In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic pushed South African historically disadvantaged institutions, that had not yet reached advanced levels of technology use in teaching and learning, to find immediate solutions to salvage the disrupted academic year. Interactions with students, which had predominantly been face-to-face, shifted to various online platforms for lecturers to adopt emergency remote teaching approaches. Most of the lecturers were unprepared or incapacitated to make the shift to online environment. Studies have looked at the online teaching and learning experiences of students and lecturers during the COVID-19 pandemic but very few have taken an autoethographic approach to their inquiry and situated experiences in historically disadvantaged institutions. In this article, as lecturers, we use autoethnographies to provide an account of adjusting to interacting with students online during national lockdowns at a historically disadvantaged institution. The Social Cognitive Theory (SCT) was applied to guide the study. This reflexive approach is valuable, as it captures professional encounters and reflections needed to understand the effects of rapid changes to teaching and learning in response to the pandemic. Given the education disparities that already existed between South African higher education institutions before COVID-19, the article contributes to the discourse on how historically disadvantaged institutions can advance higher standards of teaching and learning to serve students better. Our reflections point to the personal, technical and structural challenges of maintaining regular online interaction. Our findings show that different approaches and techniques were applied to adjust to virtual teaching and learning. As teaching and learning methodologies have the potential to ingrain social inequalities, we made recommendations on how to improve online interactions with students from historically disadvantaged contexts.
The purpose of the study was to assess the study designs and methodological approaches of published works on disability in South African higher education institutions from 2020 to 2021. A systematic review was performed as a method to achieve this. The reporting of this systematic reviews was guided by the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses standards. Electronic searches of Bielefeld Academic Search Engine, EbscoHost, ScienceDirect, Scopus and Wiley Online Library were conducted of electronic works published in English from January 2020 to December 2021. Publications of empirical research on disability in any South African higher education institution where data were collected during COVID-19 were included. Non-peer-reviewed publications, which explicitly indicated that data were collected before March 2020, did not have a South African higher education institution as a study site and were a desktop-only research or conceptual papers were excluded. Three studies were included ultimately. Ten elements were chosen for analysis based on the research purpose. The findings show that disability research has predominantly used qualitative designs and methods; an exploration that involves people with disabilities throughout the research process is limited and the inclusion of researcher positionality is limited. Arguably, this study is the first systematic review of empirical studies on disability in South African higher education since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. The results support the need for a trajectory towards the use of more diverse research designs and methods.
Disability is a social force that arguably creates more education problems for students with disabilities than their impairments. Understanding it as a form of social oppression can lead to less exclusionary teaching and learning attitudes, beliefs, expectations and practices. Numerous studies have looked at the experiences of staff and students with disabilities as well as the experiences of teaching students with disabilities. However, more studies are needed to better understand and address disability in higher education. Nondisabled perspectives have a role to play in opposing disabling educational practices and cultures to make higher education more inclusive. Many opportunities especially exist for nondisabled lecturers to contribute to addressing the higher education barriers and discrimination which often affect students with disabilities. The purpose of this study was to use a disability perspective to present my lecturing practices during the move to emergency remote teaching and learning in response to COVID-19 while working at an HDI. An autoethnographic method was used. Content analysis of my accounts exposed the exclusionary nature of my practices in terms of how they facilitated ableism and suppressed disability discourse. Recommendations are made, in light of the results, on ways to not only make higher education spaces more accommodating but counter a wider societal culture that oppresses and even seeks to eradicate the value of those who live with impairments.
Municipalities face major pressures to demonstrate that they are responsible and responsive institutions. At present, different policies and institutions exist to guide local governance in pursuit of numerous ideals through various assigned roles and responsibilities. Broadly, the latter involve government's vision of participatory development, citizen engagement and innovative service delivery amongst other things. Xenophobia has been a particular challenge to the South African government's vision for local governance, especially due to its complex contributing factors. Using document analysis, this article discusses issues around citizenship and regionalism as suggested in policies and strategies on local governance in view of the realities of xenophobic attacks. The experiences of marginalised migrants as stakeholders of local governance reveal the paradoxes of xenophobic attacks as local governance agenda on responsibility and responsiveness this article suggests implications of the conceptualisation of citizenship and regionalism in municipal approaches to local governance. Political and economic restructuring associated with local governance goals are undoubtedly shape constructions of citizenship and regionalism. As sustainable solutions to the problem of xenophobia are yet to be achieved, this article concludes by offering possible routes to local governance that broaden what is conceptualised as responsible and responsive vision and action in addressing xenophobia.
Interest in mobile government is growing globally. Mobile government refers to the use of wireless and mobile technologies to deliver services to citizens, businesses, employees and other government entities. Presently, technological advancements take place despite questions on whether the existing policy and regulatory frameworks are suitable to regulate the effects of mobile government. With mobile government, municipal operations take place in virtual spaces where the consequences of such are still largely unknown and the frameworks that are apt to minimise any long-term effects on society are yet to be defined. This conceptual paper suggests that ethics frameworks should be encouraged as part of mobile government implementation in municipalities to encourage reflective municipal practices and to improve judgement as well as behaviour in mobile government decision-making. It contributes to debates on approaches to comprehensively support and guide mobile government towards positive municipal service delivery outcomes.
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