Inserting Space into the Transformation of Higher Education (original) (raw)
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Physial space and transformation in higher education: the case of the University of the Free State
2018
The significance of space and objects in space on South African higher education campuses was brought to the fore during the 2015/16 student movements. The movements highlighted that official higher education policy and institutional practice have not adequately considered the implications of material and immaterial space for transformation. While the idea for this thesis predated the student movement campaigns, the 2015/16 student movements focused the route of enquiry on the implications of space and objects in space at a higher education institution for knowledge production aimed at transformation in higher education. The claim is that space at a higher education institution, which constructs the social and is in turn constructed by the social, provides a lens through which to focus on the 'where' and thereby produce knowledge for transformation in higher education. Space at a higher education institution is intimately linked to the specificities of historical and spatial context-related factors, as well as to other factorssuch as race, class, and genderthat impact on the reality of the everyday in higher education. Consequently, the study focuses on organisational indicators for space at a higher education institution that underpin the development of a conceptual framework. The aim is to produce knowledge that draws attention to broader socio-spatial concerns that ground and refer the study to the mandated role of higher education institutions, as social institutions, to support development in society. In this study, the implications of organisational indicators for space at a higher education institution for transformation in higher education are investigated through the case study of the Bloemfontein campus of the University of the Free State. The investigation draws data from multiple sources, including first-person accounts, desktop reviews, and socio-spatial mapping of the Bloemfontein campus in its entirety and in relation to its contextthe city of Bloemfontein. The data is analysed using qualitative techniques located in a social constructivist framework that allows for a reiterative and process-oriented research approach. The context-dependent knowledge produced in this manner and tested in the conceptual framework allows for inferences to be made about the socially constructed nature of space at a higher education institution and to gain insights into how this, in turn, constructs the social in the everyday reality of an individual in higher education. The study provides an empirical perspective from which to assess how the organisation of 5 space at a higher education institution and the implications this has for the reality of the everyday in higher education impacts on individuals' understanding of transformation. The purpose of this assessment is to move beyond a descriptive institutionalisation of transformation in higher education towards producing knowledge for transformation in South Africa.
Space, Language and Identity Politics in Higher Education
Journal of Student Affairs in Africa, 2019
In the South African context, the politics of space, language and identity in higher education have been brought into sharp focus by the 2015/16 student movement. It is largely due to the student movement and campaigns like #RhodesMustFall, #OpenStellenbosch, #AfrikaansMustFall, #FeesMustFall and #RUReferenceList, to name but a few, that the debates of the mid and late 1990s on the Africanisation of higher education and curriculum reform, the transformation of institutional cultures, and the meanings and implications of advantage and disadvantage in higher education, are receiving renewed attention. All the articles in this guest-edited issue respond in various ways to matters raised in the course of the 2015/16 student movement or attribute the political salience of their analysis to concerns raised by various student campaigns since 2015.
Intertwined Higher Education Places and Spaces
Journal for the Study of Postsecondary and Tertiary Education, 2020
Aim/Purpose: This essay highlights how the way educational places and spaces are imagined impacts higher education research, policy, and practice. Background: Drawing on the rapid transition to online education in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, dichotomous thinking about education space is problematized by examining how the physical (e.g., the lecture hall) is intertwined with the digital (e.g., an online course shell). Methodology: Conceptual essay Contribution: I illustrate how shifting towards conceptualizing higher education as an intertwined environment, that which is a blended mix of the physical and the digital is a more robust construct that can better assist researchers, policymakers, and practitioners. Findings: Dichotomous— online or on campus—thinking masks issues of equity and justice deserving of higher education leadership research, policy, and practice in need of attention, which COVID-19 has brought to light. Recommendations for Practitioners: By embracing an inter...
Volume 43 Issue 1, 2021
In order to know how to change one must be able to acknowledge what one does not know. Central to knowledge production of relevance is humility and an understanding of the realities of one’s own environment. From a decolonial perspective, knowledge production is affected by the development and creation of the actual physical spaces of the university and its pedagogy. The Covid_19 pandemic has tested the functionality of the physical space of the university as well as the organization of the city space. This paper considers these issues, their impact and effect on the mental well-being of both academics and students by exploring the idea of the university as a virtuous city. We draw on Al-Farabi’s treatise of the Virtuous City because physical and conceptual architectures reflect a way in which the world is structured. In South Africa, the violent design of the fragmented spaces has been planned according to the colonial, cartographic imagination which destroys and distorts memory an...
Universities: Space, Governance and Transformation
This paper takes up the themes in the articles and examines not only the environmental changes that are taking place in relation to universities, but also the dynamics of their organizational implications. It argues that there are parallels between managerially and academic professionalism in that both deny context. Arguing for a context-sensitivity that is not dependant, issues of space and governance become important in order to understand forms of knowledge and the relationship between the contexts of production and the contents of what is produced. Universities have different capacities to play at the game of scales and they are judged according to abstract indicators that provide little or no opportunity for learning. Instead of examining these relations, expertise is assumed to be spatial, whilst universities transform themselves in the slipstream of imagined futures as if they were separate from the present and past. Understanding is lost in the process and so too are the opportunities to adequately examine the differences in types of knowledge's that are produced for sustainable futures in contemporary societies.
Ethnographic Worldviews: Transformations and Social Justice, 2013
Studies on institutional culture conducted in South African Higher Education Institutes date as far back as 1994, marking the official termination of apartheid. Using the University of Cape Town as a microcosm, many of the previously marginalised groups continued to express dissatisfaction with the University’s commitment to diversity and the speed at which transformation was taking place. Building upon the Vice Chancellor’s desire to create ‘open and safe spaces’ for dialogue and debate on transformation and diversity issues, management initiated the Khuluma project (‘to speak out’ in isiXhosa). Retreating from the familiarity of the work environment for three days in order to enter a protected space in which to engage with South Africa’s apartheid past, the institutional culture and with each other, Khuluma’s key objective was to effect a sustainable set of changes. ‘Safe space’ has emerged as a popular metaphor, particularly as a vital classroom atmosphere within education or a therapeutic space in psychotherapy, yet academic enquiry remains limited. Literature provides little detail about what is meant by safe space or how it is created; even fewer scholars have questioned the utility of aiming for safety. This paper argues that safe space can be acknowledged to exist only as an ideal; a never fully attainable situation. If hurt and struggle are part of transformation then what does ‘safety’ signify? Paradoxically, Khuluma challenged participants to embrace, not to avoid, the uneasiness of participation, the shocks of awareness and the dangers of vulnerability. My research showed that Khuluma participants implicitly understood the paradoxical ‘unsafety’ located in the metaphoric ‘safe space’.
Working the ‘in-between-spaces’ for transformation within the academy
South African Journal of Education, 2018
This paper considers the importance of 'in-between spaces' within the academy for challenging dominant institutional culture and hegemonic power relations towards a 'de-colonised' university. It questions 'mainstreaming' of transformational initiatives, as this can bring about regulation, rather than the turbulence that is often what is needed for substantive change to occur. I draw on a case study of the work of the Division for Lifelong Learning (DLL) at University of the Western Cape and in particular two examples of its marginal activities which were hosted regularly over a 10 year period. These are: the Vice-Chancellor's Annual Julius Nyerere Lecture on Lifelong Learning and the cross-campus Annual Women's Breakfast. I use documentary evidence and insider knowledge to reflect critically on the relevance of the spaces that were created for enacting such alternative institutional practices. I employ 'knowledge democracy' as a lens to bring the margins to the centre of the analysis. The argument is made that the work in the 'in-between-spaces' is a critical part of 'decolonising education' through disruptive, political, pedagogical, and organisational transformation.
Belonging and Becoming in the space[s] of Higher Education
South African journal of higher education, 2022
This article explores the intimate entanglement of students Becoming and Belonging in the informal spaces of higher education. In so doing, it raises the many possible ways of belonging and becoming at a South African university. The entwined relationship's contribution to student identity construction and the potential to exercise agency [or not] is discussed. The theme of Belonging and Becoming emanated from a PhD study that employed visual methodology, specifically photography, to capture students in informal spaces on campus that were of significance to them. The data arose from interviews with student participants and a larger body of students who viewed the photographs as part of an exhibition on campus. The article draws on the concepts of mobility and spatiality, recognising the dynamic nature of campus spaces that are constantly in a state of being socially reproduced. The article recommends that higher education's obligations extend beyond students' academic advancement.
Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences, 2014
Higher education has progressively adopted a corporate identity where teaching, research and related practices have become commodified, and academics are expected to practice for institutional financial gain. Academics have to develop programmes that attract as many students as possible. Research, teaching and related practices should be done in a way that secures funding for the university and attract subsidies from government and the industrial sector. Many academics complain of limited space for these practices. This article proposes a framework that academics may use to reflect on the issue of space for the development of their academic identities. The framework is drawn from Mouzelis's critique of structuration theory and highlights issues which may be considered as influential in academic practice as structure and agency.
South African Journal of Psychology, 2017
Transformation efforts in South African higher education have been under increased scrutiny in recent years, especially following the last years of student activism and calls for decolonization of universities. This article presents data from a participatory photovoice study in which a group of students reflect on their experiences of feeling safe and unsafe at an urban-based historically disadvantaged university. Findings highlight the way in which historical inequalities on the basis of social identities of race, class, and gender, among others, continue to shape experiences, both materially and social-psychologically, in South African higher education. However, and of particular relevance in thinking about a socially just university, participants speak about the value of diversity in facilitating their sense of both material and subjective safety. Thus, a diverse classroom and one that acknowledges and recognizes students across diversities, is experienced as a space of comfort, ...