Community, self and identity

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Educating South African university students for citizenship Education in South Africa is in crisis. Low literacy and numeracy rates, poor discipline, and a sense of despair pervade the education landscape. At the same time, educators are called upon to achieve more, with universities tasked to produce graduates capable of exercising responsible and reflective citizenship in a competitive and globalising world. However, universities face very complex demands and resource constraints. In this sobering context, this book provides an opportunity to learn from a bold experiment in teaching and learning taking place across two very different South African universities, one historically black, and one historically white and Afrikaans. With a mixture of rigorous scholarship, thoughtful self-reflection, and insights which have relevance far beyond their own project, contributors to this ground-breaking volume take the reader systematically through an account of what is and is not possible in South African universities. The contributors demonstrate the potential and limitations of imaginative innovations, and invite the reader into an ongoing discussion about the future and potential for higher education in South Africa and beyond.

List of figures and tables
Foreword
Nasima Badsha
Acknowledgements
Editors’ introduction
Brenda Leibowitz, Leslie Swartz, Vivienne Bozalek, Ronelle Carolissen, Lindsey Nicholls and Poul Rohleder
Abbreviations and acronyms

PART 1: BACKGROUND

Understanding the challenges of the South African higher education landscape
Brenda Leibowitz
Community, self and identity: Training South African university students for transformation
Poul Rohleder and Leslie Swartz
Designing the project: Theoretical approaches
Vivienne Bozalek and Ronelle Carolissen
Community and identity: A theoretical review
Ronelle Carolissen and Poul Rohleder

PART 2: OUTCOMES AND FINDINGS

Student experiences of the CSI module
Ronelle Carolissen
‘Apartheid was your past, not mine’
Lindsey Nicholls, Poul Rohleder, Vivienne Bozalek, Ronelle Carolissen, Brenda Leibowitz and Leslie Swartz
Interpreting drawings: Reading the racialised politics of space
Poul Rohleder and Lucia Thesen
Using cognitive maps to heal the legacies of apartheid
Stanley D. Brunn

PART 3: THE PARTNERS

Educating the educators: Creating a powerful learning environment
Brenda Leibowitz, Vivienne Bozalek, Ronelle Carolissen, Lindsey Nicholls, Poul Rohleder and Leslie Swartz
Facilitating deep understanding: A facilitators perspective
Dianne Dawes, Neil Henderson, Sorayah Nair and Melanie Petersen

Experiencing the CSI module through the camera lens
Andre Daniels

‘That’s what friends are for’ – the CSI project’s ‘critical friends’
Henk J. van Rinsum, Tamara Shefer and Toke Smolders

CLOSE: The pedagogy of discomfort as a lens for the CSI project
Megan Boler

About the authors
Index

Megan Boler is a professor at the Ontario Institute of Studies in Education/University of Toronto.

Vivienne Bozalek is a professor of social work and the director of teaching and learning at the University of the Western Cape.

Stanley D. Brunn is a professor of human geography at the University of Kentucky.

Ronelle Carolissen is an associate professor of community psychology and chair of the Department of Educational Psychology at Stellenbosch University.

Andre Daniels is an e-learning staff member and the digital media coordinator at the University of the Western Cape.

Dianne Dawes is a registered social worker by profession and honorary research fellow at the University of Cumbria.

Neil Henderson is currently lecturing in the Department of Social Work at the University of the Western Cape.

Brenda Leibowitz is an associate professor and director of the Centre for Teaching and Learning at Stellenbosch University and is responsible for the work of the First-year Academy.

Sorayah Nair is a clinical psychologist and organisational consultant who trained at the University of the Western Cape and Stellenbosch.

Lindsey Nicholls lectures at the School for Health Sciences and Social Care at Brunel University, London.

Melanie Petersen is currently a senior adviser: student feedback at Stellenbosch University.

Poul Rohleder is acting programme leader and principal lecturer in psychology at Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge, and an honorary senior lecturer at the Department of Psychology at Stellenbosch University.

Tamara Shefer is a professor of womens and gender studies and psychology at the University of the Western Cape and deputy dean of teaching and learning in the Faculty of Arts.

Toke Smolders has worked for more than forty years as a community development worker with communities at risk in Amsterdam, and as a social work lecturer and coordinator of international policies and projects at the universities of Applied Sciences Hogeschool De Horst (Driebergen) and Hogeschool Utrecht (Amersfoort and Utrecht).

Leslie Swartz is a professor of psychology at Stellenbosch University.

Lucia Thesen is a senior lecturer in the Centre for Higher Education Development at the University of Cape Town.

Henk J. van Rinsum is an historian and anthropologist in the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences at Utrecht University.