In this article we will share the impact of mindfulness pedagogy on students in a short-term study abroad course in South Africa. During a one-month program for undergraduate and graduate students, we implemented an explicit critical contemplative pedagogy (Kaufman, 2017) that included daily mindfulness exercises and reflective journaling as a…

The Tygerberg Children's Choir (TCC) is rooted in South Africa's Afrikaner culture. Its transition to a multicultural children's choir, within a drastically changed political dispensation, furnished a rich subject for a historiographic choir identity investigation. From its establishment in 1972 until 2019, Hendrik D. Loock was the conductor.…

Background: Currently, the globe is at the crossroads of a polycrisis where multiple shocks and interdependencies play out in an ever-evolving integrated world. Young children and their families bear the brunt of these realities through stresses that have a negative impact on them. In seeking better worlds in early childhood care and education…

The article tracks key moments in teacher education policy and curriculum in South Africa from the 1970s to the present day. Political and social features of education in each decade are outlined, from a racialised and fragmented system of teacher education, to the imagining of alternatives, and the imperative for educational transformation. The…

Purpose: This qualitative study discusses the importance of effective leadership practices in connecting the macro-, meso-, and micro-contexts in which school leaders operate, considering the colonial and apartheid history of South Africa and the current era of neoliberal philosophies by exploring the degree to which school leaders in historically…

This article reflects on our participation in two efforts at education organising at the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic -- the national C19 People's Coalition, and the Progressive Organisations Formation (POF). We suggest our experiences as participants in these movements reflect a broader political climate in South Africa in which large-scale,…

Students, through teaching and learning, must reflect on what they do not know. It is only when they recognise what they know, and what they do not, that they will awaken to their own curiosity. The more they can open themselves to others and their epistemologies, the deeper their own self-reflection in relation to others. In this way, engendering…

We propose a new framework for understanding post-conflict history education based on ethnographic fieldwork in the same South African school two decades apart. We explore how and why teachers engage with the legacies of conflict in 1998 and 2019 by investigating how they draw boundaries around 1) time, what the conflict period is and how stark…

In the shift to Emergency Remote Teaching and Learning (ERT&L) during the COVID-19 pandemic, remote assessment and feedback became a major source of discontent and challenge for students and staff. This paper is a reflection and analysis of assessment practices during ERT&L, and our theorisation of the possibilities for shifts towards…

Language is an important element in the struggle for social change and decolonization within South African tertiary education. We explored the relationship between indigenous languages and cocurricular involvement to sense of belonging. Data were collected via a survey of 4210 students that included demographics, cocurricular involvement, and…

The last three decades have seen significant educational reform, which have influenced the transformation of assessment practices in higher education institutions (HEIs). In addition, various societal and global changes have required that higher education create adaptive graduates who acquire and develop higher-order skills which include…

The global spread and hegemony of English as a medium of teaching, learning and research has come to be closely associated with neoliberalisation of higher education in the universities across the world, and has negatively impacted on epistemic issues, especially in Global South universities. No permanent solution has been found on challenges of…

The core objective of this article is to evaluate the progress made in linguistic development over the past three decades, with a specific focus on the role of language and its philosophical underpinnings in reshaping and decolonising South African higher education landscape. Linguistic imperialism as a conceptual framework alongside the Framework…

This timely book features rich examples of students and teachers, defined as learning partners, disrupting hierarchy in education by collaborating on social change projects. At the book's core is Paulo Freire's theorization of students and teachers working together toward co-liberation. Co-written by learning partners, each chapter in this…