The birth of educational archaeology in South Africa

Antiquity ◽  
2000 ◽  
Vol 74 (283) ◽  
pp. 159-165 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amanda B. Esterhuysen
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
African Education ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
South African Education

Archaeology in education has been introduced in South Africa only recently as the politics of the past precluded the application of archaeology in the classroom. This paper presents the background to South African education and educational archaeology and discusses some of the issues and studies undertaken in South Africa. It also offers comment on the factors which determine and shape educational archaeology of the present and those that may affect the discipline of archaeology in the future.

Is Decentralisation a Suitable Response to Improve South African Rural Education?

2021 ◽  
Vol 20 (6) ◽  
pp. 211-224
Author(s):  
Kevin Teise ◽  
Emma Barnett
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Rural Education ◽  
Rural Communities ◽  
South African ◽  
School Level ◽  
High Quality ◽  
African Education ◽  
Departments Of Education ◽  
South African Education ◽  
Effectiveness And Efficiency

South Africa (SA) has a decentralised education system. It is generally assumed that decentralisation improves the effectiveness and efficiency of education by responding to the needs, values, and expectations of both local and rural communities. A large part of SA could be described as rural and a large number of learners attend rural schools. This makes rural education a significant part of the South African education context. With education being decentralised, and with decentralisation being heralded as the panacea to the problems faced by rural communities as well as rural education, the assumption is that rural education should be of a high quality. This desk-top paper assesses the potential of decentralisation to improve the quality and effectiveness of South African rural education. This it does by locating decentralisation within neoliberalism which this paper argues is the impetus behind the decentralisation of South African education, and the reason for the decline in the quality and effectiveness of rural education. The paper also highlights certain tensions between the various decentralised spheres of governance, namely the central and provincial Departments of Education and school-level governance structures. The paper further indicates how these tensions potentially hamper the effectiveness and efficiency of rural education. The paper concludes with some recommendations aimed at improving rural education.

scholarly journals Critical agency in the post-apartheid education system

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nazir Carrim
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Social Justice ◽  
Critical Thinking ◽  
South African ◽  
Educational System ◽  
Education System ◽  
The South ◽  
African Education ◽  
South African Education

This paper looks at critical agency in the South African education system. There has been a consistent linking of critical thinking with critical agency under apartheid, and that this was constructed by a ‘critical struggle’ (Touraine, 1985) against apartheid domination. However, this changed significantly in the post-apartheid moment, where compliance with the newly elected government is emphasised, and could be viewed in terms of ‘positive struggles’ (Touraine, 1986). These, however, limit critical agency in the post-apartheid formation. There is, nonetheless, evidence of critical agency being enacted in the post-apartheid education system. The importance of highlighting those forms of critical agency is crucial in order to enhance social justice in the post-apartheid educational system and society. This paper also links critical agency in the post-apartheid situation with the postcolonial and postmodern conditions because such conditions affect the possibilities of critical agency not only in South Africa but more generally.

scholarly journals The African languages in South African education 2009–2011

2012 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 120-124
Author(s):  
Rosemary Wildsmith
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Language Education ◽  
National Language ◽  
African Education ◽  
African Languages ◽  
Learning And Teaching ◽  
Educational Domain ◽  
South African Education

South African National Language Education policy (South Africa, DoE 2002) enshrines multilingualism (ML) as one of its major goals. The implementation of such a policy is a slow process, however, particularly in the educational domain, where parents, teachers and students favour the dominant, ex-colonial language (English) for both historic and instrumental reasons (Dalvit & de Klerk 2005). However, results of the National Benchmarking Test (NBMT Report 2009) conducted at selected South African universities show that most non-English speaking students in higher education have underdeveloped language and numeracy skills for study at this level, one of the main barriers to access being that of language (Council on Higher Education 2007: 2). Efforts have thus intensified in South African institutions to introduce the home languages of learners into the educational domain, either as learning support alongside the main medium of instruction or as alternative languages of instruction, working towards the development of a bilingual education model. This report documents developments in research in the promotion and use of the African languages in education in South Africa in recent years, particularly since the publication of the previous report (Wildsmith-Cromarty 2009), which discussed various initiatives in the teaching, development and use of the African languages in South African education during the period 2005–2008. This report considers further developments in the use of the African languages for academic purposes in the following areas: the learning and teaching of these languages as additional languages and for professional purposes in selected disciplines for specialist programmes, and their intellectualization, which includes their use as languages of instruction, in the translation of materials and other learning resources, and development of terminology.

scholarly journals The emergence of an education policy dispositif in South Africa: An analysis of educational discourses associated with the fourth industrial revolution

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aslam Fataar
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
Research Association ◽  
The South ◽  
African Education ◽  
Generic Skills ◽  
Fourth Industrial Revolution ◽  
South African Education ◽  
The Impact

The notion of the fourth industrial revolution (4IR) has recently entered the public and policy domain in South Africa. It has rapidly found resonance in policy discourse and the popular media. It has also entered the language of educational policy and institutions. The impact of 4IR on educational thinking and practice has hitherto not featured in academic discussion on education in South Africa except for a keynote plenary session at the annual conference of the South African Education Research Association (SAERA) in Durban (October 2019). The South African Education Deans Forum recently published a call for the submission of chapters for a book on teacher education, 4IR, and decolonisation. In this article, I develop an address that I delivered at the SAERA 2019 conference as part of the plenary panel. The article consists of four sections. The first offers a consideration of the entry of 4IR discourse into the educational imaginary. I suggest in this section that 4IR discourse has installed a socio-technical imaginary in South Africa's unequal educational dispensation. The second section concentrates on the construction of educational governance. Based on research on 4IR-related policy making, I discuss the policy directions taken by the Department of Higher Education and Training and the Department of Basic Education in giving effect to ways of engaging with 4IR in each of their domains. The third section features a discussion of the impact of technological disruption on society, the economy and education. The final section presents a discussion of the emerging educational architectures in the 4IR and a critical consideration of the curriculum and pedagogical dimensions of 4IR, which, I argue, are informed by an orientation that prioritises the acquisition of generic skills. Sidelining knowledge and concepts as central to the structuring of the curriculum, a generic skills approach succumbs to what might be called a knowledge blindness that holds pernicious consequences for epistemic access in South Africa.

scholarly journals Informing principal policy reforms in South Africa through data-based evidence

2015 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gabrielle Wills
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
School Leadership ◽  
South African ◽  
School Principals ◽  
Policy Reforms ◽  
The Past ◽  
Age Profile ◽  
South African Education ◽  
Low Levels ◽  
Average School

In the past decade there has been a notable shift in South African education policy that raises the value of school leadership as a lever for learning improvements. Despite a growing discourse on school leadership, there has been a lack of empirical based evidence on principals to inform, validate or debate the efficacy of proposed policies in raising the calibre of school principals. Drawing on findings from a larger study to understand the labour market for school principals in South Africa, this paper highlights four overarching characteristics of this market with implications for informing principal policy reforms. The paper notes that improving the design and implementation of policies guiding the appointment process for principals is a matter of urgency. A substantial and increasing number of principal replacements are taking place across South African schools given a rising age profile of school principals. In a context of low levels of principal mobility and high tenure, the leadership trajectory of the average school is established for nearly a decade with each principal replacement. Evidence-based policy making has a strong role to play in getting this right.

“Lest We Forget”: A Postapartheid Perspective on Remembering in Liturgy for Healing and Justice

2021 ◽  
Vol 51 (1) ◽  
pp. 60-72
Author(s):  
Hilton Scott
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
United Kingdom ◽  
South African ◽  
South African Context ◽  
Recent Past ◽  
South Africans ◽  
The Past ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
The Future ◽  
African Context

The idea of Remembrance Day (also known as Armistice Day) in the United Kingdom and Commonwealth countries carries two important notions: (1) to remember significant tragedies and sacrifices of the past by paying homage, and (2) to ensure that such catastrophes are prevented in the future by not forgetting. This concept can be applied to the South African context of a society and young democracy that is living in the wake of apartheid. In certain spheres this will include decolonizing the long-standing practices of Remembrance Day in South Africa, ritualizing the event(s) to be more relevant to those who partake by shifting the focus to tragedies caused during apartheid, and remembering that such a deplorable catastrophe should never be repeated. The important liturgical functions and pragmatic outcome(s) of this notion are reconciliation, restoration, transformation and, ultimately, liberation, as South Africans look to heal the wounds caused by the tragedies of the recent past and prevent such pain from being inflicted on others in the future.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document