In marketing, it’s either you have it or you don’t : a study of knowledge and knowers legitimated in the marketing diploma curriculum in South Africa
- Authors: Ncube, Kevin
- Date: 2021
- Subjects: Marketing -- Study and teaching (Higher) -- Curricula , Marketing -- Study and teaching (Higher) -- South Africa , Vocational qualifications -- South Africa , Education, Higher -- South Africa
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/172230 , vital:42178 , 10.21504/10962/172230
- Description: This study was undertaken in the South African higher education system in which the differentiation of institutions still reflects racial inequalities from the country’s history of colonial apartheid. As an educator in an institutional type referred to as Universities of Technology, I had become increasingly concerned about who succeeds, how they succeed, who fails, and who drops out. The South Africa education system broadly suffers from low student retention and high drop out with lower success rates mostly affecting Black students. By the end of apartheid in 1994, Black students had been entering Technikons en masse and were the dominant student group in these institutions which changed designation to Universities of Technology in 2005. Technikons offered programmes with a stronger technological and vocational orientation focusing on qualifications directly linked to the job market. They did not offer postgraduate programmes and today, Universities of Technology still produce little research. These institutions also battle with a far lower throughput rate than Traditional Universities and a higher graduate unemployment rate. This has led to a call for better theorised accounts of applied knowledge to replace unhelpful common-sense understandings. There was thus a call in the literature for studies, such as this one, that focused on the nature of knowledge in a diploma curriculum. Furthermore, the field of Marketing is under-researched. The field of Marketing has been characterised as having a weak theoretical foundation and as appropriating knowledge from other fields without growth of the field per se. In Marketing, importance is placed on the possession of a broad spectrum of general knowledge, rather than specialised accounts of the field. The study sought to examine the following research questions: 1) What kind of knowledge is privileged in the Marketing diploma? 2) How does the positioning of actors in the field of Marketing education impact on the choice and structure of knowledge privileged in the curriculum? The study was undertaken mainly through the use of interviews to explore academics’ perspectives on what is valued in the Marketing curriculum. Thirty-one academics from 11 institutions participated in the study. I also analysed course guides and other documentation related to the curriculum. The study analysed the organising of knowledge in the Marketing curriculum. To do this, the study drew on Legitimation Code Theory and in particular the tools of Specialisation and Semantics. These tools allowed the analysis of data to establish the basis on which it is specialised from other fields and the extent to which the field is contextually or conceptually coherent. The data demonstrated that academics who lecture in Marketing entered Marketing education from a diverse range of disciplines. The data also confirmed, in line with the literature, that the field of Marketing draws from multiple disciplines and fields for the purposes of serving the world of work. In Bernsteinian terms the nature of the Marketing curriculum is identified as a ‘region’. However, the data also demonstrated that the field of Marketing serves a heterogenous world of work characterised by constant changes which do not seem to allow a stable development of the field. The field of Marketing was thus portrayed as a region tending towards a generic, raising questions about the reliability of its knowledge base. The nature of generics often leads to an openness which is associated with instability, a weaker autonomy, and an inability to differentiate the field from others with further implications that knowledge in the curriculum is likely to be unsettled. One of the key findings was that while there was significant focus on knowledge, this was not the main basis on which success is achieved. Despite the ample evidence of knowledge in the Marketing curriculum, there was little agreement as to what constituted that knowledge, the actual nature of that knowledge was not settled, broadly agreed upon, nor particularly complex, drawing as it did on ‘everyday’ understandings of the world. The data revealed that there was little evidence that the knowledge was particularly specialised nor that it allowed for cumulative acquisition of ‘powerful knowledge’. Rather, the knowledges in the field of Marketing were characterised by a horizontal knowledge structure consisting of a set of languages acquired separately. The knowledges were based on different and sometimes even contradictory assumptions and thus presented few opportunities to integrate previous theories to build a more powerful knowledge structure. The knowledges tended to be context specific as opposed to being abstract or conceptual. There are social justice implications for fields in which the acquirer is only afforded context specific knowledges and as such has to acquire an endless series of low-level knowledges. They are not given access to powerful knowledge characterised by induction into a system of meaning which enables a more meaningful engagement with the complex world and thinking the not yet thought. In such instances, the education arguably does not provide access to the kind of specialised knowledge which allows for powerful meaning making in the world. The study calls for a strengthening of the epistemic spine of the Marketing diploma to provide access to more abstract, principled knowledge. A major finding was that most of the lecturers’ responses focused on the need for being a particular kind of knower to be successful in Marketing. The kind of person valued in Marketing was portrayed as possessing a particular personality and natural talent which were rarely seen as dependent on the knowledge acquired during the diploma, but rather on the dispositions that students brought. The respondents also mostly raised concerns that most of the students enrolled in Marketing did not to have the requisite ‘Marketing personalities’. Students were expected to be from a particular social class intimated through reference to their backgrounds, the schools they went to, their access to technologies, and the geographical regions they came from. They were expected to bring a particular language competency. Social class and language were arguably also used as coded reference to racial category, and this was more explicitly indicated by some respondents. The dominance of the knower in the data revealed that in Marketing, “you either have it or you don’t” indicating a strong view that Marketers are born with the necessary inherent characteristics of “confidence and people-skills” or belong to the social group that develops them. The implications were that if you do not have it, there is nothing one can do to get . This particular finding raises serious social justice issues on access and success in Marketing. If there is nothing that can be done to develop these characteristics, allowing such people into Marketing is setting them up for failure. On the other hand, denying access based on birth and social grouping raises concerns of the justice in the societies we live in. The study calls for an explicit engagement with the assumptions about the knower’s dispositions. While it was consistently evident that such dispositions were key to the specialisation of the field, the assumption that students either had these dispositions or lacked them is a social injustice and raises a number of unanswerable and painful questions given the racially differentiated success rates. The study concludes by calling for academics to explicitly curriculate for the target dispositions so that students are exposed to the value of these dispositions and given opportunities to engage with them.
- Full Text:
Mapping the transition from a traditional university into an entrepreneurial university
- Authors: Naidoo, Tharusha
- Date: 2021
- Subjects: Rhodes University -- Management , Education, Higher -- South Africa , Education, Higher -- Economic aspects -- South Africa , Academic-industrial cooperation , Entrepreneurship , Business and education -- South Africa , Research -- Economic aspects -- South Africa -- Case studies
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MBA
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/172214 , vital:42177
- Description: The study aims to map the transition of a traditional university into an entrepreneurial university. The concept of the entrepreneurial university has been established as a game changer in the development and innovation spheres at higher education institutions worldwide. In the year 2002, the South African Higher Education sector embarked on a modelling and redefining journey which gave birth to the National Plan for Higher Education. The Entrepreneurship Development in Higher Education has undertaken work done on the entrepreneurial university which gave rise to the mapping that breeds ground towards policy. This study sought to investigate whether there is a conducive environment at Rhodes University, with an entrepreneurial climate to develop institutional capabilities and build new networks. The research highlights the current direction of Rhodes University and elaborates on the potential for the transition towards an entrepreneurial university. An overview of the entrepreneurial university was provided through an analysis of literature, which dominated in the more developed countries compared to South Africa. The researcher adopted a qualitative research study to capture the direct experiences of the individuals that are in the institution. A questionnaire was designed using the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development Guiding Framework and the direct perceptions of academics from the university were documented. The objectives were firstly, to explore elements of leadership and governance that enhance transformation of Higher Education Institution from a traditional university towards an entrepreneurial university. Secondly, to investigate internal resources that enhance Organisational Capacity with specific reference to people and incentives. Lastly, to determine how Teaching and Learning strengthen entrepreneurship development. The interviews revealed that the challenges faced by the institution were closely linked to those recognized by existing literature. What was interesting to note, limited funding and support were regarded as the most significant problems, closely followed by unskilled people and lack of infrastructure. It is suggested that cultivating and nurturing an entrepreneurial culture is of paramount importance together with the creation of a policy framework. Furthermore, the study concluded with practical recommendations proposed to management regarding the three strategic lenses. The research also illustrated that Rhodes University may not be viewed as being entrepreneurial but certainly has pockets of entrepreneurship and innovative activities.
- Full Text:
Conceptualisations of and responses to plagiarism in the South African higher education system
- Authors: Mphahlele, Martha Matee (Amanda)
- Date: 2020
- Subjects: Plagiarism , Plagiarism -- Prevention -- South Africa , Education, Higher -- Moral and ethical aspects , Education, Higher -- South Africa , Cheating (Education) -- South Africa , College students -- Legal status, laws, etc. -- South Africa , College discipline -- South Africa
- Language: English
- Type: text , Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/162642 , vital:40963
- Description: Violations of academic integrity are a cause for concern in universities around the world and plagiarism is one of the most significant examples of these academic integrity issues with which universities are grappling . The approach taken to managing plagiarism depends to a large extent on the understanding of the phenomenon within institutions. This study investigated how plagiarism is conceptualised and responded to in the South African Higher Education system and how this impacts on teaching and learning. Data was collected from 25 out of the 26 South African public universities; the missing university had just been established and did not yet have policies or processes in place. The data was primarily in the form of documents known in these institutions as ‘plagiarism policies’, along with a wealth of other related policies and reports. This was supplemented by interviews as a means of verifying the document analysis with seven plagiarism committee members from across the three institutional types in South Africa, namely: traditional universities, comprehensive universities, and universities of technology. Using Bhaskar’s (2008) critical realism as a metatheory and Archer’s (1995) social realism as both a substantive theory and analytical framework, the experiences and events of plagiarism management were critically examined. Critical realism consider s these experiences and events at the level of the e mpirical and the actual , in order to identify the mechanisms at the l evel of the r eal from which these emerge. Social realism argues that when undertaking such an analysis in the social world, this entails identifying the emergent properties of both the parts (structure and culture) and people (agents). Therefore, the data was analysed using Archer’s analytical dualism to identify structural, cultural and agential mechanisms shaping the understanding of plagiarism and the practices associated with managing the phenomenon. The study found that dominant in the sector was an un derstanding of plagiarism as always being an intentional act, with implications for teaching and learning practices, which then focused on identifying and punishing incidents of plagiarism in student writing. A legal discourse was found to permeate the universities’ plagiarism management systems, such that most procedures replicated the legal framework. This was seen to undermine the identity of universities as teaching and learning spaces and of students as novice members of the disciplinary fields. The study further highlighted that due to plagiarism being perceived as an intentional act, punishment in almost all universities is prioritised as the key means of attending to plagiarism in the se institutions. This emerged as a structural constraint to students’ acquisition of academic writing norms. Such understandings and approaches were seen to be complementary to the risk-aversion of many institutions in a globalised era of university rankings. As increased bureaucracy has been put in place to attend to incidents of plagiarism, including obligatory reporting thereof, an unintentional consequence emerged, where it was at times simpler for academics to ignore incidences of plagiarism than to act on them. Turnitin was frequently referred to across the data as the preferred text - matching tool, but Turnitin together with other text-matching tools , was often used in a way that complemented the understanding of plagiarism as always being an intentional act. The stu dy found that text - matching software was largely misunderstood to be plagiarism software, where the similarity index was perceived to be a measure of plagiarism. This led to an understanding that students needed to paraphrase texts in order to avoid detect ion by the program me, and this may inadvertently encourage plagiarism , as students are taught to write towards the software. The research found that in those instances where educational responses to plagiarism were in place, they often demonstrated a lack of understanding of academic literacies development and the extent to which norms of knowledge production are disciplinary specific. Most (but not all) of the data about educational responses focused on add-on workshops and the signing of a declaration form, indicating that the student has not plagiarised. The workshops were seen to emphasise technical skills, such as the punctuation norms of referencing, and were often offered in a generic format by people outside of the target disciplines. These workshops were found to ignore the connection between the technical skills of referencing and the norms of knowledge construction, with a potential deleterious effect on the development of authorial identity. Finally, the data showed a few instances where particular institutions acknowledged that plagiarism occurs along a continuum, where on one side is intentional plagiarism associated with cheating and requiring punishment, and on the other side is unintentional plagiarism, which is understood to require an educational response , and was seen to emerge from either a lack of understanding of academic literacy norms , or from negligence. Literacy development with regard to taking on the norms of knowledge-making in the academy was seen to be a complex and lengthy process that was fundamental to educational endeavours of facilitating epistemological access, while cases of negligence were seen to be mainly caused by technical oversight rather than a lack of access to the relevant knowledge production norms. The study concludes by arguing that cases of intentional plagiarism require quick and appropriate punishment, but that there also needs to be an institution-wide understanding that unintentional plagiarism often emerges from students failing to access the specific knowledge-making norms of the discipline. There is thus a need for academics to be aware of the complexities related to taking on literacy practices, and who also understand the role of feedback in this process. But it ought not to be assumed that academics would have such insights simply by virtue of their expertise in the discipline. These academics need to have carefully constructed staff development support, as they take on such pedagogical approaches. The study argues that the dominant conceptualisation of plagiarism in the domain of culture as an intentional act and the complementary policies and processes in the domain of structure as focusing on detecting and punishing incidents of plagiarism, fail to address plagiarism in appropriate educational ways.
- Full Text:
Rhodes University students’ experiences of living as students on National'Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) funding
- Authors: Mgwili, Thab’sile
- Date: 2020
- Subjects: National Student Financial Aid Scheme (South Africa) , Rhodes University -- Students -- Finance , Education, Higher -- South Africa , Education, Higher -- Finance -- South Africa , Student aid -- South Africa , Welfare state -- South Africa , Student financial aid administration -- South Africa , Student financial aid administration -- South Africa -- Case studies
- Language: English
- Type: text , Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/147961 , vital:38697
- Description: This study explores Rhodes University students’ experiences of living as students on National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) funding. The Marxist theoretical framework critique of neoliberalism and welfare systems is used. The Marxist theory is the main theory that underpins the study. Eighteen participants were involved in an in-depth interview process. Out of 18 participants, one is a staff member at Rhodes University Financial Aid Office. The key findings of this research revealed the unfavorable circumstances of students on NSFAS at Rhodes University. Secondly, it was discovered that students shared similar sentiments as NSFAS and DHET: They recognize the major areas that need to be addressed by NSFAS. Thirdly, NSFAS had to some extent made a positive contribution to the higher education sector. Suggestions have been made on how my study may be improved to yield even better results.
- Full Text:
The effects of education on economic growth and global competitiveness: a statistical approach
- Authors: Mbatha, Erica Isabel Tavares Da Silva
- Date: 2020
- Subjects: Economic development -- Effect of education on -- South Africa , Education, Higher -- South Africa , Educational attainment -- South Africa
- Language: English
- Type: text , Thesis , Masters , MBA
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/147558 , vital:38649
- Description: This thesis investigates whether there is a relationship between education, economic growth and global competitiveness and whether there is a relationship between South Africa’s current throughput rates in institutions of higher education, and its economic growth and global competitiveness. Economic growth is defined as a country’s ability to improve the life of its average citizen based on the strength of its economy. As such, it is increasingly important for a country to assess the factors that contribute to the improvement of their economy, which will ultimately result in its economic growth. Global competitiveness is an indication of how countries are able to provide for their people internally, as well as participate in the international market. To this end, economic growth and global competitiveness are two proxies that can be used to demonstrate the economic wellbeing of a country. Considering that prosperity under economic growth and global competitiveness of a country are driven by its people, one of the aims of this thesis was to investigate whether there is a relationship between education and economic growth and global competitiveness. Considering the recent demand in free education in South Africa, it is also important to understand whether there is a relationship between South Africa’s current throughput rates at higher education institutions and its economic growth and global competitiveness. Bearing in mind the political past which has led to inequality in the country, it is important to understand which types of education contribute to the economy and which types need to be further supported in order to increase the country’s economic productivity. Therefore, an additional aim of the thesis was to determine the relationship between South Africa’s current throughput rates in institutions of higher education, and its economic growth and global competitiveness. To address the aforementioned aims, data were collected from various open access online repositories. All the data were collated and numerous general linear models were constructed and tested to determine the different relationships as per the two aims. The results reveal that secondary school education had the highest impact on economic growth and global competitiveness on a global scale. This could be attributed to the fact that secondary school graduates tend to make up the largest part of the general workforce and as such, would make up a substantial proportion of the economy. Regarding South Africa, the only significant relationships were between green cluster universities (universities that focus on both research and technical training) and global competitiveness. Overall average throughput rates in all academic institutions were low; this could indicate that perhaps there are issues within the higher education system itself that need to be addressed in order to increase the throughput rate. From a managerial perspective, the results of this research stress the importance for the government to further investigate this area of study, as the call for free education becomes more prominent. The low throughput rates seem to suggest that the government is spending substantial amounts of money on students who do not always complete their studies. More research needs to be done to assess the root of the problem in South Africa’s tertiary education system, in order to ensure that this aspect increases its positive contribution towards the country’s economic growth and global competitiveness.
- Full Text:
A social realist account of constraints and enablements navigated by South African students during the four year professional accounting programme at Rhodes University, South Africa
- Authors: Myers, Lyndrianne Peta
- Date: 2019
- Subjects: Rhodes University -- Students , Accounting -- Study and teaching (Higher) -- South Africa , Education, Higher -- South Africa , Education, Higher -- Social aspects -- South Africa , Education, Higher -- Finance -- South Africa , Higher education and state -- South Africa
- Language: English
- Type: text , Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/93800 , vital:30946
- Description: This dissertation is an analysis of the enablements and constraints navigated by 43 students from different academic years within the Department of Accounting, Rhodes University, in their pursuit of obtaining the postgraduate Diploma in Accounting (DipAcc) qualification. Passing this diploma year entitles students to become Trainee Accountants, which is one of the requirements for their ultimate goal of becoming a chartered accountant. In the course of semi-structured, face-to-face interviews conducted for this study, students from across the four years of the professional degree programme, shared what had helped or hindered them on their journeys to and through Rhodes University, and within the Department of Accounting at this university. Focus group discussions were then held with academics from the department, where the student participants’ experiences were shared. The responses of the members of the focus groups confirmed many of the student participants’ experiences as did interviews with representatives from the South African Institute of Chartered Accountants (SAICA). These representatives also spoke about students’ experiences at other campuses. To determine how localised the student participants’ experiences were, selected individuals from a number of other Departments or Schools of Accounting at SAICA-accredited institutions in South Africa were also interviewed. SAICA representatives also discussed the ‘pervasive skills’ which trainee accountants are expected to acquire. The perspectives from these different groups, have provided validation of the student research participants’ experiences. Critical Realism and Social Realism were used as theoretical underpinnings while Social Realism, Bernstein’s Pedagogic Device, Legitimation Code Theory and New Literacies Theory were used as explanatory theories. Using these theories, the participants’ experiences were analysed and could be understood in a different way. This dissertation reveals how this unequal privileging of individuals as a result of the existing structures is perpetuated at university level. It is the poorer students from under-resourced schools who generally struggle with the language and the practices and ways of being required for success at university. Student participants’ experiences of constraint and enablement arose primarily in the areas of the finances required for tuition and living expenses while at university; having English as a language of learning; and difficulties experienced with taking advantage of the learning opportunities within the department. Research participants also spoke about their experiences of transformation in terms of both student protests, and a mentoring programme which assisted them in gaining access to the practises and ways of being required for the discipline. In so doing they were inducted into the discipline’s community of practice. This dissertation has assisted in providing an understanding of what has helped and what has hindered students at Rhodes University, on their journeys towards obtaining the Postgraduate Diploma in Accounting qualification. It has also provided insight into the mechanisms which lie behind these experiences. This study will provide practitioners and policy-makers with the opportunity to be better informed about students’ struggles, to contemplate their interactions with students and to identify, remove or reduce unnecessarily burdensome hurdles. Equally and perhaps more importantly, this study and the work which emerges as a result of this research, will provide students with tools to assist them in their academic journeys, to manage essential hurdles, and to eliminate or avoid unnecessary hurdles.
- Full Text:
Conditions constraining and enabling research production in Historically Black Universities in South Africa
- Authors: Muthama, Evelyn
- Date: 2019
- Subjects: Universities and colleges, Black -- South Africa , Universities and colleges -- Research -- South Africa , Education, Higher -- South Africa , Universities and colleges -- South Africa -- History , Black people -- Education -- South Africa -- History , Discrimination in higher education -- South Africa -- History
- Language: English
- Type: text , Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/131527 , vital:36591
- Description: The South African higher education system has a highly uneven landscape emerging from its apartheid past. Institutions remain categorised along racial lines within categories known as ‘Historically Black’ and ‘Historically White’ institutions, or alternatively ‘Historically Disadvantaged’ and ‘Historically Advantaged’ universities. Alongside such categorisations, universities fall within three types, which arose from the restructuring of the higher education landscape post-apartheid through a series of mergers: traditional universities, comprehensive universities, and universities of technology. This study which is part of a larger National Research Foundation-funded project looking at institutional differentiation in South Africa, sought to investigate the conditions enabling and constraining production of research in the Historically Black Universities (HBUs). By providing clarity as to the nature of truth and the concept of knowledge underpinning study, Critical Realism ensures that the study moves beyond the experiences and events captured in the data to the identification of causal mechanisms. Archer’s theory of Social Realism is used alongside Critical Realism, both as a meta-theory to provide an account of the social world and as a more substantive theory in the analysis of data. Social Realism entails understanding that the social world emerges in a complex interplay of powers in the domains of structure, culture and agency. Identifying the powers in each of these domains that enabled or constrained research development meant moving beyond suggesting simple causal relationships to ensure that I identified the complexities of the interplay of mechanisms. Data was collected from all seven institutions designated by the Department of Higher Education and Training as HBUs, by online survey, in depth interviews with academics and heads of research, and through the collection of a range of national and institutional documentation. Using analytical dualism, I endeavoured to identify some of the enablements and constraints at play. There were a number of areas of strength in research in the HBUs. There has also been a significant increase in research output over the last decade; however, the study also identified a number of mechanisms that constrained research productivity. The study found that while there were a number of mechanisms that appeared to have causal tendencies across all the institutions, there were a number of very specific institutional differences. There was very little consistency in understanding of the purpose of research as being key to what universities and academics do. The implication of this incoherence in the domain of culture (i.e. beliefs and discourses in Archer’s terms) is that various interventions in the structural domain intended to foster increased research output often had unintended consequences. Unless there are explicit discussions about how and why research is valuable to the institution and to the country there is unlikely to be sustained growth in output. In particular, the data analysis raises concerns about an instrumentalist understanding of research output in the domain of culture. This in part emerged from the lack of a historical culture of research and was found to be complimentary to managerialist discourses. Another key mechanism identified in the analysis was the use of direct incentives to drive research productivity. Such initiatives seemed to be complementary to a more instrumentalist understanding of the purpose of research and thereby to potentially constrain the likelihood of sustained research growth. While many of the participants were in favour of the use of research incentives, it was also evident that this was often problematic because it steered academics towards salami slicing, and other practices focused on quantity as opposed to quality research. Predatory publications, in particular, have emerged as a problem whereby the research does not get read or cited and so it fails to contribute to knowledge dissemination. Another constraint to research production was related to the increased casualisation of academic staff, which has exacerbated difficulties in attracting and retaining staff especially in rural areas. In South Africa, 56% of academics in universities are now hired on a contract basis which constrained the nurturing of an academic identity and the extent of commitment to the university and its particular academic project. In the HBUs, these employment conditions were exacerbated by increased teaching loads as a result of increased number of students (undergraduates and postgraduates) that have not been matched with similar increases in academic staff. There was a nascent discourse of social justice that focused on research as a core driver of knowledge production in some of the HBUs. This is potentially an area of strength for the HBUs especially emerging from their rural position as there was a complementary culture of social concerns. There was evidence that the nexus between research and community engagement could be a strong means of both strengthening institutional identity and increasing research productivity. But unless the nexus is clearly articulated, a systematic process of support is unlikely to emerge. Given the extent to which the rural positioning of HBUs has been acknowledged to constrain research engagement, this finding has a number of positive implications.
- Full Text:
Funding higher education and training in South Africa: a comparative study of tax incentive measures, in conjunction with a dedicated tax
- Authors: Holm, Darryn
- Date: 2018
- Subjects: Education, Higher -- Finance , Education, Higher -- South Africa , Tax incentives -- Law and legislation -- South Africa , Student aid -- South Africa , Universities and Colleges -- Taxation -- Law and legislation -- South Africa , South Africa. Income Tax Act, 1962
- Language: English
- Type: text , Thesis , Masters , MCom
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/59445 , vital:27606
- Description: Higher education and training in South Africa in the post-Apartheid era has never been more volatile than it is currently, some two decades into democracy. Despite the many advances and achievements of higher education, the student protests of 2015 and 2016 have given expression to underlying fault-lines, including increasing student expectations and frustrations with regard to access and funding. This research was undertaken to document the underlying historical issues and models pertaining to funding within the higher education and training sector as well as the existing higher education and training taxation policies and incentives enacted in South Africa and selected international jurisdictions. This was done with a view to providing a framework for higher education and training tax policy formation in South Africa to assist in meeting its higher education and training “access and affordability” targets as set out in the National Plan on Higher Education and the Higher Education White Paper, while at the same time not hindering economic growth. A doctrinal research methodology was adopted in this study as it mainly analysed and interpreted legislation and policy documents and therefore the approach was qualitative in nature. An extensive literature survey was done in order to document the various internationally selected legislated higher education and training tax policies and incentives. The literature indicated that there are widespread funding perspectives and initiates, and that international tax policies enacted with the aim of ensuring that higher education and training is more accessible and affordable to the public, is stable and effective in certain jurisdictions. It is submitted that while a higher education dedicated tax may not be sufficiently effective in South Africa, a combination of broad-based tax incentives will help to promote the change to a more affordable and stable higher education funding system, whilst not preventing growth through sustainable development.
- Full Text:
Knowledge and knowers in Educational Leadership and Management (ELM) Master’s Programmes in South Africa
- Authors: Kajee, Farhana Amod
- Date: 2018
- Subjects: Educational leadership -- South Africa , Teachers -- Training of -- South Africa , Education, Higher -- South Africa , Master of education degree -- South Africa , Knowledge, Theory of , Educational sociology -- South Africa , Education, Higher -- Aims and objectives -- South Africa , Legitimation Code Theory (LCT)
- Language: English
- Type: text , Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/60698 , vital:27819
- Description: This dissertation examines the knowledge and knower practices in the Master’s in Educational Leadership and Management (ELM) coursework programmes at South African public universities. This study was prompted by my growing awareness of problems and tensions in the field of ELM generally, and at the level of programme design of the M Ed degree in particular. Many of these had been identified by a national audit of coursework M Eds in ELM (CHE, 2010), and this study sought to find a way of theorising these with a view to improving both course design and teaching. To this end I employed Maton’s Legitimation Code Theory (LCT) which enables critical engagement with knowledge and knowers in programmes, how they are positioned, and how this positioning may be problematic. Hence my first research question sought to discover and critique what counted as knowledge in these programmes and why, while the second asked how knowers were positioned, and why this had come to be the case. LCT has its roots in the work of Bernstein and Maton, whose preoccupation with curriculum was/is driven by a sense of social justice: if we can understand how and why the curriculum is organised and presented in a particular way, it becomes possible to re-imagine teaching and learning, making it accessible to a broader, more inclusive body of learners. The study also drew on critical realism as an underlabourer. This philosophy provided a nuanced understanding of ontology, encouraging and enabling me, as researcher, to unearth causal mechanisms driving the status quo. Only seven South African universities currently offer the coursework option of a Master’s degree in ELM, compared to thirteen when the audit was conducted in 2010. Six of the universities agreed to take part in the study. Data was gathered through content analysis of the six course outlines and interviews with individual co-ordinators or academics centrally involved in the programmes. Through the development of a translation device I was able to establishing that a knower code was dominant in the programmes. Using this point as my departure, I interrogated the knowledge practices and found that different types of knowledge were being privileged across the programmes, with some having a practical/professional leaning and others a more academic/theoretical orientation. The resultant tension does, I argue, restrict knowledge building and helps to account for the fact that the field is generally considered to be under-theorised. The fact all of these programme are registered with the same national qualifications authority, ostensibly following the same national guidelines for Master’s degrees is worrying. The study attempts to find underlying, historically significant reasons for this unevenness. An analysis of the programmes revealed a leaning towards supportive pedagogical approaches. While all programmes promote a cultivated gaze their purposes are not always the same. While a hegemonic practices potential for opening counts as knowledge, cultivated gaze can enable transformation, it can also encourage that can impede real change and empowerment. The study has the up much needed debate on what is meant by a Master’s in ELM, what and what kinds of knower are envisaged.
- Full Text:
Pushing the bounds of possibility: South African academics narrate their experiences of having agency to effect transformation
- Authors: Idahosa, Grace Ese-Osa
- Date: 2017
- Subjects: Education, Higher -- South Africa , Education, Higher -- Social aspects -- South Africa , Educational change -- South Africa , Higher education and state -- South Africa , Rhodes University
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/5845 , vital:20981
- Description: Over 20 years after the first democratic elections, the institutional cultures and structures of many South African universities remain un-transformed; they are embedded with racist and sexist discourses and attitudes that allow for the marginalisation and exclusion of students and staff (Department of Education 2008; Soudien 2010; van Wyk and Alexander 2010; Akoojee and Nkomo 2007; Hemson and Singh 2010). In order to effect change, research has noted the importance of leadership and staff involvement in the transformation process (Van-Der Westhuizen 2006; Portnoi 2009; Niemann 2010; Viljoen and Rothmann 2002). These studies argue that both leaders and staff members must be interested, and actively involved in, the transformation process. This suggests that the extent to which leaders and individual staff members have agency to effect transformatory practices determines the success of transformation policies. But what motivates this interest in transformation? While a number of studies have focused on the imperative to transform, few studies have focused on the role of individual agency in the transformation process. After all the world and in some ways structural properties are given to us and at the same time ‘actively constituted by us’ (van Manen 1997, XI). Drawing on interviews with academic staff members at one university in South Africa, this study uses a hermeneutic phenomenological approach to understand the nature of having agency to enable transformation drawing on the experiences of academic staff members. In the context of studies on the agency- structure divide and the need for a structural and cultural change in universities in South Africa, the project aimed to find out how transformation happens, when it does happen. I was interested in how individual agents are able to use their agency to ensure transformation amid limiting and rigid structures and cultures in the university. Given the fact that structures are only revealed in human action, the individual experience of transformation at once gives insight into the dominant structures, the social context and how their capacity to act was deployed to enable a change in such structures - at least in their own experience and understanding. This may help our understanding of transformation and what is needed to effect the transformation of deeply embedded apartheid legacies in university structures and cultures. This study aimed to reveal moments at which individuals embedded in what have been identified as rigid structures and cultures perceive themselves as having had the agency to interrupt and transform them despite their rigid nature. The study was interested in what characterises these moments and what individual and institutional contexts make them more or less possible/likely.
- Full Text:
Conditions enabling or constraining the exercise of agency among new academics in higher education, conducive to the social inclusion of students
- Authors: Behari-Leak, Kasturi
- Date: 2015
- Subjects: Social integration -- South Africa , Students -- South Africa -- Social conditions , Educational change -- South Africa , College teachers -- South Africa , Education, Higher -- South Africa , Critical realism , Social realism , Agent (Philosophy)
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: vital:1333 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1020295
- Description: This study, which is part of a National Research Foundation project on Social Inclusion in Higher Education (HE), focuses on the exercise of agency among new academics, conducive to the social inclusion of students. Transitioning from varied entry points into higher education, new academics face numerous challenges as they embed themselves in disciplinary and institutional contexts. Given the complexity and contested nature of the current higher education landscape, new academics are especially vulnerable. Using Roy Bhaskar’s critical realism as meta-theoretical framing and Margaret Archer’s social realist theory, with its methodological focus on analytical dualism and morphogenesis, this study offers a social realist account of how new academics engage with enabling and constraining conditions at institutional, faculty, departmental and classroom levels. Through an analysis of six individual narratives of mediation, this study explicates and exemplifies the range of agential choices exercised by new academics to mediate their contested spaces. A nuanced social and critical account of the material, ideational and agential conditions in HE shows that the courses of action taken by these new academics are driven through their concerns, commitments and projects in higher education. Yet, despite the university’s espousal of embracing change, the current induction and transition of new academics is inadequate to the task of transformation in higher education. Systemic conditions in HE, conducive to critical agency and social justice, are not enabling. Bhaskar’s Seven Scalar Being, used as an analytical frame and heuristic, guides the cross-case analysis of the six narratives across seven levels of ontology. The findings highlight that, despite difficult contextual influences, the positive exercise of agency is a marked feature of new participants in HE in this study. This has immediate implications for ways in which professional and academic development, and disciplinary and departmental programmes, could create and sustain conducive conditions for the professionalisation of new academics through more sensitised practices. Using alternative research methods such as photovoice to generate its data, this doctoral study proposes that new research methodologies, located in the third space, are needed now more than ever in HE sociological research, to recognise the researcher and the research participants as independent, autonomous and causally efficacious beings. To this end, this study includes a Chapter Zero, which captures the narrative of the doctoral scholar as researcher, who, shaped and influenced by established doctoral practices and traditions in the field, exercises her own doctoral agency in particular ways.
- Full Text:
Implementation of multilingualism in South African higher education : exploring the use of isiXhosa in teaching and learning at Rhodes University
- Authors: Gambushe, Wanga
- Date: 2015
- Subjects: Language and education -- South Africa , Multilingual education -- South Africa , Native language and education -- South Africa , Education, Higher -- South Africa , Language policy -- South Africa , Cytology -- Study and teaching (Higher) -- South Africa , Xhosa (African people) -- Education (Higher)
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: vital:3649 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1017890
- Description: This study explores the implementation of multilingualism at Rhodes University (RU), by examining the teaching and learning practices of lecturers, demonstrators and students within the Cell Biology module, offered by the Biological Sciences and Botany departments at RU. This examination is in line with RU’s Language Policy (2005/2014), which recognises multilingualism and the development of isiXhosa as an academic/scientific language. The study and the choice for the location of the study within RU was motivated by what seemed to be a pattern of under achievement of LOTE speaking students studying Cell Biology. This pattern necessitated a further inquiry into the language aspect of the teaching and learning of Cell Biology. The goals of this research were to investigate spaces where LOTE students use their home languages and the motivations behind their usage of those languages. Due to the varying proficiencies of LOTE students in their mother tongue, this study sought to investigate the language capabilities of LOTE students in their home languages. The perceptions of the main role players in the Cell Biology module were sought, in order to get an idea of what students, lecturers and demonstrators thought about multilingualism in teaching and learning practices in the Cell Biology module. This study has discovered that there is a disparity in achievement between LOTE and English speaking students, with English students outperforming LOTE students consistently in the period investigated. On the language capabilities of LOTE students in their mother tongue, it was discovered that they have enough linguistic capital for a mother tongue intervention to succeed. There were mixed views about the use of LOTE in HE, but students were mostly in favour of the use of LOTE. A number of recommendations are made as to how multilingualism can be implemented in Cell Biology. In this study I argue that there is a need to use the mother tongue of LOTE students in order to support learning, the mother tongue intervention is supported by scholars such as Paxton (2007, 2009; Madiba 2011, 2012, 2014). The use of the mother tongue to support learning should be a short-term measure while the process of the development of African languages is underway, because languages develop as they are used, and form follows function (Madiba 2008). Ultimately, African languages should be developed and use as academic languages in HE not only in order to fulfil the legislative imperatives such as the Constitution and the Language Policy Higher Education but also to increase access and success among LOTE students.
- Full Text:
The supervisor’s tale: postgraduate supervisors’ experiences in a changing Higher Education environment
- Authors: Searle, Ruth Lesley
- Date: 2015
- Subjects: Graduate students -- Supervision of -- South Africa , Education, Higher -- South Africa , Educational change -- South Africa , Archer, Margaret Scotford -- Political and social views , Critical realism , Knowledge, Sociology of , Dissertations, Academic , Faculty advisors -- South Africa , Education -- Study and teaching (Graduate) -- South Africa , Universities and colleges -- Graduate work
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: vital:1331 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1019952
- Description: The environment in which higher education institutions operate is changing, and these changes are impacting on all aspects of higher education, including postgraduate levels. Changes wrought by globalisation, heralded by rapid advances in technology have inaugurated a new era in which there are long term consequences for higher education. The shift towards more quantitative and measurable "outputs" signifies a fundamental change in the educational ethos in institutions. Effectiveness is now judged primarily on numbers of graduates and publications rather than on other aspects. The drive is to produce a highly educated population, especially through increasing postgraduates who can drive national innovation and improve national economies. This affects academics in a range of ways, not least in the ways in which they engage in teaching, what they are willing to do and how they do it. Such changes influence the kinds of research done, the structures and funding which support research, and thus naturally shapes the kinds of postgraduate programmes and teaching that occurs. This study, situated in the field of Higher Education Studies, adopting a critical realist stance and drawing on the social theory of Margaret Archer and the concepts of expert and novice, explores the experiences of postgraduate supervisors from one South African institution across a range of disciplines. Individual experiences at the level of the Empirical and embodied in practice at the level of the Actual allow for the identification of possible mechanisms at the level of the Real which structure the sector. The research design then allows for an exploration across mezzo, macro and micro levels. Individuals outline their own particular situations, identifying a number of elements which enabled or constrained them and how, in exercising their agency, they develop their strategies for supervision drawing on a range of different resources that they identify and that may be available to them. Student characteristics, discipline status and placement, funding, and the emergent policy environment are all identified as influencing their practice. In some instances supervisors recognise the broader influences on the system that involve them in their undertaking, noting the international trends. Through their narratives and the discourses they engage a number of contradictions that have developed in the system with growing neo-liberal trends and vocationalism highlighting tensions between academic freedom and autonomy, and demands for productivity, efficiency and compliance, and between an educational focus and a training bias in particular along with others. Especially notable is how this contributes to the current ideologies surrounding knowledge and knowledge production. Their individual interests and concerns, and emergent academic identities as they take shape over time, also modifies the process and how individual supervisors influence their own environments in agentic moves becomes apparent. Whilst often individuals highlight the lack of support especially in the early phases of supervision, the emergent policy-constrained environment is also seen as curtailing possibilities and especially in limiting the possibilities for the exercise of agency. Whilst the study has some limitations in the range and number of respondents nevertheless the data provided rich evidence of how individual supervisors are affected, and how they respond in varied conditions. What is highlighted through these experiences are ways pressures are increasing for both supervisors and students and changing how they engage. Concerns in particular are raised about the growing functional and instrumental nature of the process with an emphasis on the effects on the kinds of researchers being developed and the knowledge that is therefore being produced. As costs increase for academics through the environments developed and with the varied roles they take on so they become more selective and reluctant to expand the role. This research has provided insights into ideas, beliefs and values relating to the postgraduate sector and to the process of postgraduate supervision and how it occurs. This includes the structures and cultural conditions that enable or constrain practitioners as they develop in the role in this particular institution. It has explored some of the ways that mechanisms at international, national and institutional levels shape the role and practices of supervisors. The effects of mechanisms are in no way a given or simply understood. In this way the research may contribute to more emancipatory knowledge which could be used in planning and deciding on emergent policies and practices which might create a more supportive and creative postgraduate environment.
- Full Text:
Knowledge and knowing in the public management and public administration programmes at a comprehensive university
- Authors: Lück, Jacqueline Catherine
- Date: 2014
- Subjects: Knowledge and learning , Public administration -- Study and teaching (Higher) , Knowledge, Sociology of , Learning, Psychology of , Knowledge, Theory of , Educational equalization -- South Africa , Education, Higher -- South Africa , Literacy -- South Africa , Technical institutes -- South Africa
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: vital:1326 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1013166
- Description: Knowledge is often tacit and under researched in educational fields. In order for student access to knowledge and its related academic discourses to be facilitated, a deep understanding needs to be gained of the form that this knowledge takes. This study interrogates the ways in which knowledge is constituted in the first year of a Public Management Diploma and a Public Administration Degree at a comprehensive university in South Africa. The study takes a social realist approach that understands reality as fact but sees our knowledge thereof as a social phenomenon. The study was concerned with knowledge structures and knower structures as it argues that these have not been adequately accounted for in the sociology of education research. But this study comes to this concern from a strongly ideological view of student reading and writing. This study calls on a social practices approach that sees literacy as embedded within specific academic discourses, which vary from context to context. It uses this ideological understanding of literacy as the orienting framework for the study of knowledge. The study takes place in a Higher Education mileu that has begun to transform from its divisive past. The transformation brought about new institutional formations such as the comprehensive university, with its mix of vocational, professional and formative programmes and varied emphasis on contextual and conceptual curriculum coherence. Increasingly, the transformation agenda also shifts concern from simply providing physical access to a previously disenfranchised majority to ensuring full participation in the context of high attrition rates in first year and low retention rates. The data was analysed using the Specialisation Codes of Legitimation Code Theory to see what was being specialised in the Diploma and Degree curricula of the Public Management and Administration fields. These fields are characterised in the literature by ongoing tensions about focus, and perceptions of there being a theoretical vacuum and an inability to deal adequately with challenges in the South African public sector. Analysis of lecturer interviews and first-year curriculum documentation showed that both the Public Management Diploma and Public Administration Degree have stronger epistemic relations (ER), with an emphasis on claims to knowledge of the world. The data showed relatively weak social relations (SR), in that there was not the valuing of a particular lens on the world or a specific disposition required for legitimation within this field. The combination of ER+ and SR- indicates that these curricula are Knowledge Codes, where legitimation is through the acquisition of a set of skills and procedures. The programmes were characterised by fairly low-level procedural knowledge, which may point to a workplace-oriented direction that is dominant in the comprehensive university. In keeping with concerns raised in the literature about this field, there was little evidence of theoretical or propositional knowledge in the Public Management Diploma and while the Public Administration Degree had some evidence of this, it was arguably not to the extent expected of a degree as described in the National Qualifications Framework. This study was limited to the first-year of the Diploma and Degree and subsequent years could present different findings. Lecturers showed awareness of student challenges with literacy practices and made concerned attempts through various interventions to address this but they were found to value the surface features of writing practices over personal engagement with the knowledge. Though the expectations of student literacy practices in tests and assignments were aligned to the ways in which knowledge was constructed in the curriculum, there was little evidence of student induction into disciplinary discourses of the field as knowledge was presented as being neutral and student writing primarily took the form of retelling objective facts. The implications of these findings could include student exclusion from higher-level academic discourse, more powerful knowledge in the workplace and, finally, constrain them from becoming producers of knowledge.
- Full Text:
Governance
- Authors: Badat, Saleem
- Date: 2006-09-01 , 2014-06-10
- Subjects: Universities and colleges -- South Africa -- Administration , Education, Higher -- South Africa
- Language: English
- Type: Text
- Identifier: vital:7598 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1011749
- Description: Conference notes on governance in the Higher Education sector.
- Full Text:
Contesting Higher Education in South Africa: from mass opposition student politics of the 1970s and 1980s to student politics in the post-1994 era of reconstruction
- Authors: Badat, Saleem
- Date: 2006-08-10 , 2014-06-12
- Subjects: Students -- South Africa -- Political activity , South Africa Students Congress (SASCO) , Education, Higher -- South Africa
- Language: English
- Type: Text
- Identifier: vital:7615 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1011823
- Description: Address at the SASCO Rhodes Meeting, Rhodes University, 10 August 2006
- Full Text:
A comparative analysis of environmental policies of South African universities
- Authors: Gyan, Cecilia Adwoa
- Date: 2006
- Subjects: Environmental education -- South Africa , Sustainable development -- Study and teaching , Education, Higher -- South Africa , Universities and colleges -- Environmental aspects , Environmental policy -- South Africa , Campus planning -- Environmental aspects -- South Africa
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MSc
- Identifier: vital:4773 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1008067 , Environmental education -- South Africa , Sustainable development -- Study and teaching , Education, Higher -- South Africa , Universities and colleges -- Environmental aspects , Environmental policy -- South Africa , Campus planning -- Environmental aspects -- South Africa
- Description: There has been ongoing global concern on environmental issues and which is supposed to have moved down into smaller institutions and areas through local agenda 2l. Environmental issues are associated not only with care for the environment but also sustainable development. Various universities are beginning to strive for sustainable development and care for the environment. Some universities are therefore integrating care for the environment in their curricula and in their daily operations on campus. The greening of higher educational institutions as models is important as they are the seat for research and training of undergraduates who will become future leaders and policymakers and caretakers of the environment. It is therefore important for undergraduates to be exposed to greening processes in operations, research and curricula whilst still on campus. This study examines the process of formulating a policy and applies that to forming an environmental policy. The study involved a comparative analysis of environmental policies of various tertiary educational institutions from different countries. The study focused on how many universities in South Africa have environmental policies and how the universities which have environmental policies went about their formulation process. The study further examines the duration of the formulation process and the constraints encountered by universities. The study then reviews strategies on how the environmental policy is being implemented and how effective the implementation process is practically and the constraints these institutions face. The findings of the study reveal that few universities ill South Africa have an environmental policy. The universities are making efforts in their implementation process however, not all the principles found in the policies are being implemented effectively as there are no environmental management systems in place and there are no measurable objectives and targets set for proper evaluation of the success or failure of the policy.
- Full Text:
Discourses surrounding 'race', equity, disadvantage and transformation in times of rapid social change : higher education in post-apartheid South Africa
- Authors: Robus, Donovan
- Date: 2005
- Subjects: Rhodes University , University of Fort Hare , Universities and colleges -- Mergers -- South Africa , Education, Higher -- South Africa , Education and state -- South Africa , Apartheid -- South Africa , Discourse analysis -- Methodology , Discrimination in education -- South Africa , Educational change -- South Africa
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MSocSc
- Identifier: vital:3142 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007196 , Rhodes University , University of Fort Hare , Universities and colleges -- Mergers -- South Africa , Education, Higher -- South Africa , Education and state -- South Africa , Apartheid -- South Africa , Discourse analysis -- Methodology , Discrimination in education -- South Africa , Educational change -- South Africa
- Description: Since the dismantling of Apartheid in South Africa in 1994, the South African socio-political and economic landscape has been characterised by rapid change. In the ten years since the 'new' democratic South Africa emerged, transformation has become a dominant discourse that has driven much action and practice in a variety of public areas. One of the areas of focus for transformation has been Higher Education whereby the Department of Education aimed to do away with disparity caused by Apartheid segregation by reducing the number of Higher Education institutions from 36 to 21. This research draws on Foucauldian theory and post-colonial theories (in particular Edward Said and Frantz Fanon), and the concept of racialisation in an analysis of the incorporation of Rhodes University's East London campus into the University of Fort Hare. Ian Parker's discourse analytic approach which suggests that discourses support institutions, reproduce power relations and have ideological effects, was utilised to analyse the talk of students and staff at the three sites affected by the incorporation (viz. Rhodes, Grahamstown, Rhodes, East London and Fort Hare) as well as newspaper articles and public statements made by the two institutions. What emerged was that in post-Apartheid South Africa, institutional and geographic space is still racialised with virtually no reference to the historical and contextual foundations from which this emerged being made. In positioning space and institutions in this racialised manner a discourse of 'white' excellence and 'black' failure emerges with the notion of competence gaining legitimacy through an appeal to academic standards. In addition to this, transformation emerges as a signifier of shifting boundaries in a post-Apartheid society where racialised institutional, spatial and social boundaries evidently still exist discursively.
- Full Text:
The integration of academic skills/support programmes into university department structures: a case study in the sociology of education
- Authors: Drewett, Michael
- Date: 1993
- Subjects: Education, Higher -- South Africa , Compensatory education -- South Africa , Education, Higher , Education -- Philosophy , Rhodes University. Academic Development Programme
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MSocSc
- Identifier: vital:3327 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1003115
- Description: This research focuses on the extent to which the Rhodes University Academic Skills Programme (ASP), now known as the Academic Development Programme, is able to act as an agent of progressive change within Rhodes University. In so doing it concentrates on the potential of the strategy of integrated academic development for dealing with the academic needs of university students within the context of South Africa as a society in transition. The candidate considers the inability of structuralist educational theory to account for the potential of human agency at the site of formal education. It is shown that structuralist theories provide deterministic and pessimistic accounts of the role of institutions of formal education. In support of this contention this study explores the history of ASP at Rhodes University, demonstrating that significant change in student academic development has already taken place. ASP has contributed to change within the said University through challenging traditional notions of academic development. This thesis suggests that the non-structuralist critical theory of Jurgen Habermas provides a more holistic account of ASP than do structuralist theories of formal education. Through the incorporation of Habermas's theory of communicative action a process of critical integration is explored, showing that a strategy of integrated academic development has the potential to involve all those who have an interest in university education through a process of rational discourse. This potential is strengthened by the fact that many students and staff have expressed an awareness of the need for an integrated academic development strategy. This thesis subsequently explores the possibility of there being a process of democratic and rational discourse which could lead to a progressive integration programme in the Rhodes University Department of Sociology and Industrial Sociology. This thesis stresses the contested nature of the integration process within departments. It is indicated that Habermas's critical theory is able to account for the changes which have taken place in the past and which are presently under way. It is argued that it not possible to predict future outcomes, but that if ASP pursues a process of rational discourse, it will indeed be able to stimulate a critical integrative approach to academic development in the Rhodes University Department of Sociology and Industrial Sociology.
- Full Text: