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This article focuses on the dilemmas science educators face when having to introduce Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK) to science student teachers in a predominantly paper-based distance learning environment. It draws on the premise that science education is bound by the Nature of Science (NOS), and by the Nature of Scientific Inquiry (NOSI). Furthermore, science educators' own PCK, and the limitations of a predominantly paper-based distance education (DE) model of delivery are challenges that they have to face when introducing PCK and authentic inquiry-based learning experiences. It deprives them and their students from optimal engagement in a science-oriented community of practice, and leaves little opportunity to establish flourishing communities of inquiry. This study carried out a contextual analysis of the tutorial material to assess the PCK that the student teachers had been exposed to. This comprised the ideas of a community of inquiry, a community of science, the conceptualization of PCK, scientific inquiry, and the 5E Instructional Model of the Biological Sciences Curriculum Study. The analysis confirmed that the lecturers had a good understanding of NOS, NOSI and science process skills, but found it difficult to design interventions to optimize the PCK development of students through communities of inquiry. Paper-based tutorials are ideal to share theory, policies and practices, but fail to monitor the engagement of learners in communities of inquiry. The article concludes with a number of suggestions to address the apparent lack of impact power of the paper-based mode of delivery, specifically in relation to inquiry-based teaching and learning (IBTL).

The academic success of first-year students' learning in science faculties is by no means assured, especially in an Open Distance Learning setting with its limited number of face-to-face encounters between students and lecturers or tutors. Therefore, such encounters should be highly efficient in view of the considerable amount of knowledge transfer to students. The University of South Africa (Unisa) makes provision for contact sessions of 15 hours per semester for selected modules in an attempt to elevate the pedagogical efficiency of these sessions by focusing on the threshold concepts as an innovative way of learning. This paper shows that tutorials adopting the threshold concepts approach have the potential to make students academically more successful. The focus of this study is an introductory information systems module that teaches the Python programming language. Our statistical analysis demonstrated that the year marks and final exam scores of the participating students were frequently higher than those of the students in the control group.

Critical thinking and problem solving skills are included in the IS curriculum as foundational skills. IS education researchers recognize the importance of these skills for future IS practitioners given the complexity of the technology based society and economy of the future. However, there is limited work on how these skills are best taught in IS. This research reports on a course focusing on the explicit development of critical thinking and problem solving skills of first-year IS students at the University of Pretoria. The critical thinking part of the course focuses on the analysis, evaluation of, and response to arguments. Class discussions and assessments are based on local, authentic arguments. In the problem solving skills component of the course, students are taught to understand the nature of a problem and to classify it as belonging to one of three categories: puzzles, problems, and messes. For each category, appropriate problem solving approaches are suggested and practiced. To illustrate the role of design and creativity in problem solving, students have to create an artefact using the Maker Space of the university. They have to apply the five phases of design thinking as suggested by the Stanford d.school design thinking approach. The course has been presented since 2016, and feedback is collected from students annually. Based on a feedback questionnaire that the students complete at the end of each course, we have reason to believe that they find the course valuable and consider those skills to be applicable to other courses as well as elsewhere in their lives. They also point out the value it holds for their future as IS practitioners. As part of our ongoing research, we are investigating ways to develop a critical disposition amongst students, an important component of critical thinking.

In recent years, Master of Business Administration (MBA) programmes and their curricula have been subjected to substantial scrutiny. However, the majority of studies have been confined to business schools in Western countries. By comparison, much less research is available on MBA programmes in developing countries, particularly those in Africa. In an effort to address this gap, this article examines MBA programmes in South Africa by first situating them within the global MBA curriculum debate. It then notes the need to move away from a generalist MBA programme to a specialized MBA in line with emerging global trends. Finally, it suggests a multidisciplinary approach to the redesign of the MBA curriculum.

Purpose: Microteaching is a teacher training method based on microclasses (groups of four or five students) and microlessons lasting no more than 5-20 min. Since it was first explored in the late 20th century in experiments at Stanford University, microteaching has evolved at the interdisciplinary level. The purpose of this paper is to examine the networks found via an analytical bibliometric study of the scientific output related with microteaching in teacher training, through a study and examination of the Web of Science database. Design/methodology/approach: This research was conducted with the VOSviewer tool for content analysis through data mining and scientific network structure mapping by means of the normalisation technique. This technique is based on the association strength indicator, which is interpreted as a measurement of the similarity of the units of analysis. Findings: Two hundred and nine articles were thus obtained from the Web of Science database. The networks generated and the connections among the various items, co-authorship and co-citation are presented in the results, which clearly indicates that there are significant authors and institutions in the field of microteaching. The largest cluster is made up of institutions such as Australian Catholic University. The most often-cited document is by Rich and Hannafin. Allen (1968), who defines microteaching as a technique based on microclasses and microlessons, is the author most often cited and has the largest number of connections. Research limitations/implications: This research's limitations concern either aspects that lie beyond the study's possibilities or goals that have proved unattainable. The second perspective, which focuses on skill transfer, contains a lower percentage of documents and therefore has a weaker central documentary structure. Lastly, the authors have also had to bear in mind the fact that the scientific output hinges upon a highly specific realm, the appearance and/or liberalisation of digital technologies and access to those technologies in the late 20th century. Originality/value: This research shows that microteaching is a promising area of research that opens up vast possibilities in higher education teacher training for application in the realm of technologies. This paper could lead to several lines of future research, such as access to and the universal design of learning from the standpoint of different communication and pedagogical models based on microteaching.

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic and the shift to digital learning materials have dramatically reduced the use of paper-based textbooks in higher education. In the field of engineering, students need a comprehensive understanding of mathematical concepts, which can be achieved through the use of e-textbooks. These digital learning materials can provide a more comprehensive and effective learning experience by incorporating a variety of multimedia elements, such as audio, visual aids, and interactive features. Rationale/Relevance: Mathematics students are expected to possess critical problem-solving skills, yet they are rarely asked to elaborate on and explain their mathematical reasoning and concepts through written argument in the engineering mathematics classroom. While students may excel in formula manipulation, they may still possess misconceptions about mathematical principles and concepts. A reliance on mechanical and procedural approaches, such as formula application, without proper conceptual understanding can result in serious misunderstandings of mathematics and its real-world applications. Without the ability to reason about mathematical concepts, students may struggle to connect what they are learning in class with real-world scenarios, leading to difficulties in solving practical problems. It is, therefore, crucial to foster conceptual understanding and critical reasoning skills in mathematics education, rather than solely relying on memorisation, in order to equip students with the necessary skills to succeed in their careers. Research Problem/ Research Question: This study will answer the following research question:How effective are e-textbooks in promoting conceptual understanding of engineering mathematics? Aim of the Study/Focus: The purpose of this study is to investigate conceptual learning in engineering mathematics using an e-textbook as a learning tool. Methodology: This qualitative case study explores e-textbooks as adaptive technology, with functionalities that include artificial intelligence allowing students to develop their understanding by interacting with digital text, watching videos of real-world mathematics concepts, and responding to quick quizzes on concepts; as well as practising and mastering further mathematical principles and concepts. It focuses on first-year engineering students and lecturers at a University of Technology in South Africa. The analysis of interview recordings was done with ATLAS.ti. analytical software. Theoretical Framework: The data from this study was analyzed through the lenses of cultural historical activity theory (CHAT) and Vosniadou's notion of conceptual change, allowing the researchers to explain complex real-world situations that students experience when engaging with the e-textbook to solve mathematics problems. Recommendations: The work presented here has implications for future studies of conceptual learning in mathematics research and may provide opportunities around learning engineering mathematical concepts, particularly in the context of developing countries. This is because it offers novel instructional approaches that are tailored to the specific needs and challenges of these countries.

Neoliberal practices such as managerialism and academic casualisation impact higher education systems globally. While these practices can constrain any curriculum aimed at enabling transformative learning, this paper shows that they place particular limitations on arts and humanities curricula intent on cultivating criticality and a sense of social responsibility. I draw on data from an English literature curriculum study at a mega distance education institution in South Africa and use Legitimation Code Theory to take a close-up look at how two neoliberal practices: managerialism and academic casualisation cause misalignments between the underpinning values of the curriculum and the kinds of pedagogic and formative assessment practices that are employed. I conclude that decisions regarding administration, enrolments and staffing based on neoliberal values can frustrate students' epistemological and ontological access to humanities disciplines and limit the potential of humanities curricula to offer a higher education in service of the social good.

This paper reports on the lessons learnt from the COVID-19-induced emergency remote (online) teaching and learning of a one-year teacher education course. The final-year course, within a four-year Bachelor of Education programme, aimed at developing pre-service teachers' knowledge of the nature and process of learning and how to guide and support learning in diverse school contexts. The course was planned before the COVID-19 pandemic, and teaching and learning would have taken place on campus, with limited online activities. The ensuing lockdown in South Africa resulted in university teaching and learning moving abruptly online. We investigated lessons learnt from the transition to emergency remote (online) teaching. Data were generated by conducting semi-structured interviews with 20 student teachers about their experiences of the course. The data were analysed using the constant comparative method. Analysing the data highlighted the benefits of remote (online) teaching that should be considered when using a blended approach to harness online teaching affordances. As we advance, we will implement a fully blended approach, harnessing the affordances of both online and contact-based teaching and learning.

In this paper, drawing on an extensive research project across three countries (VET Africa 4.0 Collective 2023), we produce an emerging argument that it is necessary to rethink and reframe VET logics and approaches in a warming future dominated by informality and mass unemployment. Currently, neither the formal VET college or workplace are adequately set up to provide the type(s) of VET that are in demand or needed for just transitioning and sustainable futures. We acknowledge the importance of political economy accounts in developing a richer understanding of VET, but suggest these are not sufficient for dealing with the existential and practical crisis of the climate emergency. We note that many scholars have sought to address this tension in the academic literature by adopting a political ecology account that reframes the theoretical and political challenge. This leads us to call for a political-economy-ecology account of VET. Although we acknowledge the limited nature of our approach here, we offer some thoughts for VET analysis with reflection on these theoretical issues applied to four cases studies from Uganda and South Africa of VET provisioning in oil, transport, water and food (which materially shape our cases).

Given a peculiar sociocultural pressure for knowledge to reap immediate socioeconomic benefits in Africa, philosophy courses have gained a very low valuation by African students. They misperceive the courses not to be relevant to their future careers, leading to a lack of engagement with the courses. Focusing on South Africa, this paper proffers one way to bridge this relevance gap. The central claim is that this perceived irrelevance is fuelled by the construction of philosophy course syllabi solely from the instructor's perspective, such that the relevance gap is bridged by including African students' perspectives.

In this conceptual paper, borne from the experiences of two academic literacy lecturers at the NWU, we ask, regarding elements of assessment, how we can sensibly adapt an intervention-style writing course in a post-COVID higher education context. We propose a course correction model, applicable to academic literacy writing courses, to address the pedagogical lacunae highlighted in a pre-pandemic context and compounded in the post-pandemic higher education context. We argue for the adaption of this writing course to contend with the under-preparedness of students for higher education, the issue of online learning and resultant student cognitive overload and additional challenges, such as the rapid development of AI and its effects on teaching and learning, and specifically writing courses. An important element which needs to be reconceptualised within the context of our compounded problem, is that of the writing assessment. In this paper we argue for moving away from placing major emphasis on assessing the final product of writing and shifting some focus to the pedagogical value of examining the student's journey of writing. We therefore propose incorporating reflective writing as a significant element of assessment through our reflect-rewrite-model. The goal of this proposed model is to create a space for fostering student self-awareness, responsibility, critical thinking, and evaluation skills. Such outcomes should then contribute to the creation of effective and contextually relevant, academic skills development, which in turn should positively influence student success and mitigate some of the issues currently experienced in the module offering.

Education institutions globally, are increasingly driven to integrate innovative technologies in teaching spaces. While many studies have been conducted on e-learning, blended learning and m-learning, only a few studies have concentrated on the STEM preservice teachers' e-readiness for using online multimodal teaching methods in developing economic contexts. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to examine the interplay of experiences, attitudes and technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK) self-efficacy as they influence STEM preservice teachers' e-readiness for implementing online multimodal teaching. This paper employed a descriptive online survey method and a stratified random sampling technique to collect data from 204 final-year STEM preservice teachers on a teacher training programme in South Africa. Statistical tools of confirmatory factor analysis, exploratory factor analysis, bivariate and correlation analysis were employed on the collected data. The results revealed that STEM preservice teachers have positive attitudes towards multimodal online learning. However, STEM preservice teachers do not feel confident in using multimodal online resources in their teaching. In addition, this paper found that experiences of online multimodal teaching impacted on preservice teachers' attitudes and resultantly, STEM preservice teachers' TPACK self-efficacy. The results and discussions inform the design for improvement in online multimodal teaching methods e-readiness and usage by preservice teachers. Recommendations include resource support, alignment of teacher training curricula and development of practicum practices for overall improvement of preservice teachers' experiences.

Enabling theory-practice bridging in engineering education is essential for developing twenty-first century graduate capabilities. Massification, resource constraints, and technological development have resulted in significant shifts to alternative forms of practical engagement, such as the use of online laboratories, but how do these contribute to learning? Based on three illustrative case studies at a research-intensive institution in the Global South, this paper offers a conceptualisation of the degrees of complexity entailed in multimodal approaches to teaching Fluid Mechanics, Finite Element Analysis and Control Systems at different stages of their respective programmes The paper examines the different levels of abstract-concrete learning when students engage with verbal, symbolic, graphic and physical representational artefacts designed to enable cumulative learning. The conceptual instruments are theoretically and methodologically drawn from Legitimation Code Theory dimensions, which lend themselves to the graphic analysis of knowledge practices. It is suggested that the explicit integration of and shifting between levels of abstraction and complexity with different kinds of technologies enables the kind of cumulative learning necessary to prepare technically-equipped graduates for complex twenty-first century engineering contexts.

Developing science identity in pre-service science teachers is important as it influences their perceptions about science teaching and learning. Pre-service teachers' science identity can be developed in their specific modules where they obtain content knowledge. Grounded in the notion of pre-service teachers' learning agendas, and identity development, this paper presents an argument pertaining to how science content modules at one South African university contribute to pre-service teachers' development of their identities as science teachers. Data were collected through individual interviews with 13 pre-service science teachers and analyzed using an inductive thematic analysis. The findings revealed four categories of aspects that influenced the pre-service science teachers' identity construction and development. The first is about the nature of the subject matter knowledge taught in the modules. The second is about the context in which this subject matter knowledge is taught. The third concerns how teaching is conducted, and the last comprises the nature of practical work. These findings are discussed, and the implications related to the structure of science content modules in initial science teacher education programs are discussed.

Three practitioners -- a film-maker, a photographer and a film curator, all working in higher education, teaching film production, photography and film studies -- discuss their reflections on co-convening a decolonising pedagogy workshop-conference hosted in May 2019 at HDK-Valand, University of Gothenburg, Sweden. They draw from their unique geographical positions -- South Africa, Sweden and the UK respectively -- to reflect on the nuances and differences of how race and subjectivity shape classroom interactions with the curriculum, and the institutional challenges in developing transformational pedagogy practices. The conversation uses as its impetus this shared experience of co-convening and facilitating the 'Decolonising pedagogy: Exploring processes in image-making' workshop-conference, and leads to discussion of broader issues of historical conditions and the geopolitical contexts that have determined the subsequent impact and outcomes in their different universities.

This paper presents a fully online course model for teaching speaking and listening skills for students learning Arabic as a foreign language at the International Peace College South Africa on the NEO learning management platform. It also investigates the students' attitudes towards the course. The course was developed by the researcher during the first semester of 2020. This period coincided with South Africa's first wave of COVID-19, and the country's first strict lockdown. The syllabus consists of three components: listening, speaking and conversational Arabic. It includes various technology-enhanced activities and resources which were developed by using LMS features, Web 2.0 tools, and e-learning specifications such as Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI) and Shareable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM). The integration of technology in the course is based on an approach that combines Bloom's taxonomy and Technology Integration Matrix (TIM). Apart from the description of the course, this study used thirty-item questionnaire to investigate the attitudes of thirty-one learners who participated in the course. They answered questions about the course's resources, activities as well as its impact on their language skills. Results from the questionnaire revealed that the respondents' attitudes towards the online course were positive and statistically significant at p<0.05. The design and the approach adopted in this study can apply to any context of language teaching. It provides a myriad of technology-enhanced activities that can be effectively used to teach listening and speaking skills virtually. Foreign language teachers can adopt this approach in its entirety, or with idiosyncratic modifications to design their language courses, irrespective of the virtual learning ecology (VLE) they use.

The development of 21st century competencies and skills in science teaching and learning is a key strategic imperative. Game-based learning platforms can be used to promote pedagogic innovation in various educational settings. Game-based applications such as Kahoot! have been increasingly used in education to facilitate meaningful enactment of formative assessment practices. Within the realm of science education, formative assessment is largely perceived as an assessment practice with pedagogic potential to enhance students' academic performance, motivation and engagement during the teaching and learning process. Kahoot! is an interactive game-based learning platform which can essentially be utilised to enhance students' academic performance, motivation and engagement in the classroom. This paper explores the role of Kahoot! as a formative assessment tool to enhance students' academic performance, motivation and engagement with a view to help students to achieve stipulated learning outcomes during remote teaching and learning in undergraduate Physical Sciences teacher education. The research study adopted a generic qualitative design and involved 21 purposively selected preservice Physical Sciences teachers at a South African university. Data was collected through semi-structured interviews and the administration of qualitative user-generated online quizzes with the participants. The findings demonstrated that Kahoot! plays a significant role in enhancing students' academic performance, motivation and active engagement during remote teaching and learning. Theoretical implications for technology-enhanced teaching and learning are discussed.

This paper examines three new tools--a framework, an heuristic and a lens--for analysing lecturers' adoption of OER in higher educational settings. Emerging from research conducted at the universities of Cape Town (UCT), Fort Hare (UFH) and South Africa (UNISA) on why lecturers adopt--or do not adopt--OER, these tools enable greater analytical insights at the institutional and cross-institutional level, and hold the potential for generic global application. The framework--the OER Adoption Pyramid--helps distinguish and compare the factors shaping lecturers' OER adoption which are both immediate (over which they have personal control) and remote (over which they have less or no control). The heuristic--the OER Readiness Tables--derives from the Pyramid and provides a visual representation of the institutions' obstacles and opportunities for OER engagement. The lens--of "institutional culture"--nuances these comparisons so that the analysis remains attentive to granular, idiosyncratic variables shaping OER decisions. We believe this research will have value for scholars interested in researching OER adoption, and institutions interested in promoting it. [This paper was presented at the 2017 Open Education Consortium Global Conference, held in Cape Town (South Africa) in March 8th-10th 2017.]

The aim of this paper is to examine the strategies used by peer facilitators in improving students' academic performance in a previously disadvantaged university in South Africa. It also assesses whether peer facilitators are succeeding in this quest. This paper stems from a larger study on the implementation of peer academic support programmes, which used the qualitative research approach and a sample of 31 participants made up of peer facilitators, students and programme coordinators. The study made use of in-depth interviews and focus group discussions as well as documentary analyses as methods of data collection. Data was analysed thematically using the main and sub themes that emerged from the data coding. The results indicate that peer facilitators use different strategies to engage students in an interactive manner in order to improve their academic performance. Some of these strategies include ethically acceptable discussions, questioning, and answering and redirecting questioning. The findings further show that these strategies are succeeding in improving students' academic performance to an extent. This is through improved pass rates and skill proficiency in various areas of academic learning. However, the participants reported that the strategies are not satisfactorily yielding the desired results because of certain impediments, which include the behaviour of some facilitators, poor relations between the Teaching and Learning Centre (TLC) and various departments, and less individual attention paid to students by the peer facilitators, some of which raise ethical concerns. Consequently, these hinder satisfactory achievement of students' academic overall performance at the university. Among other recommendations, the Teaching and Learning Centre should forge better relations with departments to attract needy students for academic support, and there is need to ensure better preparation of peer facilitators with necessary acumen to guide students effectively.

The history, development, products, and impact of image-making are well-represented in literature. The literature looks extensively at the technological developments and advancements in the field and how photography has contributed to our understanding of historical, political and social tensions. However, the training and preparation of photographers has received less attention in the literature, particularly in photography education in resource-constrained contexts. This paper seeks to present mushfaking as a conceptual framework that addresses the multi-literacies required in photography education. This approach uses inexpensive solutions to aid digital photography's teaching and learning process. Mushfaking is offered as a learning design tool for practice-based teaching and learning. The paper aims to offer a new dimension on how mushfaking can be used as a learning design principle to show how this concept could bring theory and praxis together, facilitating the design of context-based solutions to educational problems.

This paper aims to explore student experiences resulting from collaborative teaching and learning of academic literacy and content knowledge, for multiple objectives at a South African University of Technology. Using the qualitative research approach, undergraduate students who attended the Communication Skills course were randomly selected. Data were collected using in-depth interviews and questionnaires. The data were thematically coded to make sense of the experiences shared by the participants. The results indicated that academic literacy courses in the Faculty of Applied Sciences at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT) were often regarded as peripheral, until we the lecturers in the present study collaborated to align disciplinary or content knowledge with academic literacy. Our alignment included the practice of decolonising the language and academic literacy curriculum, collaborative teaching, integrating content and language teaching and learning, and implementing a range of blended pedagogies, along with social media. Based on the student reflection and feedback, we are inclined to conclude that this pedagogy enhanced the overall teaching and learning experience. We further found that student learning experiences improved as the literacy course was moved from the periphery to the mainstream of the academic project by adopting various approaches in teaching and learning, guided by student needs, the language context of the class, and the learning outcomes or needs of the discipline.

Promoting teacher professionalism is regarded as a strategy to address the disparate quality of learning in South African classrooms. Through a qualitative analysis of initial teacher education (ITE) programmes offered by five universities, this paper analyses the messages of teacher professionalism transmitted to pre-service teachers. Findings show that professionalism in teaching is variously conveyed to pre-service teachers as being located in their personal appearance and attributes; within their personal morals and shared ethical imperatives; in the kinds of workplace relationships they build, and in their use of formal knowledge for reasoned judgment in practice. The Specialisation Dimension of Legitimation Code Theory (LCT) (Maton, 2014) is used to show that when teacher professionalism is presented as highly individualised traits, the possibilities of developing shared knowledge-based teaching practices is reduced, and the importance of conceptuallyinformed judgments is obscured. This shuts down possibilities for systemic improvement. Conversely, if teacher professionalism is primarily located in what teachers know and can do with that knowledge, the social, moral and affective dimensions of teaching are underemphasised. Ideally, approaches to teacher professionalism ought to introduce students to teaching as a communally-owned practice, based on shared knowledge that enables reasoned judgment. The paper draws on the conceptual tools offered by LCT to suggest how social and epistemic relations can be weakened and strengthened to enhance the construct of teacher professionalism offered to prospective teachers through their ITE programmes.

The changes taking place in the schooling landscape because of the coronavirus are real and meaningful and have implications for the training of preservice teachers, especially the teaching practicum component of their initial teacher education programs. The havoc caused by COVID-19 forced many faculties of education into a state of 'panic-gogy' to ensure that student teachers could complete their teaching practicums. In this paper we argue that consideration should be given to core teaching practices and practice-based teacher education pedagogies (i.e., representations and approximations) that can be used in alternative "placement contexts" that will supplement and harness the authenticity of school-based experiences. We provide two conceptual tools, collaboratively developed by teaching practicum educators and mentor teachers, that can be used as heuristic by other university-school partnerships when considering teaching practicum redesign efforts.

Student voice in this digital age and across higher learning institutions is increasing exponentially with the function of social media. Student voice provides a vibrant communication pathway to extended curriculum programme students in higher education institutions. Social media ensures active participation of extended curriculum programme students in generating views and ideas that define the higher learning environment and experience towards better learning conditions and outcomes. A systematic literature review was used in gathering scientific papers through trusted academic databases. The systematic literature review was conducted between the period of 1 April 2019 and 28 September 2019, by looking into the contents of articles covering the current research objectives. The study's findings show that social media provides an effective and instant spread of the extended curriculum programme students' voice across higher education learning institutions. It also allows the students in the extended curriculum programme to engage with each other and the institutional management promptly. Social media promotes extended curriculum programme students' voice in reaching the right audience at the right time. The results of this study are key for extended curriculum programme students, lecturers, and university management in understanding and applying social media effectively and in bringing transformation to South African higher education institutions and beyond.

This paper explores how academics navigate the Higher Education (HE) landscape being reshaped by the convergence of unbundling, marketisation and digitisation processes. Social Realism distinguishes three layers of social reality (in this case higher education): the empirical, the actual and the real. The empirical layer is presented by the academics and their teaching; the actual are the institutional processes of teaching, learning, assessment, mode of provision (online, blended); the real are the power and regulatory mechanisms that shape the first two and affect academics' agency. Two dimensions of academics' experiences and perceptions are presented. The structural dimension reflects academics' perceptions of the emergent organisation of the education environment including the changing narratives around digitisation, marketisation and unbundling in the context of digital inequalities. The professional dimension aspects play out at the actor level with respect to work-related issues, particularly their own. This dimension is portrayed in academics' concerns about ownership and control.

This paper examines the conceptions of 'number sense' as promoted in pre-service primary mathematics education courses at 11 South African Higher Education Institutions through the texts used by academics or prescribed for students. While all the participating institutions agree that the development of primary school learners' 'number sense' is central to their mathematics methodology courses and that there is an overwhelming amount of research and literature on 'number sense' nationally and internationally, their conceptualisations of the nature of 'number sense' vary. Teacher educators, who develop pre-service teacher education courses, were asked to provide the texts, used to underpin the 11 universities' mathematics education modules in the Bachelor of Education (Foundation and Intermediate Phases) and Post Graduate Certificate in Education (Foundation and Intermediate Phases) programmes. These texts were analysed drawing on Whitacre et al.'s emphasis on three 'number sense constructs' identified as Innate Number Sense, Early Number Sense and Mature Number Sense. The results show that there is no common language of description for 'number sense' across the 11 universities. This research implies that there is a need to develop a consistent understanding of 'number sense' and how it is developed across institutions.

Research on mathematical equivalence, and to some extent, on number structure in early grade mathematics, has shown that most students at primary and secondary levels understand these concepts instrumentally rather than relationally. The study reported in this paper uses a design research approach to explore both mathematical equivalence and number structure in a primary pre-service teacher education programme at a university in South Africa and reports on an intervention strategy intended to culminate in developing design principles comprising guidelines for the effective teaching of number structure and mathematics equivalence in primary pre-service teacher education programmes. The mixed method study comprises 70 first-year primary pre-service teachers (PSTs) and a teacher educator. The PSTs wrote pre- and post-tests, and were interviewed following the pre-test. Skemp's notion of relational and instrumental understanding guided the design of the intervention and the analysis of the data. The results from the study indicates that PSTs' understanding of the notion of equivalence is similar to what has been reported for students in schools, and that there were some learning gains in the post-test results. Based on the findings from the study in general, some emergent design principles are proposed.

This paper presents the results of a systematic review of literature, reported in research journals, on the experiences of higher educational institutions regarding teaching, learning, and assessment during the COVID-19 pandemic. Different studies related to the COVID-19 pandemic have been conducted within the South African context, but there has not been a systematic review of these studies highlighting the lessons learned, how these lessons have affected education in higher education institutions (HEIs), and how these lessons can inform future planning. This study aims to summarise literature on teaching, learning and assessment in higher education institutions and to conceptualise possible guidelines for future planning. An analysis of 52 research articles revealed 7 implications for the lessons learnt from the pandemic for future teaching, learning and assessment (TLA) in South African HEIs (realisation of the affordances of technology for TLA, institutional changes related to online TLA during the pandemic, students' experiences related to TLA, lecturer's experiences related to TLA, the need for care, assessment related matters, approaches to teaching, learning and assessment) and several recommendations for how these lessons can be leveraged to help HEIs to prepare effectively for future catastrophic disruptions to education in South African HEIs. The discussion shows the digital divide that exists within the South African population and other contextual challenges faced by higher education institutions during the pandemic, and the different sacrifices by both institutions and students to survive the pandemic. Overall, the findings of this review provide valuable guidance for HEIs and stakeholders involved in TLA, offering insights on how to integrate the lessons learned from the pandemic into their future planning and strategies.

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted the higher education sector significantly. It forced the stakeholders to do new things and brought many innovations to educational activities. As the pandemic hit the shores of many countries, among other things and sectors, education activities were disrupted. Many, not well-advanced universities in terms of technology and learning management systems (LMS) embarked on a forced recess, using the period to put online education platforms in place. The advanced universities immediately migrated contact teaching and learning to online platforms. This paper aimed to investigate the immediate effects that the pandemic has on South Africa's higher education systems in terms of how both lecturers and students were made to use new technologies/tools, how the tools enhanced teaching and learning, how assessments transformed due to the pandemic, and if some of the interventions employed during the pandemic will find usefulness when the pandemic has finally retreated. In this study, universities that are offering engineering degrees in South Africa are used as a case study, and data were obtained from both engineering students and engineering lecturers at these universities through qualitative (survey with open-ended questions) together with quantitative (surveys with closed-ended questions) research methods. The study shows that higher education activities cannot go back to the way they were before the pandemic. The study brings to light that some old techniques will be combined with some innovations employed during the pandemic to ensure effectiveness and greater throughputs in the higher education systems going forward.

The transformation of higher education, in line with the South African Constitution, has led to increased enrolments of students with disabilities. However, limited research has been conducted on teaching and learning support these students receive. Access of students with disabilities in higher education is a human rights issue yet research shows that it has not been linked to increase in instructional support. As such, their participation has been limited. Some of the barriers limiting their participation are lecturers' negative attitudes due to lack of disability awareness and the unavailability or inadequacy of support in teaching and learning. As a result, higher education institutions have not succeeded in creating enabling teaching and learning environments for these students. This paper seeks to initiate discussion about the teaching and learning support needs of students with disabilities, particularly in an Open Distance e-Learning context and to propose strategies that can be employed to increase the quality of their participation and improve their academic outcomes.

Discourses and relations of child/adult and early education are super-permeated with ideas and practices of authority and boundary-making. In early years' practices, deeply important beliefs and assumptions about who or what has authority and who or what should create the boundaries of everyday activity often go unquestioned. This produces different kinds of epistemic injustice in respect of children and those who work with them, as well as through the materialities of early childhood and training settings, including higher education. These systems of authority both express and produce wider patterns of living associated with the wider society, including democracies. Posthumanism inspires questions about not only ways of knowing, but also about the privileging of dis/embodied knowing over feeling, intuiting, sensing, making, and moving. This paper thinks from the diffractive position that knowing is a direct material and moving engagement to explore possibilities for "sympoietic" pedagogies of enquiry-making-with (Haraway, 2016), and examines how these generate new ideas about early childhood practices and what professional knowledge might become. We illustrate this diffractive curriculum and pedagogy through an example from teacher education in South Africa to make important connections between authority, pedagogy, and an enlarged framework for democratic education; in this work, we explore "sympoietic" approaches to negotiation.

In this study, the variables having impact on the student motivation have been analyzed based on the articles, conference papers, master's theses and doctoral dissertations published in the years 2000-2017. A total of 165 research papers were selected for the research material and the data were collected through qualitative research techniques through document review and content analysis. According to the research results, the most important factors affecting student motivation are the fields of teacher, teachers' classroom management skills and their teaching methods. In this research, factors having less influence on the student motivation are parental communication, student characteristics and study fields. In addition, relational search type was used more than others, mostly students were selected as the study group and most researches were conducted in USA and Turkey.

In the last few decades teaching strategies and delivery methodologies have been challenged tremendously by rapidly changing social needs and perpetually changing global realities transformed by among others innovative technologies. However, little research has been done to identify the feelings and experiences by lecturers during the change towards online teaching and learning. The aim of this paper is to document the challenges of lecturers at the University of South Africa (UNISA) during the process of change towards online teaching and learning. Through a pilot case study within the framework of UNISA, the experiences, in terms of staff development, of four lecturers were analytically and qualitatively documented through face to face interviews. This study was of an exploratory nature and used an inductive qualitative approach to gain insight into why lecturers continue to be negative and struggle towards technology integration practices. Results brought about new questions and insights towards understanding the broader role of UNISA in moving lecturers towards online teaching and learning. It revealed the first step to dealing constructively with the challenges of lecturers' attitudes and staff development on the change horizon. The practical implications of this paper provide university support staff and university management with suggestions for technology acquisition and staff development for lecturers in higher education institutions.

This paper is a personal reflection that seeks to capture most of the observable changes that have taken place in South Africa and in its public university system as a consequence of the sudden and global spread of the novel coronavirus. The purpose for doing so is to provide a record of how the South African university sector has responded to the COVID-19 pandemic, based on the assumption that there have been a variety of national and sectoral responses to the unprecedented crisis.