Suchergebnisse

Supervision might be understood as the provision usually by an academic to a student of either the expert guidance in subject knowledge or genre knowledge in relation to postgraduate thesis development. The Project for Postgraduate Educational Research (PPER) team members, in the course of their field visits, sought to interview supervisors of postgraduate education research in the different institutions' faculties and schools of education where there was a substantive history of successful supervision. Evidence of sustained supervision was determined by the number of theses found in particular disciplines supervised by the same supervisor who is still employed at the institution at the time of the project visit. This article raises questions with regard to pedagogy and research and explores the complex nature of supervisory relationships which is central to the pedagogy of postgraduate education. Questions about the pedagogy of postgraduate education research leads the authors to explore how conventional attachments to supervisory relationships are challenged, changed or remain unaltered (Johnson et al. 2000, 137) - in the context of higher education, where, according to the CHE (2009), Ph.D. candidature has become more frequent. Our argument is that supervisory relationships in PhD pedagogy are negotiated and defined by the supervisors' particular ideas and interests about scholarship and knowledge generation, within situated, institutional realities. We find a variety of supervisory models and practices which arise from supervisors' ideological commitments, as well as personal experiences, and we conclude that there is exists a continuum - from a traditional model where there is deep, intense attachment to the one-to-one relationship on one end, a hybrid model where the supervision relationship is reconfigured and opened up for multiple relationships, on the other end.

Realisation of multilingual education as a right has remained a controversial issue in South Africa. This is despite the Constitutional and legislative frameworks that support multilingual education. While the controversy undermines linguistic diversity in educational institutions in general, as suggested by the exclusion of African languages in the curriculum in some primary schools, it is in the curriculum of most institutions of higher learning where this linguistic diversity is undermined. Despite this bleak picture, some studies report promising trends regarding attempts at promoting multilingual education in some of these institutions. The article concludes by encouraging the universities to interrogate the language ideologies that underlie the language policies and implementation of the policies in the institutions of higher learning, and how these promote or infringe the language rights of students.

It is widely known that there is a dearth of education research in South Africa which takes as its methodological basis experimentation. The emphasis has been on educators' and learners' experiential understanding in the first decade of democracy after apartheid, when qualitative research predominated. The article investigates, first, the extent of experimental and quasi-experimental research designs. Second, we examine, drawing upon a sample of theses which self-report as experimental and quasi-experimental research, the extent to which such methodologies are actually deployed and with what success or efficacy. And, third, we interrogate the associations of experimental and quasi-experimental designs with particular disciplines within education. This article points out the problems with random assignment of participants into experimental and control group in educational settings. Most of the experimental research is concentrated in three institutions in the Gauteng Province, while there are six institutions where this methodology is not used. Also, the experimental designs are prevalent in the psychology of education discipline. This points, ultimately, to the lack of supervision capacity in the experimental designs in South African higher education institutions.

Knowledge generation over the decade 1995-2004 in South Africa, and its relationship to the changing nature of socio-economic landscapes, suggests an ever closer relationship between the research produced in higher education, and its social and scientific purposes. These have been identified largely by the State through its regulatory frameworks, economic, and social agendas. In this article we examine the research generation of postgraduate students of education in South African higher education institutions in the first decade after apartheid. Using the Project for Postgraduate Education Research (PPER) as an example, we explore the role of large-scale research projects in South Africa, and how such work might respond to Government priorities, as well as issues identified by society and the academy in partnership with the State.

Historically, rurality and rural education have been marginalised bodies of knowledge in South Africa. The post-1994 era has seen an emerging government concern to address the continuing interplay between poverty, HIV/AIDS, underdevelopment, and underachievement in schools categorised as rural. To address these concerns, scholars in South African institutions of higher learning have conducted research on various issues on rurality and rural education. However, little is known of the focus of the various studies and the state of rural education and rural education research. Drawing on the Project for Postgraduate Education Research (PPER) from 1995-2004, the purpose of this article is to critically analyse the discourses underpinning rural education and rural education research in South Africa. The article focuses on three enabling assumptions. The first is that there is little research which takes as its primary focus rurality as lived experience worthy of scholarly reflection regarding how rurality influences social or specific education issues. Secondly, there is substantively more research in which rurality, or facets of rural life, is considered as context in which projects or studies are located. Such studies are conducted in a rural context without any intention of investigating rural issues or rural education issues, or explaining how rurality influences education in these rural contexts. Thirdly, there is a small body of research which takes as its focus social issues in relation to rural conditions. These studies focus on rurality not merely as the context of reflection, but as an active constituent of social conditions evident in rural life. Our analysis, focusing on postgraduate research in South African HEIs in terms of these assumptions, aims to continue a dialogue that leads to further understanding of the complexities of rural education and rural development.