Jean Farmer's Poster at the SRHE

Jean Farmer at the SRHE NR Conference, in front of her poster

Here is some wonderful news from Jean Farmer. She is at the SRHE conference, but first attended the SRHE New Researchers conference. She writes: "I won first prize at the SRHENR conference.  A certificate. 50GBP voucher. And my poster goes up on the website and in the London offices of SRHE. My poster has much less information than the other posters but it was judged on poster as well as presentation. 'Enthused discussion of her work and clear explanation of a methodology and thought-provoking method'."

Jean's PhD is part of the Structure, Culture and Agency research project.  

Congratulations Jean!

Jean farmernrsrhe[2] from Brenda Leibowitz

Conference presentations by Structure, Culture and Agency team

June has been a busy month for the Structure, Culture and Agency team. We made five presentations at the International Consortium for Educational Development (ICED) Conference in Stockholm and one poster presentation at the Propel Conference in Stirling. Most of these have been written up for publication or are being written up at our up and coming writing retreat at the end of July. They are mostly based on the idea of the interplay between structure, culture and agency, and are mostly based on the institutional case studies.

Chris Winberg's presentation at ICED, Stockholm, 2014 from Brenda Leibowitz

Clever Ndebele's presentation at ICED, Stockholm, June 2014 from Brenda Leibowitz

Leibowitz, Bozalek, van Schalkwyk and Winberg presentation at ICED, Stockholm June 2014 from Brenda Leibowitz

Leibowitz, Garraway and Farmer presentation at ICED Conference, Stockholm, June 2014 from Brenda Leibowitz

Jeff Jawitz also made a presentation on the UCT case study, which is available as part of the ICED proceedings. And finally, Wendy McMillan and Natalie Gordon made a poster presentation based on an interview with one lecturer, using complexity theory:

Here are some photos of some of the South African gang enjoying Stockholm:

Presentation by Susan van Schalkwyk and Julia Blitz at Ottawa Conference, 25 - 29 April 2014

Julia Blitz and Susan van Schalkwyk, members of the Structure, Culture and Agency research project, made a presentation on data from the project at the 12th Canadian Conference on Medical Education in Ottawa, Ontario, on 25 - 29 April 2014. They used the work of Lieff to show that the qualitative data derived from the open ended responses to a survey conducted at participating universities could be analyzed in terms of four lenses: political, structural, symbolic and human resource. (See S Lieff 'Faculty development: Yesterday, today and tomorrow: Guide supplement'. 33.2-Viewpoint, Medical Teacher, 32, 429-431, 2010). Their conclusion is contained in the slide below.

Interplay of Structure, Culture and Agency: A study on Professional Development in Higher EducationAccessing 

development activiTheyteaching role

Research Findings

The initial three year funding cycle for this project has come to an end. We are waiting to hear whether the application for a new round of funding has been successful. In the meantime we have reported on this first cycle to the National Research Foundation. While we were busy with this first cycle there were high points, when it felt like our collaboration was making a real difference to our working lives and we were really getting somewhere. (The photos below give a sense that working together is fun, as well as a lot of hard work.)  But there were other moments when it felt we were so busy with our personal and professional lives, or so mired in a morass of data, that we were merely treading water. Now that I complete this report, I realize we have really achieved a great deal. The synthesis of findings is in the page on Report to NRF 2014, and the conclusion is the following:"The requirement by the National Research Foundation that proposals on education research be based on a collaboration amongst at least three institutions, one of which is rural, has stimulated a valuable mode of inquiry, one which could not have yielded the richness and variety of data, had it been conducted in one institution, or similar institutions.  The key finding of this not-as-yet concluded research project, is that there is a great need for attention to the teaching role in South Africa, and for capacity building of the institutional role-players, both management and professional developers, to support this role. Change at the level of the system (structural and cultural) are required to effect this." 

Heltasa Conference 2013

Our team made several presentations at the annual Higher Education Learning and Teaching Association of Southern Africa (Heltasa) conference, which was held at UNISA in Pretoria in November 2013. Here are two of the presentations.

Nherman heltasa professional learning of academics for their teaching function_final from Aidan Kraak

Commitments heltasa bjj from Aidan Kraak

We were concerned about the findings and the process

This project has had a primary aim, namely to consider how contextual influences influence the take-up of professional development opportunities by academics in South African universities. The research design has been participatory, where the investigators are members of centres for teaching and learning, and thus have a key stake in the outcome of the research. The data has been collected at macro and micro levels: we analyzed national higher education policies and initiatives; we interviewed senior managers at each institution and we interviewed a minimum of ten lecturers at each of the institutions. we also generated descriptive and reflective reports on the conditions for teaching and learning at each institution. By December 2013 we have collected all the data (over 120 interviews transcribed) and have completed four of the eight case studies and have sent a number of manuscripts to journals.

It became clear early on in the project that the attention was both on the research findings and on the research process: we were concerned to build the research capacity of the team members and to reflect on the optimal conditions for researchers to collaborate and support each other's identity development as researchers. Here we were in session, learning about social realism, coding and talking about collaboration:

Short summary of the project

This was a National Research Foundation (NRF) funded project entitled “The Interplay of Structure, Culture and Agency: contextual influences on the professional development of academics as teachers in Higher Education in South Africa” which was undertaken by researchers at eight universities during 2011 – 2013. The project was an investigation into contextual influences on the professional development of academics as teachers in higher education in South Africa. It was based on an analysis of the national context and eight case studies at public higher education institutions. The eight institutions and sites for the case studies were: Cape Peninsula University of Technology, Durban University of Technology, Fort Hare University, Rhodes University, Stellenbosch University, University of Cape Town, University of Venda and the University of the Western Cape. The lead research institution was Stellenbosch University.

The project emerged out of a call from the NRF for educational research to be undertaken collaboratively, by researchers from at least three institutions, of which one should be rural. A team of 18 researchers were motivated to become involved in this project as they all work to enhance teaching and learning in their universities. The team saw this project as an opportunity to reflect on their own institutional contexts and on quality teaching and the way professional development with regard to the teaching role is supported at their institutions and their academic development units.

The purpose of the research was threefold:

·       to make suggestions about how to enhance professional development with regard to teaching at each of the eight participating institutions;

·       to make suggestions at the national level for appropriate and context-sensitive policy to enhance teaching and learning in South Africa;

·   to contribute to the international debates on professional development with regard to teaching and learning with specific reference to the concepts of ‘structure, culture and agency’ as developed in the work of social realist Margaret Archer. 

Research team members:

Cape Peninsula University of Technology:

James Garraway

Chris Winberg

Durban University of Technology:

Gita Mistri

Julian Vooght

Rhodes University:

Chrissie Boughey

Lynn Quinn

Silvana Barbali

Jo-Anne Vorster

University of Cape Town:

Jeff Jawitz

June Pym

Kevin Williams

University of Fort Hare:

Vuyisile Nkonki

University of Stellenbosch:

Nicoline Herman

Brenda Leibowitz

Susan van Schalkwyk

Jean Farmer

University of Venda:

Cosmas Maphosa

Clever Ndebele

University of the Western Cape:

Vivienne Bozalek

Wendy McMillan

The principal investigator was Brenda Leibowitz, from the Centre for Teaching and Learning at Stellenbosch University. 

A new funding proposal has been submitted to the NRF for 2014 - 2016. The team is awaiting the outcome.