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Couched in the theory of communicative action as the theoretical framework, I document how the engagement of a South African universitys research team with the local school community facilitates the conversations and activities among its teachers, learners and parents towards the enhancement of learner performance in the study of Mathematics in a Grade 9 class. Theory of communicative action is understood as the democratic action based on the discursive rationality and validity of the arguments of individuals and/or groups of collectives. Because these communicative action decisions are not imposed, learners, teachers and parents have taken ownership of their own learning and this has resulted in improved performance. At the same time, we as researchers and participants have understood our democratic role and power in ensuring the success of this academic project. These findings indicate that a university, given its immense resources, including intellectual capital, can play a significant role in the creation of networked power, emancipatory knowledge, empowered subjectivities and spaces of solidarity which are the conditio sine qua non for good academic performance and sustainability of any democracy. Keywords: theory of communicative action, democracy, emancipatory knowledge, empowered subjectivities, higher education, networked power, spaces of flow, spaces of solidarity

In this paper I show how bricolage as a theoretical framework is used to understand and enhance the learning of the postgraduate students and academics working as a team. Bricolage is described as a metaphor for a research approach which creates something out of nothing and uses that which is available to achieve new goals. It is about finding many and new ways to resolve real life problems using that which is present in the context. It is not linear research, but research that acknowledges and works with the contradictions and incongruences in order to weave a complex text of solutions to the problems. It uses multiple voices, different textual forms and different resources, blurring neat disciplinary boundaries. In short, it splinters the dogmatism of a single approach. This theoretical positioning provides the vocabulary to describe and understand processes and interactions among the research team of 28 PhD and 22 Masters' students being supervised by 15 academics, across the two campuses of the University of the Free State. For example, while all the actors in this team come from diverse and sometimes contradictory theoretical origins and fields of specialisation they tend to coalesce around the theme of creating sustainable learning environments in their respective research sites. To this theme they ask different questions, hence diverse aims and objectives. They also read different literature informed by the diverse groups of participants in their respective studies. Rather than being the sole determinants of their respective research agendas, they treat the participants as co-researchers who direct and inform the direction of these studies. Their methodologies acknowledge the multiple voices of those who directly experience the problem under investigation and thus can assist in the resolution thereof. They listen to all, irrespective of their station in life and, like bricoleurs, they weave meaningful solutions out of fragments of data and materials from very diverse sources of participants with different ways of doing things.

"Lavia and Mahlomaholo re-examine how postcolonial theories might contribute to understandings about education in Culture, Education, and Community. They provide a critical space in which to interrogate the ways in which postcolonial voices are imagined and struggle to be valued, heard, and responded to. The book takes the imagination of the postcolonial and the experience of postcoloniality as its focus, acknowledging that postcolonialism is a troubling, unsettling, and ambiguous concept requiring re-visiting and re-interpretation"--

Published Article ; If our intention as parents, educators, educationists, researchers and community members is to create sustainability in the learning environments, then social justice is where we should start and where we should aim. Social justice implies that learners and teachers have to be treated fairly and with respect in terms of the distribution of educational and other supportive resources. It furthermore implies that teachers also have to be treated fairly and justly. Thus respect, mutual validation and beneficiation among all participants have to inform the relationships within such learning environments for them to be sustainable and free of inequities, strive, desperation, marginalisation, oppression and depression to mention a few. The above definitely lead to a socially just and democratic citizenry which is the outcome which all nations, especially ours, aspire for.