Lay persons who are trained to conduct research in their own communities form an essential part of many research projects. However, the effects of conducting research in their own communities have not been adequately explored. This paper examines the experiences, perceptions, and challenges faced by a group of community researchers during their involvement in a research project that examined if, and how, the relationships between mothers and their adolescent daughters could be harnessed to develop a daughter-initiated cervical cancer intervention. Seven community researchers interviewed 157 mother-daughter pairs in Cape Town, South Africa. We examine the use of journaling as a tool to document the experiences of community researchers, and we consider how journaling may help the community-based researcher grapple with the research process, and, more broadly, what such journal content illustrates with respect to the nature and challenges of community-engaged health research. An analysis of the content of the journals provides a strong indication of how personal and intimate the research process can be for community researchers by virtue of the background that they bring into the process as well as the additional weight of the research process itself. The complexities of navigating dual and somewhat oppositional roles – the role of impartial scientist or researcher and the role of invested community person - has been both underestimated and insufficiently researched.

This study presents a practical application of photography and drawing to a qualitative study on community building and leadership in a South African settlement. The article describes how the researcher and participants used visual data that the participants in the study produced for a collaborative nonformal education workshop on community building. Using their own photographs and drawings, the women evaluated their shared leadership roles and contributions to community building. The sharing of their own experiences created opportunities for collaboration among women who were divided along ethnic, cultural, and political lines. The fusion of methodology and pedagogy brought about a better understanding of power relationships and its effect on women's development. The study presents the research and educational potential of photography and drawing as data source and material for learning.

<span>The ability of parents to nurture and support their children during their primary school years is considered to be fundamental for the child’s development and learning. Teachers and educational psychologists assign great prominence to parental involvement as a tool to advance educational success for children, especially for those who are faced with disadvantages. In the past two decades, we have seen South African schools radically shifting from being racially and ethnically homogenous to becoming culturally, ethnically and linguistically heterogeneous. It is especially the schools in the lower socioeconomic areas that find themselves under tremendous pressure to serve their growing immigrant school population. Not enough is known about the cultural capital that lies embedded in these learners’ home contexts and the roles that their parents play in their education. In this manuscript, I investigate the potential intersectionality of school and home and critique the affiliation between teachers and immigrant parents as an important dimension of learning success in the primary school. I situate the discussion in a community school with a strong Somali immigrant population.</span>

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Transformation of South Africa's HWIs is evidenced by a diversification of their student and staff populations. The transition from exclusion to inclusion of black minority student populations and their cultures on to these university campuses has not been without challenge for those accessing these institutions. This article reports on a study that was conducted at Stellenbosch University about the experiences of five black women undergraduate students at this still predominantly white Afrikaans university. The findings show that despite legislated pressure and institutional policy initiatives to transform, these "Coloured" undergraduate students do not experience the university environment as inclusive. What emerged were a prevailing awareness of otherness and an acute awareness of their minority status. The small numbers of minority students, together with a lack of symbols or icons that reflect and acknowledge the presence of diverse cultures exacerbate the feeling of being in the minority or a 'tolerated otherness". They experience SU as a university typified by a culture and practices that cling to traditions that are not always sensitive to the impact of history or diversity. This type of organisational culture in which covert and overt resistance to transformation is the norm, hampers the political will to move from policy to practice, and entrench the experience of marginalization.