This conceptual article theorises the role of poetry in English classrooms from a multimodal perspective. It discusses the gap between the practices of poetry inside and outside South African schools, particularly where English is taught as an additional language (EAL). The former is shown to be monomodal and prescriptive, while the latter is…

Road safety education is a complex phenomenon which should be viewed holistically if taken into account the interconnectedness of education, infrastructure and enforcement. Effective road safety education is specifically important for learners in the Further Education and Training (FET) band, as they are active contributors to a community. The…

This qualitative study explores how a community of enquiry pedagogy in combination with a social semiotic approach to visual analysis influenced the changing knowledge and concepts of knowledge experienced by students in an undergraduate teacher education course. The art of the Constitutional Court of South Africa was the focus of our study and…

Teaching in higher education poses unique sets of challenges, especially for academics in the engineering, built sciences and information science education disciplines. This article focuses on how reflective collaboration can support academics in their quest to find unique solutions to challenges in different academic contexts. A reflective…

The extensive empirical research inspired by Piaget and Vygotsky's theories of make-believe play has been criticised for restricting data to Western, urban, middle-class children. We seek to redress this bias by researching the traditional black South African Pedi children's game Masekitlana. Our data relies on embodied memories enacted by Mapelo…

In this paper we argue that human rights approaches for intellectually disabled people have failed to recognise the complexity of rights claims made by and on behalf of this group. Drawing on a research project into discourses of education for intellectually disabled people in the Eastern Cape, South Africa we discern three rights discourses;…

The article provides an analysis and critique of contemporary debates concerning the quality of education in South Africa from a social justice perspective. In particular the article focuses on the "Education Roadmap" which has gained support from a range of stakeholders in South Africa including key members of the newly elected…

The start of the Education for All (EFA) movement ushered in a new era in education, an era linked to research on issues such as "global governance" or the "world institutionalization of education". This global governance not only affects the way in which educational systems are influenced, it also involves how we view and…

Student learning inventories are used by both researchers and educators as tools to identify "at risk" students. This article critically interrogates the results of one of these inventories, the 18-item Approaches to Learning and Studying Inventory. In-depth interviews were held with a purposive sample of 10 first-year engineering…

This article begins with a critique of dominant approaches to language policy in education that are based on the notion of "rights" and "peoples." It makes the case for an approach that is based on the tripartite view of social justice, as articulated by Nancy Fraser. This view of social justice sees a complementary…

The Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996 confers equality on all South African citizens regardless of race and gender. It has been reported that, under apartheid, gender inequality was a way of life and even social liberation movements observed it. Education is not exempt from gender inequality; the Department of Education in 2003…

In this article, literacy, which is conceived of as a set of cognitive skills, is juxtaposed with a sociocultural orientation that sees literacy as a set of social practices for the production of meaning. Cognitive, skills-based pedagogies treat literacy as universal, autonomous, and independent of context, whereas sociocultural literacy…

University access programmes inherently and inevitably provide students with a "label". Firstly, students are generally segregated and stigmatised as they are treated as a separate group that accessed university somewhat "illegitimately". Access programmes generally place more emphasis on academic development and in so doing…

With youth unemployment in South Africa hovering around 50 percent and close to half the population living in poverty, a university degree has come to be seen by many as the only way out. And universities are straining under the burden: This admissions cycle, the University of Johannesburg alone rejected more than 70,000 applicants in filling an…

Skills development is critical to South Africa's development. It has been argued that South Africa's twin post-Apartheid challenges, poverty and unemployment requires a level of skills development not undertaken before (RSA, 2008a; ANC, 2007). The creation of a separate ministry, the department of higher education and training (DHET), which has…