"Doing Justice to History" challenges everyday racism in society and offers counter-stories to the singular narratives that still prevail among national historians and in school curricula. It will be a key resource for the annual Black History Month in both the UK and the US. But the book's key purpose is to argue for deeper and…

This study explored similarities and differences in mathematics teaching and learning between public and private schools in post-apartheid South Africa. These conditions are viewed through the perceptions of mathematics teachers who navigate these two distinct spaces. This investigation was conducted during a cultural immersion component of a…

Universities in South Africa during apartheid reflected the racialised politics of the period. This gave rise to divisive descriptors such as "historically white/black"; "English/Afrikaans-speaking" institutions and "Bantustan'' universities. These descriptors signal a hierarchy of social status and state funding. We start…

Population censuses record considerable volumes of personal information, which when aggregated and tabulated provide significant insights into national societies. South African censuses have recorded levels of educational attainment since their inception in the mid-nineteenth century, initially measuring literacy and later the level of education…

A key factor in providing quality education is the main language of instruction (M-LoI). This creates a challenging situation for education policymakers in post-colonial multilingual countries such as South Africa. Language-in-education policies must valorise indigenous languages and redress their exclusion in past education systems while ensuring…

This article argues that we have lost the plot in South African reading education. To find it, we need to move beyond the predominant mode of reading as oral performance, where the emphasis is on accuracy and pronunciation, to reading as comprehension of meaning in text. While reading research in South Africa has been conducted mainly in school…

This paper explores a curriculum paradox that may arise for teachers in post-authoritarian regimes if a radically new curriculum, designed to prepare learners for democratic citizenship, requires them to be autonomous professionals. If teachers were originally schooled and trained under the old regime to follow the orders inscribed in syllabi and…

This paper will focus on the shifts in discourses about teacher education and teacher voice within the South African research and policy environment over the last four decades. The alignment of the political and educational agenda in providing resistance to the apartheid system culminated in 1994, the start of the new democracy. The preceding…

The focus of this article is on the role and contribution of policy research in contexts of social transformation. With reference to education transformation policies in post-apartheid South Africa, the argument is developed that research studies vary in their contribution to change, as a function of the paradigmatic assumptions and methodological…

The catalyst for learning and change in transformative learning theory has mostly been explained in terms of a disorientation in a relatively stable life. This article explores a South African, nonformal adult learning program, as a source of "orienting dilemmas," which catalyze learning and change in lives that are regularly and…

Twenty-two years after apartheid South African higher education is still struggling with challenges around access, success and transformation. Stellenbosch University (SU), as a historically white university, is striving to become significantly better and different in terms of relevance and active role-playing. SU wants to prepare students to…

South African government has been promulgating pieces of legislation aimed at ensuring racial integration, especially in higher education, and indirectly enforcing acculturation in historically white universities. Studies have proven that institutional cultures in historically white universities alienate and exclude black students' identities.…

This paper provides a history of academic development by examining how a South African institution coped with the potent social forces confronting it before the collapse of apartheid. Theoretically, it draws on the framework of Pierre Bourdieu and engages with a paper written a decade ago by Naidoo, who also used Bourdieu to understand…

Policy and research have been advocating the importance of teachers in achieving equity and teachers are called to act as agents of social justice. This issue remains central to the development of a post-apartheid South Africa, where a need for reconciliation and healing still dominates the society. Such a landscape requires adequate support…

Within the discourse of language planning and policy, there is an increasing realisation of the strategic role of information and communication technologies in the promotion of indigenous African languages. The article discusses the strategic role that social software, in particular blogs and wiki, can and should play in the development of African…