Reclaim and Resist

Aim/Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to understand how one graduate program shaped doctoral students’ scholarly identities as interdisciplinary scientists. Background: Scholarly identity refers to the ways individuals see themselves as legitimate, contributing members of their academic community. However, much of the research on scholarly identity focuses on students and faculty within traditional, discipline-bound contexts. We therefore know little about how doctoral students develop scholarly identities that are interdisciplinary in nature. By interdisciplinary, we refer broadly to scholarly work that uses methods, concepts, frameworks, or perspectives from two or more academic fields or disciplines, or scholarly work aimed at addressing research problems that spans multiple academic fields or disciplines. Methodology: This qualitative, ethnographic case study focuses on the University of Maryland’s Language Science Center (LSC), which houses a National Science Foundation Research Traineeship (NRT) Program for doctoral students in the interdisciplinary language sciences, which includes fields such as linguistics, hearing and speech, computer science, and neuroscience. The LSC is nationally and internationally known for its interdisciplinary graduate training program and thus provides a platform for understanding the components of graduate training that contribute to students’ scholarly identity development as interdisciplinary scientists. We draw from four years of qualitative data collection, including student interviews, student and faculty focus groups, ethnographic observations, and document analysis. Contribution: Across the public and private sectors, there is a strong push for developing interdisciplinary solutions to society’s problems. However, many colleges and universities are not organized to encourage interdisciplinary collaboration and research. Focusing on the ways one graduate program facilitated interdisciplinary scholarly identity development for doctoral students therefore provides graduate programs with a potential roadmap for navigating the barriers that may block the development of students with interdisciplinary research interests. Findings: We found curricular and co-curricular NRT program activities contributed to students’ scholarly identity development as interdisciplinary scientists by connecting them (or “plugging them in”) to a pre-existing, interdisciplinary network of students and faculty; increasing doctoral student competence in the methods, cultures, and perspectives of other disciplines; encouraging doctoral students to find common ground with scholars from different disciplinary backgrounds; and broadening doctoral students’ views of the potential impact and application of their work. Recommendations for Practitioners: Graduate training programs in the interdisciplinary sciences should think strategically about the kinds of activities that help students develop a scholarly identity and the conditions and contexts in which scholarly identity development might be undermined. We offer multiple examples of the kinds of activities graduate programs can consider using to facilitate scholarly identity development and the underlying mechanisms that make such activities successful. Recommendation for Researchers: Developing a scholarly identity is an important component of doctoral student success and should be considered as a useful potential theory for individuals who study graduate education. Impact on Society: Graduate programs play a critical role in training not only the next generation of faculty, but also the next generation of scientists in government and industry. If more graduate programs can successfully train doctoral students to be interdisciplinary scientists, societal benefits could include more responsive and adaptive solutions to pressing social problems. Future Research: Future researchers should consider how different graduate training elements produce students with different types of interdisciplinary scholarly identities, how the scholarly identity of students trained in interdisciplinary graduate programs continues to evolve as they transition into both academic and non-academic careers, and the strategies and experiences of faculty members who mentor students from outside of their own disciplines.

This paper seeks to provide a comparative analysis of the role of labour movements in democratisation during two very different political transitions in Nigeria and South Africa and in the context of globalisation and neoliberal hegemony. First, Nigeria is examined as an example of authoritarian rollback and containment of pro‐democracy movements in an economy heavily conditioned by interventions from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Second, South Africa is discussed as a case of home‐grown structural adjustment or gradual neoliberal shift in macroeconomic policies without relevant external interventions. The paper compares the failure of past Nigerian democratisation with the problems and issues arising after the first successful democratic electoral change in South Africa. Labour is analysed by focusing on its relationships with a set of organisations, institutions and regulated behaviours, and the broader concept of labour movement in its plurality of forms of identity, militancy and organisation. The argument of this paper is that the neoliberal discourse, with or without overt political authoritarianism, involves a narrowing of spaces for institutionalising the progressive role of labour in civil society. In the Nigerian case, this process leads to grassroots' demand for a significant radicalisation of trade union strategies, while the possibilities and constraints for such an outcome in the South African case are explored in relation to the crisis of corporatist solutions. The paper concludes that the impact of labour is the single most important factor in the establishment of democracy through alliance with other social forces. At the same time, this conclusion cautions with the contradictory nature of pressures placed on organised labour.

Despite the enriched curriculum and pedagogical practices that expose everyone enrolled to be trained as professional teachers to teaching skills, the number of incompetent teachers produced by many higher learning institutions is still increasing. There is an outcry from the general public in South Africa. In order to gain insight into this concern, this study examined the challenges of pre-service teachers’ classroom participation in a rurally located university in South Africa. A qualitative research design of a case study approach was employed to collect data from ten years 3 and 4 pre-service teachers and five lecturers. A semi-structured and focus group discussion (FGD) was organised to collect data on a thematic analysis. The findings revealed that lack of preparation from both lecturer and student, the use of teacher-centred approach, difficulty in understanding English language, teaching workload, large classes, student background and tribalism are major challenges limiting pre-service teachers’ classroom participation in a rurally located university in South Africa. Pertinent recommendations were made, including student-centred and collaborative teaching and learning approaches that could encourage students to participate actively in classroom activities. This would also catalyse the pre-service teachers' involvement in the teaching and learning process.
 
 Received: 21 June 2022 / Accepted: 29 August 2022 / Published: 2 September 2022

As part of a growing literature on the histories of psychology in the Global South, this article outlines some historical developments in South African psychologists' engagement with the problem of "health." Alongside movements to formalize and professionalize a U.S.-style "health psychology" in the 1990s, there arose a parallel, eclectic, and more or less critical psychology that contested the meaning and determinants of health, transgressed disciplinary boundaries, and opposed the responsibilization of illness implicit in much health psychological theorizing and neoliberal discourse. This disciplinary bifurcation characterized South African work well into the postapartheid era, but ideological distinctions have receded in recent years under a new regime of knowledge production in thrall to the demands of the global market. The article outlines some of the historical-political roots of key trends in psychologists' work on health in South Africa, examining the conditions that have impinged on its directions and priorities. It raises questions about the future trajectories of psychological research on health after 20 years of democracy, and argues that there currently is no "health psychology" in South Africa, and that the discipline is the better for it.

South Africa's crisis in mathematics attainment is well documented (DBE, 2013; Spaull, 2014; WEF, 2014). To meet the need to develop students' mathematical performance in schools the government has launched various initiatives using computers to impact on mathematical attainment. While it is clear that computers can change pedagogical practices, there is a dearth of qualitative studies indicating exactly how pedagogy is transformed with Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) in a teaching activity. Consequently, this paper addresses the following question: how, along which dimensions in an activity, does pedagogy alter with the use of computer drill and practice software in four disadvantaged grade 6 mathematics classrooms in the Western Cape province of South Africa? The paper draws on Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) to develop a view of pedagogy as socially situated. Four ideal pedagogical types are identified: Reinforcement pedagogy, which has the reinforcement of specialised knowledge as its object; Collaborative pedagogy, which has the development of metacognitive engagement with specialised knowledge as its object; Directive pedagogy, which has the development of technical task skills as its object, and finally, Defensive pedagogy, which has student regulation as its object. Face-to- face lessons were characterised as predominantly Reinforcement and Collaborative pedagogy and most computer lessons were characterised as mainly either Defensive or Directive.

The question of what constitutes ‘a community’ or even ‘the community’ takes on an extra salience in a divided society such as South Africa where the entire environment remains imprinted with the legacy of enforced segregation along racial lines. Higher education institutions need to prepare emerging health and social service students for the world of practice in a context of diversity, continuing segregation and marked inequality. As one step to helping students deal with working in a divided society, academic departments from two different South African universities have been involved in a collaborative teaching and research project. Fourth year psychology and social work students from the two universities took part in a collaborative, practical course which formed part of their curricula. In this course, students were given the opportunity to engage with the notion of ‘community’ and ‘community work’ with each other. The students came from diverse racial, class and political backgrounds, and by engaging with one another as they did, had the opportunity to ‘visit’ worlds they have rarely had access to. While this course was able to achieve a broadening awareness among students from different backgrounds about the notion of community, it will take both more engagement with courses of this kind, and a continuing history of change in South Africa, for students to feel more comfortable in transcending both physical and psychological boundaries. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

KEYWORDS Online Learning. Service-learning. International Exposure. Multi-disciplinary Interaction.Power Dynamics ABSTRACT The researchers explore here an alternative model for horizontal international collaboration in teaching and learning; a module incorporating service-learning and online-learning principles. Playing the Power Game, is a service-learning module first taught internationally via the internet from two different academic institutions: the University of the Free State (UFS) located in Bloemfontein, South Africa and the University Without Walls (UWW), Saratoga Springs, NY, Skidmore College in the United States. This paper considers the process and results of this unique international service-learning venture. By isolating power as theoretical abstraction; applying multidisciplinary approaches placing learners' experience, service and reflection at the pedagogical center; and by harnessing the enormous capacity of the internet to connect peoples, we are confident that a unique cross-cultural learning experience resulted: charting a useful new pedagogical model with value for facilitators across the disciplines in the internet age.

In a shrinking world, in which a neo-liberal discourse has permeated sub-Saharan African higher education, critical reflection is required to assess the merits and demerits of globalisation. Research, intensive discussion and hearings conducted over a two-year period by the Task Force on Higher Education and Society, convened by the World Bank and United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) for the purpose of exploring the future of higher education in the developing world, led to the conclusion that without more and better higher education, developing countries would find it increasingly difficult to benefit from the global knowledge economy. A decade later, we argue for a radical change in the traditional discourse on globalisation because of the emergence of countries such as China, South Africa, India, and Brazil as global players in the world economy. These emerging global powers, reframe the political and imperial philosophy at the epicentre of globalisation discourse – an economic creed, through their mutual consultation and coordination on significant political issues. Their economic and military capabilities enable them to influence the trade regime and thereby strengthen the voice of the developing world as a whole. In relation to this paper’s inquiry, the cooperation of these emerging powers gives the free enfranchised people of the world an opportunity to choose a different path of international relations (internationalisation) formed on more liberal lines, as opposed to the neo-liberal economic rationality of globalisation. This paper therefore examines globalisation and internationalisation of higher education in sub-Saharan Africa, a field in which increased knowledge production and distribution open up opportunities for users, institutions and societies. Against a background of chronic economic uncertainty we examine the influence of major international institutions on the direction of higher education, in particular teacher education. Drawing on relevant literature and our own experience, reflexively, we argue that the tendency, towards free market regulation ideologies, privileges neo-liberal global knowledge discourses, such that they impose on higher education a need to respond across a range of fields. Keywords : commodification, discourse practices, globalisation, global players, higher education, internationalisation, knowledge economies, marketisation, neo-liberalism, regulation ideologies, shrinking world, sub-Saharan Africa, teacher education

This article discusses the impact of neoliberal capitalism on women and reviews the promises of Beijing against the realities of women's lives in Africa. The focus is on South Africa post-1994, the impact of Growth Employment and Redistribution, and the neoliberal discourses contained in the New Partnership for Africa's Development. Against this contemporary analysis, the article calls for radical structural changes, a move towards social democracy, and for consciousness-raising among both men and women so that they understand the dynamics of power imbalances and how structural factors impact their lives. Given the devastatingly poor and marginalised positions of the majority of women, and the current lack of labour absorption capacity, the article advocates for comprehensive social security in the form of a basic income grant to positively impact the lives of women in South Africa.

Informed by the qualitative method and the descriptive-interpretive design, this study, which was underscored by radical humanist goals of structural social work, reflects the voices of 16 youth who had transitioned out of care. The results show that emerging adults, transitioning out of care, are vulnerable and in need of support. This article discusses three main themes derived via an inductive approach: the influence of sociocultural networks, connecting with family, and the multiple risk factors associated with getting into and out of care that compromise youth’s quest for security. The neoliberal discourse on independent living needs to shift to interdependence and Ubuntu. It is interdependence, not independence, that gives a human face to care leavers as service providers respond to their past trauma, present vulnerability, and future risks, while promoting family preservation and resourceful, caring communities.

The aim of this study was to evaluate an HIV-related risk reduction programme for heterosexual university students using a pre-post test intervention design. Participants included 814 university students, of which 351 (43.1 %) were males and 423 (52.0 %) were females with a mean age of 19.3 years (SD=2.6). Results indicated that HIV-related knowledge; condom knowledge and risk perception were enhanced by the HIV- related risk reduction programme. However, there is a need for improvement, especially with regard to attitudes towards condoms since some students still had negative attitudes even after the intervention programme. Key Words: Evaluation, HIV-risk reduction intervention, university students, South Africa. AJPHERD Vol.10(3) 2004: 180-192

Academic development (AD) programmes for students not complying with the entrance requirements of mainstream programmes in science have been running at a number of universities in South Africa. In this study we contribute to the debate on criteria for the success of AD programmes, specifically in the context of research-intensive universities in South Africa. We identify five quantitative criteria for evaluating such a programme: retention, completion rate, migration to other faculties, comparison with other institutions and enrolment in graduate studies. Most of these criteria are relatively common in evaluating similar programmes whereas the extent of migration to other faculties is particular to this study. We illustrate the use of these criteria evaluating the BSc Four Year Programme at the University of Pretoria based on the group of students who registered for the programme in 2008. We found that around 15% of this group had completed their studies in the minimum time while the eventual completion rate of students getting degrees is expected to be in the order of 50%. The attrition rate across the four year science degree programme was high (43%), but the majority of students who terminated their studies did so during the first year. Of those still enrolled in their fourth year a high percentage of students remained in science-related programmes (79%). The fact that more than half of first graduates had enrolled for postgraduate programmes in 2012 is a criterion for success that is especially important for a research-intensive university.

The influence of WhatsApp usage on collaborative pedagogy and social networking during teaching practice at a rural university in South Africa

This study mapped and audited the types, nature and diffusion of ICTs in LIS education in sub-Saharan Africa. Questionnaires were sent to 51 LIS schools in 19 countries of sub-Saharan Africa, of which 29 (57%) were returned. Most LIS schools have a significant ICT content in their programs, and most ICT modules are highly rated as core/required within these programs. Practical training for ICT skills was included in all modules but to a limited extent. ICT use in teaching and learning was largely focused on computer literacy, followed by use of ICT in bulletin boards, distance learning and collaborative teaching. Only a few African LIS schools, with significant growth in South Africa, employ online teaching. ICT is used in research mainly to collect research information, to identify sources for research funds and to apply research tools such as statistical packages. There was also evidence of strong use of ICT for academic administration largely through stand alone PCs or offline. Computer hardware availability was noted to be low as the number of computers in terms of computer student or staff ratio is extremely low. While a variety of computer software is available in the market with Microsoft products leading the market, softwarelicensing requirements are problematic because of cost and infringements. Most institutions have set up mechanisms to provide staff with ICT competency, and evidently the agenda for ICT development for LIS education in Africa is still quite long. Such an agenda should always include provision of resources and better ICT infrastructure, staff development, ICT policy, ICT accessibility for students and staff, curriculum development, collaboration and networking for resource sharing, distance learning education, practical education/training for skills development, experiential learning, and integration of ICT in LIS education.

This paper reports the integration of supplementary training in academic literacy, for those without the assumed entry standard, into a standard electrical engineering program without compromising any other educational objectives. All students who commenced an engineering degree were tested as part of their first session's assessment activities. Those identified as having inadequate academic literacy were directed to study a specifically designed credit-bearing course, which is controlled by the engineering faculty but was designed and is taught in collaboration with academic literacy teachers. Students who completed this course responded positively and also demonstrated measurable improvement in their communication skills. The approach has alleviated the skepticism about teaching academic literacy usually found amongst engineering faculty staff and has been adopted by the wider engineering faculty.