Collaborative research in contexts of inequality: the role of social reflexivity
- Leibowitz, Brenda, Bozalek, Vivienne, Farmer, Jean, Garraway, James, Herman, Nicoline, Jawitz, Jeff, McMillan, Wendy, Mistri, Gita, Ndebele, Clever, Nkonki, Vuyisile, Quinn, Lynn, Van Schalkwyk, Susan, Vorster, Jo-Anne, Winberg, Chris
- Authors: Leibowitz, Brenda , Bozalek, Vivienne , Farmer, Jean , Garraway, James , Herman, Nicoline , Jawitz, Jeff , McMillan, Wendy , Mistri, Gita , Ndebele, Clever , Nkonki, Vuyisile , Quinn, Lynn , Van Schalkwyk, Susan , Vorster, Jo-Anne , Winberg, Chris
- Date: 2017
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/66634 , vital:28973 , https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-016-0029-5
- Description: publisher version , This article reports on the role and value of social reflexivity in collaborative research in contexts of extreme inequality. Social reflexivity mediates the enablements and constraints generated by the internal and external contextual conditions impinging on the research collaboration. It fosters the ability of participants in a collaborative project to align their interests and collectively extend their agency towards a common purpose. It influences the productivity and quality of learning outcomes of the research collaboration. The article is written by fourteen members of a larger research team, which comprised 18 individuals working within the academic development environment in eight South African universities. The overarching research project investigated the participation of academics in professional development activities, and how contextual, i.e. structural and cultural, and agential conditions, influence this participation. For this sub-study on the experience of the collaboration by fourteen of the researchers, we wrote reflective pieces on our own experience of participating in the project towards the end of the third year of its duration. We discuss the structural and cultural conditions external to and internal to the project, and how the social reflexivity of the participants mediated these conditions. We conclude with the observation that policy injunctions and support from funding agencies for collaborative research, as well as support from participants’ home institutions are necessary for the flourishing of collaborative research, but that the commitment by individual participants to participate, learn and share, is also necessary.
- Full Text: false
- Date Issued: 2017
- Authors: Leibowitz, Brenda , Bozalek, Vivienne , Farmer, Jean , Garraway, James , Herman, Nicoline , Jawitz, Jeff , McMillan, Wendy , Mistri, Gita , Ndebele, Clever , Nkonki, Vuyisile , Quinn, Lynn , Van Schalkwyk, Susan , Vorster, Jo-Anne , Winberg, Chris
- Date: 2017
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/66634 , vital:28973 , https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-016-0029-5
- Description: publisher version , This article reports on the role and value of social reflexivity in collaborative research in contexts of extreme inequality. Social reflexivity mediates the enablements and constraints generated by the internal and external contextual conditions impinging on the research collaboration. It fosters the ability of participants in a collaborative project to align their interests and collectively extend their agency towards a common purpose. It influences the productivity and quality of learning outcomes of the research collaboration. The article is written by fourteen members of a larger research team, which comprised 18 individuals working within the academic development environment in eight South African universities. The overarching research project investigated the participation of academics in professional development activities, and how contextual, i.e. structural and cultural, and agential conditions, influence this participation. For this sub-study on the experience of the collaboration by fourteen of the researchers, we wrote reflective pieces on our own experience of participating in the project towards the end of the third year of its duration. We discuss the structural and cultural conditions external to and internal to the project, and how the social reflexivity of the participants mediated these conditions. We conclude with the observation that policy injunctions and support from funding agencies for collaborative research, as well as support from participants’ home institutions are necessary for the flourishing of collaborative research, but that the commitment by individual participants to participate, learn and share, is also necessary.
- Full Text: false
- Date Issued: 2017
The ‘decolonial turn’: what does it mean for academic staff development?
- Vorster, Jo-Anne, Quinn, Lynn
- Authors: Vorster, Jo-Anne , Quinn, Lynn
- Date: 2017
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/66612 , vital:28971 , https://doi.org/10.17159/1947-9417/2017/853
- Description: publisher version , It has become increasingly evident that the discourse of transformation that has shaped the democratising of higher education institutions over the first two decades of the democratic dispensation in South Africa has now run its course. Over the past few years, and particularly during the tumultuous student protests of 2015 and 2016, students and some academics have been calling for the decolonisation of university structures and cultures, including curricula. Using concepts from Margaret Archer’s social realism we consider the failure of the discourse of transformation to lead to real change and examine a constellation of new discourses related to the decolonisation of universities that have emerged in South Africa recently. Furthermore, we critique the discourses that have underpinned our own practices as academic developers over the past two decades and then explore the implications of what could be termed a ‘decolonial turn’ 1 for academic developers and by implication for the academics with whom they work.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2017
- Authors: Vorster, Jo-Anne , Quinn, Lynn
- Date: 2017
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/66612 , vital:28971 , https://doi.org/10.17159/1947-9417/2017/853
- Description: publisher version , It has become increasingly evident that the discourse of transformation that has shaped the democratising of higher education institutions over the first two decades of the democratic dispensation in South Africa has now run its course. Over the past few years, and particularly during the tumultuous student protests of 2015 and 2016, students and some academics have been calling for the decolonisation of university structures and cultures, including curricula. Using concepts from Margaret Archer’s social realism we consider the failure of the discourse of transformation to lead to real change and examine a constellation of new discourses related to the decolonisation of universities that have emerged in South Africa recently. Furthermore, we critique the discourses that have underpinned our own practices as academic developers over the past two decades and then explore the implications of what could be termed a ‘decolonial turn’ 1 for academic developers and by implication for the academics with whom they work.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2017
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