South African society is currently experiencing a breakdown of morals, which is negatively impacting not only communities but also teaching and learning in Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). There appears to be a widespread lack of respect for authority, accountability, and good manners among students, who often display rudeness, laziness,…

Stellenbosch University students who graduated with a Bachelor of Commerce in Management Accounting or a Bachelor of Commerce in Financial Accounting may convert to a Bachelor of Accounting by completing a conversion year. The purpose of the conversion year is to meet the Bachelor of Accounting Honours admission requirements, which puts students…

This study focuses on the admission criteria of a bachelor of accountancy (BAcc) degree program as one of many factors influencing students' success in graduating in the regulated time frames. The present study used constructivist learning and student engagement theories as connected lenses to explore the effect of admission criteria on…

People of diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds are now more than ever interacting with one another in work and social situations, mainly remotely during the midst of the pandemic. Intercultural education can prepare student teachers with the tools they need to interact effectively in a variety of intercultural situations with their…

Background: It is widely accepted that the quality of schools depends on the quality of teachers. Understanding what occurs while learning to teach is an important pursuit for acquiring a sense of the quality of teachers. The initial development of teachers is a critical point from which to activate such understanding. Aim: This study, therefore,…

Background: From 2020, the Law faculty has decided to discontinue the five-year Extended Curriculum Programme (ECP) stream within the Bachelor of Laws (LLB) degree for a variety of reasons, including students' perceptions of stigma, the poor throughput rate of this stream and the identified need to extend academic support to more students in the…

The training of highly skilled persons for the areas of Economics and Commerce requires that degree students upon entry need certain knowledge and skills in mathematics including aspects of statistics. The context is distance education and entry students seem unable to cope with the requirements of the mathematics-based topics that they need to…

The focus of this article is on the re-design of a fourth year Bachelor of Education (B.Ed) programme at the University of the Western Cape (UWC). Due to the changes in teacher qualifications, as outlined in the 2015 "Minimum Requirements for Teacher Education Qualification" (MRTEQ) policy document, Higher Education Institutions were…

Background: Academic literacy(ies) is a major determining qualifier for success in a university qualification. Academic literacy(ies), in this study, are seen as social practices or discourses that occur within specific academic disciplines. Students therefore needed to 'learn' the academic literacy(ies) discourse of the faculty. Aim: This study…

The Bachelor of Education (BEd) undergraduate degree at a university in the Gauteng province, South Africa, aims to prepare pre-service teachers by using their experiences to expose them to the South African schooling context. This is done using a scaffolded process that includes formative assessment, summative assessment and Work-Integrated…

We live in a dynamic world, characterised by major economic, technological and social change. Decolonising teacher education is embedded in a critical approach that aims to create counterhegemonic intellectual spaces in which new worldviews can unfold, in ways that can lead us toward change of praxis. The idea for this article was born out of…

Motivation to enter initial teacher education is a key concern in research globally and in South Africa specifically. Supply of teachers for the Foundation Phase is identified as a critical need in South Africa and understanding why individuals enter these programmes is crucial. In this context, this article explores what motivates student…

The South African government recently adopted an education policy that attempts to achieve socio-economic redress through expanding free university education to first-year students from low-income backgrounds. However, in a country in which structural factors such as race, gender, and age continue to shape labor market outcomes, to what extent can…

The aim of the research was to explore the levels of cognitive loading induced by certain tenets of constructivist pedagogy namely self-directed learning complex questions and zone of proximal development. The study also sought to investigate the associations between these constructs and with cognitive loading and complex questions. Data for the…

In South Africa under apartheid, higher education was unavailable to a large segment of the population. Many who enrol for an undergraduate degree today are thus mature students or 'adult learners' 25 years or older who are in full-time employment. Since these students learn differently from their younger peers, institutions need to know what…