The morphogenesis of higher education leadership: a social realist exploratory journey
- Authors: Andrews, Ruth
- Date: 2023-10-13
- Subjects: Educational leadership South Africa , Education, Higher South Africa , Critical realism , Social realism , Educational change South Africa , Transformational leadership
- Language: English
- Type: Academic theses , Doctoral theses , text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/442897 , vital:74051 , DOI 10.21504/10962/442897
- Description: The purpose of the study underpinning this thesis was to explore the tensions experienced by university leaders as they balance politics, power and the academic project whilst pursuing their ultimate concerns in the world. Universities are undergoing constant change, particularly in the present time of hypercomplexity, where the discourses of globalisation and neoliberalism condition higher education institutions and their leaders. This predisposes universities to operate as a market economy rather than as a public good. University leaders are under immense pressure as they seek to reposition themselves and exercise their agency in steering their institutions in a landscape fraught with complexity and contestation about the very nature of the modern university. The study was located in a traditional university in South Africa, which added another layer of complexity given the history of Apartheid and, the use of education as a means of discriminating against the black majority population, and the subsequent attempts by the government to transform the system following the first democratic election of 1994. Bhaskar’s (1989) critical realism and Archer’s (1998, 2000) social realism were used to frame the study theoretically. Bhaskar argues for the understanding of the world as an ‘open system’ in which experiences and events emerge from the tendential interplay of mechanisms at a layer of reality not directly accessible to empirical observation. Archer’s (2000) social realism draws on critical realism to provide a set of tools that allows an exploration of the social world in more detail. This study draws on the tools of analytical dualism, or the temporary separation of structure, culture and agency for analytical purposes, and Archer’s (1998) morphogenetic framework, which allows for the exploration of change, or non-change, over time. The overarching goal of the study was to explore how leaders at one South African university were enabled and constrained as they exercised their agency in the pursuit of projects they had identified to address their ultimate concerns about the world more generally and higher education in particular. However, the study also sought to explore the construct of leadership itself in a specific context by using Archer’s (2007, 2012) theoretical work on reflexivity. The study drew on in-depth interviews with senior leaders at the institution, including two vice-chancellors. The interviews were subjected to analysis, and the inferential tools of abduction and retroduction were used to identify the interplay of mechanisms located at the level of the Real, the deepest layer of reality posited by Bhaskar (1978), which led to the events and experiences reported by leaders. A literature review was used to identify additional theories that were used in the processes of abduction and retroduction. The study revealed that change, or rather non-change, is often concealed in cultural rhetoric veiled in leadership practices in acts assimilating past ideology and codified rules and practices with new codified rules and practices. Leaders often draw on powerful relational networks as they reflexively exercise their agency, and these networks can also work to constrain change. , Thesis (PhD) -- Faculty of Education, Education 2023
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- Date Issued: 2023-10-13
Mentoring as social learning value creation in two South African environmental organisations: a social realist analysis
- Authors: Hiestermann, Michelle
- Date: 2022-10-14
- Subjects: Social realism , Social learning , Mentoring , Environmental education South Africa
- Language: English
- Type: Academic theses , Doctoral theses , text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/366248 , vital:65846 , https://doi.org/10.21504/10962/366248
- Description: South Africa is facing overwhelming crises of educational quality, record rates of unemployment (especially amongst youth) and environmental issues and risks, further exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic. Environmental education research that addresses these challenges is critical to ensuring that future generations thrive in a warming climate. South Africa needs environmental leaders; we therefore need to understand and explore the possibilities of mentoring young professionals in environmental organisations in South Africa. Several initiatives have been developed to contribute to the mentoring of young professionals in South African environmental organisations. This study drew on a critical realist ontology, social realist meta-theory and domain specific theory on mentoring and evaluation to explore mentoring as a value creating proposition in two environmental organisations in South Africa that were part of the national Groen Sebenza youth employment creation programme which had a strong focus on mentoring. To strengthen conceptual analytical tools on mentoring, I undertook an immanent critique of domain specific mentoring theory to develop a more appropriate foundation for mentoring theory in the environmental sector that was not subject to the historical influence of human capital theory only (which has tended to dominate the field’s literature). I then developed in-depth understanding of mentoring in two case study contexts, namely a non-profit environmental organisation and an environmental consulting company, using qualitative research approaches that included contextual profiling, case study research and mirror data workshops. Analytically, I considered the case data drawing on the value creation evaluation framework of Wenger-Trayner and Wenger-Trayner (2014) which itself was developing as an analytical framework as the study developed. I strengthened the analytical framework with social realist interpretations drawing on Archer (1995). This offered me a way of developing an in-depth understanding of the factors which constrain or enable the value creation possibilities of mentoring, with a view to inform human capacity development initiatives that support mentoring in the environment sector. It was possible to explain the value creation possibilities of mentoring within two case study environmental organisations through considering mentoring as a social learning process of value creation and this overcame some of the shortfalls identified in other early learning theories as well as theories of mentoring. The research revealed how mentoring can provide a value creation social learning trajectory for unemployed youth. A social realist perspective explained how young professionals expanded their primary agency, through full participation in workplace communities of practice, to find their identity as corporate agents in the workplace with their mentors. In this research, Social Realist ontology, theory and methodology was able to achieve what Human Capital Theory could not and provided an account of the interplay of structure, culture and agency over time, through emergent properties and the separation of structure and agency. Thus, it was possible to avoid conflation and the limitation of theory of the present tense, with a deeper, ontologically robust explanation of mentoring as social learning and social change and a social realist orientation to human capacity development. South Africa has a history of oppression, inequality and injustice and requires social processes that are reflexive, critical, emancipatory and transformative. Therefore, this research required theory and approaches that could explain mentoring of unemployed youth, as a common good initiative for a more just and sustainable society. As shown in this study, a Social Realist approach can uncover the underlying generative mechanisms and make the implicit more explicit in research, policy and strategy, offering a robust alternative to the tenets of Human Capital Theory that have driven much mentoring research in South Africa and elsewhere to date. , Thesis (PhD) -- Faculty of Education, Education, 2022
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- Date Issued: 2022-10-14
Exploring structures and beliefs underlying textbook praxis in German foreign language courses at a South African university – a social realist perspective
- Authors: Engelbrecht, Natasha
- Date: 2022-04-07
- Subjects: German language Study and teaching (Higher) English speakers , Curriculum change South Africa , German language Textbooks History and criticism , Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (Project) , Decolonization South Africa , Educational change South Africa , Social realism
- Language: English
- Type: Doctoral thesis , text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/232657 , vital:50011 , DOI https://doi.org/10.21504/10962/232657
- Description: Commercial textbooks, aligned with the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR), are prescribed in almost all undergraduate GFL courses offered at South African universities. Although providing practical relevance and quality assurance, the CEFR-level descriptors were developed for the European context. The projected relevance and appropriateness of teaching materials presently implemented in German curricula in South African higher education have been determined in Germany, not for local contexts, but for learners vaguely described as “Anfänger” (Evans, et al., 2012, p. 8) and “Erwachsene und Jugendliche ab 16 Jahren” (Hueber, 2019, p. 11), often with a focus on learning for prospective German immigrants or for the use in refugee- or immigrant integration courses. However, the textbook occupies a central position in the GFL course because of the structured grammar progression that it lends to the curriculum. The variety of resources available to lecturers (tests, worksheets, online learning platform) and students (exercises, English-German glossary, English grammar explanations) is also an asset to GFL courses. Calls for the transformation and decolonisation of higher education have prompted academic disciplines to re-evaluate the common-sense assumptions which underpin knowledge practices in their curriculum. Following a social realist perspective and an exploratory case-study approach, this study presents a critical analysis of the textbook prescribed in the German Studies 1 course at Rhodes University and student experiences of the textbook to disentangle the complex relations which cause textbook praxis and lay bare power structures and tensions in the system. , Thesis (PhD) -- Humanities, School of Languages and Literatures, 2022
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- Date Issued: 2022-04-07
Factors that shape learner achievement in socially disadvantaged and rural contexts: a social realist study in two rural senior secondary schools in Omusati region, Namibia
- Authors: Shilongo, Erica
- Date: 2018
- Subjects: Academic achievement Namibia Omusati , High school students Namibia Omusati Social conditions , Rural schools Namibia Omusati , Education, Rural Namibia Omusati , Social realism
- Language: English
- Type: text , Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/62240 , vital:28146
- Description: Learners’ performance and the reasons for either achievement or failure in school has lo ng been a topic of debate. In early research on academic achievement, theorists, educators, biologists and psychologists traditionally focused on the learners from socially disadvantaged family backgrounds who underachieve. Much of the debate internationally centred on whether learner academic achievement / underachievement is a product of hereditary traits or the social context. In particular, arguments for and against whether the reasons for the achievement / underachievement of children from socially disadvantaged families are genetic or the social context in which they find themselves continue unabated. Such explanations do not provide insight into why it is that despite familial (genetic) and social circumstances (social disadvantage), some children succeed and/or are able to act outside expectations of failure. Little research has focused on those in the same or similar contexts who are achieving academic success despite their limiting circumstances and the reasons for their success. This study used a social realist lens to investigate the factors that shape the academic achievement of 12 learners in two rural senior secondary schools in Omusati region, Namibia. All 12 learners are from low socioeconomic family backgrounds. The data was collected through survey, interviews with learners, parents and teachers, field notes and document analysis. The main finding of the study show that contrary to research that portrayed learners’ achievement as determined either by heredity or social contexts, the 12 learners constantly used their agentic possibilities to navigate constraining structural and cultural conditions at regional, familial and school levels to achieve academic success. Their agency was shaped by the socioeconomic conditions in their lives, namely, socioeconomic deprivation; large extended families in rural households, lack of amenities and utilities in their families, participation in household chores, experience of family tragedies and of changes when they were young.
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- Date Issued: 2018
An exploration into the conditions enabling and constraining the implementation of quality assurance in higher education: the case of a small comprehensive university in South Africa
- Authors: Masehela, Langutani Meriam
- Date: 2015
- Subjects: University of Venda -- Evaluation , Education, Higher -- South Africa -- Evaluation , Universities and colleges -- South Africa -- Auditing , Quality assurance -- South Africa , Quality assurance -- Standards -- South Africa , Universities and colleges -- South Africa -- Evaluation , Educational accountability -- South Africa , Education, Higher -- Standards -- South Africa , Educational evaluation -- South Africa , Critical realism , Social realism
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: vital:1334 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1020312
- Description: At an international level, demands for accountability in respect of the quality of teaching and learning in higher education are increasing. This is also the case in South Africa. The response to these demands has taken the form of the introduction of quality assurance systems to higher education. In South Africa, a formal national external quality assurance was introduced to the higher education system in 2001 as a result of the establishment of the Higher Education Quality Committee. The Higher Education Quality Committee is a standing committee of the South African Council on Higher Education. Like other quality assurance agencies across the world, the Higher Education Quality Committee has the responsibility for i) auditing institutions of higher education and ii) accrediting learning programmes. The first cycle of institutional audits ran from 2004 until 2011. As quality assurance was introduced to the higher education system and the first cycle of institutional audits began, universities in South Africa developed policies and procedures intended to assure quality in three areas of their core functioning: research, teaching and learning and community engagement. The University of Venda, which is the focus of the study on which this thesis is based, was no exception. As a practitioner in the Centre for Higher Education Teaching and Learning at The University of Venda, it was my observation that the policies and procedures intended to assure quality in teaching and learning were not always implemented by academic staff members. This was in spite of poor student performance data which raised questions about the quality of the teaching and learning processes in place. The study underpinning this thesis was designed to explore this phenomenon. More specifically, it aimed to identify the conditions enabling and constraining the implementation of policies and procedures in two Schools in the University: the School of Health Sciences and the School of Human and Social Sciences. In order to explore these conditions, I adopted Roy Bhaskar’s Critical Realism as an under-labouring philosophy for the study. Critical realism posits a view of reality comprising three strata, none of which can be reducible to the other. The first of these strata is termed the level of the Empirical and consists of the experiences and observations which become apparent to us through the senses. The second layer, the Actual, consists of events from which these experiences and observations emerge. Underpinning both of these layers is a further layer, the Real, which is not accessible by empirical means and which consists of structures and mechanisms which generate both events at the level of the Actual and experiences and observation at the level of the Empirical. The design of my study sought to reach this deepest layer of reality to identify these mechanisms. Bhaskar’s critical realism is philosophy which needs to be operationalized using substantive, or explanatory, theory. For this purpose, I drew on Margaret Archer’s social realism. The design on my study drew on case study methodology and involved in-depth interviews with members of the two Schools which each formed cases within the more overarching case of the University itself. In addition to these interviews, I analysed a range of institutional documents related to the assurance of quality in teaching and learning. The exploration of enabling and constraining conditions at the level of the Real allow me to make a series of recommendations in the final Chapter of my thesis intended to enhance the quality assurance system introduced to the University.
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- Date Issued: 2015
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.
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- Date Issued: 2015