Promoting social justice in teaching and learning in higher education through professional development

ABSTRACT

The article analyses a national professional learning programme through a social justice lens, drawing on Fraser’s framework for social justice and Moje’s distinction between socially just pedagogy and pedagogy for social justice. The South African Teaching Advancement at Universities (TAU) Fellowships Programme seeks to advance inter-institutional collaboration and social justice in teaching and learning by building a cadre of senior academics as scholars, leaders and change agents in various disciplinary fields, across all South African public universities. Fraser’s framework allows evaluation of strategies used to support participation with parity; Moje’s distinction is extended to show the interface between socially just staff development and staff development for social justice. The article analyses the substantial impact on participants through Fraser’s cultural and political dimensions, and assesses the current and cumulative impact on social justice in teaching and learning through present and planned subsequent iterations of the programme.

KEYWORDS:

• Social justice
• participatory parity
• professional development
• SOTL
• South African higher education

Acknowledgements

The comments of the late Brenda Leibowitz on a draft of this article, and the leadership of Jeff Jawitz in coding the reflective reports, are acknowledged with gratitude. Similarly, the comments of the three anonymous reviewers are gratefully acknowledged.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 In addition to systemic reshaping through institutional mergers, three new universities were more recently established, primarily with the goal of extending access to higher education to geographically under-represented areas.

2 On the basis of national cohort analyses, Scott describes South African HE as a ‘low participation high attrition’ system (Fisher and Scott 2011, 1; see also Scott, Yeld, and Hendry 2007); gaining physical access to university by no means guarantees epistemological access (Morrow 2009).

3 Fraser is interested in institutionalised rather than psychological processes of valuing or devaluing, in misrecognition and status inequalities (see Leibowitz and Bozalek 2016, 113). Clearly, though, such institutionalised processes may well have long-term psychological consequences.

4 Most individual projects were SOTL research projects and drew on participants’ own disciplines.

5 See Bozalek and Boughey 2012; Leibowitz and Bozalek 2016, 114.

6 The phrase ‘historically disadvantaged institutions’ signifies those institutions which were established by the apartheid government to accommodate different racial groups of students (other than white students); they were often located in rural areas and significantly underfunded.

Additional information

Funding

The TAU project and associated research was funded by the South African Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET).