Teacher educators in South Africa face challenges of preparing new teachers for an inclusive education system that has been accepted as policy but is not yet fully realised in school contexts. Pre-service teachers entering teacher preparation programmes are themselves a product of a schooling system in which many inequalities and marginalising…

In this essay, four teacher educators explore their journeys towards foregrounding students' lived experiences when teaching literature. Data about our teaching of literature in different contexts were generated through our personal reflective narratives and ensuing dialogic critical friend conversations. Inductive thematic analysis of the…

Neoliberal ideology globally prioritises competition and productivity over staff well-being in higher education, leading to exploitative practices and heightened stress among academic faculty, culminating in what can be termed modern academic slavery. This study investigates the contemporary impact of neoliberalism on South African universities,…

This paper stems from a broader study that foregrounded an existing mentoring programme against the backdrop of low teacher retention in the South African schooling system. It works from the premise that beginner teachers are exiting the teaching profession within the first three to five years of teaching. This research suggests that one way of…

The trends in higher education's post-pandemic recovery and towards sustainability are not new concepts and are still being discussed in various contexts. Evidence shows that higher education suffered greatly from the pandemic due to closures of institutions. Hence, more post-pandemic studies are necessary to understand its effects and how…

In this study, the researchers explore lecturers' perspectives on the impact artificial intelligence (AI) has on blended learning within the context of South African higher education. AI is transforming traditional teaching and learning by enabling academic institutions to offer computerised, effective, and objective educational processes. The…

Entitlement is a remote research topic in South Africa. Even further remote is the idea of teacher educator entitlement being a topic of academic inquiry. In this chapter, we report a self-study of a teacher educator's experiences and interactions with her students, in which the construct of entitlement was used as an interpretative lens. The data…

A presumed indicator of change, in terms of the South African higher education sector's racialised past, are the quantitative measures of numerical 'diversity' within the academic staff composition at historically white institutions. To better inform policy, academic development curricula and institutional culture, this study focuses on…

Distance education is a mode of teaching that enables students who are not able to enrol fulltime at a university due to a shortage of time, physical access or financial abilities, to study in their own environment and at their own pace. Only one university in South Africa offers Physical Education as a comprehensive module in the distance…

The unprecedented extended COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns forced higher education institutions (HEIs) to find innovative ways to effectively deliver student tuition and support. The lockdown brought many challenges to the education sector, including increasing the blurring of the work-home boundaries. This study investigated how COVID-19 accelerated…

This article examines the experiences and perceptions of academics about student engagement and how their professional practice in a professional community enhances students' persistence and success in a university in South Africa. While previous research has widely focused on students' perception of how student engagement enhances student success…

This article explores student teachers' resilience during the COVID-19 pandemic and their ability to thrive in online teaching practice. Amid the pandemic's unprecedented challenges, student teachers exhibited remarkable adaptability in navigating the shift to remote teaching. Through qualitative research and thematic analysis, this article delves…

In 1994, South Africa's political governance changed from being a White minority-controlled apartheid state to a democracy--a relatively peaceful transition underpinned by a social cohesion and reconciliation ideology, namely, that all (both perpetrators and the oppressed) were victims requiring healing in the new proverbial "rainbow…

Higher Education institutions robustly adopted digital pedagogy during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. This article reports on a study focussing on postgraduate students' first-hand experiences of digital pedagogy for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) education. This study was conducted at one higher education…

The South African government continues to work tirelessly to reverse the effects of apartheid by addressing social inequalities and transforming the higher education sector by dismantling structural, cultural, institutional, and interpersonal discrimination. The use of the lowercase "w" for white or whiteness in this article is the…