The article examines students' engagement in university classrooms in South Africa. Of interest is the extent to which students experience some measure of parity of participation in these engagements. Such "participatory parity" broadly refers to students being able to act on a more or less equal footing with their peers and lecturers.…

Education in democratic South Africa has been saddled with the extraordinary task of sanitising a once dehumanising and splintered education system into a singular narrative of social justice and creative, problem-solving individuals. This extraordinary effort has witnessed a pendulum swing from the openness of outcomes-based education, to a less…

The need to transform higher education in South Africa is indisputable. This article explores how the recent #mustfall protests, as an Event, could inform transformation. An Event follows three phases: reframing (shattering the frame through which we understand reality), the fall (the loss of a primordial unity which is a retroactive illusion) and…

How can black women academics improve the lives of young people in their community? Etienne and her colleagues explore the ways they can intervene in two persistent and severe problems - the escalating knife crime that costs ever more young lives, and the disproportionately low academic attainment of black students compared with their white peers.…

Traditional advising responsibilities are shifting to include a holistic, learning-based and developmental approach that favours advising of the entire university experience. A dearth of systematic empirical evidence exists on advisors' perceptions of the value of advising students during the COVID-19 pandemic in the South African context. The…

Quality enhancement in student affairs is an integral part of professional practice, and its documentation and reflective evaluation are important in the ongoing professionalisation of student affairs in Africa. This article proposes a way of conceptualising a reflective scholarship of practice in student affairs in Africa and method to conduct…

Memory politics are often regarded as the "soft" issues contested in the aftermath of political and social upheaval. Yet critical public debates on memory, justice, impunity and reconciliation in South Africa prompted by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) process suggest otherwise. I offer a partial review of some of the key…

New voices emerging in the global South are contesting the academy's elitist and exclusionary ethos by disrupting the normalcy of coloniality. Concerns raised by the student protests of 2015 and 2016 have challenged the higher education sector to rethink its traditional teaching, learning, and assessment practices in response to student calls for…

This article pays tribute to Allan Luke's work as a pedagogical gift. His ability to bring sociological theories of power, identity and the body to bear on conceptualizing critical literacy is a gift. His research with indigenous populations, and his writing on inclusive curriculum, genres of power and double consciousness resonate in South Africa…

Much academic development work, whether it be student, academic staff, institutional or curriculum development, is undertaken from an affirmative rather than a transformative approach (Luckett, L., and S. Shay. 2020. "Reframing the Curriculum: A Transformative Approach." "Critical Studies in Education" 61 (1): 50-65). To be…

This study addressed the knowledge gap regarding South African parents' view of their role in the education of young children as democratic citizens. The study was conducted with parents of children younger than 8 years in 2 multicultural primary schools in Gauteng, South Africa. The explanatory sequential mixed methods research design was used to…

Background: Social transformation in South Africa is a sensitive issue because of the historical realities of segregation and past injustices. Aim: To address transformation, Visual Communication Design students were asked to design an exhibition, event, sculpture or garden to memorialise the forced removals that took place on the site of the…

Scholars writing on agency argue that normally, individuals who experience social structures as comfortable will tend to want to reproduce them while those who experience these structures as oppressive will want to change them. This is a bleak outlook because it suggests that those in positions of power and influence are less likely to seek to…

Background: Universities, globally, and in South Africa, continue to be confronted with demands for transformation, humanisation of pedagogical practices and to embrace social justice. Aim: In this article, we bring to the surface possibilities of "Ubuntu" pedagogy within a social justice framework. We intersect Collective Fingers Theory…

In this paper, I explore whether and how white people can make a meaningful contribution to decolonising university curricula. Drawing on my experiences as a white academic teaching at a South African university, I argue that identity matters when talking about decoloniality and that whites need to think carefully about the effects of their…