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…

Post-colonial higher education contexts experience a never-ending recuperation from the multiple violences imposed by colonisation. Coloniality has largely been successful in maintaining a hegemonic hold by white settler colonisers in various facets of higher education despite attempts to decolonise this sector and attempts at transformation. The…

Given South Africa's colonial and apartheid past, postgraduate supervisors are encouraged to explore decolonial and socially just ways of supervision. I draw on Freire's adult education theory and Hackman's tools of social justice education to reflect on transformative supervision workshops held at a South African university School of Public…

Institutional transformation and inclusion have slowly become more prominent in the strategies of historically white institutions in South Africa. Despite these efforts, progress towards these goals has been limited. In this article, we reflect on our conversations about transforming our curricula and teaching practices as an interdisciplinary…

This qualitative case study set out to explore how the COVID-19 pandemic has influenced the educational practice of academics, using this moment as a new perspective to illuminate broader, enduring issues such as how will approaches to university education that have emerged in response to the pandemic lead to lasting changes? What is the likely…

The claim made is that dignity matters in both legal and recognitional aspects for flourishing and lifelong learning opportunities for young adults. Dignity is understood here as a foundational capability and functioning to be and to do in ways which matter to a person, requiring the material and non-material conditions which enable and secure…

In the past two decades, we have seen a renewed interest in decolonisation. A proliferation of literature produced on the topic, the establishment of journals on decolonisation, student protests such as the #RhodesMustFall campaign at universities in South Africa and Oxford University in Britain, French President Emmanuel Macron's call for the…

In a critical review of the South African government's Minimum Requirements for Teacher Education Qualifications (MRTEQ), designed to provide a foundation for teacher education institutions, a stark deficiency emerges in terms of critical Global Citizenship Education (GCE). This paper thus aims to investigate the underpinnings guiding teacher…

Background: This paper describes findings from research conducted on students who participated in a service-learning course in South Africa. Objective: The study aimed to understand how participants constructed their experiences of service-learning and to interrogate their emotional investments in these constructions. Method: Data were collected…

At the national universities within South Africa, various events during the past years indicate that students suffer under different kinds of oppression. It is widely acknowledged that students from poor, rural geographical areas find the university space alienating and not speaking to their life worlds. In this paper I respond to Fataar's (2019)…

Doctoral education in South Africa is at crossroads between the transformation agenda of higher education and the production of knowledge, whereas policy imperatives to produce more doctorates may come at the expense of quality. This article examines how universities assure the quality of doctoral education in Education at the point of access, its…

This article reflects on the successes and failures of student protests in transforming higher education in South Africa through a Marxist lens. The slow pace of change by the government in addressing structural and systemic inequalities has led to disgruntlement within the student body. In their quest to hasten the process, students engaged in…

This article introduces a research project that works with former Extended Studies Programme students to make knowledge that emerges through online, multimodal collaborations. Knowledge-making is not politically neutral, and the project and article are responding in part to the calls of the 2015/2016 South African student protesters to decolonise…

In this paper, drawing on an extensive research project across three countries (VET Africa 4.0 Collective 2023), we produce an emerging argument that it is necessary to rethink and reframe VET logics and approaches in a warming future dominated by informality and mass unemployment. Currently, neither the formal VET college or workplace are…

Nancy Fraser and Participatory Parity provides a philosophical framework based on the work of Nancy Fraser, examining how her ideas can be used to analyse contemporary issues in higher education and reimagine higher education practices. Providing a forum for considering Fraser's work in relation to participatory parity in higher education, the…