Narrative Imagination and Social Change: Instructors in Agricultural Colleges in Ethiopia Address Sexual and Gender-Based Violence

Ethiopia has one of the highest rates of sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) in the world, making female students particularly vulnerable in its post-secondary institutions. Although there is extensive literature that describes the problem, mainly from the students' perspectives, what remains understudied is the role of instructors, their perception of the current issues, and what they imagine they can do to address campus-based SGBV, particularly in rural settings. In this study, we used the concept of narrative imagination to work with instructors in four Ethiopian agricultural colleges to explore how they understand the SGBV issues at their colleges and what they imagine their own role could include in efforts to combat these problems. Using qualitative narrative-based methods such as interviews and an interactive storyline development workshop, as well as cellphilming (cellphone + film) as a participatory visual method, the data were collected across several fieldwork phases. We consider how we might broaden this framework of narrative imagination to include the notion of art for social change.

Raising Awareness of Agency to Address Climate Change: The Do One Thing (DOT) Strategy

The United Nations Children's Fund 2008 report, Our Climate, Our Children, Our Responsibility, warned that children will suffer most from the effects of climate change. Environmental education is one way to prepare children to cope and enable them to educate their families and friends about the need to act now to minimise the danger climate change poses. This article reports on findings from a participatory action research project aimed at integrating education for sustainable development into the Grade 7 curriculum, with a specific focus on climate change. Critical participatory action research has a transformative intent, engaging participants in learning to cultivate a sense of purpose and increase their capacity to solve local problems. Learner responses to qualitative questionnaires and recorded discussions related to the Do One Thing (DOT) strategy were used to determine learning about climate change and enable both learners and community members to identify action for change. Thematic coding was used to evaluate the effectiveness of the DOT strategy in increasing awareness of agency and resultant learning. The findings indicate that not only did the learners gain knowledge about the causes and consequences of climate change but the potential of the learners and community members to identify possible actions for change was increased as well. We provide suggestions as to how teachers can use the DOT strategy as part of an action research approach to integrating environmental education for sustainable development in order to raise awareness of local environmental threats and encourage learners and their families to behave in a more environmentally friendly way. The explanation of the research process offered in this article also highlights how participatory learning activities can help engage learners as active agents in their own learning.

A Critical Approach to University-Community Partnerships: Reflecting on the Diverse Realities

Postapartheid South Africa has seen a greater focus on community engagement by universities, and its inclusion as one of the core focus areas of higher education in addition to teaching and research. This focus on engagement with the community was ignited by a requirement to enhance the university's social responsibility through establishing partnerships with the communities it serves. Higher education institutions have traditionally positioned themselves in engagement projects as the singular organisation that has knowledge to offer when compared to what the community can offer. In this paper, we propose a critical engagement process to enhance collaboration in engagement projects. Our qualitative study resides in a critical theory paradigm, and we used drawings as well as narrative free writing to reflect and explore our perceptions regarding community engagement. We used the collaborative self-study methodology because it provides opportunities for critical and self-critical reflection that could lead us to discovering valuable insights, as well as provide suggestions on how to enhance university community partnerships. Our findings suggest that, despite legislation and efforts to enhance university community engagement, this remains a contested space where power relations, inequality, and claims to knowledge ownership continue to pose challenges.

Towards a Digital Resource Mobilisation Approach for Digital Inclusion During COVID-19 and Beyond: A Case of a Township School in South Africa

COVID-19 is affecting the functioning of most countries globally, creating a situation now described as the “new normal”—a time of unexpected educational change. The national lockdown, accompanied by the closure of educational institutions, brought economic hardship and deepened the digital divide between the rich and the poor. Educational institutions capable of transitioning to an online mode of delivery made that shift, while the majority of South Africa’s schools remained excluded due to poverty and lack of technological infrastructure. The educational sector is at wits’ end to find strategies to curtail the growing digital divide. This paper offers a digital resource mobilisation approach as framework to keep schools on the path to achieving the National Development Plan’s aim of ICT capacitation. To consider developmental possibilities and respond to the digital exclusion of township schools, we asked the question: “What are the online teaching and learning experiences of school stakeholders?” Responses to this question assisted development of a digital resource mobilisation theory that is offered as a viable approach to digital inclusion and social change. Data were collected by telephonic interviews with three teachers, three learners, three school governing body parents, and one school principal. Based on the findings, recommendations for digital inclusion are suggested.

Making Wine Without Grapes: The Case for Quality Teaching With Limited Resources

This article illustrates the significant role that creative, conscientious, dedicated, motivated, and committed teachers play in guiding, directing, and developing students' thinking, perspectives, and future lives. It highlights the importance of teacher agency in connecting learning to students' lives. It argues that good teachers can employ pedagogical practices that are not dependent on the availability of resources. It employs Pierre Bourdieu's theories of capital, field, and habitus to show how teachers can develop students' dispositions, consciousness, perceptions, perspectives, and lives. It also uses Nancy Fraser's theory of social justice to show how teachers can develop in working-class students, the essential knowledge, skills, and understandings that enable them to compete on a par with middle-class students. It uses life course theory to understand how the participants' schooling experiences, relationships, interconnectedness, and transitions influenced their thinking, doing, and lives. It employs a qualitative paradigm to explore five students' and one teacher's notions of how teaching and learning practices assisted the students to overcome the issue of inadequate resources. To locate the participants' perspectives and to analyse how their schooling experiences in the period 1968-1990 influenced their lives, the article uses the life history technique. The findings of the research stress that it is the inventiveness, competence, and attitude of the teacher that are the defining factors in the provision of quality education-not merely the availability of material resources.

Teachers' Experiences in the Implementation of the Life Skills CAPS for Learners With Severe Intellectual Disability

This article focuses on a participatory process where the experiences of teachers regarding the implementation of the life skills curriculum and assessment policy statement (CAPS) for learners with severe intellectual disabilities (SID) in schools for learners with special educational needs were investigated. This curriculum for learners with SID has been developed to be more effective in meeting the needs of these learners. The curriculum ensures that learners can meet the requirements of the national CAPS used in ordinary public schools at a reduced depth and width, or at a more functional level, in accordance with their cognitive abilities. Although a descriptive mixed research method was applied in the study, this article reports on the qualitative part of the research. In the qualitative phase, collages and arts-based discussions with core project groups were used to generate data. Four schools, 13 core project groups, and 51 participants (teachers) were involved in the research. The transcribed data from the core project group discussions were analysed using thematic analysis, and the themes that emerged were discussed by the participants. Based on the results of these qualitative arts-based discussions, the findings were used to create opportunities for the teachers to talk and work together to jointly develop a training manual for beginner teachers and to form a learning environment that would permit rich inquiry-based dialogue among the teachers.

Using Photographs and Memory-Work to Engage Novice Teachers in Collaborative Learning About Their Influence on Learner Behaviour

This article offers an account of using photographs and memory-work as a visual participative method in research conducted by a deputy principal with novice teachers in a South African primary school. The study was prompted by observations of how novice teachers struggled to manage learner behaviour in socially just and compassionate ways. It aimed to help novice teachers express the uncertainties and challenges they encounter, and prompt candid discussions on learner behaviour. The article shows how visual participative methods can facilitate collaborative learning with novice teachers. Additionally, it illustrates how the novice teachers came to see their critical role in influencing learner behaviour and the value of positive teacher-learner relationships in supporting learner behaviour. This work will be valuable to educational researchers in diverse contexts interested in growing their participative research methods repertoire. Furthermore, it illustrates how working with photographs and memory-work can facilitate the expression of participants' viewpoints and understandings and intensify educational researchers' learning from and with others in the interests of social change.

A Leadership Development Programme: A Case Study of Transformative Learning in Qatar

Leadership development is an important issue for Qatar as it strives to achieve the ambitious goals set out in its 2030 National Vision (Ministry of Development Planning and Statistics, 2015). Various resources are being invested, but often with minimal results, forcing Qatar to continue to rely on expatriate expertise. Transformative learning experiences that change the deeply held beliefs, worldviews, and frames of reference of what it means to be a 21st century leader in Qatar are needed. This paper presents the case study of an executive leadership development programme to identify key success factors or inhibitors that fostered or hindered transformative learning experiences. It includes in-depth interviews conducted over a 10-month period during 2015. Additional rich data of the participants' experiences were obtained from their blogs, written assignments, and organisational documentation. A thematic analysis identified 11 themes, the inclusion of which fostered transformative learning or, the absence of which, hindered transformative learning: (1) identifying stakeholder expectations, (2) conducting a respected selection process, (3) appropriate English levels, (4) alignment between content and the participant's educational and cognitive skills, (5) time and commitment allocated to a well-structured pre-programme and a (6) post-programme stage, (7) in-depth awareness of the participants' professional and cultural contexts, (8) inclusion of autonomous components, (9) inclusion of personal and cultural interactions, (10) an acceptable balance of travel, stress, uncertainty, and course intensity, and (11) a group dynamic. There were indications the intensity of the programme pushed the participants beyond the required state of disorientation necessary for transformative learning and into one of being overwhelmed and stressed.

An Exploration of Pre-Service Student Teachers' Understanding of Social Justice Issues Through Theatre-in-Education

The aim of this qualitative study was to establish how students' understanding of social justice was enhanced through their participation in the theatre-in-education process, and its contribution to their learning. The population of the study comprised all students registered for the third-year education module, Issues and Challenges in Education-PGED 302. The population included Bachelor of Education (Foundation Phase, Intermediate Phase, and FET) students. Of the population of 300 students registered for the module, only 72 Bachelor of Education (Intermediate Phase) students who participated in the theatre-in-education presentations, constituted the sample for the study. Data comprised students' written reflections based on their theatre-in-education experiences, which were coded and analysed thematically. The study indicated that students' understanding of social justi ce in education was enhanced through their participation in their theatre-in-education presentations.

A Visual Conversation From South Africa: Climate Resilience and Hope for a Green Recovery

As the world copes with two parallel catastrophic events-climate change and COVID-19, this article examines how visual art students in South Africa used the pandemic period to imagine a better world, a green economic recovery, and a closer connection with nature and biodiversity. The visual conversation that this new generation of artists created provides a lens for engaging with a world in change. They generate inspirational and resourceful ideas, calling on us to be participatory and inclusive as a fundamental aspect of being human, evoking imagination to create alternative visions in collaboration with others. New understandings through visual research can provide a foundation for developing collective strategies toward economic and social security, and flourishing individually and as community.