Institutions of higher learning in the Eastern Cape face significant challenges in ensuring equitable access to technology among their student population. The digital divide, exacerbated by socioeconomic disparities, poses a barrier to academic success and hinders the realization of educational goals. This paper explores strategies for addressing…

Purpose: In the past decade, against increasing global inequality, higher education has grappled with increased demands for social justice, transformation and decolonisation. While a lot of research in South Africa has focused on the (im)possibilities of fostering racial, gendered, socio-economic and cultural change, the connection of such change…

Inclusion and equitable education, as articulated by the fourth sustainable development goal and anticipated by 2030 seems hard to attain in a context where teachers' practices are inconsistent with inclusive national policies. In the study reported on here we investigated South African teachers' experiences in implementing the screening,…

The global outbreak of COVID-19 aggravated inequalities in the basic education sector in South Africa. The pandemic necessitated mechanisms to advance learning while safeguarding against the spread of the life-threatening virus. To pursue teaching and learning, rotational school attendance models were introduced. However, the notion of "no…

The emergence of the teaching an pandemic was a fundamentally disruptive force in the global higher education system that called on us to re-think the very purposes of higher education, our values, and who the academy is inherently for. Largely driven by the then panic over the unpredictable and infectious nature of the COVID-19 disease, higher…

Globally, higher education institutions were forced to use online assessments during the COVID-19 pandemic. Given the fast-paced transition to online assessments at the time, the authors saw a unique opportunity to explore accounting educators' experiences and perceptions of assessments conducted in accounting courses in South Africa during this…

This paper explores how academics navigate the Higher Education (HE) landscape being reshaped by the convergence of unbundling, marketisation and digitisation processes. Social Realism distinguishes three layers of social reality (in this case higher education): the empirical, the actual and the real. The empirical layer is presented by the…

Background: Early childhood development (ECD) is pivotal in addressing educational inequality and reducing income disparities in South Africa. Government initiatives to integrate ECD into the education system underscore a positive trajectory. Aim: This study assesses the impact of relocating ECD to the Department of Basic Education (DBE) in South…

In most of the countries that signed the Salamanca Statement, there seems to be a gap between policy formulations and realisations of inclusive education. Much of this gap has been blamed on the deficit or narrow view to inclusive education that focuses only on the education for disabled students, against the broader view of inclusive education,…

In South Africa, progression refers to the elevation of a learner from one grade to the following grade (excluding grade R), in spite of the learner not having achieved all the promotion stipulations (DBE, 2012a). This article is embedded in a social justice theoretical framework that advocates for a just society through fairness, equal access to…

Transformation reflects the government's engagement and policies in restructuring higher education to cultivate the country's communal economy. Higher education is challenged in providing tertiary education to students from diverse environments, and staff transformation is needed. This cross-sectional study establishes the staff's perception of…

An Applied Drama and Theatre pedagogy is rooted in principles of embodiment, participation and collaboration, praxis and immersion in social contexts. Over the past fourteen years, the Drama for Life department at the University of the Witwatersrand prioritised the implementation of an Applied Drama and Theatre teaching and learning practice that…

Inquiry-based science education has been advocated as a goal in the South African school science curriculum. Despite this goal, the implementation of inquiry in this country has been largely fragmented due to contextual factors that exert an influence on its traction in the classroom. This phenomenologically orientated study reports on the…

There is currently a clarion call to address social injustice in South African higher education (HE) in order to achieve greater equity in access. Within this context, current social injustices pertain to financial exclusion as well as epistemic marginalisation and are embodied in the predominance of expensive textbooks which are authored in the…

When geometry teaching lacks elements of flexibility, inclusivity and accessibility, it is often difficult for learners to follow and understand what they are being taught. In line with this, this paper reports on the application of universal design for instruction (UDI) to guide flexible and accessible teaching of geometry to maximise learning.…