“Starting With Ourselves”: An Overview of the Transformative Education/al Studies (TES) Project

• In Event: “Starting With Ourselves”: Perspectives From the Transformative Education/al Studies Project

Abstract

Higher Education in South Africa is characterised by a number of disturbing factors: poor undergraduate success and throughputs, particularly among students from previously disadvantaged communities; slow if any transformation of curricula, a poor profile of community engagement and social action; inadequate Higher Education staff qualifications; an ageing professoriate; and too few new and young researchers (ASSAf, 2010; Scott, Yeld & Hendry, 2007).

Thus, a vital question for the South African Higher Education community is: How can we ensure that our education/al research processes as well as the ensuing research knowledge “improve education and actually serve the public good” (Ball & Tyson, 2011, p. 198)? The participants in the Transformative Education/al Studies project share a conviction that we can start by studying and making public the development of our own self-reflexive pedagogic, research and graduate supervision capacity. We are working from an understanding that "the very process of [such] self-study [can change us as] practitioners and [our] situations” (Pithouse, Mitchell & Weber, 2009, p. 48).

The TES project is therefore simultaneously a research project and an education/al intervention. It is a three-year (2011-2013) project led by researchers from the Durban University of Technology (DUT), Walter Sisulu University (WSU) and the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) and funded by a grant from the South African National Research Foundation. Currently, the participants are 22 Higher Education practitioners who are pursuing Masters and Doctoral studies at the three universities and their 12 research supervisors. Together these staff-students and supervisors form an inter-institutional, trans-disciplinary inquiry community, underpinned by the methodology of self-study of education/al practice (Pinnegar & Hamilton, 2009). A wide range of academic disciplines is represented, including teacher development, communication, fine arts, the performing arts, and accountancy education.

Thus far, TES project participants have come together for two three-day inter-institutional workshops led by international experts in self-study of education/al practice. Participants also attend support meetings at the individual institutions and access an online classroom and list serves. Over the next two years, there are plans for further workshops as well as a public conference, and edited book.
The TES project brings into dialogue a number of practitioner-research studies that respond to the manifold challenges facing Higher Education in South Africa The overarching research question (drawing on Whitehead, 1999) --, “How do I transform my education/al practice as ….?” -- is adapted for each participant’s educational context, giving rise to a range of responses and insights that contribute not only to research knowledge, but also to the “[improvement of] education and [that] actually serve the public good” (Ball & Tyson, 2011, p. 198). For example:

“How do I transform my educational practice as a teacher of science to first year students from a disadvantaged educational background?”
“How do I transform my educational practice as mentor of first generation Higher Education academics?”
“How do I transform my educational practice as a writing tutor in a writing centre for non-mother tongue speakers of the language of instruction in Higher Education?”

Author

• Kathleen Pithouse-Morgan, University of KwaZulu-Natal