can be incorporate...
abstract Sexual assault is a serious and urgent concern at university campuses. The fear of sexua... more abstract Sexual assault is a serious and urgent concern at university campuses. The fear of sexual assault is widespread and expressed almost exclusively by women. This briefing explores female students’ fears about sexual violence and the spaces within which they feel vulnerable while at university, with a view to planning effective interventions to address their fears. This was done by working with them towards understanding the nature and extent of sexual violence, how to deal with it when it occurs and, most importantly, how to prevent it. The analysis draws on the responses of 133 female students at a university in KwaZulu-Natal, who participated in an online survey titled ‘Safer learning environments’, which comprised of closed- and open-ended questions. The findings reveal that the fear of sexual assault is widespread, especially amongst women living in university residences. The people most feared are outsiders and male students. Given the powerful ways in which female students’ activities on campus are shaped and constrained by their fear of sexual violence, it is important to gain their perspectives on how sexual violence is understood, how it is reported, and how it can be addressed. Comprehensive interventions that include and move beyond strengthening security measures and punishment are critical. These have to actively engage students in reflecting on and challenging social and cultural norms that normalise violence against women.
ABSTRACT The degradation of African sexuality, through the construction of African bodies as obje... more ABSTRACT The degradation of African sexuality, through the construction of African bodies as objects of symbolic and substantial violence and crime, and African people as sexually permissive and sexually immoral, has been a persistent feature of numerous scholarly works. The era of HIV and AIDS has strengthened the bleak African sexuality discourse, by underscoring the danger of sex in Africa. This Article seeks to de-legitimise the subjugation of African sexuality by exploring the sexual realities of young South Africans. Theoretical and conceptual constructs from feminism, and romantic and confluent love, were engaged with to generate insights about youthful love, desire and sex. An innovative, qualitative methodology, whereby young people were enabled to generate interview data from other young people, thereby reducing the power differentials between the researchers and the research participants, was employed. The findings revealed that young South Africans who participated in this study transcended hetero-patriarchal boundaries by demanding sexual autonomy. They disrupted traditional patterns of gender imbalances, which are inherent in the notion of romantic love. These young South Africans in love did not give primacy to the permanence of relationships and did not pursue the idea of a partner who would transform “me” into “we” (Giddens, 2006: 62). Instead, they actively embraced the liberating quality of passionate love, by engaging in confluent love, as a route towards sexual freedom, and consequently, constructed their sexuality autonomously.
African Journal of Research in Mathematics, Science and Technology Education, 2011
Abstract: This article advances the rationale for the re-thinking of science education, which is ... more Abstract: This article advances the rationale for the re-thinking of science education, which is characterized by a shift away from the view of science as being disconnected from social issues, to a view of science as a human activity, which is embedded in social, cultural and ...
A major challenge that confronts South Africa is the increasing percentage of its population, esp... more A major challenge that confronts South Africa is the increasing percentage of its population, especially young women, being infected with HIV daily. This article looks at how young researchers develop an understanding of the influence of gender and the spread of HIV through critical and reflexive engagement with the data that they have gathered. The article is based on a study that used the principles of feminist theory to focus on gender roles and the related issues of power and risky behaviour among young people. It discusses how young researchers' perceptions of gender become transformed through the process of engaging with photovoice inquiry.
Mobile Ad-hoc Network (MANET) sebagai wireless local area network yang bersifat dinamis dalam hal... more Mobile Ad-hoc Network (MANET) sebagai wireless local area network yang bersifat dinamis dalam hal pergerakan node berperan untuk mengkondisikan setiap terminal client sebagai backwarding/fowarding-devices. Dengan demikian kondisi topologi jaringan akan berubah seiring dengan perubahan posisi pada node-client. Hal ini tentu saja akan memberikan keuntungan yang baik pada client dalam segi fleksibilitas tempat, mengurangi biaya instalasi, reduksi penyediaan infrastruktur dan sifat temporary instalasi sesuai dengan kebutuhan yang diinginkan. Pada penelitian ini telah dilakukan pemodelan dan simulasi untuk menunjukkan algoritma routing-network, status node yang terlibat dalam MANET, dan perhitungan nilai QoS dari komunikasi-data yang dibangun antar node yang saling bertetangga. Hasilnya menunjukkan perubahan topologi jaringan mengalami perubahan seiring dengan perubahan skenario yang dibangkitkan secara random dan stokastik; dan perubahan topologi jaringan ini merepresentasikan perubahan posisi node dalam MANET saat membangun komunikasi-data dari node-sender ke node-receiver. Metode pengujian menggunakan teknik kuantitatif serta kondisi random direpresentasikan dengan pembangkitan bilangan random yang bekerja berdasar Distribusi Normal/Gauss. Algoritma SNetS yang digunakan telah dapat mengakomodir jumlah N-node, sehingga kondisi node-terminal, bagaimana status node, serta QoS yang didapatkan mendekati kondisi real.
There is a growing realisation of the vital role that Higher Education institutions in South Afri... more There is a growing realisation of the vital role that Higher Education institutions in South Africa can and should play in keeping students not only alive, well and productive but also prepared to face the multiple challenges associated with living and working in the context of the HIV & AIDS pandemic. This article reports on part of a larger research project that explores the experiences and work of university educators who are involved in curriculum innovating through integrating HIV & AIDS in their teaching at a South African ...
This article focuses on my ethnographic self-reconstruction in order to explore my academic journ... more This article focuses on my ethnographic self-reconstruction in order to explore my academic journey, by critically evaluating the influence of professional academic cultures on my teaching practice, with a view to understanding my professional identity. I make visible to the reader and myself my suppressed feelings, emotions and ambitions by analysing learning opportunities that facilitate my ‘being’ an academic. Drawing on theoretical frames from autoethnography, I engage in personal epistemological vigilance by directing my sociological gaze inwards. I retroactively and selectively draw on diary recordings of my own micro-ethnographies, and my teaching portfolio statement as the data sets. My entry into this slippery, treacherous space evokes feelings of vulnerability and hyper-visibility. It illuminates the struggle of being on the right-hand side of binaries such as disciplinary specialist/ interdisciplinary researcher, experienced/novice academic, and scholar/teacher. This work...
This paper focuses on a critical reflection of my practice as a woman academic who supervises the... more This paper focuses on a critical reflection of my practice as a woman academic who supervises the research work of postgraduate students, and who teaches collaboratively in a Masters level module in the higher education context. This epistemological vigilance is facilitated by my temporary withdrawal from teaching in order to analyse my modes of academic pedagogy and practice. Drawing on theoretical frames from feminism and cultural production theory, I use journal entries to reflexively explore my experience as a woman academic navigating the postgraduate landscape. The findings include a description of my learning in the workplace through three primary activities, namely, individual supervision, team supervision and collaborative teaching on a postgraduate module. I consider the intersecting influences of my age, gender, experience in teaching and research, and the hierarchy of different types of work, on my academic development by charting my individual journey from the undergrad...
This article explores how academics make the transition from teaching mainly on undergraduate pro... more This article explores how academics make the transition from teaching mainly on undergraduate programmes to teaching a postgraduate module. It reflects on whatenables learning to occur through participation in a community of practice, where the community comprises academics at different levels who teach the same postgraduate module. Through self-study methodology, where data was sourced from the reflective diaries of the authors, entry into and sustained participation in the postgraduate terrain are detailed. The findings reflect the types of support which facilitate professional development of academics. A view is provided into the private narratives of academics as they assume a 'boundary identity trajectory' when they approach the nexus of undergraduate and postgraduate teaching.
The Southern African Journal of Environmental Education, 2018
The gendered experiences of women in community environment education (CEE) are often relegated to... more The gendered experiences of women in community environment education (CEE) are often relegated to the margins of environmental Education research discourse. This study disrupts the linearity of the relationship between women’s physical presence in work settings and their participation in these spaces. Specifically, this work addresses the question: What constrains women’s participation in the activities of one Zimbabwean community environmental education organisation (CEEO)? This qualitative study was underpinned by a critical philosophical paradigm with ecofeminism as the overarching theoretical framework. Data were generated using document analysis of teaching materials, individual interviews, focus group discussions and participant observation. Twenty-six women aged between 38 and 62 years, who frequently attended the CEE programme, were recruited through purposive and snowball sampling techniques, to participate in this study. Findings suggest that there is widespread devaluing...
Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education is increasingly viewed as a ve... more Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education is increasingly viewed as a vehicle for global dominance and a panacea to economic downturns, environmental challenges, and food security. However, divergences in STEM education agendas at regional and national levels imply disparities in policy formulation and implementation in the Global North and Global South. This study sought to explore what informs the drivers of STEM education in the two geo-economic blocks with a view to understanding contextual factors that inform practice. A focus on STEM education in the Global North and Global South becomes necessary, given the widespread calls for collaborative work, for example, shared interests in addressing sustainable development goals, and research on the COVID-19 pandemic. A theoretical approach, based on a review of relevant literature, was adopted. Ideology critique informed the analysis and was used to make sense of the salient themes. In the Global North, STEM education is historically driven by ambitions of political dominance, the need to curb economic slumps and address critical skills shortages, and growing desire for extra-terrestrial colonization. Within this context we argue that a neoliberal agenda drives the STEM education enterprise. In the Global South, massification with equity dominates policy formulation and implementation as countries battle to redress past colonial imbalances. The Global South countries generally sign up to regional and global STEM education agendas but financial constraints compounded by an unabated brain drain result in stagnation at policy adoption at vocational level. Convenient partnerships are increasingly fashionable as countries in the Global North seek to exploit the geographical advantage of those in the Global South in order to fully utilise the extra-terrestrial space, resources for biomedical science and indigenous natural resources, among others. Collaboration endeavors between the Global North and Global South need to be mutually beneficial. The Global North needs to redistribute the aspects of power it holds in relation to STEM to move towards more equitable policies and practices across these geopolitical realms. We recommend greater vocationalisation of STEM education hinged on STEM integration with the humanities in the Global South and balanced, mutually beneficial STEM collaboration endeavors with the Global North countries.
abstract Sexual assault is a serious and urgent concern at university campuses. The fear of sexua... more abstract Sexual assault is a serious and urgent concern at university campuses. The fear of sexual assault is widespread and expressed almost exclusively by women. This briefing explores female students’ fears about sexual violence and the spaces within which they feel vulnerable while at university, with a view to planning effective interventions to address their fears. This was done by working with them towards understanding the nature and extent of sexual violence, how to deal with it when it occurs and, most importantly, how to prevent it. The analysis draws on the responses of 133 female students at a university in KwaZulu-Natal, who participated in an online survey titled ‘Safer learning environments’, which comprised of closed- and open-ended questions. The findings reveal that the fear of sexual assault is widespread, especially amongst women living in university residences. The people most feared are outsiders and male students. Given the powerful ways in which female students’ activities on campus are shaped and constrained by their fear of sexual violence, it is important to gain their perspectives on how sexual violence is understood, how it is reported, and how it can be addressed. Comprehensive interventions that include and move beyond strengthening security measures and punishment are critical. These have to actively engage students in reflecting on and challenging social and cultural norms that normalise violence against women.
PONTE International Scientific Researchs Journal, 2017
Teaching and learning by engaging learners in practical work in science is regarded as useful in ... more Teaching and learning by engaging learners in practical work in science is regarded as useful in linking theory to practice. Practical work is linked to inquiry based learning, and is seen as a route to learning how to apply the scientific method. Within the South African context, where learner performance in Science and Mathematics has been dismal based on international and national evaluative tests, the importance of practical work has received greater attention. A large amount of the work that has been done about practical work in science classrooms focusses on practicing or pre-service teachers. Little attention has been directed to what learners say about practical work. We address this paucity by exploring learners' views about practical work, through the following question: "What are learners' views about the effectiveness of practical work in Natural Sciences classrooms? Why do learners hold these views?" In order to respond to these questions we designed a qualitative study within an interpretivist paradigm. We purposively selected grade nine Natural Sciences learners who participated in individual and focus group interviews. Our findings reveal that all the participants valued practical work for four reasons. First, practical work enabled learning of science process skills; second, it deepened conceptual understanding; third, it made science fun and enjoyable and finally, it enabled them to relate classroom science to activities in daily life. These findings are significant to science teachers and policy makers who determine the scope of practical work.
Cognitive injustice, which nourishes and sustains current political, social and economic injustic... more Cognitive injustice, which nourishes and sustains current political, social and economic injustice, has been at the centre of the knowledge production enterprise since the colonisers embarked on their project of dispossession and plunder. In order to achieve global justice, the quest for epistemic justice needs to be brought to the centre of curriculum discourses. The postcolonial critique of the canonical corpus of Euro-Western knowledge demands a change in our locus of enunciation. We seized this zeitgeist to repaint the education curriculum canvass in science professional teacher development. We leveraged theoretical constructs from Southern theory, by adopting a decolonial epistemic perspective and privileging a dialogic dynamic. Six purposefully selected, practising science teachers, who were registered to study an Honours in Education module, were engaged to generate qualitative data to respond to the following question: How do science teachers leverage indigenous knowledge to...
South African academic institutions and the government have recognized the importance of Indigeno... more South African academic institutions and the government have recognized the importance of Indigenous Knowledge Systems (IKS) in the development of the country. The role of traditional kings, traditional chiefs and medicinal healers in the social, economic and political development of communities and the environment are recognized for their value in society. While there are new developments of IKS research in South Africa (SA), little has been done in academia to bridge the gap between students and lecturers at the tertiary level, to link them to the local community on an equal footing. This paper explores through interviews and dialogues with chiefs (amakhosi), headmen (izinduna), diviners-spiritualists (izangoma) and diviners-herbalists (izinyanga) their concerns about the state and future of IKS, and their aspirations for the inclusion of IKS into formal societal structures like universities. More specifically, the paper explores their experiential knowledge that can be incorporate...
abstract Sexual assault is a serious and urgent concern at university campuses. The fear of sexua... more abstract Sexual assault is a serious and urgent concern at university campuses. The fear of sexual assault is widespread and expressed almost exclusively by women. This briefing explores female students’ fears about sexual violence and the spaces within which they feel vulnerable while at university, with a view to planning effective interventions to address their fears. This was done by working with them towards understanding the nature and extent of sexual violence, how to deal with it when it occurs and, most importantly, how to prevent it. The analysis draws on the responses of 133 female students at a university in KwaZulu-Natal, who participated in an online survey titled ‘Safer learning environments’, which comprised of closed- and open-ended questions. The findings reveal that the fear of sexual assault is widespread, especially amongst women living in university residences. The people most feared are outsiders and male students. Given the powerful ways in which female students’ activities on campus are shaped and constrained by their fear of sexual violence, it is important to gain their perspectives on how sexual violence is understood, how it is reported, and how it can be addressed. Comprehensive interventions that include and move beyond strengthening security measures and punishment are critical. These have to actively engage students in reflecting on and challenging social and cultural norms that normalise violence against women.
ABSTRACT The degradation of African sexuality, through the construction of African bodies as obje... more ABSTRACT The degradation of African sexuality, through the construction of African bodies as objects of symbolic and substantial violence and crime, and African people as sexually permissive and sexually immoral, has been a persistent feature of numerous scholarly works. The era of HIV and AIDS has strengthened the bleak African sexuality discourse, by underscoring the danger of sex in Africa. This Article seeks to de-legitimise the subjugation of African sexuality by exploring the sexual realities of young South Africans. Theoretical and conceptual constructs from feminism, and romantic and confluent love, were engaged with to generate insights about youthful love, desire and sex. An innovative, qualitative methodology, whereby young people were enabled to generate interview data from other young people, thereby reducing the power differentials between the researchers and the research participants, was employed. The findings revealed that young South Africans who participated in this study transcended hetero-patriarchal boundaries by demanding sexual autonomy. They disrupted traditional patterns of gender imbalances, which are inherent in the notion of romantic love. These young South Africans in love did not give primacy to the permanence of relationships and did not pursue the idea of a partner who would transform “me” into “we” (Giddens, 2006: 62). Instead, they actively embraced the liberating quality of passionate love, by engaging in confluent love, as a route towards sexual freedom, and consequently, constructed their sexuality autonomously.
African Journal of Research in Mathematics, Science and Technology Education, 2011
Abstract: This article advances the rationale for the re-thinking of science education, which is ... more Abstract: This article advances the rationale for the re-thinking of science education, which is characterized by a shift away from the view of science as being disconnected from social issues, to a view of science as a human activity, which is embedded in social, cultural and ...
A major challenge that confronts South Africa is the increasing percentage of its population, esp... more A major challenge that confronts South Africa is the increasing percentage of its population, especially young women, being infected with HIV daily. This article looks at how young researchers develop an understanding of the influence of gender and the spread of HIV through critical and reflexive engagement with the data that they have gathered. The article is based on a study that used the principles of feminist theory to focus on gender roles and the related issues of power and risky behaviour among young people. It discusses how young researchers' perceptions of gender become transformed through the process of engaging with photovoice inquiry.
Mobile Ad-hoc Network (MANET) sebagai wireless local area network yang bersifat dinamis dalam hal... more Mobile Ad-hoc Network (MANET) sebagai wireless local area network yang bersifat dinamis dalam hal pergerakan node berperan untuk mengkondisikan setiap terminal client sebagai backwarding/fowarding-devices. Dengan demikian kondisi topologi jaringan akan berubah seiring dengan perubahan posisi pada node-client. Hal ini tentu saja akan memberikan keuntungan yang baik pada client dalam segi fleksibilitas tempat, mengurangi biaya instalasi, reduksi penyediaan infrastruktur dan sifat temporary instalasi sesuai dengan kebutuhan yang diinginkan. Pada penelitian ini telah dilakukan pemodelan dan simulasi untuk menunjukkan algoritma routing-network, status node yang terlibat dalam MANET, dan perhitungan nilai QoS dari komunikasi-data yang dibangun antar node yang saling bertetangga. Hasilnya menunjukkan perubahan topologi jaringan mengalami perubahan seiring dengan perubahan skenario yang dibangkitkan secara random dan stokastik; dan perubahan topologi jaringan ini merepresentasikan perubahan posisi node dalam MANET saat membangun komunikasi-data dari node-sender ke node-receiver. Metode pengujian menggunakan teknik kuantitatif serta kondisi random direpresentasikan dengan pembangkitan bilangan random yang bekerja berdasar Distribusi Normal/Gauss. Algoritma SNetS yang digunakan telah dapat mengakomodir jumlah N-node, sehingga kondisi node-terminal, bagaimana status node, serta QoS yang didapatkan mendekati kondisi real.
There is a growing realisation of the vital role that Higher Education institutions in South Afri... more There is a growing realisation of the vital role that Higher Education institutions in South Africa can and should play in keeping students not only alive, well and productive but also prepared to face the multiple challenges associated with living and working in the context of the HIV & AIDS pandemic. This article reports on part of a larger research project that explores the experiences and work of university educators who are involved in curriculum innovating through integrating HIV & AIDS in their teaching at a South African ...
This article focuses on my ethnographic self-reconstruction in order to explore my academic journ... more This article focuses on my ethnographic self-reconstruction in order to explore my academic journey, by critically evaluating the influence of professional academic cultures on my teaching practice, with a view to understanding my professional identity. I make visible to the reader and myself my suppressed feelings, emotions and ambitions by analysing learning opportunities that facilitate my ‘being’ an academic. Drawing on theoretical frames from autoethnography, I engage in personal epistemological vigilance by directing my sociological gaze inwards. I retroactively and selectively draw on diary recordings of my own micro-ethnographies, and my teaching portfolio statement as the data sets. My entry into this slippery, treacherous space evokes feelings of vulnerability and hyper-visibility. It illuminates the struggle of being on the right-hand side of binaries such as disciplinary specialist/ interdisciplinary researcher, experienced/novice academic, and scholar/teacher. This work...
This paper focuses on a critical reflection of my practice as a woman academic who supervises the... more This paper focuses on a critical reflection of my practice as a woman academic who supervises the research work of postgraduate students, and who teaches collaboratively in a Masters level module in the higher education context. This epistemological vigilance is facilitated by my temporary withdrawal from teaching in order to analyse my modes of academic pedagogy and practice. Drawing on theoretical frames from feminism and cultural production theory, I use journal entries to reflexively explore my experience as a woman academic navigating the postgraduate landscape. The findings include a description of my learning in the workplace through three primary activities, namely, individual supervision, team supervision and collaborative teaching on a postgraduate module. I consider the intersecting influences of my age, gender, experience in teaching and research, and the hierarchy of different types of work, on my academic development by charting my individual journey from the undergrad...
This article explores how academics make the transition from teaching mainly on undergraduate pro... more This article explores how academics make the transition from teaching mainly on undergraduate programmes to teaching a postgraduate module. It reflects on whatenables learning to occur through participation in a community of practice, where the community comprises academics at different levels who teach the same postgraduate module. Through self-study methodology, where data was sourced from the reflective diaries of the authors, entry into and sustained participation in the postgraduate terrain are detailed. The findings reflect the types of support which facilitate professional development of academics. A view is provided into the private narratives of academics as they assume a 'boundary identity trajectory' when they approach the nexus of undergraduate and postgraduate teaching.
The Southern African Journal of Environmental Education, 2018
The gendered experiences of women in community environment education (CEE) are often relegated to... more The gendered experiences of women in community environment education (CEE) are often relegated to the margins of environmental Education research discourse. This study disrupts the linearity of the relationship between women’s physical presence in work settings and their participation in these spaces. Specifically, this work addresses the question: What constrains women’s participation in the activities of one Zimbabwean community environmental education organisation (CEEO)? This qualitative study was underpinned by a critical philosophical paradigm with ecofeminism as the overarching theoretical framework. Data were generated using document analysis of teaching materials, individual interviews, focus group discussions and participant observation. Twenty-six women aged between 38 and 62 years, who frequently attended the CEE programme, were recruited through purposive and snowball sampling techniques, to participate in this study. Findings suggest that there is widespread devaluing...
Uploads
Papers by Ronicka Mudaly