scholarly journals Conceptualisation and Early Implementation of an Academic Advising System at the University of Cape Town

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 31-45
Author(s):  
Ermien van Pletzen ◽  
Riashna Sithaldeen ◽  
Danny Fontaine-Rainen ◽  
Megan Bam ◽  
Carmelita Lee Shong ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Academic Advising ◽  
Capability Approach ◽  
Cape Town ◽  
Institutional Context ◽  
Evaluation Framework ◽  
Coherent System ◽  
Theory Approach ◽  
Structural Barriers ◽  
University Of Cape Town ◽  
The University

Academic advising is a High-Impact Practice that supports better outcomes for all students, particularly those encountering structural barriers to success. This paper presents a case study of processes followed in a three-year project (2018–20) at the University of Cape Town (UCT) to conceptualise, design, and start implementing an academic advising system. Three goals were formulated: to develop conceptual capacity and a theory of academic advising; to develop an academic advising model responsive to institutional context and student need; and to develop structures, relationships, tools, and resources to implement a coherent system. An informed grounded theory approach was used to analyse baseline data of existing support and advising at the institution. Data was collected through document and desktop research, interviews with stakeholders, and student focus groups. A monitoring and evaluation framework was developed to track and reflect on progress against the goals. Iterative cycles of data collection, analysis, and reflection took place as implementation started. A key finding was that UCT’s advising structures incline towards a decentralised faculty-based model, complemented by centralised support services that encompass advising functions. Low levels of integration were found, as well as inefficient duplication of services. To address these challenges, the conceptual and operational capacity of the academic advising team needed to be advanced. This was done by assembling a multidisciplinary team, undergoing professional training, and by running a journal club. A promising theoretical approach that emerged was a capability approach to academic advising. A shared model of academic advising was found to be best suited to the institutional context and a three-tiered model operationalised by faculty, professional, and peer advisers, as well as by automated advising tools, was designed. Implementation started through pilot projects. During Covid-19, innovative concept and centralised systems development that connected students to institutional resources, enabling them to practise agency and supporting their ability to achieve despite unprecedented structural barriers, demonstrated the viability of the capability approach adopted for steering further development of the system.

Double Thoughts

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Dean
Keyword(s):  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Jacques Derrida ◽  
Postcolonial Theory ◽  
Cape Town ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Paul De Man ◽  
Literature And Philosophy ◽  
De Man ◽  
University Of Cape Town ◽  
The University

Coetzee’s interest in destabilizing the boundaries of literature and philosophy is most evident in later fictions such as Elizabeth Costello. But as Andrew Dean argues in this chapter, this interest in moving across boundaries in fact originates much earlier, in Coetzee’s quarrel with the institutions and procedures of literary criticism. Coetzee used the occasion of his inaugural professorial lecture at the University of Cape Town (Truth and Autobiography) to criticize the assumption that literary criticism can reveal truths about literature to which literary texts are themselves blind. Influenced in part by such figures as Jacques Derrida and Paul de Man, Coetzee posed a series of challenging questions about the desires at stake in the enterprise of literary criticism. Developing these thoughts, Dean explores the way in which Coetzee’s earlier fiction, including such texts as Foe (1986), is energized by its quarrelsome relationship with literary criticism and theory, especially postcolonial theory.

The Many Racial Effigies of Sara Baartman

2017 ◽  
Vol 58 (3) ◽  
pp. 275-299 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kellen Hoxworth
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
Cape Town ◽  
Racial Oppression ◽  
Black Paint ◽  
African Students ◽  
The Many ◽  
University Of Cape Town ◽  
The University

Six African students enact a somber, silent dance. They stage a series of striking images at the base of South African artist Willie Bester's sculptureSara Baartman, in the Chancellor Oppenheimer Library at the University of Cape Town (UCT). Their faces and bodies smeared with black paint, the students articulate their protest ofSara Baartmanin explicitly racial terms, aligning their critiques of economic, colonial, and racial oppression under the sign of blackness.

van Wyk Louw, Nicolaas Petrus (1906–1970)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Heilna du Plooy
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Cape Town ◽  
Western Cape ◽  
The Family ◽  
South African Literature ◽  
Literature History ◽  
Faculty Of Education ◽  
University Of Cape Town ◽  
The University

N. P. Van Wyk Louw is regarded as the most prominent poet of the group known as the Dertigers, a group of writers who began publishing mainly in the 1930s. These writers had a vision of Afrikaans literature which included an awareness of the need of thematic inclusiveness, a more critical view of history and a greater sense of professionality and technical complexity in their work. Van Wyk Louw is even today considered one of the greatest poets, essayists and thinkers in the Afrikaans language. Nicolaas Petrus van Wyk Louw was born in 1906 in the small town of Sutherland in the Western Cape Province of South Africa. He grew up in an Afrikaans-speaking community but attended an English-medium school in Sutherland as well as in Cape Town, where the family lived later on. He studied at the University of Cape Town (UCT), majoring in German and Philosophy. He became a lecturer at UCT, teaching in the Faculty of Education until 1948. In 1949 he became Professor of South African Literature, History and Culture at the Gemeentelijke Universiteit van Amsterdam. In 1960 he returned to South Africa to become head of the Department of Afrikaans and Dutch at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johanneshurg. He filled this post until his death in 1970.

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