A social realist account of the way academic managers exercise agency in monitoring students’ academic success in South African higher education
- Dwayi, Valindawo Valile Medicine
- Authors: Dwayi, Valindawo Valile Medicine
- Date: 2024-04-05
- Subjects: Social realism South Africa Eastern Cape , Critical realism , New public management , Academic development , Academic achievement South Africa Eastern Cape , College students Rating of South Africa Eastern Cape , College student development programs South Africa Eastern Cape , Student adjustment South Africa Eastern Cape
- Language: English
- Type: Academic theses , Doctoral theses , text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/435863 , vital:73207 , DOI 10.21504/10962/435863
- Description: The roots of this thesis lie in discourses which promote the use of academic monitoring strategies for student success in South African higher education. Although access to higher education widened for black South Africans following the first democratic election, this ‘formal’ access (Morrow, 1993) has not been matched by success with annual cohort studies showing that, regardless of the university at which they are registered, the subjects they are studying and the qualifications they hope to attain, black South Africans fare less well than their white peers. Monitoring performance and referring students on to academic support and development structures thus became a strategy identified as having the potential to address patterns in performance data. The study reports on an attempt to introduce a strategy for Academic Monitoring for Integrated Academic Development at a historically black university in South Africa’s Eastern Cape province. It draws on a metatheoretical framework developed from Bhaskar’s (1978, 1998) critical realism and Archer’s (1995, 1996) social realism to do this. More specifically, it focuses on the way managers at the institution exercised their agency in relation to the strategy and identifies the way social and structural conditions, developed from the time colonial settlers first arrived on the continent, worked to constrain the exercise of this agency. Although the focus of the study was on agency, the study revealed a system of necessary contradictions (Archer, 1995, 1996), a system of conflicting beliefs exacerbated by a lack of resources, that led to the implementation of the strategy not being as successful as intended. The study not only illuminates the conditions at one South African university but also adds to the body of work on management in higher education and to critiques of ‘managerialism’. , Eyona ngxam yale thisisi kukuphendla iindlela zokukhuthaza ukusetyenziswa kwamaqhinga ezemfundo okuqwalasela impumelelo yabafundi kumaziko emfundo ephakamileyo aseMzantsi Afrika. Nangona emva konyulo lokuqala lwedemokhrasi abemi abantsundu baseMzantsi Afrika bethe bavuleleka ukuba bafikelele kwimfundo ephakamileyo, olu fikelelo 'lusesikweni' (Morrow, 1993) khange luhambelane nempumelelo yaba bafundi, nanjengoko uphando olujolise kwimpumelelo yabafundi ngonyaka ngamnye lubonisa ukuba aba bafundi bathi nokuba bafunda kweyiphi iyunivesithi, befunda ziphi iikhosi bekwafundela waphi amakhono, abafundi abantsundu basoloko berhuqeka emva xa bethelekiswa nabo bamhlophe. Ukuqwalaselwa kwenkqubela nokudluliselwa kwabafundi kumacandelo enkxaso nophuhliso kwimiba yemfundo kube liqhinga elithe lachongwa njengelunokukwazi ukujongana neepateni zendlela abaqhuba ngayo abafundi. Olu phando lunika ingxelo malunga nenzame yokuza neqhinga lokuQwalaselwa kwemiba yeMfundo ukwenzela uPhuhliso kwiyunivesithi eyayisakuba yeyabantsundu kwiphondo leMpuma Koloni laseMzantsi Afrika. Luqamele ngesakhelo semethathiyori esakhelwe kwi-critical realism kaBhaskar (1978, 1979) kunye ne-social realism kaArcher (1995, 1996). Eyona nto lugxile kuyo yindlela abalawuli neenkokeli zeli zikomfundo eziwasebenzisa ngayo amagunya azo ngokunxulumene neli qhinga, lukwachonga indlela iimeko zentlalo nezeziko, ezamana ziphuhliswa ukususela oko kwathi kwafika abarhwaphilizi kweli lizwekazi, ezasebenza ngayo ekunqandeni ukusetyenziswa kwala magunya. Nangona ugxiliso lolu phando belusemagunyeni, luthe lwaveza uluhlu lwemiba echaseneyo eyimfuneko (Archer, 1995, 1996), uluhlu lweenkolelo ezingqubanayo ezihlutshezwa kukushokoxeka kwezixhobo, nolukhokelele ekubeni ukufezekiswa kweli qhinga kungabiyiyo le mpumelelo ibilindelekile. Olu phando aluphelelanga nje ekugqamiseni iimeko zale yunivesithi yaseMzantsi Afrika, koko lukongeza kumsebenzi osele wenziwe kwimfundo ephakamileyo lukwaphendla ‘ezolawulo’. , Thesis (PhD) -- Faculty of Education, Centre for Higher Education Research, Teaching and Learning, 2024
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2024-04-05
- Authors: Dwayi, Valindawo Valile Medicine
- Date: 2024-04-05
- Subjects: Social realism South Africa Eastern Cape , Critical realism , New public management , Academic development , Academic achievement South Africa Eastern Cape , College students Rating of South Africa Eastern Cape , College student development programs South Africa Eastern Cape , Student adjustment South Africa Eastern Cape
- Language: English
- Type: Academic theses , Doctoral theses , text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/435863 , vital:73207 , DOI 10.21504/10962/435863
- Description: The roots of this thesis lie in discourses which promote the use of academic monitoring strategies for student success in South African higher education. Although access to higher education widened for black South Africans following the first democratic election, this ‘formal’ access (Morrow, 1993) has not been matched by success with annual cohort studies showing that, regardless of the university at which they are registered, the subjects they are studying and the qualifications they hope to attain, black South Africans fare less well than their white peers. Monitoring performance and referring students on to academic support and development structures thus became a strategy identified as having the potential to address patterns in performance data. The study reports on an attempt to introduce a strategy for Academic Monitoring for Integrated Academic Development at a historically black university in South Africa’s Eastern Cape province. It draws on a metatheoretical framework developed from Bhaskar’s (1978, 1998) critical realism and Archer’s (1995, 1996) social realism to do this. More specifically, it focuses on the way managers at the institution exercised their agency in relation to the strategy and identifies the way social and structural conditions, developed from the time colonial settlers first arrived on the continent, worked to constrain the exercise of this agency. Although the focus of the study was on agency, the study revealed a system of necessary contradictions (Archer, 1995, 1996), a system of conflicting beliefs exacerbated by a lack of resources, that led to the implementation of the strategy not being as successful as intended. The study not only illuminates the conditions at one South African university but also adds to the body of work on management in higher education and to critiques of ‘managerialism’. , Eyona ngxam yale thisisi kukuphendla iindlela zokukhuthaza ukusetyenziswa kwamaqhinga ezemfundo okuqwalasela impumelelo yabafundi kumaziko emfundo ephakamileyo aseMzantsi Afrika. Nangona emva konyulo lokuqala lwedemokhrasi abemi abantsundu baseMzantsi Afrika bethe bavuleleka ukuba bafikelele kwimfundo ephakamileyo, olu fikelelo 'lusesikweni' (Morrow, 1993) khange luhambelane nempumelelo yaba bafundi, nanjengoko uphando olujolise kwimpumelelo yabafundi ngonyaka ngamnye lubonisa ukuba aba bafundi bathi nokuba bafunda kweyiphi iyunivesithi, befunda ziphi iikhosi bekwafundela waphi amakhono, abafundi abantsundu basoloko berhuqeka emva xa bethelekiswa nabo bamhlophe. Ukuqwalaselwa kwenkqubela nokudluliselwa kwabafundi kumacandelo enkxaso nophuhliso kwimiba yemfundo kube liqhinga elithe lachongwa njengelunokukwazi ukujongana neepateni zendlela abaqhuba ngayo abafundi. Olu phando lunika ingxelo malunga nenzame yokuza neqhinga lokuQwalaselwa kwemiba yeMfundo ukwenzela uPhuhliso kwiyunivesithi eyayisakuba yeyabantsundu kwiphondo leMpuma Koloni laseMzantsi Afrika. Luqamele ngesakhelo semethathiyori esakhelwe kwi-critical realism kaBhaskar (1978, 1979) kunye ne-social realism kaArcher (1995, 1996). Eyona nto lugxile kuyo yindlela abalawuli neenkokeli zeli zikomfundo eziwasebenzisa ngayo amagunya azo ngokunxulumene neli qhinga, lukwachonga indlela iimeko zentlalo nezeziko, ezamana ziphuhliswa ukususela oko kwathi kwafika abarhwaphilizi kweli lizwekazi, ezasebenza ngayo ekunqandeni ukusetyenziswa kwala magunya. Nangona ugxiliso lolu phando belusemagunyeni, luthe lwaveza uluhlu lwemiba echaseneyo eyimfuneko (Archer, 1995, 1996), uluhlu lweenkolelo ezingqubanayo ezihlutshezwa kukushokoxeka kwezixhobo, nolukhokelele ekubeni ukufezekiswa kweli qhinga kungabiyiyo le mpumelelo ibilindelekile. Olu phando aluphelelanga nje ekugqamiseni iimeko zale yunivesithi yaseMzantsi Afrika, koko lukongeza kumsebenzi osele wenziwe kwimfundo ephakamileyo lukwaphendla ‘ezolawulo’. , Thesis (PhD) -- Faculty of Education, Centre for Higher Education Research, Teaching and Learning, 2024
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2024-04-05
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
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2023-10-13
- 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
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2023-10-13
The transformative potential of intersecting arts-based inquiry and environmental learning in urban South Africa: a focus on socio-ecological water pedagogies
- Authors: James, Anna Katharine
- Date: 2022-04-08
- Subjects: Environmental education South Africa , Water conservation Study and teaching South Africa , Art in environmental education South Africa , Social learning South Africa , Educational sociology South Africa , Water-supply Social aspects South Africa , Critical realism , Socio-ecological education
- Language: English
- Type: Academic theses , Doctoral theses , text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/290660 , vital:56772 , DOI 10.21504/10962/290660
- Description: In this study I explore and explain transformative potential in arts-based environmental learning with a focus on water pedagogy. The study took place over a period of four years, where approximately 40 school pupils between the ages of 10 and 17 years-old were engaged in participatory arts-based inquiries into water located across unequal neighbourhoods in Cape Town, South Africa. Educators, school learners, citizens and decision-makers hold different historical, cultural, political and spiritual perspectives on water. These play a role in shaping what is termed in this research the ‘hydro-social cycle’. Yet, due to dominant ideas of what counts as knowing and truth, educators in educational settings struggle to account for the complexity of water, limiting educational encounters to a partial knowing leading mostly to limited unimaginative framings of problems and solutions. My focus on transformative potential in learning is derived from a concern for how environmental education encounters and the sense-making they enable, are infused by socio-economic, political, and historical elements, specifically colonialism, capitalism, and white supremacist racism. The connections between the multiple layers of capitalist crisis and the ever-urgent environmental crisis are not adequately made in mainstream forms of water education. The research explores how arts-based pedagogy could enable a productive meeting of critical environmental education with ecological literacies. Within this positioning, transformative potential considers how educational engagements position questions about water within the social life of participants/learners and inform learning that leads to fuller and more nuanced greater knowledge. Theoretically, I work with an interrogation of critical education theory, underlaboured by critical realism which enabled me to rigorously consider how claims to knowing are shaped by their accompanying assumptions of what is real. Drawing on recent debates in critical education theory, I resist the notion of critique as ideology and engage instead in the craftsmanship of contextual and responsive inquiry practice. This has enabled me to articulate processes and relationships in water education encounters with meaningful understandings of the effects of simultaneous crises rooted in racial capitalism and environmental crisis. My methodological approach is arts-based educational research with a directive to reflect upon educational encounters in an integrated way. It includes two parts informing the facilitation and analysis of open-ended learning processes. One component was arts-based inquiry practice developed for exploring complexity, drawing on the thinking of Norris (2009, 2011) and Finley (2016, 2017). The second part holds reflective space for these encounters guided by the practice of pedagogical narration inspired by the Reggio Amelia approach, demonstrated by Pacini-Ketchabaw, Nxumalo, Kocher, Elliot and Sanchez (2014). Clarifying the intellectual work of a responsive educator-researcher, pedagogical narration brings multiple theoretical lenses into conversation with emergent dimensions of educational process. In practice, in order to transgress the dominance of colonial white supremacist knowledge frames of water, I needed to be curious, to be confounded, to expect the unexpected in the educational encounters with participants and this mirroring of practice was emulated by the participants as they followed their own questions about water in Mzansi (South Africa). In our work together we came up against assumptions we had previously not questioned as individuals. Together we explored the implications of this by, for example, questioning who is responsible for saving water. These explorations required bringing together science knowledge and everyday knowledge at multiple scales: the household, catchment, government and global. It required us to be critical of how language and images are mobilized in public communication and school curriculums; for example, representations of water are infused with history and power in a way that impacts how we know and teach about water. The transformative potential of this pedagogical space is generated through acts of creative expression which are seen as acts of absenting absence, for example exhibiting through play how water use in the household interconnects with gender and age relationships. As such, creative expression through multiple mediums or more-than-text enables a deeper understanding of water as well as openings for interdisciplinary engagement with learning about water. My research found that in bringing together the contributions of critical education and environmental education in practice, two shifts are needed: environmental educators need to view ecological literacy as inseparable from the social and political. The knowledge that is shared about water in the classroom has social and political implications. On the other hand, critical educators need to better locate justice concerns in the material and ecological world at scale. Arts-based inquiry, as a kind of scaffolding for pedagogical process, has the potential to enable these shifts by opening up fixed analytical frames. Making these shifts requires a reflective practice on the part of the educator to navigate the inherited blind spots in environmental learning and critical education, such as dualities. One way to do this is for the educator to identify absences, as articulated in the Critical Realist tradition, and consider how these absences might be absented. This differs from a simplistic process of critique in the possibilities it opens up for collaboration between different schools of thought rather than further polarisation and alienation between educators and knowledge keepers on social ecologies. These insights have relevance for many sites of environmental education practice, such as natural science lecturers, school teachers or community activists. It is knowledge-learning work emergent from and responsive to complex ecological crisis, which requires everyone to rethink and open up to new ways of being, seeing and doing around these issues. The transformative potential of this work is that the thinking and transforming at all scales can be catalysed and grounded through the arts based educational encounters with the participants. , Thesis (PhD) -- Faculty of Education, Education, 2022
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2022-04-08
- Authors: James, Anna Katharine
- Date: 2022-04-08
- Subjects: Environmental education South Africa , Water conservation Study and teaching South Africa , Art in environmental education South Africa , Social learning South Africa , Educational sociology South Africa , Water-supply Social aspects South Africa , Critical realism , Socio-ecological education
- Language: English
- Type: Academic theses , Doctoral theses , text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/290660 , vital:56772 , DOI 10.21504/10962/290660
- Description: In this study I explore and explain transformative potential in arts-based environmental learning with a focus on water pedagogy. The study took place over a period of four years, where approximately 40 school pupils between the ages of 10 and 17 years-old were engaged in participatory arts-based inquiries into water located across unequal neighbourhoods in Cape Town, South Africa. Educators, school learners, citizens and decision-makers hold different historical, cultural, political and spiritual perspectives on water. These play a role in shaping what is termed in this research the ‘hydro-social cycle’. Yet, due to dominant ideas of what counts as knowing and truth, educators in educational settings struggle to account for the complexity of water, limiting educational encounters to a partial knowing leading mostly to limited unimaginative framings of problems and solutions. My focus on transformative potential in learning is derived from a concern for how environmental education encounters and the sense-making they enable, are infused by socio-economic, political, and historical elements, specifically colonialism, capitalism, and white supremacist racism. The connections between the multiple layers of capitalist crisis and the ever-urgent environmental crisis are not adequately made in mainstream forms of water education. The research explores how arts-based pedagogy could enable a productive meeting of critical environmental education with ecological literacies. Within this positioning, transformative potential considers how educational engagements position questions about water within the social life of participants/learners and inform learning that leads to fuller and more nuanced greater knowledge. Theoretically, I work with an interrogation of critical education theory, underlaboured by critical realism which enabled me to rigorously consider how claims to knowing are shaped by their accompanying assumptions of what is real. Drawing on recent debates in critical education theory, I resist the notion of critique as ideology and engage instead in the craftsmanship of contextual and responsive inquiry practice. This has enabled me to articulate processes and relationships in water education encounters with meaningful understandings of the effects of simultaneous crises rooted in racial capitalism and environmental crisis. My methodological approach is arts-based educational research with a directive to reflect upon educational encounters in an integrated way. It includes two parts informing the facilitation and analysis of open-ended learning processes. One component was arts-based inquiry practice developed for exploring complexity, drawing on the thinking of Norris (2009, 2011) and Finley (2016, 2017). The second part holds reflective space for these encounters guided by the practice of pedagogical narration inspired by the Reggio Amelia approach, demonstrated by Pacini-Ketchabaw, Nxumalo, Kocher, Elliot and Sanchez (2014). Clarifying the intellectual work of a responsive educator-researcher, pedagogical narration brings multiple theoretical lenses into conversation with emergent dimensions of educational process. In practice, in order to transgress the dominance of colonial white supremacist knowledge frames of water, I needed to be curious, to be confounded, to expect the unexpected in the educational encounters with participants and this mirroring of practice was emulated by the participants as they followed their own questions about water in Mzansi (South Africa). In our work together we came up against assumptions we had previously not questioned as individuals. Together we explored the implications of this by, for example, questioning who is responsible for saving water. These explorations required bringing together science knowledge and everyday knowledge at multiple scales: the household, catchment, government and global. It required us to be critical of how language and images are mobilized in public communication and school curriculums; for example, representations of water are infused with history and power in a way that impacts how we know and teach about water. The transformative potential of this pedagogical space is generated through acts of creative expression which are seen as acts of absenting absence, for example exhibiting through play how water use in the household interconnects with gender and age relationships. As such, creative expression through multiple mediums or more-than-text enables a deeper understanding of water as well as openings for interdisciplinary engagement with learning about water. My research found that in bringing together the contributions of critical education and environmental education in practice, two shifts are needed: environmental educators need to view ecological literacy as inseparable from the social and political. The knowledge that is shared about water in the classroom has social and political implications. On the other hand, critical educators need to better locate justice concerns in the material and ecological world at scale. Arts-based inquiry, as a kind of scaffolding for pedagogical process, has the potential to enable these shifts by opening up fixed analytical frames. Making these shifts requires a reflective practice on the part of the educator to navigate the inherited blind spots in environmental learning and critical education, such as dualities. One way to do this is for the educator to identify absences, as articulated in the Critical Realist tradition, and consider how these absences might be absented. This differs from a simplistic process of critique in the possibilities it opens up for collaboration between different schools of thought rather than further polarisation and alienation between educators and knowledge keepers on social ecologies. These insights have relevance for many sites of environmental education practice, such as natural science lecturers, school teachers or community activists. It is knowledge-learning work emergent from and responsive to complex ecological crisis, which requires everyone to rethink and open up to new ways of being, seeing and doing around these issues. The transformative potential of this work is that the thinking and transforming at all scales can be catalysed and grounded through the arts based educational encounters with the participants. , Thesis (PhD) -- Faculty of Education, Education, 2022
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2022-04-08
Constraints and enablements on quality improvement in higher education
- Authors: Browning, Leanne Elizabeth
- Date: 2021-10-29
- Subjects: Education, Higher Aims and objectives South Africa , Education, Higher Evaluation , Quality assurance South Africa , Educational evaluation South Africa , Self-evaluation , Critical realism
- Language: English
- Type: Academic theses , Doctoral theses , text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/294956 , vital:57273 , DOI 10.21504/10962/294956
- Description: This study contributes to the literature on quality improvement in higher education by examining the structural, cultural and agential constraints and enablements on a quality process at a university in South Africa. It examined four cases and developed an understanding of the complex interaction of structure, culture and agency and the mechanisms that enable or constrain quality improvement in higher education. The study drew on the literature on higher education quality for the theoretical basis for what is known contributes to the way in which quality assurance and improvement is implemented and its impact on the higher education context. Critical Realism provided the ontological framework and conceptual tools to understand and explore the complex social world within which the quality process took place. The literature on the morphogenetic approach provided the analytical framework for the data analysis and findings. The data consisted of a set of documents from a quality process that took place over a five-year period. The data analysis revealed that different departmental contexts impact on how mechanisms are activated. Each school context shapes the way in which people engage with the review process and consequently, processes and procedures are mediated in each context. This research therefore adds to the understanding of the way in which quality processes take place at a micro-level within an institutional context and informs the approach to quality improvement more broadly, nationally and internationally. The research contributes to the knowledge that will inform planning, policies and practices in quality improvement processes in higher education and the findings identify a number of factors (mechanisms) that should inform the way in which a quality process is facilitated, will enable effective self-evaluation and review processes, and consequently are more likely to lead to quality improvement. , Thesis (PhD) -- Faculty of Education, Centre for Higher Education Research, Teaching and Learning, 2021
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2021-10-29
- Authors: Browning, Leanne Elizabeth
- Date: 2021-10-29
- Subjects: Education, Higher Aims and objectives South Africa , Education, Higher Evaluation , Quality assurance South Africa , Educational evaluation South Africa , Self-evaluation , Critical realism
- Language: English
- Type: Academic theses , Doctoral theses , text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/294956 , vital:57273 , DOI 10.21504/10962/294956
- Description: This study contributes to the literature on quality improvement in higher education by examining the structural, cultural and agential constraints and enablements on a quality process at a university in South Africa. It examined four cases and developed an understanding of the complex interaction of structure, culture and agency and the mechanisms that enable or constrain quality improvement in higher education. The study drew on the literature on higher education quality for the theoretical basis for what is known contributes to the way in which quality assurance and improvement is implemented and its impact on the higher education context. Critical Realism provided the ontological framework and conceptual tools to understand and explore the complex social world within which the quality process took place. The literature on the morphogenetic approach provided the analytical framework for the data analysis and findings. The data consisted of a set of documents from a quality process that took place over a five-year period. The data analysis revealed that different departmental contexts impact on how mechanisms are activated. Each school context shapes the way in which people engage with the review process and consequently, processes and procedures are mediated in each context. This research therefore adds to the understanding of the way in which quality processes take place at a micro-level within an institutional context and informs the approach to quality improvement more broadly, nationally and internationally. The research contributes to the knowledge that will inform planning, policies and practices in quality improvement processes in higher education and the findings identify a number of factors (mechanisms) that should inform the way in which a quality process is facilitated, will enable effective self-evaluation and review processes, and consequently are more likely to lead to quality improvement. , Thesis (PhD) -- Faculty of Education, Centre for Higher Education Research, Teaching and Learning, 2021
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2021-10-29
Museums for the Planet: Critical Realist Philosophy and the Possibility of an Eco-decolonial Museology
- Authors: Jeffery, Thomas Carnegie
- Date: 2021-10-29
- Subjects: Museums Management , Critical realism , Ontology , Decolonization , Organizational change , Social ecology , Eco-decolonial
- Language: English
- Type: Doctoral theses , text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/192692 , vital:45251 , 10.21504/10962/192692
- Description: This study introduces dialectical critical realism into museology as a philosophical underlabourer for the development of new theoretical potentials for the transformation of museum practice. The idea of the museum is in a moment of fluidity evident in emergent decolonial and ecological perspectives and in the International Council of Museum’s process of redefinition of the museum. The potential to reimagine the museum lacks a coherent philosophical and theoretical foundation. The persistence of museological dualism separates the social from the ecological and absents the emergence of relational modes of thinking and practice. This study conceives an ecological-decolonial or eco-decolonial mode of museology that is disruptive of dualism and generative of relationality, and is thus generative of agency for deeper, more effective and enduring social-ecological justice. The core of this thesis is the development of the eco-decolonial mode of museology through the DCR onto-axiological chain or ‘MELD’ schema. At 1M a depth ontological analysis augmented by interviews with key informants establishes a dialectic of society and ecology in the museological context. 1M surfaces capitalism and the implicit neoliberal ontology of museology as deep causal mechanisms of the 2E persistence of museological human-nature dualism. The paradox of ‘emancipatory neoliberalism’ is a policy-practice contradiction that absents potentials for transformation of the museum and that is held in place by the grounding ontological activity of museology, collection. The 2E perspective on absences enables the emergence of new transformative pathways towards the 3L vision of the eco-decolonial mode of museology as a (4D) new way of thinking and working to resolve neoliberal restrictions. The fundamental 4D change envisioned for museum philosophy, theory and practice is an ontological transformation from traditionalist human-nature dualism to a progressive human-nature dialectic. A case study considers instances where museum workers exercised the agency to expand practice in this way. Future work using the expansive learning methodology of Change Laboratories will develop and implement the potentials generated by the onto-axiological chain for the eco-decolonial mode to bring real change to traditional, dualist museum practice, in order to ensure the relevance and the agency of the museum as a social structure in and for a changing world. , Thesis (PhD) -- Faculty of Education, Education, 2021
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2021-10-29
- Authors: Jeffery, Thomas Carnegie
- Date: 2021-10-29
- Subjects: Museums Management , Critical realism , Ontology , Decolonization , Organizational change , Social ecology , Eco-decolonial
- Language: English
- Type: Doctoral theses , text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/192692 , vital:45251 , 10.21504/10962/192692
- Description: This study introduces dialectical critical realism into museology as a philosophical underlabourer for the development of new theoretical potentials for the transformation of museum practice. The idea of the museum is in a moment of fluidity evident in emergent decolonial and ecological perspectives and in the International Council of Museum’s process of redefinition of the museum. The potential to reimagine the museum lacks a coherent philosophical and theoretical foundation. The persistence of museological dualism separates the social from the ecological and absents the emergence of relational modes of thinking and practice. This study conceives an ecological-decolonial or eco-decolonial mode of museology that is disruptive of dualism and generative of relationality, and is thus generative of agency for deeper, more effective and enduring social-ecological justice. The core of this thesis is the development of the eco-decolonial mode of museology through the DCR onto-axiological chain or ‘MELD’ schema. At 1M a depth ontological analysis augmented by interviews with key informants establishes a dialectic of society and ecology in the museological context. 1M surfaces capitalism and the implicit neoliberal ontology of museology as deep causal mechanisms of the 2E persistence of museological human-nature dualism. The paradox of ‘emancipatory neoliberalism’ is a policy-practice contradiction that absents potentials for transformation of the museum and that is held in place by the grounding ontological activity of museology, collection. The 2E perspective on absences enables the emergence of new transformative pathways towards the 3L vision of the eco-decolonial mode of museology as a (4D) new way of thinking and working to resolve neoliberal restrictions. The fundamental 4D change envisioned for museum philosophy, theory and practice is an ontological transformation from traditionalist human-nature dualism to a progressive human-nature dialectic. A case study considers instances where museum workers exercised the agency to expand practice in this way. Future work using the expansive learning methodology of Change Laboratories will develop and implement the potentials generated by the onto-axiological chain for the eco-decolonial mode to bring real change to traditional, dualist museum practice, in order to ensure the relevance and the agency of the museum as a social structure in and for a changing world. , Thesis (PhD) -- Faculty of Education, Education, 2021
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2021-10-29
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