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.…

Personal epistemology is concerned with people's beliefs or assumptions about the nature of knowledge and knowing. Whilst contributions in this field can be traced back to the 1970s, fundamental questions about the ontology and epistemology of the construct still remain. The current study explored the effects of three characteristics of questions…

In this paper we study epistemological transitions across an intended engineering curriculum and recommend strategies to assist students in attaining the increasingly complex concepts and insights that are necessary for transition to advanced levels of study. We draw on Legitimation Code Theory [Maton, Karl. 2014, "Knowledge and Knowers:…

This article reports on a study that focuses on students from rural areas of South Africa and their experiences of higher education. These students have attracted little attention in widening participation research in South Africa, despite being one of the most marginalised groups. The article, drawing on the experiences of student co-researchers…

The aim of this paper is to search for possibilities to change the terms and content of conversations on colonial/decolonial human rights education. The content of conversations consists of what we know about human rights. The terms of conversations are the principles, assumptions, and rules of knowing in human rights education. The terms and…

This article discusses North-South-South higher education collaboration as a context for development education. We analyse an intensive course on qualitative research methods and culturally responsive education organized by a network of five universities from global South and global North. The course aimed to enhance qualitative understanding of…

In southern Africa, biotechnology is increasingly important with regard to food security and the development of the pharmaceutical industry. Universities are tasked with providing the relevant capacity development through tertiary-level courses to meet these development needs. However, the knowledge and practices of biotechnology may be…

The ongoing 2015/16 student unrest (#RhodesMustFall; #FeesMustFall) has displayed heightened calls for the decolonising of the curriculum in the higher education (HE) sector. Students have highlighted in the recent protests that the curriculum remains largely Eurocentric and continues to reinforce white and Western dominance. In response to the…

The tutorial system is considered to be a useful pedagogical intervention to improve student retention, particularly in the context of a first-year student's experience of entering university. For these novice students to achieve academic success, it is important that they are given access to the subject-specific knowledge and practices in their…

This paper seeks to address the ways in which ideology and literacy practices shape the responses of students to an ongoing initiative at the University of the Western Cape aimed at diversifying options for epistemological access, specifically the language varieties and the modes in which parts of the curriculum for a third year linguistics module…

Since technology education is, compared to subjects such as mathematics and science, still a fairly new subject both nationally and internationally, it does not have an established subject philosophy. In the absence of an established subject philosophy for technology education, one can draw on other disciplines in the field, such as engineering…

This articles aims to demystify curriculum and pedagogical discourses and related practices of sectoral occupational fields and qualifications of universities of technology (UoTs). The article takes issue with the academic tradition which emphasises distinctiveness of UoT as a sector that should focus exclusively on applied knowledge that is fixed…

In the light of the notorious video made by white students at the University of Free State (UFS) in which black middle aged cleaners were subjected to forms of degradation in a mock initiation ceremony (which included being given food mixed with urine) the Minister of Education authorised an investigation on social cohesion in universities. The…

The education dispensation in South Africa underwent tremendous changes during the last decade of the twentieth-century and in the early years of the new millennium. Many lecturers are not necessarily equipped to face all the challenges that are a result of the changes. Since it is the vision of the new government to have a "rational,…