Technical Vocational Education and Training (TVET) in South Africa has undergone major institutional, structural and curricular changes over the last fourteen years. Drawing on figurational sociology by Norbert Elias, the study worked within a qualitative research paradigm and used open-ended interviews to investigate lecturers' experiences of…

In search of embodying values that underpin democracy at school level, the objectives of the article include exploring expectations generated by the constitutional dispensation (Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 108/1996, section 41) and delineating those moulded by the South African Schools Act (84/1996, Preamble). While the latter…

Many rural children in South Africa are subjected to social isolation, poor quality schooling and other related challenges, which impacts their growth and development and access to post-school educational opportunities. Well-functioning boarding schools offer a solution but research in South Africa is still in its infancy. Using the theoretical…

The purpose of this qualitative study was to uncover preservice teachers' generative learning and explore whether and how they built on and/or extended linguistically responsive teaching 1 year after participating in a study abroad program and community-based international service learning project. We relied on narrative reflections, interviews,…

Why have many developing countries that have succeeded in expanding access to education made such limited progress on improving learning outcomes? There is a growing recognition that the learning crisis constitutes a significant dimension of global inequality and also that educational outcomes in developing countries are shaped by political as…

Following a transformation of experience-based handicraft education, Technology education was introduced in Botswana and South Africa in 1990 and 1998, respectively, with the intention of developing technologically literate societies, as well as to develop learners' skills for the world of work. Despite these optimistic intentions, limited…

Teaching and teacher education in South Africa have emerged from a highly fragmented past. Teachers from diverse backgrounds, experiences and qualifications find themselves working together in schools where they do not necessarily have access to a common language of practice, nor a shared understanding of professional teaching practices. To…

The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has highlighted a 'vicious cycle of decline' in rural, regional and remote (RRR) regions, with significant inequalities in educational outcomes between rural and urban areas. However, interventions have not resulted in transformative or lasting improvements to education in rural…

Access to quality education for all children is a common mantra for countless national and world organizations, such as the UN and its Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This paper examines the struggle within two nations who continue to move beyond the impact of racial segregation in the United States (US) and "apartheid" in South…

Benchmarking is one way of ensuring academic depth and rigour in teacher education. After making a case for setting benchmarks in teacher education based on the widely recognised intra-education system contextual factors, the importance of also taking into account the external (e.g. the national-social) context in which teacher education occurs is…

The quality and standard of South African examination questions for the grade 12 examination have become an important issue for the South African education system. So far, the focus of empirical research has been on factors that lead to poor performance in the Physical sciences as well as the alignment of the grade 12 Physical Sciences examination…

Purpose: Standards should provide a means for transparently comparing academic programmes delivered by higher education providers and the research activities they carry out. The purpose of this study is to investigate the different sets of standards related to the quality assurance of academic programmes in four countries with regard to the…

Free and compulsory primary education remains a priority area in the international policy perspective, starting from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948 to the formulation of Sustainable Development Goals in 2015. Under the impact of globalization, an impressive expansion in the access to primary education has been observed in recent…

The provision of quality basic education is essential as it can ensure that all learners have an equal opportunity to succeed in life. This paper discusses district officials' perspectives regarding some factors that impede the achievement of quality basic education in schools under their jurisdiction. Data were collected through semi-structured…

The international debate on colonisation is gaining momentum, primarily in the Americas, Africa and Australasia. Recent incidents in South Africa, such as the Fallist movement and the protest over rules on black girls' hair at certain schools, have sparked renewed debates on (de-)colonisation in the education system. It has become critical that…