Collaborative learning experiences of fourth-year students in a social work module

This article provides insight into a fourth-year social work module, integrating an authentic learning task. This task focused on the development of a funding proposal for a social service organization. It attempted to integrate collaborative learning by scaffolding students’ participation in the world of work, rather than just receiving a qualification. In view of the prevalent conversation around the Fourth Industrial Revolution and the Covid-19 pandemic, it is essential that lecturers at higher education institutions embrace collaborative and problem-solving skills for student tasks. Recent evidence suggests that higher education graduates’ learning and their readiness for work in a professional environment require a greater focus on creative and innovative thinking to solve real-world problems. The results from this qualitative investigation revealed that students found working in teams and collaborating with their peers both challenging and rewarding. This process contributed to the holistic development of social workers ready to work in the real-world.

Faithfulness and fidelity across identities and contexts for SOTL in the global South

Issue 5.2 of SOTL in the South features four peer-reviewed articles, one reflective piece and one book review. The peer-reviewed articles include two articles about broader concerns related to the scholarship of teaching and learning in higher education, namely the discursive and negotiated work of producing SoTL work and the importance of considering diverse worldviews regarding research ethics. In addition, there are two detailed accounts of instances of SoTL, one from Lesotho, addressing the challenges facing students from rural contexts, and the other from South Africa, investigating the implementation of collaborative learning in a fourth-year social work classroom. The issue concludes with a reflection on an action-oriented workshop held in Aotearoa New Zealand aimed at increasing the number of Māori and Pasifika academics, and a review of The Bloomsbury Handbook of the Internationalization of Higher Education in the Global South.

The Bloomsbury Handbook of the Internationalization of Higher Education in the Global South

In this review of The Bloomsbury Handbook of the Internationalization of Higher Education in the Global South, Carolina Guzmán-Valenzuela discusses why this book might come to be considered a first port-of-call for recognising that internationalisation of higher education is a narrative firmly rooted in western ideologies and which serves as a totalising imaginary. The book, Guzmán-Valenzuela argues, helps to understand the many faces and dimensions of internationalisation in higher education and invites us to think further about what is appropriate to each country given its historical, cultural, political, educational and epistemic background. For Guzmán-Valenzuela, this is a crucial task.

Rural students’ transition in and through a semi-urban university: Experiences from the National University of Lesotho

This paper reports on the findings of a study carried out at the National University of Lesotho (NUL). The paper explored the influence of ‘rurality’ on students who originate from the rural areas of Lesotho and analysed their transition at the NUL. The spatial geographic theory and narrative inquiry were adopted, and qualitative focus groups were utilised to collect data. The students were given an opportunity to conceptualise ‘rurality’ and narrate their stories about growing up and earlier schooling, as well as their learning experiences at the NUL. The findings revealed that rural students’ educational trajectories are indeed filled with numerous challenges, mainly due to deprivation and limited exposure to technology in their earlier lives. The main recommendation made by the paper is that the concerned stakeholders ought to be mindful of the needs of all prospective higher education students, including those from rural backgrounds, and intervene accordingly.

Research ethics and diversity of worldviews: Integrated worlds and ubuntu

Many scholars have argued for inclusion of indigenous knowledges in all levels of teaching, as well as a re-thinking of research approaches in African and other southern contexts. However, methodology in indigenous knowledge research in southern Africa over the past few years shows only a few examples of an actual change in approach, genre, data collection or ethical considerations. This paper deals with just one of these aspects: research ethics. I argue that ethical considerations affect all aspects of the research process and hence affect how we construct and validate new knowledges. The paper aims to disrupt conventional ethical assumptions through illustrative research examples. It draws together three frameworks into a synthesised model to clarify different worldview perspectives that may be applied to research. The discussion and model may serve as an educational tool for researchers, particularly in the global South. I draw on both indigenous knowledge literature and three research projects located in rural South Africa to argue for the need to reconsider standard ethical norms. Standard ethical protocols are inadequate in providing guidance to students and researchers for complex contexts and diverse cultural values and indigenous worldviews.

Reflections on an action-oriented workshop: How can more of our professors be Māori and Pasifika?

There is a chronic underrepresentation of Māori and Pacific academics in our university sector in Aotearoa New Zealand. Sitting behind the disparity are a range of practices that support some groups in Aotearoa New Zealand to succeed and move more freely through higher education institutions than others. In response to scholarship highlighting this issue, a collective of students and staff at Te Herenga Waka | Victoria University of Wellington came together to organise an action-oriented workshop to draw attention to ways that universities are governed through power relations. Attention was also paid to mitigating power imbalances in the organisation, format, and delivery of the event, and between attendees, presenters, and event facilitators from dominant and non-dominant ethnic and cultural groups. This reflection piece is not so much a recounting of the event itself but rather an opportunity to share with the wider academic world ways in which the collective attempted to hold our university accountable for failing in their responsibilities to the people on whose ancestral lands they exist.

“You become academic royalty once you’ve published”: A social practice exploration of identity in academic writing

Academic publishing plays a visible role in the lives of academics in the contemporary university. This paper, located in the academic literacies field of critical enquiry, illustrates the complex ways in which two South African academics understood and discursively constructed their identities through their writing for a recently published book exploring lecturers’ teaching and learning contexts and practices. The autoethnographic sensitivity of the research enabled the elicitation of critical self-reflective accounts, presented through detailed individual reflective sketches. The analysis uses the concepts of autobiographical self, discoursal self and affiliation (Ivanič, 1998; 2005) to show how these writers were able to discursively represent themselves in the book. It further highlights how continued disparities and inequities that characterise academic publication are experienced by the writers. The findings demonstrate the value of the social practice view of writing and its capacity to make visible how writers enact various linguistic, rhetorical and stylistic resources as they discursively construct their alignment to their scholarship community. In particular, it illuminates generative spaces where academic development practitioners can lead dialogues to re-examine current publication practices, their consequential nature for writers and explore possibilities to support emergent SOTL authors.

Nancy Fraser and participatory parity: Reframing social justice in South African higher education, edited by Vivienne Bozalek, Dorothee Hölscher, and Michalinos Zembylas

In this review of Nancy Fraser and participatory parity: Reframing social justice in South African higher education, edited by Vivienne Bozalek, Dorothee Hölscher, and Michalinos Zembylas, book reviewer Sergio Celis discusses why this book is an invitation to reimagine our participation in the higher education field, as scholars, teachers, and citizens. Keywords: Nancy Fraser, Participatory parity, South Africa, Higher education, Book review How to cite ths article: Celis, S. 2021. Nancy Fraser and participatory parity: Reframing social justice in South African higher education, edited by Vivienne Bozalek, Dorothee Hölscher, and Michalinos Zembylas. Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in the South. 5(1): 144-148. DOI: 10.36615/sotls.v5i1.178. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Internationalisation through South-North mobility: Experiences and outcomes of research capacity-building programmes for African scholars in Denmark

Internationalisation of higher education in the global South manifests in different ways through different modalities. Using a multi-disciplinary mobility-lens, this paper discusses outcomes of geographical mobility practiced by African scholars going to universities in the global North as part of research capacity-building programmes. Over the past 30 years, Danida (Danish International Development Assistance) has provided financial assistance – including research visits at Danish universities – to academics in the global South, who would work with problems in their home countries. This type of internationalisation through research capacity building is used in many European countries and is interesting because it facilitates geographical mobility across the North-South socio-economic divide. Based on a survey sent to 499 current and former African scholars as well as 15 qualitative interviews, the aim of this paper is to analyse the reflections from African academics being involved in this type of internationalisation practice. Thereby we give voice to scholars from the global South who are the practitioners of South-North mobility. More specifically, we analyse the role of different locations for becoming an academic and for their knowledge production. Thus, the paper critically examines the impact made by ‘internationalisation as mobility’ on the personal and professional development of African academics. Key words: Internationalisation, Academic mobility, Knowledge production, Africa, Capacity building How to cite this article: Adriansen, H.K. & Madsen, L.M. 2021. Internationalisation through South-North mobility: Experiences and outcomes of research capacity-building programmes for African scholars in Denmark. Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in the South. 5(1): 46-65. DOI: 10.36615/sotls.v5i1.166. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Faculty productivity in Zambian higher education in the face of internationalization: Unpacking research, publication and citation at the University of Zambia

This paper is based on a study that aimed at examining and interrogating the extent of faculty productivity in Zambia in terms of research, publication and citation with specific reference to the University of Zambia (UNZA). The paper invokes the Network Theory of Internationalisation of Higher Education founded by Johanson & Mattsson (1988).The research design used in this article is a convergent parallel mixed-methods design. The sample size total was 254, of which 244 were academic staff and 10 were key informants from management. Qualitative data was analysed according to emerging themes, while quantitative data was analysed using descriptive and inferential statistics. The findings of this paper seem to suggest that faculties at UNZA were highly involved in research (applied and basic) at 75%, but with poor incidences of transforming research into publication and innovation. Only 38% of respondents published articles annually (increasing to 62% within two years) in local and international journals. While respondents who had published books in the last two years was as low as 19.5%. UNZA productivity output in terms of citation was relatively poor, below the expected standard of h-index and citation index of a flagship university which has a track record of more than 40 years of operation as a fully-fledged comprehensive university. Results primarily showed that the UNZA had an average h-index of 4.50 and a citation index of 156.87 which are significantly lower than the world averages of 17.50 and 971, respectively. The paper finally argues that, UNZA like most of the flagship and comprehensive universities in Africa, are quickly transforming from a teaching university into a research university based on the influence of the global North whose research agenda is central – at the expense of teaching. In order to improve on research productivity, this paper recommends that UNZA deliberately identify relevant industries, and global and regional partners to genuinely collaborate with as a way of leveraging resources and expertise. There is also a growing desire by universities in the global South to work closely together as way of improving their own productivity capacity in terms of research, publication, citation and redefine the concept of internationalization to fit the global South. Key words: Faculty, Productivity, Research, Publication, Citations, University of Zambia How to cite this article: Masaiti, G., Mwila, K., Kulyambanino, C. & Njobvu, T. 2021. Faculty productivity in Zambian higher education in the face of internationalization: unpacking research, publication and citation at the University of Zambia. Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in the South. 5(1): 66-86. DOI: 10.36615/sotls.v5i1.153. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/