This article offers an account of the development of student leaders' agency within the institutional culture of their residences at Stellenbosch University (SU). Residences at formerly white universities such as SU are struggling to align their welcoming practices and cultures to the requirements for immersion of the diverse students who now live…

Key drivers of major changes in the post 1994 South African higher education transformation has been due to the increased involvement of university students in the university leadership and governance. However, strife for increased participation has often resulted into tension between the university student organizations and the university…

Student affairs and student engagement are becoming important mechanisms for social change within South African tertiary education. We explored the relationship between student involvement in cocurricular activities and learning outcomes related to collective leadership for social change. Data were collected via a survey of 1,309 students that…

In my attempt to adhere to the request that I provide an interpretation of the theme for the session, "Critical Engagement, Innovation and Inclusivity", and cognisant of the primary audience, I weave student leadership responsibilities, challenges and possibilities into the address. Events since the plenary address have however…

Post-apartheid South African education reforms shifted the role of religion from a primary foundation for all subjects to one of several strategies to develop civic, moral, and ethical values among the nation's youth. A concurrent decline in the number and size of postsecondary religious studies departments, however, caused achievement of the…

The outbreak of COVID-19 and the lockdown measures that were widely implemented in response to the pandemic forced many of the forms of engagement and activities promoted by student affairs and services staff among students at universities to be curtailed or transformed -- at first, so that they entailed no interpersonal contact and later so that…

Despite a growing body of literature on international student involvement, international students in the South African context have remained understudied. In this quantitative study, we examined international students' cocurricular involvement and associated learning and development in a South African university. Participants included 198…

The power and importance of peer influence in educational settings has been well documented (Cuseo, 2010; Ender & Kay, 2001; Keup, 2010). In South Africa, research supports international trends that student involvement in peer-led activities contributes to student success and ultimate throughput (Layton & McKenna, 2015; Loots, 2009;…

We examined student engagement with respect to gender, race, and finance at 1 South African university using a culturally relevant conceptual framework. Data for 2,569 students were collected via a survey covering demographics, cocurricular involvement, and learning outcomes. Findings include differences in sense of connection, pride, and…

The study described in this article highlights the complexity of service-learning efforts and community engagement pursuits. It is based on 6.5 months of qualitative fieldwork in International Baccalaureate international schools in Kenya, Ethiopia, and South Africa. The article unpacks the understandings and skills involved in service-learning…

Twenty years after Nelson Mandela became President of South Africa, deeply entrenched inequalities and injustices are still at the core of the country's social fabric. South Africa's public and private sectors continue to battle with the situation and higher education institutions are no exception. The South African Ministry of Education has…

A case study was conducted with a student leadership body of a private multicultural international secondary school in North-West Province , South Africa, to indicate that the emotional intelligence leadership development challenges of student leaders can be identified through a questionnaire as a measuring instrument, which can then be utilized…

This research investigated the female adolescent view of leadership by giving voice to student leaders through focus group discussions. The questions: What is leadership? Where/how was leadership taught?, and How was leadership practised? were explored within the context of girls' schools located in Australia, with one school located in South…

Peer-led academic learning has increased in importance, but there is little sense of how many institutions support it, how they understand its purposes or what peer-led learning best practice is. This report examines the provision of peer-led learning in the UK. It identifies challenges and opportunities, including international perspectives and…

In this article, I explore the concepts of mentoring and role modeling with regard to developing student leaders within the girls' school context. The foundation for this discussion lies in two qualitative studies involving staff and students from girls' schools located in Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. Both survey and focus groups were…