'Feeling at home': institutional culture and the idea of a university
- Authors: Vice, Samantha
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: text , book
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/142072 , vital:38047 , ISBN 9781869142902 , https://books.google.co.za/books?id=49o8rgEACAAJanddq=Being+at+home:+Race,+institutional+culture+and+transformation+at+South+African+higher+education+institutionandhl=enandsa=Xandved=0ahUKEwiPgsa6mpjjAhXNN8AKHbNwAtoQ6AEIKDAA
- Description: This edited work has gathered together contributions on how to transform universities in South Africa; as many are struggling to shift their institutional culture. In a South African context, transformation means to attempt to change higher education institutions such that they no longer reflect the values promoted by apartheid but rather reflect the values embodied in South Africa's 1996 Constitution. Institutional culture is the main subject for discussion in this book. In order to transform South Africa's universities, the contributors begin by analyzing the idea of what a university is, and relatedly, what its ideal aims are. A second theme is to understand what institutional culture is and how it functions. Moreover, transformation cannot occur without transforming the broader cultures of which they are a part. Related to this theme is a general concern about how contemporary moves towards the instrumentalization of higher education affect the ability to transform institutions. These institutions are being pushed to conform to goals that are outside the traditional idea of a university, such as concerns that universities are being 'bureaucratized' and becoming corporations, instead of a place of learning open to all. In conclusion it can be said that the contemporary South African academic community has an opportunity to recreate itself as the end of apartheid created space for engaging in transformative epistemic projects. The transformation of the tertiary sector entails a transformation of institutional cultures.
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Playing broken telephone with student feedback: the possibilities and issues of transformation within a South African case of a collegial rationality model of evaluation
- Authors: Belluigi, Dina Z
- Date: 2013
- Language: English
- Type: text , book
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/66943 , vital:29003 , https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-1-84334-655-5.50001-5
- Description: publisher version , Drawing on the case of a small South African university which espouses a social justice approach to transformation, this chapter considers the possibilities and challenges created for student feedback within an institutional context that gives the individual lecturer a large degree of autonomy in evaluation. The chapter looks at some of the dominant perceptions of student feedback in addition to how it is collected and utilised, by referring to the institution’s policies and guideline documents; institutional research conducted with course coordinators; responses elicited from 40 lecturers on the issues outlined in this chapter; the author’s own reflections as a staff developer in the institution; and specific examples of good practice from lecturers situated within social science disciplines. The emerging concerns which structured this discussion are: the impact of student feedback on improving quality; enabling student voice; increasing student ownership; and the educational value of evaluation processes.
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Farmworker Research & Resource Project (DSRP): Press clips summary 3
- Authors: University of the Witwatersrand
- Date: 1989-06-30
- Subjects: Agricultural labourers -- South Africa , Agricultural labourers -- South Africa -- Economic conditions , Agricultural labourers -- South Africa -- Social conditions
- Language: English
- Type: text , book
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/68951 , vital:29342
- Description: Thousands of farmers were saved from bankruptcy by the Department of Agriculture, says Minister Greyling Wentzel. He said in 1986/1987 2 741 farmers who would have been bankrupt were saved through the department’s production aid scheme. The Rill,7m they received as loans enabled them to get a crop in the ground, without which they would have gone under. The debt consolidation scheme likewise helped about 2 000 farmers escape bankruptcy for the period 1983/1984 to 1986/1987.
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The story of Jane G
- Authors: Cape Action League (C.A.L.)
- Date: 1989
- Subjects: Champion, A W G (Allison Wessels George), 1893-1975 , Capitalism -- South Africa , Civil rights movements -- South Africa , Trade Unions -- South Africa , Labour unions -- South Africa
- Language: English
- Type: book , text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/60143 , vital:27741
- Description: Jane G, first appeared as a series in Solidarity, the mouthpiece of the Cape Action League. The series was read by activists in community, student, youth and worker organisations. At the request of readers, the Cape Action League decided to publish the series as a booklet. The book is written in easy English in order for it to be used by workers and their allies as an instrument for active struggle against all forms of oppression and exploitation. The story of Jane G has its roots in the daily experiences of an ordinary black working mother living in South Africa/Azania. She is the mother you meet at the bus stop, meet in the taxi, talk to at the corner shop or prayer meeting. In this series, Jane G’s struggle is typical of the millions of workers suffering a similar fate in our country. Jane speaks of the hardship she faces under the exploitative cycle of earning low wages and paying high rents. The burden of working long hours and paying high prices for basic food in order to look after her family. She finds relief by joining the Clothing Workers’ Union which organises workers at the Rex-Tex factory where she works.
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