The COVID-19 pandemic set higher education institutions on an unprecedented path requiring of them to identify alternative strategies and implement various initiatives to sustain their academic projects. With the widespread devastation of the pandemic, the purpose of universities within their communities were again in the spotlight. A sensibility…

The article discusses the question of the co-construction of knowledge between the university and its communities in the pursuance of community engagement, which is one of the key mandates of universities in South Africa. It reflects on the limitations of most academic approaches to the concept and practices associated with the scholarship of…

Service-learning has, arguably, gained significant currency as a pedagogical and engagement mechanism within the broader discourse of universities and their role in community development. However, less emphasis has been placed on the human development dimensions of service--learning for community members, with the focus largely being on students'…

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 article was motivated by the need to academically frame and share the response of the North-West University (NWU) to the perceived increase of academic dishonesty during COVID-19. Within the ambit of the online (hybrid) teaching and learning approach that became dominant during the COVID-19 pandemic, the NWU established a Community of…

In this article we offer a discussion around our academic-practitioner involvements with one another and with a targeted community, in relation to a particular project. In the title of the article, we have hyphenated the term "academic-practitioner" to render fuzzy the distinction between "academic" roles (associated with…

This article seeks to address what it means to be an 'engaged' university and, in so doing, to contribute to current discourses -- in a fast growing field -- about how to collaborate with communities for meaningful social transformation. As a group of researchers from the faculty of education in a South African university, we share our thinking…

This paper reports on an international collaborative study that investigated how students from rural contexts negotiate the transition to university, and how prior cultural and educational experiences influence their higher education trajectories. A qualitative, participatory methodology was adopted, centred on co-researcher narratives, digital…

The role of higher education in improving educational practices and access through research in technology innovations across the wider spectrum of schooling has especially increased in the information driven 21st century lifestyle. Pre-service teacher training plays a significant role in this transformation. For South Africa, research in…

Purpose: This paper aims to present the results of an investigation on how a reciprocal relationship between the University of Mpumalanga (UMP) in South Africa and the surrounding communities can be used to accelerate the implementation of sustainable development goal 4 (SDG 4). The aim of this paper is to establish stakeholder perceptions on the…

Community engagement as a public mission of higher education is widely accepted in South Africa. This is articulated in White Paper 3 on the transformation of higher education and in institutional policies that promote different forms of community engagement. However, compared to the traditional roles of teaching and research, community engagement…

The article explores the multifaceted process of creating the large-scale annual public puppetry event, The Barrydale Giant Puppet Parade, in the rural town of Barrydale, South Africa. It unpacks the complex layers of meaning and making arising through a co-creative puppetry project in a region of South Africa marked by poverty and the on-going…

This article sheds light on how non-formal education was used as a tool to provide knowledge and skills for Manyeledi community members who are engaged in subsistence farming, to improve their crop yield. Manyeledi is a rural village in the North-West province, which, like most rural areas, is experiencing environmental degradation caused by the…

Universities in South Africa have the potential to advance various dimensions of human development, including well-being. However, this potential can be constrained by historical processes of oppression and the negation of indigenous ways of being and doing. Applying the capabilities approach (Sen, 1999) as a normative framework for the outcomes…

Action learning within community-based research is a powerful capacitator of social action. Here, we consider three aspects of action learning that are vital to enable this: (i) developing self-directed and lifelong action learning; (ii) generating local and theoretical knowledge through action research and reflection on learning; and (iii)…