Abstract
The field of academic development in South Africa has produced a wealth of research over the thirty years of its existence. The impact of globalisation, however, has meant that local research in the field of academic development is often regarded as being of lesser value than knowledge from the global North and the so-called ‘best practices’ that emerge from it. The impact of uncritical acceptance of ‘best practice’ approaches from the global North is that understandings of teaching and learning tend to be divorcedfrom the context of practice. As a result, the application of such approaches often failsto accommodate the diverse learning needs of students and are not responsive to complex institutional and global South contexts.
Highlights
The field of academic development in South Africa has produced a wealth of research over the thirty years of its existence
Despite much of the early academic development research being grounded in a student deficit discourse, scholars such as Vilakazi and Tema (1985) strongly argued that it was not the students who needed development, but rather the universities themselves that were deficient or underprepared
Mehl (1988) argued that if universities themselves did not understand their deficiencies, it would be unlikely that the vision of a non-racial, democratic South Africa could be realised
Summary
The field of academic development in South Africa has produced a wealth of research over the thirty years of its existence. Some thirty-five years later, we are still calling for ‘pedagogies in context’ and for understandings of student learning and teaching approaches that are socio-culturally relevant, responsive, and effective for our African and South African context (see, for example, Behari-Leak and McKenna, 2017; Boughey and McKenna, 2016).
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