Time: Thursday, 29/Aug/2024: 15:45 - 17:15 Session Chair: Sofia Santos |
Location: Room 119 in ΧΩΔ 02 (Common Teaching Facilities [CTF02]) [Floor 1] Cap: 56 |
Video
In Search of Social Justice: Creating Intercultural Relationships with Blackfoot Indigenous Community, Speaking Truth and Naming It
University of Calgary, Canada
Presenting Author:The objective of this research stems from many visits to the Kainai Nation, part of the Blackfoot Confederacy located in the southern part of Alberta (a Province in Western Canada). The researcher spent over three years visiting the Reserve, an area where the Blackfoot people were forced to live...barren, windy prairies, forced from their homes in the beautiful and abundant Canadian Rocky Mountains. The research emerged from my visits to the Nation in a desire to create relationships with the teachers, administrators, and students at the three schools based on the Reserve. I intended to observe and write about the education system on the Blackfoot land. However, after beginning my visits, observing and asking questions, I realized that I was not there to create a profile of the Canadian Indigenous tribe, but as a friend, I was there to listen to their stories, their anger, their hopes, and their tragedies. My intent to "observe" the schools was quickly discarded and I continued to visit the community as a friend. The relationships I made were authentic with both sides of the relationship. We discussed our lives, ate together, worked with students together, we created artistic relics of the work we continued to do and the months quickly turned to years as I drove 400 km each way to visit the Reserve.
Instead of the research being my end goal, I realized that the relationships that we had created together deserved my ears and eyes. We often discussed Social Justice and the First Nations people gave strong opinions about the phrase and how shallow it was. Listening became essential in our discussions, I heard stories from the children, the youth, the teachers, and the tribal Elders. As much as I felt I was ready for engaging with the relationships that grew out of our visits, my own heart felt heavy and my feelings for the community deepened. It was in the second year that the students and teachers began to discuss how they felt being "put" on a Reserve, dragged from their tribal lands with water, moose, deer, elk, fish, birds, trees: food, shelter, and a fullness of life. Like many of North American Indigenous peoples, they were displaced and forced to live in uncomfortable and unknown areas. By the 1900s, many became addicted to whiskey, and their communities were patroled by police: the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and their souls were forced into Catholic, Mormon, and Angelican ways of being.
After the second year of my community engagement with my Blackfoot friends, I began filming in the community, the residents were thrilled that I wanted to film them and to hear their stories. While filming them was basically for my own archival memories, I realized that there were two people I wanted to film and share with my own white colonial people. I had become close to an Elder and his granddaughter, and asked them if I could film them. I wanted to film their stories. The Elder was a product of residential schools and was forced to live with Angelican priests for 12 years. His granddaughter was a student at Kainai High School and a leader in her circles. Both of them defied all the horrendous names and stereotypes that white Canadians had associated them with.
The film was a poignant 23 minute film and I was given a blessing by the Elder and his granddaughter to share the product, allowing white people to see who they really were.
I discuss importance of intercultural relationships and ways a simple research project became lifelong relationships and corrections to stereotypes.
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources Used
When first meeting the Blackfoot people, I offered tobacco and handshake, there was no contract or document used.The first part of the "research" was not intended to be research, it was an act of community engagement. However, after spending time with the tribal members, they encouraged me to make the film in order to tell their story. Consequently, ethnographic interviews turned into short prompts and 1 hour turned into long story telling and explanations. The stories of both grandfather and daughter emerged by my listening and watching. The film became a testament to how intercultural relations emerge. While I learned and valued much of the Blackfoot ways of life, my friends learned much about my life and my ways. They were particularly interested in me being Jewish as they had been inundated by religious groups as they were colonized. I must note that this is the first time I have submitted this story and film to a conference, and I made sure that it was acceptable to the tribal members. They want their truths to be told and as I had become part of their family, I could tell the truths. See conclusion below for more depth.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or Findings
I concluded that intercultural relationships are not just a way to achieve research or a paper, but they must be authentic and observations discussed and shared without hesitation or secrecy in this type of community engagement. I use that phrase a lot as it allows readers to know that these are not subjects but individual people who have welcomed me into their lives. It is essential to note (as it is in the film) that Abraham Maslow spent a great deal of time with the Blackfoot Confederacy Indigenous Peoples and took from them his model shaped like a tipi for hierarchy of needs. The Blackfoot accused him of coming into their communities and lying to them and were disgusted with his publication which did not acknowledge them. This is why I consider this presentation as sharing my story and my observations, but not as doing "research on." I consider my friends my equals and carry with me, their trust.
References
McDiarmid, J.(2019). "Highway of Tears." Toronto: Anchor Canada Publishing.
Lowen-Trudeau, G. (2015). "From Bricolage to Metissage." New York: Peter Lang Publishing.
Ross, Rupert. (2014). "Indigenous Healing." Penguin Books.
Good, Michelle. (2023). "Truth Telling: Seven Conversations about Indigenous Life in Canada."
HarperCollins.
Kovach, Margaret. (2009). " Indigenous Methodologies." University of Toronto Press.
Paper
Peer Mentors „For Educational Opportunities”
1University of Pécs, Hungary; 2Eötvös Loránd University, Hungary
Presenting Author:The presentation focuses on the prevention of early school leaving (European Comission, 2015; Gonzáles-Rodrigez, 2019; Paksi et al, 2023), and the analysis presents a preventive intervention for groups of pupils at risk of dropping out.
The research was carried out in Hungary, which has an early school leaving rate of 12.4% in 2022, compared to the EU average of 9.6%. The SES index for Hungary measures a high number of students' performance (OECD 2019). Students with low social status are more likely to live in deprived areas and small towns, and Roma students are over-represented among them. International research on Roma has found that the most persistent forms of group-based disadvantage are linked to identities of origin (minority), with one form of inequality promoting or deepening another (Howard and Vajda 2017). Another problem is the limited access to educational services, which is caused by the frequent segregated education in addition to the settlement disadvantage (Kende, 2021).The educational attainment of disadvantaged and Roma youth is significantly lower than that of their higher social peers, and they are more likely to have failed schooling and to drop out early (Kende-Szalai, 2018; Bocsi, Varga & Fehérvári, 2023). These are described to lack career guidance, which if present, is characterized by “randomness” in elementary school (Bereményi, 2020, p. 19.). According to a Hungarian study (Kisfalusi, 2023), Roma students are less likely to apply for a secondary school career that requires a longer learning path. This is due to the lower socio-economic status of Roma students, cost-benefit expectations and their lower self-esteem. Lack of information and lower career offers from teachers may also play a role. Studies show that mentor programme reduce the gap in career guidance; besides it is understood to prevent early-school leaving (Fehérvári & Varga, 2023). The research investigates an ongoing mentoring programme in 1-1 classes in 10 schools, supporting the successful progress of disadvantaged and Roma students (N 130). The aim of this programme is to connect services and resources in the student's environment and strengthen career guidance to help prevent early school leaving. The key actors in the programme are mentor teachers, who work along a career-focused mentoring plan tailored to their institution and supported by horizontal learning. In their work, cooperation with families and institutions that provide peer support in secondary school or university courses for pupils is important. The presentation inquires peer mentors (secondary school students), who, based on the literature also benefit from participating in such mentor programs (Beltman, Herker & Fischer, 2019). Elementary school pupils’ primary socialization (as they are from disadvantaged background and/or of Roma minority) differs from the institutional secondary school socialization sphere; due to this, they undergo bicultural socialization (LaFromboise, Coleman & Gerton, 1993; Nguyen & Benet-Martínez, 2013). In the programme peer mentors are attributed by similar socialization patterns as pupils (mentees), meaning they have undergone or are undergoing same or similar difficulties as their younger peers.
This presentation focuses on the role of peer support in career guidance by introducing students who participate in the programme as mentors. Twenty students from Gandhi Roma High School joined one of the 10 schools in the framework of the School Community Service (and/or volunteering). The criteria for joining were that they should preferably be "alumni" of the school and/or from a surrounding locality.
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources Used
To explore peer mentors’ perceptions about the benefits and difficulties of their mentoring role prior to their personal experiences, interview format research was carried out. Data collection has followed the research ethical guidelines and the headmaster of the institution has given permission for involving students in the interviewing process. Research participants have contributed to recording the interviews. Transcript were made of the recordings and data of participants have been anonymized using codes. Data collection has been carried out between December 2023 and January 2024. Interviews were collected by two members of the research group. Those students from the High School were invited to the research who were peer mentors in the program, all of them accepted participation (N=20; n=20). Semi-structured interviews were used to explore their views on the mentoring role at the beginning of their work. The semi-structured interview consisted of a total of 21 items of which 1 item was an associative, open-ended task; 13 items were semi-structured, open-ended discussion topics; and 7 items were closed-ended demographic data. Demographic data introduces the sample via descriptive statistics, analysing age, grade, gender, socioeconomic status (parents education level), minority, place of habitat. Open-ended discussion topics revealed the “mentoring past” of participants meaning their history of being mentored and being a mentor, that contributes to the analysis of the results. Open-ended items were coded with content analysis, applying the grounded theory (Glaser and Strauss, 2017), via the help of the Atlas.ti software. Two independent coders – research group members – have coded the interviews, creating a consensus on the final coded results. Results were analysed with descriptive statistics, presenting the frequency and distribution of answers. Quotations from the participants are also used to illustrate categories and to further nuance the results. In the presentation the focus is on a few results that are connected to peer mentors’ self-reflection about their self-efficacy and presumed difficulties, obstructions in their work.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or Findings
In the research peer mentors were asked about their roles as mentors and self-evaluation of their work – in most of their cases, data collection has taken place at the beginning of the mentoring process. The results highlighted that peer mentors have joined the programme because of intrinsic motivation: most of them undergone difficulties when choosing secondary school, because of that they aimed to support their younger peers. Choosing a school from the 10 institutions was mostly based on redescription of the research group (students were “alumni” pupils) and/or social motivation (other peer mentors joining). As peer mentors who begun their work, assumptions about the characteristics of a “good” mentor and mentee were recorded. Their plans as mentors and presumed difficulties highlight the areas in which programme developers can scaffold mentoring – thus providing a positive mentoring experience. Peer mentors are committed to their work, and the introduction of supervision, which they have requested, can help them to overcome the obstacles that many of them have encountered. Further research is planned to monitor the mentoring process in the end of the semester (Spring semester of 2023/2024) in which experience of mentors is to be revealed. Process-monitoring should also involve the perception of mentees and document analysis of mentoring outcomes/products.
References
Beltman, S., Helker, K. & Fischer, S. (2019). ’I really enjoy it’: Emotional Engagement of University Peer Mentors. International Journal of Emotional Education, 11(2), 50-70.
Bereményi, Á. (2020). Career guidance inequalities in the context of labour shortage. The case of Roma young people in Hungary. Working Paper Series, 2020(5). Central European University
Bocsi, V., Varga, A., & Fehérvári, A. (2023). Chances of Early School Leaving—With Special Regard to the Impact of Roma Identity. EDUCATION SCIENCES, 13(5). http://doi.org/10.3390/educsci13050483
European Commission (2015). A whole school approach to tackling early school leaving. European Union.
Fehérvári, A., & Varga, A. (2023). Mentoring as prevention of early school leaving: a qualitative systematic literature review. FRONTIERS IN EDUCATION, 8. http://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2023.1156725
Glaser, B. G., and Strauss, A. L. (2017). The discovery of grounded theory. Strategies for qualitative research. New York, USA: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group
González-Rodríguez, D., Vieira, M. J., Vidal, J. (2019). Factors that influence early school leaving: a comprehensive model. Educational Research, 61(2), 214–230.
Howard, J. – Vajda, V. (2017). Navigating Power and Intersectionality to Address Inequality. IDS Working Paper, 504.
Kende, A. (2021). Comparative overview of the capacity of the education systems of the CEE countries to provide inclusive education for Roma pupils. Working Papers Series, 2021/3. Budapest: CEU.
Kende, A. – Szalai, J. (2018). Pathway to early school leaving in Hungary. In Van Praag, L., Nouwen, W., Van Caudenberg, R., Clycq, N., Timmerman, C. (eds.). Comparative Perspectives on Early School Leaving in the European Union (pp. 33–46). London, UK: Routledge.
Kisfalusi, D. (2023). Roma students' academic self-assessment and educational aspirations in Hungarian primary schools. British Journal of Sociology of Education. https://doi.org/10.1080/01425692.2023.2206003
LaFromboise, T., Coleman, H. L. K., & Gerton, J. (1993). ‘Psychological impact of biculturalism: evidence and theory’ Psychology Bulletin, 114(3), 395-412.
Nguyen, A. M. D., & Benet-Martínez, V. (2013). ‘Biculturalism and adjustment: Ametaanalysis’ Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 44(1), 122-159.
OECD (2019). PISA 2018 Results (Volume II): Where All Students Can Succeed, Paris: OECD
Paksi B, Széll K, Fehérvári A. (2023). Empirical Testing of a Multidimensional Model of School Dropout Risk. Social Sciences, 12(2): 50. https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci12020050
Paper
Educating for Living Diversity: ‘Migrant’ Identities, Belonging and Community-Centred Pedagogies for Social Justice
University of Birmingham, United Kingdom
Presenting Author:Learning to live peacefully and with meaningful connections to others in a diverse society is arguably an educational imperative for children and young people living in a rapidly diversifying Europe, and for those tasked with educating them. This imperative speaks not only to attempts to secure the long-term flourishing of European societies but also to immediate educational challenges and practicalities. In many parts of Europe, as well as the wider Global North, these challenges manifest as chronic educational inequities and inequalities affecting racial, ethnic, and religious minorities, such as low attainment, disproportionate exclusions, and teacher and peer racism (e.g. Archer and Francis 2007; Bochaca 2006; Gilliam 2023; Wallace and Joseph-Salisbury 2022). They also relate to the well-documented issue of de facto segregation inside many classrooms (e.g. BBC 2017). These problems persist despite decades of dedicated policymaking aimed at tackling them.
This paper addresses two reasons why the challenges of conviviality and educational inequity continue to exist. Firstly, we argue that following the fraught history of dealing with difference in education, ideas and practices of intercultural education have ended up as somewhat detached from the social and political realities of living and schooling in diverse contexts. That is, they do not sufficiently address the unequal effects of policymaking or indeed the politics of education. Secondly, we draw attention to a sort of ‘museumification’ of diversity, not least in educational settings, and argue that ‘diversity’ has come to be reified as an object (of celebration, of critique, of attainment, of teaching and learning). In these conditions, there is often an expectation that racial and religious minority people perform ‘their diversity’; that they represent a static, often ‘exotic’, and essentially different culture in ‘high fidelity’. We aim to demonstrate that such curated and performed diversity is at quite some distance from the empirical reality of diverse lives in towns and cities across Europe.
Based on empirical research in Birmingham, UK, one of Europe’s most diverse cities, we call for a move towards educating for ‘living diversity’, which comprises the complex, entangled, competing and ongoing currents of diverse people’s lives. Diversity, thus, is not an object or discipline; it is a lived and living reality that is constantly in play, including at the intimate levels of individual and familial life. We thus intend for the idea of living diversity to both challenge dominant approaches conceptually and operationalize an alternative educational model. As we aim to demonstrate, such an educational turn depends in part upon strong collaborations between multiple stakeholders dedicated to social justice, and artistic practice is one of its central components. Furthermore, it depends upon adopting a more sophisticated understanding of identity, reflexivity, and agency – both individual and communal. Drawing on the work of Stuart Hall (1990) and Margaret Archer (2012), we argue that educational attempts to ‘pin down’ identities or discover their ‘historical essence’ are doomed to fail. Instead, educators should pay attention to the ‘points of suture’, often straddling numerous places and times, which constantly animate people’s sense of self, other, and belonging, and which individuals use as definite positions of reflection, analysis, and action.
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources Used
This paper is derived from a research project which was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and started in 2020 just before the Coronavirus pandemic. Its aim was to co-construct educational knowledge and practice with diverse social and educational actors in Birmingham, UK. The project’s methodology can be described as multi-stakeholder participatory research (MSPR), as it involved several partners (educational and community stakeholders) including artists, activists, non-formal educators, Third sector actors, local state-funded schools, local policymakers, and academics, who worked collaboratively to promote a process of ‘co-learning and capacity building among partners’ (Israel et al. 2008: 52), with the aspiration to problematize dominant discourses of migration, belonging and diversity within local schools.
One of the key advantages of MSPR is that it is, per se, an educative space and process, through which partners learn to work together, developing professional intercultural sensitivity. This means recognizing the differences among partners’ priorities and aims and finding ways to constructively negotiate them to achieve meaningful collaboration. Each organization can be thought of as a loosely defined cultural unit, as people working there probably share broadly similar aims, philosophies, and methods of practice. However, as the initiators of the project and responsible for its funds, we emphasized the concept of social justice as a basis for collaboration, a sort of common denominator to which all partners should be committed, and which would ultimately guarantee the project’s coherence of trajectory and outcomes.
Between October and November 2021, severely challenged by Covid-19 restrictions, we conducted a series of face-to-face semi-structured interviews and photography sessions with Birmingham denizens who either had refugee status or would describe themselves or their families as settled immigrants. The participants were recruited via a network previously established with a leading migrant-led organization that is both active locally and nationally. Furthermore, the fieldwork was organized in collaboration with Vanley Burke, a renowned British-Jamaican photographer. In a series of intimate and generative sessions, Burke took portraits of the participants while we collected in-depth stories from them about their lives, especially how they came to be ‘Brummies’ (someone from Birmingham). A total of seventeen people were photographed, and among those, thirteen agreed to be interviewed. Interviewees were from diverse racial/ethnic backgrounds, including white Eastern Europeans. The interviews were voice-recorded, transcribed, and then thematically analysed using NVivo.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or Findings
Participants clearly articulated the complexities of diversity and belonging during the interviews, challenging the hegemonic reproduction of static and passive depictions of their identities. Given our findings, a central aim of our collaboration was to develop a model for co-constructive education that could be readily adopted by schools across Europe and beyond. Following a series of successful exhibitions of Burke’s portraits, we worked with our partners to produce educational activity packs for primary and secondary schooling featuring the portraits and some of the stories shared by our participants. The packs provide authentic learning materials for teachers and children to discuss and problematize issues around migration, belonging and diversity through artistic engagement – i.e., both by ‘decoding’ the images and bringing their analyses to bear on important questions of diversity and by engaging in their own artmaking to articulate their questions and experiences and communicate these with their peers.
Our approach assumes that the arts are valuable not just for introducing children to critical enquiry but also enabling them to explore or ‘excavate’ (Gholami 2017) aspects of selfhood/otherness that may not be readily accessible via logocentric educational interactions. Gonçalves (2016:18) argues that in the field of intercultural communication and dialogue, arts ‘add to the learning process a way for learners to combine emotions and feelings with intellectual insights in a form of expression that is at the same time safe and powerful’. Our educational packs are permanently available as a free download on the website of one of our partners, the internationally respected Ikon Gallery. A first round of trialling/evaluating the packs took place between February and March 2023 with seven schools in Birmingham, involving 320 children ranging from Year 2 to Year 7, and their teachers. The results, which we will discuss in the paper, are highly encouraging.
References
Archer, L. & Francis, B. (2007). Understanding Minority Ethnic Achievement: Race, Gender, Class and ‘Success’. Routledge.
Archer, M. S. (2012). The Reflexive Imperative in Late Modernity. Cambridge University Press.
Bochaca, J. G. (2006). Ethnic minorities and the Spanish and Catalan educational systems: from exclusion to intercultural education, International Journal of Intercultural Relations 30: 261-279. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijintrel.2005.11.006
BBC News (2017). Warning over segregation in England's schools https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-39344973# (retrieved 21/12/2023)
Gholami, R. (2017) “The Art of Self-Making: Identity and Citizenship Education in Late-Modernity,” British Journal of Sociology of Education 38 (6), pp. 798-811 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01425692.2016.1182006
Gilliam, L. (2022). Being Muslim “without a fuss”: relaxed religiosity and conditional inclusion in Danish schools and society. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 45(6), 1096-1114. https://doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2021.1971733
Gonçalves, S. (2016). We and They: Art as a Medium for Intercultural Dialogue. In Comparative and international education: A diversity of voices, edited by Gonçalves, S. and Majhanovich, S. (2016). Sense Publisher: Netherlands.
Hall, S. (1990). Cultural identity and diaspora. In: Rutherford, J. (Ed.) Identity: Community, Culture, Difference (pp. 222-237). Lawrence and Wishart.
Israel, B. A., Schulz, A. J., Parker, E. A., Becker, A. B., Allen, A. J., & Guzman, J. R. (2008). Critical Issues in Developing and Following Community-Based Participatory Research Principles. In M. Minkler & N. Wallerstein (Eds.), Community-Based Participatory Research for Health: From Process to Outcomes (2nd ed., pp. 47-62). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Wallace, D. & Joseph-Salisbury, R. (2022). How, still, is the Black Caribbean child made educationally subnormal in the English school system? Ethnic and Racial Studies, 45:8, 1426-1452, DOI: 10.1080/01419870.2021.1981969
Paper
Evaluating staffs undergraduate teaching experiences in the Department of Entrepreneurial Studies and Management, Durban University of Technology, South Africa
Durban University of Technolog, South Africa
Presenting Author:The aim of the study was to evaluate staff experiences and interventions in teaching and learning research methodology in the Department of Entrepreneurship and Management Studies. However, the majority of staff and students belong to the previously disadvantaged communities where the latter continue to experience poor education infrastructure and quality of secondary education. Many previously disadvantaged communities still have limited access to information and communications technology (ICT) in addition to poor road networks, inadequate school infrastructure, lack of electricity, and a low economic status (Hlalele 2012). For example, during the COVID-19 pandemic, higher education institutions had to immediately revert to on-line teaching and learning which further disadvantaged students from townships and rural areas from the non-white communities. Overall, eliminating the apartheid policies of dispossession still remains a challenge for the South African government to transform education (Department of Education 2005).
According to Pirthiraj (2017) and Langtree et al.(2015), student performance is linked to social, psychological, economic, environmental, and personal factors. While Hobden and Hobden (2015) highlighted that access to higher education is a matter of economic and social fairness, this being the case in South Africa. A further analysis of education history and quality shows that South Africa faces challenges in the accessibility and affordability for students who qualify to study at universities. As the majority of students registered at Durban University of Technology are derived from previously disadvantaged communities with poor school and educational infrastructure, low economic capabilities and complex social issues, their level of preparedness for university life and overall academic performance is compromised (Pirthiraj 2017).
Lombard and Kloppers (2015) comments that while there is considerable international interest in promoting research skills at postgraduate level ,research methods in the context of undergraduate studies has little attention as there are few systematic discussions about curriculum design and teaching research methods experiences. Students perceive research methods courses to be complex and demanding, which leads to poor performance in research methods and, as a result, a negative attitude toward the field of educational research as a whole. Acton and McCreight (2014) also found that students who struggled with basic arithmetic showed less interest in research methodology studies. This scenario is relevant as the majority of students registering at DUT originate from previously disadvantaged communities.
The aim of social justice is to guide societies on transforming different aspects for instance curriculum, historical injustices and cultural values, and to mitigate disparity (Albertus 2019). In education, social justice relates to the extent of social fairness and equality within the schooling system. Social injustice occurs when circumstances such as wealth, gender, and/or race determine a person's educational opportunities. Hence students who do not acquire an education compared with more privileged students are provided with a poor foundation for the rest of their lives. In a socially just approach, the curriculum is chosen to help the learners extend their students’ worldview by exposing them to diverse concepts, opinions and challenging beliefs (Francis and Le Roux 2011). Schools that are committed to a socially just education give careful consideration to the selection of their curriculum and how it can be used to broaden the learners’ perspectives (Wassell, Wesely and Glynn 2019). In this regard, students who come from schools that are socially unjust often have a narrow worldview which will inherently affects their learning curve as they are inadequately prepared for the level of social and cultural diversity at the university and the world at large (Uleanya and Rugbeer 2020)
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources Used
Research is defined as a scientific approach of answering a research question, solving a problem, generating new knowledge through a systematic and orderly collection, organization, and analysis of information with an ultimate goal of making the research useful in decision-making (Kabir 2016: 2). According to Ahmed and Shifraw (2019) there has been a significant increase in research conducted in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Despite this progress, Africa still lacks the research capacity to adequately address the continent's problems in food, security, energy, transportation, and health (Ahmed and Shifraw 2019). This is reflected in Africa's insignificant contribution to the global share of researchers, which has remained constant over time. Africa needs to urgently develop highly skilled student, academic and professional researchers.
The qualitative research method was used to collect data which focused on staff experiences and intervention strategies used in teaching and learning research methodology in the Department of Entrepreneurship Studies and Management. A self-completed questionnaire with open ended questions was administered and thematic analysis was used to analyze data which is being presented by the paper. Cilliers, Davis and Bezuidenhout (2014) assert that the depth of human experience and arbitrary interpretations associated with a particular incident are of interest to qualitative research. Thus teaching experiences and the intervention could be discovered through the use of a qualitative approach. The participants were the 12 staff in the Department of Entrepreneurial Studies and Management in the Faculty of Management Sciences at Durban University of Technology. Nine questionnaires were completed, thus providing a 75% response rate.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or Findings
Majority of the students registering at Durban University of Technology come from previously disadvantaged communities challenged by poor educational and communications infrastructure. This is due to the fact that curricular improvements are primarily influenced by technological advances, which are available in urban areas long before they reach township and rural settings (Landa, Zhou and Marongwe 2021). The consequences of the above is that affordability and access to education has become a challenge to the already disadvantaged students who have been exposed to poor quality education in secondary schools.
This study revealed that both student and staff development in research methodology needs further institutional support and from the Department of Entrepreneurial Studies and Management. Staff expressed a concern on the lack of preparedness of students to undertake research tasks to successfully complete their assessments. To overcome these challenges, staff implemented a number of interventions to ensure students acquire the necessary research skills and competencies. In the interest of ensuring ongoing professional development staff requested additional workshops and seminars to capacitate them on statistics, data analysis and software packages.
Students enter the university underprepared for campus and academic life and leave as graduates underprepared for the world of work. It is clear from the above discussion the education sector has not yet fully transformed and students continue to operate in a socially unjust education system. The study recommends that decolonization and the quality of the program offerings be reviewed to include research methodology course at all undergraduate levels. This change could further empower students through a more socially just education system to provide better stakeholder engagement and increase their employability when they graduate. In the absence of a socially just education system, the previously underprivileged students, continue to experience greater inequalities in the workplace.
References
Acton, C. and McCreight, B. 2014. Engaging students in quantitative research methods: An evaluation of Assessment for Learning strategies on an undergraduate social research methods module. Available: https://s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/assets.creode.advancehe-document- (Accessed 6 Janauary 2024).
Ahmed, I. and Shifraw, T. 2019. Challenges of being a researcher in Africa:A narrative synthesis of literature. Ethopian Journal of Health Development, 33 (4): 230-238.
Albertus, R.W. 2019. Decolonisation of institutional structures in South African universities: A critical perspective. Cogent Social Sciences, 5(1), p.1620403.
Cilliers, F., Davis, C. and Bezuidenhout, R. M. 2014. Research matters. Cape Town: Juta and Company.
Department of Education. 2005. Reflections on rural education in South Africa. Pretoria: Government Printers.
Francis, D. and Le Roux, A. 2011. Teaching for social justice education: the intersection between identity, critical agency, and social justice education. South African Journal of Education, 31(3), pp.299-311.
Hlalele, D. 2012. Social justice and rural education in SA. Perspectives in Education, 30 (1): 111-118.
Hobden, S and Hobden,T. 2015. A study of the transition pathways of school level scholarship recipients into work and tertiary education. South African Journal of Education, 35(3):1054.
Kabir, S. M.S. 2016. Methods of Data Collection. In Basic Guidelines for Research: An Introductory Approach for all disciplines, Chapter 9, 201-275.
Landa, N., Zhou, S. and Marongwe, N. 2021. Education in emergencies: Lessons from COVID-19 in South Africa. International Review of Education, 67: 167-183.
Langtree, E., M, Razak, A. and Haffejee, F. 2018. Factors causing stress among first-year students attending a nursing college in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. African Journal of Health Professions Education, 10 (2): 90-95.
Lombard, B, J, J and Kloppers, M. 2015. Undergraduate student teachers’ views and experiences of a compulsory course in research methods South African Journal of Education, 35 (1): 1-14.
Pirthiraj, A. 2017. Factors Affecting The Motivation Of First-Year Students In The Department Of Construction Management And Quantity Surveying At The Durban University Of Technology. Master’s Degree, Durban University of Technology.
Scott, I., Yeld, N. and Hendry, J. A. 2007. A Case for Improving Teaching and Learning in South African Higher Education. In: Proceedings of.
Uleanya, C. and Rugbeer, Y. 2020. Investigation of First-year Learning Experiences in a Rural University in South Africa. Journal of Student Affairs in Africa, 8 (1): 29-46.
Wassell, B.A., Wesely, P. and Glynn, C., 2019. Agents of change: Reimagining curriculum and instruction in world language classrooms through social justice education. Journal of Curriculum and Pedagogy, 16(3), pp.263-284.