Journal of Education, 2017
Issue 68, http://joe.ukzn.ac.za

Investigating factors that impact the

success of students in a Higher Education

classroom: a case study 

Eunice Nyamupangedengu
(Received 27 August 2016; accepted 17 May 2017)

Abstract

South African Higher Education Institutions (SAHEIs) were rocked by student protests in
2015 and 2016. While the main issue that sparked the protests was unaffordable fee hikes
which were negatively impacting equitable access to HE, the protests also brought to the
fore, other issues impacting students’ success such as lack of transformation and the manner
in which universities deliver their curricula which does not cater for the now diverse student
body. The main educational challenge is not the diversity of the student body but rather the
failure by institutions and individuals to tailor the standard teaching and learning processes
to the realities of the great majority of the current student body. This was the motivation for
this study in which I sought to investigate factors that impact students’ success in my
classroom. Data was collected from students in the form of students’ responses to an open-
ended question at the beginning of a course and to semi-structured group interviews at the
end of the course. Students’ responses were analysed using various bodies of literature as a
lens. The factors that are likely to impact the success of the diverse student body in a Higher
Education classroom were identified and discussed and recommendations were made. 

Introduction

South African Higher Education Institutions (SAHEIs) were rocked by
student protests in 2015 and 2016. While the main issue that sparked the
protests was unaffordable fee hikes which were negatively impacting
equitable access to HE, the protests also brought to the fore, a host of other
issues impacting students’ success at HEIs such as lack of transformation,
curriculum relevance and the manner in which universities deliver their
curricula. Historically, South African higher education used to target and to
serve a minority ethnic group (Mdepa & Tshiwula, 2012). However, with the
dawn of democracy in 1994, the student body at HEIs has been changing and



114        Journal of Education, No. 68, 2017

is continuously changing in terms of numbers, race, and socio-economic,
cultural and academic backgrounds (Scott, Yeld, & Hendry, 2007). Despite
these changes that have taken place in the student intake, traditional
educational approaches such as the curriculum frameworks, course design
methods and content, lecture delivery practices and even time tabling of
lectures that were suitable for the then ethnic minority groups continue to
prevail in the present diverse South African higher education arena (Scott et
al., 2007). This state of affairs has led to some students being privileged while
others are disadvantaged. As highlighted by Scott et al. (2007), the main
educational challenge in these circumstances is not the diversity of the student
body but rather the failure by institutions and individuals to tailor the standard
teaching and learning processes to the realities of the great majority of the
current student body. If institutions and lecturers can consider student
diversity in their mainstream teaching and learning approaches, this is likely
to enable many students to realise their potential. However, as indicated in the
CHE report of 2009 and in Scott et al. (2007), the academic staff body at
SAHEIs is poorly prepared to deal with the many reasons for the
unsatisfactory student outcomes. After reflecting on the issues that students
had raised during the protests, I realised that I was one of those members of
the academic staff who was not only pedagogically underprepared for
teaching the current diversity of students in my courses but also lacked an
understanding of the issues of both access and success. When one considers
how critical these issues of access and success are in higher education in
South Africa, one cannot overemphasise the importance of research that
would allow for a better understanding of the issues. This was the motivation
for this study in which I sought to understand the issues that impact
epistemological access at the level of my classroom. 

Literature review and conceptual framework for the

study

The concept of epistemological access was used as the framework for the
study that is reported in this paper. The term epistemological access (EA) was
coined by Morrow during an address at the then University of the North (now
University of Limpopo) in 1992. The address was later published in a book
called Learning to teach in South Africa in 2007. In his 1992 address Morrow
described two dimensions of access namely formal access and EA. The latter
is the dimension of access which was used as the conceptual framework in



Nyamupangedengu: Investigating matters that impact. . .       115

this study and for the purposes of this paper, Morrow’s 2007 definition of EA
was adapted. 

Morrow (2007, p.18) defined EA as “access to the knowledge that universities
distribute”. It (epistemological access) includes the use of teaching and
learning strategies that would enable students even those poorly prepared by
schools for university study to learn what is taught at universities and
succeed. Morrow’s definition seem to be suggesting that the lecturers are the
ones that are responsible for enabling EA with the student as the passive
recipient. However, in his 1994 paper titled <Entitlement and achievement in
education’, he clearly articulated that EA cannot be supplied or transmitted,
meaning that agency of the learner is necessary. That being the case, I am of
the idea that while lecturers must teach in a way that enable access, the
students must also actively participate in the academic practices in order for
them to gain that access. Therefore, both the lecturers and the students are key
players in enabling EA.

Contexts differ from one institution to another and from one classroom to
another and so do students’ learning needs. Therefore, pedagogical practices
are not a one size fits all i.e. the pedagogical practices that may be suitable
and effective in one context may not be effective in a different context, and
the kind of support that students require in order to gain EA also vary
depending on the contextual situation. Therefore, while issues that impact EA
are known, the manifestations of these issues differ from one academic
institution to another and from one learning context to another. That being the
case, it is important that lecturers should study their classroom contexts so as
to be in a position to effectively support their students’ EA. In addition, when
one considers what is in the pedagogical content knowledge literature e.g.
Rollnick, Bennett, Rhemtula, Dharsey, & Ndlovu (2008), effective teaching
strategies emanate from a knowledge base for teaching that includes
knowledge of students. This means that knowledge of one’s students is a pre-
requisite if lecturers are to choose teaching strategies that would enable
epistemological access. Knowledge of students mean among other things,
being aware of their level of competencies and the kind of support that they
will need in order to gain EA. This was the motivation for this study, to
initiate a social dialogue that would enable me to understand the students in
my course in terms of what they considered would enable them to learn.



116        Journal of Education, No. 68, 2017

Context of the study

I am a teacher educator at a SAHEI. I am responsible for teaching genetics a
content course to pre-service teachers (PSTs). My institution, which in this
paper I refer to as SAX is the setting for this study. SAX offers both
undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in Education. In its undergraduate
programmes the institution follows a concurrent model of teacher education
whereby undergraduate PSTs study both the content subjects and how to
teach those subjects in the same school then qualify as teachers for those
subjects at the end of their studies. At SAX therefore, teacher educators are
responsible for teaching both content and methodology courses to PSTs. The
focus of this study was the teaching of a content course, genetics to PSTs who
were training to be high school life sciences teachers. The genetics course is a
Life Sciences course which is offered to fourth year students who are taking
Life Sciences as their major. The teaching of the course takes six weeks. 

The student population in my classes represented diversity in all its many
forms: race, class, culture and academic background. Observations from some
of my previous teaching activities showed that students have different levels
of content knowledge and in some cases culture and language hinder
meaningful learning of genetics concepts. Therefore, the issues that were
raised by students such as the manner in which universities deliver their
curricula which is seen to privilege some students and disadvantage others
motivated me to carry out this study. My belief is that while universities don’t
have to necessarily change the content of their curricula as the reputable
standards have to be maintained, lecturers who are tasked with the
responsibilities of delivering the curricula to students can adjust their teaching
practices in order to cater for the diverse student body at HEIs. This necessary
shift in teaching practices calls for lecturers, through research, to continuously
seek to develop the knowledge that is appropriate for effectively transforming
the syllabus and for teaching the complex and diverse student body. Dialogue
with students is one way of gaining information that can inform one’s
teaching. The aim of this study was therefore to investigate the factors that
impact EA and success of students in a HE classroom through social dialogue
with the students. The research question that guided this study was:

What factors within a Higher Education classroom impact epistemological
access and success of a diverse student body?



Nyamupangedengu: Investigating matters that impact. . .       117

Research design 

Participants

The participants were the 70 students who were registered for the genetics
course. All 70 students were invited to be participants and they all gave their
consent.

Data sources 

There were two main data sources for this study. The first data source was the
open ended question that I asked students to respond to at the beginning of
the course. The question was: What do you expect from me as your lecturer
for the genetics course? The question appears to be simplistic but by asking
the students to respond to this question, my aim was to initiate a dialogue
between me and the students that could bring to light what they view as
teaching practices that would enable them to learn. Insights from students’
responses were going to inform my teaching of the genetics course. In
addition, empathy and care are key to transformative pedagogy and those
aspects can only develop through social interactions including social dialogue
(Ellery, 2016). The second data source was the interviews with students at the
end of the course to find out their experiences of the genetics course. My hope
was to glean from students’ experiences what could increase or hinder
epistemological access and success from what I had implemented in the
course.

Data collection

On the first day of the genetics course, students were given plain sheets of
paper with the question <What do you expect from me as your lecturer for the
genetics course?’ printed on them. I then explained to the students that by
asking them this question, my aim was to get to understand what their
expectations were and what they thought would enhance their chances of
success in a course. The information was going to inform my teaching of the
course. They were free not to participate if they did not wish to. The students
were given the time they needed to respond to the question. Those who
participated took about 10 minutes to write down their responses and to



118        Journal of Education, No. 68, 2017

submit them. After collecting students’ responses, I collated them and went
back to students for an open discussion in which I explained how I had
understood their expectations and also asked for clarification of some of their
responses. An audio-recording of the discussion of students’ responses
formed a secondary data set. Students’ expectations as disclosed in their
responses to the above question informed my teaching of the genetics course.

 At the end of the course, students were interviewed to find out their learning
experiences during the genetics course. A semi-structured interview was used
to do group interviews. I chose group interviews because according to
Bogdan and Biklen (2007), group interviews can generate a wider range of
responses than in individual interviews. Group interviews can also bring
together people who hold varied opinions or maybe “representatives of
different collectives” (Cohen, Manion, & Morrison, 2000, p. 287). In my case,
group interviews were going to bring together students who were
representative of the diverse groups in my classroom. On a practical note,
group interviews were going to be quick as they allow the interviewing of
many students at a go. I was aware of the disadvantages of group interviews
which included need for skilful interviewing, difficulties that may arise if
personal matters emerge (Cohen et al., 2000). I however felt that the
advantages outweighed the disadvantages especially because the issue that
students were going to be interviewed about was not a personal one. I also
made sure that the interviews were going to be done by an experienced
interviewer. Five groups of students were interviewed.

Data analysis

I used inductive coding to analyse the collated student responses and
deductive coding for the interview transcripts.
 

Analysis of students’ responses

I had a total of 136 statements of students’ descriptions of their expectations.
In Figure 1 below, I used the first 10 statements to show the coding process.



Nyamupangedengu: Investigating matters that impact. . .       119

Students’ expectations 

 1. Transparency: let us know in advance what will be done in the lectures (Prior access
to Teaching/Learning materials – (PaT/L)

 2. Make PPt presentations available in advance to make preparation possible – PaT/L

 3. Tuts and Pracs should be marked and returned to us before tests are written 
(Assessment expectations – Ass)

 4. Well prepared lectures (T/L process – TLp)

 5. Memos for pracs, tests and exams to be made available – Ass

 6. Content explained at our level (TLp)

 7. To be provided with sufficient notes (TLp)

 8. Have many visual aids to help us understand the concepts – TLp

 9. Good communication in terms of what is due, when and where as well as what the 
tests are on and when – Communication on Ass

10. Lecture notes that can be kept – TLp

As can be seen in the box above, the 10 student responses were about
teaching and learning and about assessment. The coding of the rest of 136
responses from the class also showed these two broad categories namely
students’ expectations about pedagogical practices and students’ expectations
about assessment practices. The expectations on pedagogical practices
category had three sub-categories namely: expectations about access to T/L
materials, expectations about the type of T/L materials and expectations about
the teaching methods. 

Analysis of interview transcripts

Five interviews were done with 13 students in five focus groups. The
interviews were first transcribed then analysed. To identify and to describe
students’ experiences as reflected in the interviews, I used what Alsop and
Watts (1997), referred to as lenses. These lenses are the cognitive, the



120        Journal of Education, No. 68, 2017

affective, the conative and self-esteem. Although the study by Alsop and
Watts was on conceptual change, I saw the four components as frames that
could help me to describe how students engaged with the teaching phenomena
that they were encountering during my teaching of the genetics course and
hence the extent to which they had accessed what I had offered in the course.
I describe these four components below.
 
Cognition occurs when stimuli is mentally processed by an individual
resulting in the formulation of concepts about those stimuli. Therefore, the
cognitive frame describes what happens when information in the environment
is transformed into knowledge in the mind of a learner. Evidence of cognition
in students’ experiences can be taken to be an indication that the students are
accessing what is being taught. The component affective refers to the
expression of feelings and emotions (Nyamupangedengu, 2016). Affective
expressions can be categorised as enjoyable, germane, salient and wonder.
The category enjoyable covers anything that is enjoyed, liked or disliked by
the students. Germane describes the extent to which something is personally
relevant to the students. The extent to which a learning experience is
prominent or important in the students’ environment is what is described as
salient and the fourth category of wonder describes the dimension of affective
when students show amazement or awe at something they have learnt about
(Lelliott, 2007). The third lens is conation which describes how a student
views the knowledge and understanding s/he gained in terms of usefulness
and applicability. Alsop and Watts used three elements to delineate conation;
trust which is the level by which students are able to trust their
understandings of the knowledge gained, control describes the quality of
control students have over the use of knowledge gained and action, the degree
of applicability of the knowledge gained. The fourth lens self-esteem relates
to how individuals see or feel about themselves (Alsop & Watts, 1997). The
aspects that cover self-esteem include image, confidence and autonomy.
Image refers to the perceptions students have of themselves. Confidence
describes the sense of self-belief that enables individuals to persist in the face
of incomprehension and autonomy refers to the individual’s capacity and
motivation to pursue issues and to find answers to questions. The above
descriptors of students’ learning experiences can be taken to indicate
epistemological access. This is because students cannot enjoy, develop
confidence or show conative experiences if they are not accessing the
knowledge that they are being taught. 



Nyamupangedengu: Investigating matters that impact. . .       121

I used the above descriptions of learning experiences as a framework for both
analysing the interview transcripts and describing students’ experiences of the
genetics course. The analysis of interview transcripts therefore involved
deductive coding. Below are two examples of coded students’ utterances. 

Munya: I think also the key aspect that she displayed was planning. I learned
that if you're going to teach learners, and make sure that they understand,
you first as a teacher must first be prepared – fully prepared – and organise
each and every thing that you are going to use, so that when you implement
whatever plan you had, you have, you cannot be confused and will be able to
clarify any misconception and challenges that you're going to encounter-
(Germaine aspect) 

Tendai: Yeah, I think that it was always nice (aspect of enjoyment) that she
was always early and you could see she was always prepared, she always
had something prepared for us to do. It wasn't like she stood up there and
thought, "well today we'll do this...", you could see she was always prepared
and that made it so much easier to trust what she was saying; to believe it –
you know what I mean? (aspect of conation)

Munya’s utterance shows that the planning that he experienced in the course
was personally relevant to him. Therefore, the utterance was coded as
reflecting germaine learning experiences. Through careful planning by the
lecturer, Munya was able to access the ‘goods’ that the lecturer was
‘distributing’ in her classroom. (Morrow, 2007). Tendai’s utterance it was
always nice shows aspects of enjoyment and her reference to trust is an aspect
of conation. These two learning experiences were accordingly coded in
Tendai’s utterance. I coded the first transcript and then asked a colleague to
also independently code the same transcript as part of the validation process.
After independently coding the transcript, I met with my colleague and
discussed our coding and ironed out any differences. I then coded all the other
four transcripts. 

Findings and discussion

As indicated earlier, the analysis of students’ responses yielded two broad
categories of students’ expectations. I used these categories as subheadings in
the discussion of findings below.
 



122        Journal of Education, No. 68, 2017

Students’ expectations about pedagogical practices

Students’ responses showed that they had certain expectations regarding the
T/L process. Those expectations could be divided into three sub-categories
namely access to T/L materials, types of T/L materials and teaching methods.
I discuss these expectations below.

Expectations about access to T/L materials

Twenty-two of the 67 students (32.8%) who responded to the open-ended
question indicated that they expected access to the T/L materials before the
lectures are delivered: 

11.. Transparency: let us know in advance what will be done in the lectures

2. Make PowerPoint presentations available in advance to make
preparation possible.

3. Tutorials to be handed out timeously

It was clear during the discussion with the students and during interviews that
students were aware of the importance of accessing lecture material before the
lectures and what they could gain. A student’s utterance during the discussion
that followed the writing of the responses is testimony to the above claim: 

Student: When you get the lecture material in advance, you prepare and you
are much more focused during lectures and sometimes you even know in
advance what you don’t understand 

Highlighting the need for advance access to T/L material is an indication of
agency on the part of the student and as argued in the literature, agency by
students is a necessary requisite if EA is to be achieved (Morrow, 2007). The
student showed motivation and eagerness to learn and that motivation has the
potential to promote EA.

In response to students’ expectation above, I made an effort to prepare a six
week long programme detailing what would be covered and in each lecture
practical and tutorial and posted on the university’s e-learning site together
with other relevant T/L materials. The utterances by Ephy and Tendai below
reflect the impact that the posting of the course materials had on students



Nyamupangedengu: Investigating matters that impact. . .       123

Ephy: She was engaged with us as a class, . . .by having the website, Sakai,
she used that really well, like giving us all the resources we need, whenever
we did a practical, she after the practical was done she would give us a memo
to see where we went wrong, how we can correct ourselves, she gave us extra
information on the website which helped us with the course – things that she
couldn't cover in the lecture were on the website, so I think that strategy by
making us all involved all the time instead of just that time that is allocated
with us (salient aspect).

Tendai: The strategy gives you the opportunity to be as prepared as she is.
That you've never felt like you were behind or that you had to catch up
(salient aspect).

Students’ utterances above show that providing students with the T/L
materials in advance, enabled them to prepare for lectures and to engage with
the T/L materials both before and after the lectures. Providing students with
T/L materials in advance is therefore a pedagogical practice that can promote
epistemological access as students can be better prepared for the lectures and
can engage with the materials any time before and after contact hours.
Universities should therefore strive to have working e-learning systems as a
way of promoting student access and success. However, discussions with the
students showed that many lecturers do not fulfil this pedagogical
expectation. When I reflected on my own experiences as a lecturer, I could
see that one of the reasons for failing to fulfil this expectation is that
preparing T/L course materials in advance that students can effectively use to
study requires lots of time that I hardly have due to heavy teaching workloads.
Most of the time, I find myself just fighting to keep afloat by focusing on
preparing for one lecture at a time. In the study that is reported in this paper,
because I was doing this study, I dedicated lots of time to the genetics course
which is not something that I can sustain if I have to write journal articles and
publish. Universities need to therefore, recognise that effective delivery of
lectures requires time. Heavy teaching workloads and high demands for
research and publications at the same time negatively impact lecturers’ ability
to offer pedagogical practices that will increase both access and success of
our students. 

Expectations on the T/L resources that students should be provided with

Forty-one students (61%) indicated that they were expecting to be given
notes. Below are three examples of such responses:



124        Journal of Education, No. 68, 2017

1. To be provided with sufficient notes

2. Notes that are clear and summarised in such a way that the notes make
sense and go hand in hand with the prescribed textbook.

3. Good lecture notes

The expectation from students of being given prepared notes reflects student
under preparedness. Students’ mindset which shows that even after being at
university for a minimum of three years, they were still expecting their
lecturer to prepare notes for them indicates how underprepared these students
were for university studies. When I reflected on this situation, I wondered
why so many students were not taking responsibility of their own learning.
Why were they still expecting lecturers to prepare notes for them? A
discussion with the students revealed that some students did not know how to
prepare their own notes, others were not confident that they will prepare good
quality notes and some said they commute every day, therefore there is not
enough time during the course of the week for them to use the library or the
computer lab to study, do research and write own notes. 

Students’ inability to prepare own notes confirms poor academic literacy, a
well-documented challenge for many students in South Africa who come from
poor educational backgrounds (Scott et al., 2007). According to Scott et al.
(2007), lack of preparedness of students going into tertiary institutions is an
aspect that negatively impacts epistemological access. In their paper, Scott et
al. (2007) made suggestions on what the higher education sector can do at
both institutional level and classroom level in order to deal with student under
preparedness. At institutional level, the suggestions by Scott et al. included
change in curriculum frameworks and provision of foundational courses.
However, as argued by Wingate (2007), provision of foundational courses is
ineffective because the courses are generic and do not consider context and
the nature of knowledge to be acquired. At classroom level, Scott et al. (2007)
suggested that teaching should be research-informed as a way of ensuring that
the support that students will get is what they need in a particular context to
achieve success. Therefore, if as lecturers and as universities, we do not do
research in our classrooms in order to understand the kind of support that the
students in our courses would need in order to learn and to learn how to learn
(Wingate, 2007), we will struggle to provide epistemological access to our
students thereby negatively impacting their success at our universities.
Students’ responses in this study offer not only opportunities for further
research but also opportunities for me as the lecturer to offer support that is



Nyamupangedengu: Investigating matters that impact. . .       125

tailored to the needs of the students in my classroom. In this study, as a
starting point, I made a suggestion to the lecturers in my discipline that we
could help students to prepare own notes by providing a guideline in the form
of headings and subheadings. Then, under subheadings have questions that
students need to respond to as part of writing their notes. The headings and
subheadings will give structure to the notes and the questions will guide
students in terms of the important content that should be included under each
subheading. The feasibility and success of this approach is yet to be
investigated and while this structure may work in one discipline, it may not
work in another. Hence the need for research at classroom level. 

The other issue that students highlighted as impacting their learning was the
issue of transport. Because students commute every day, there is not enough
time for them to utilise university resources such as libraries and computer
labs. The use of digital resources such as the e-learning system can alleviate
the issue of insufficient time for studying as a result of commuting.
Universities can lobby or push for students to be provided with funding that
allows them to buy laptops or tablets. Having a laptop of your own can enable
students to download information from the e-learning systems and other
online resources while still at the university and use it for studying at home
after lectures and during weekends. Otherwise, EA and success at tertiary
institutions will continue to elude many students from poor backgrounds. 

Expectations on teaching methods 

Students’ responses showed that PowerPoint presentations were the most
commonly used mode of teaching by lecturers. The students however
expected me to use other ways of teaching such as audio/visual aids. I
therefore used lots of T/L visual aids in my teaching of the genetics lecture. I
also included learning activities like presentations and role playing to increase
student participation during the course. The inclusion of these teaching
methods positively impacted students’ learning:

Ngoni: She was the first one for me, since I was here, from first year and
second year; she was the first one to introduce presentation in science. Like, I
haven’t talked for two years in science, so like, everybody got the chance to
say something about genetics, so if you didn't understand then there will be a
platform to show that you don't understand and then the misconception you
have will be corrected. 



126        Journal of Education, No. 68, 2017

There are two aspects that are important to note from Ngoni’s utterance
above. The first one is that Ngoni displayed that by including teaching
methods that required oral participation, students got chances to show their
level of understanding and to be corrected where they had developed
misunderstandings. This is an indication that students were accessing the
knowledge that was being taught. Therefore, our pedagogical practices as
lecturers can promote epistemological access. The second aspect is that Ngoni
said that she had not talked for two years in the science classroom.
Considering that attaining EA to any educational field is not only about
acquisition of knowledge, but also about becoming a participant in practices
(Morrow, 2007), it means that Ngoni had not been fully attaining EA and one
reason was that no opportunities had been created that had motivated her to
participate in the learning activities. Therefore, our pedagogical practices as
lecturers can hinder EA at classroom level.

The ‘other’ teaching and learning issues

The other teaching and learning issues that students raised had to do with the
teaching pace and the volume of work in class and in the course. The students
were appealing for a ‘manageable’ pace and for the volume of work per time
to be reduced.

1. Move through content at a fair pace

2. Suitable pace (not too quickly) so that we can follow and understand,
manageable pace

These expectations created a challenge for me. This is because at that time, I
could not offer a solution to what they were requesting. Slowing down the
pace and reducing the volume of work per given time would only result in me
not completing the teaching of what is specified in the course in the specified
time. This scenario again highlights the need for research and for continuous
social dialogue within our classroom where issues that hinder EA are
discussed and collective solutions sought. Students need support on how to
manage large volumes of work and lecturers need research-informed support
or solutions for students. 



Nyamupangedengu: Investigating matters that impact. . .       127

Demonstrators are persons in most cases post-graduate students who help students during1

practical sessions and also mark the practicals.

Assessment expectations 

Assessment expectations refer to what students expected with regard to
tutorials, practicals and tests. Students’ responses reflected the anxieties that
they have when it comes to assessment and what they hope for. What the
students were expecting was that firstly, all assessment tasks must be linked
to content taught. Secondly, marking of all assessment tasks must be timeous.
Thirdly, the lecturer and the students must review all marked tasks together as
part of feedback and lastly, adequate time must be allowed for completion of
tasks. For me, all these expectations were reasonable but sadly not always
fulfilled due to large classes and bigger workloads among other reasons. For
example, due to having a large class of 70 students, I have three
Demonstrators  who help me in the laboratories during practical work and1

also help with the marking of the work. The Demonstrators’ marking is not
always uniform and also the quality of help they give to students also differs.
This problem which can hinder both EA and success is an example of a
problem that is context-specific and would require context-specific solutions
hence the need to look for solutions to the issue of EA not only at institutional
level but also at classroom level. Therefore, considering that students’ success
at university is measured by the marks they get from the assessment regimes,
it is of great concern to see that our assessment practices could be negatively
impacting both epistemological access and success of our students. One of the
things that I started doing during the teaching of the genetics course was to
randomly pick and remark 10 scripts from every practical and tutorial session
to assess the quality of students’ work and the quality of marking by the
Demonstrators, then use my observations to give feedback to both the
Demonstrators and the students. I would also use my observations to prepare
and to provide students with detailed memoranda for practicals, tutorials and
tests with the hope that they will be able to identify the errors and omissions
they were making and learn from them. From the feedback that I got from the
students during interviews, it seems that these practices were positively
impacting their learning:

Ephy: . . .by having the website, Sakai, she used that really well, like giving us
all the resources we need, whenever we did a practical, she after the practical 



128        Journal of Education, No. 68, 2017

was done she would give us a memo to see where we went wrong, how we can
correct ourselves. 

Having an e-learning system in place at tertiary institutions and utilising it can
go a long way in increasing EA as students will be able to access, outside the
contact hours, not only the teaching and learning resources but also feedback
on the assessment tasks done. 

Conclusion

In this study, I used a simple question ‘What do you expect from me as your
lecturer for the genetics course?’ and focus group interviews to initiate social
dialogue between myself and the students who were registered for the
genetics course. The social dialogue was meant to help me to understand
students’ perspective of what they thought I needed to do as their lecturer to
ensure their success and also to help me critically reflect on my teaching so
that I could become aware of the impact of my pedagogical practices on
students’ EA and success. Ultimately, my aim in this study was to find out
what we can do at classroom level to afford EA to our students. The study has
revealed a number of factors that can impact epistemological access and
success of students at classroom level. One known hindrance to EA at
universities that is well-documented in the literature is the under-preparedness
of many students who gain formal access to our universities. In this study,
specific aspects of under-preparedness which include inability to prepare own
notes and to deal with high volumes of work were identified. Suggestions
were made as to how students can be supported at classroom level to
overcome these difficulties. The suggestions that made a positive impact in
this study were: the use of the university’s e-learning system to provide
advance access of T/L materials to students and for providing feedback on
assessment tasks. This study has shown that our pedagogical practices can
make a difference in promoting both EA and success of our students. For
example, the use of visual aids positively impacted the learning of content by
students hence access to knowledge. As lecturers, we have a key role to play
in order to enable epistemological access and success of our students.
Practice-based research can go a long way in informing our teaching and how
we can support our students to access the knowledge that we offer in our
classrooms. A number of such opportunities for research and for developing
deeper insights into how we can promote EA at classroom level presented



Nyamupangedengu: Investigating matters that impact. . .       129

themselves in this study e.g. the over-dependence of students on academics’
notes and inability to cope with high volumes of work. How can students be
developed to become more independent and responsible for their learning?

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Eunice Nyamupangedengu
School of Education
Marang Centre for Mathematics, Science and Technology Education
University of the Witwatersrand

eunice.nyamupangedengu@wits.ac.za

mailto:eunice.nyamupangedengu@wits.ac.za