Locating the Experiences of Rural Science Students in Higher Education

Abstract

In higher education in South Africa, the home practices with scientific underpinnings students from rural areas bring with them to their learning are not clearly understood and, therefore, are often marginalized in university teaching and learning. In a context where issues of equity of access to higher education and success are highly politicized, the experiences of these students cannot be ignored. This paper argues against absenting the experiences of these students in higher education with a view to harnessing the resulting knowledge to facilitate access to formal, disciplinary science knowledge. The paper posits that the way in which science curriculum (and/or teaching and learning) is structured tends to favor certain world views and not others, as a consequence, students from rural areas are often alienated because how they have learned to see the world is often not used as a starting point or seen as relevant when teaching the science curriculum. In order to contextualize learning and teaching, the paper argues for Archer's social realism as a theoretical framework to access students' prior experiences to enrich the curriculum and the student experience more broadly

Curricular change for social justice: Teaching science by drawing on students’ lived rural home experiences in higher education

“…I mean that we need a structure that could reflect the experiences of all students, including those who come from rural areas; their worldviews might shift the way in which they view science. In this way, the learning of scientific concepts and ways of knowing in science could be contextualised so that it encompasses students' prior learning or home environments, provided that we come to understand how to use those experiences to provide them with access to the ways of knowing and being in science (Madondo, 2018). A curriculum structure that is not reflective of all students' experiences could have the potential to misrecognise and misrepresent a variety of students' experiences within science lecture halls or out in the field.…”

“…The literature also shows that the literacies that students from rural areas bring with them into higher education could be a useful resource in accessing the Discourse of the particular discipline (Zinyeka, 2013;Zipin, et al, 2015). These literacies can be important because there are ways of knowing and being in rural areas that are valid and have scientific underpinnings but are simply ignored in the construction of knowledge in higher education (Madondo, 2018;Zipin, et al, 2015). Students from rural areas might be exposed to home practices that have scientific underpinnings.…”

Curricular change for social justice: Teaching science by drawing on students’ lived rural home experiences in higher education

“…The literature also shows that the literacies that students from rural areas bring with them into higher education could be a useful resource in accessing the Discourse of the particular discipline (Zinyeka, 2013;Zipin, et al, 2015). These literacies can be important because there are ways of knowing and being in rural areas that are valid and have scientific underpinnings but are simply ignored in the construction of knowledge in higher education (Madondo, 2018;Zipin, et al, 2015). Students from rural areas might be exposed to home practices that have scientific underpinnings.…”

Learner and Subject at the Dawn of Digital REsearch-LEd Teaching and LEarning in the Time of Covid-19

“…As evidence of this, Diab, Flack, Mabuza and Moolman (2015), in their study of curriculum challenges encountered by South African rural-origin (RO) health-science students, found that ROs experienced course content, language of teaching and learning and technology used to access the content more challenging than their urban counterparts do. Similarly, Madondo (2018) posits that the science curriculum is organized in a way that favours certain worldviews over others and consequently leaves ROS feeling alienated, because what they bring with them is often not recognised or seen as significant knowledge in the science curriculum. The issue of language is also identified by Cross and Carpentier (2009) as a challenge to curriculum accessibility and they argue that the feeling of strangeness is reinforced by the difficulty for ROs to articulate their own system of values and express themselves in their mother tongue.…”