Editorial 

This issue of Perspective in Education represents ongoing 
debates and paradigmatic conversations across a myriad of 
different educational platforms, levels and disciplines, both 
locally and internationally. As the editors, we are pleased 
to articulate, through this issue, the different perspectives 
and collaborations that have accumulated to form this 
body of knowledge. The issue draws on disciplinary and 
interdisciplinary research that spans across primary, 
secondary and higher education contexts illustrating the 
interconnected nature of knowledge across the lifespan. 
Furthermore, the papers in this issue bring out the various 
connections between, for example, topics in Educational 
Psychology, Curriculum Studies and Education Policy 
making them central to the creation of a thematic whole 
within this issue, and underscoring the importance of 
collaborative research in understanding current issues 
and debates in education. Readers are thus provided with 
the chance to reflect on how these issues, conversations 
and perspectives form a cohesive whole across these 
disciplinary boundaries and platforms. 

The first three articles privilege various issues and 
perspectives centred on the discipline of Psychology 
of Education/Educational Psychology. The first article, 
Entrenching heterosexuality through language in South 
African Life Orientation (LO) textbooks, by Wilmot and 
Naidoo, demonstrates, through a critical linguistic and 
discourse analysis, the manner in which Life Orientation 
textbooks convey heteronormative standards and in turn 
amplifies the discourses dominant to topics of normative 
sexuality representations and reproductive perspectives 
within textbooks used at secondary level schooling within 
South Africa. The second article, “You should give a child 
love and take them warm-heartedly from their parent”: 
Preschool teachers’ practice and understanding of care, 
by Phatudi, places the ethic of caring as central to the 
perspectives of preschool teachers in a township school. 
The author argues that the “ethic of caring” promotes the 
quality of learning only when viewed from a contextual 
perspective. The third article, titled An alternative approach 
to a complex issue: Youth-designed strategies for the 
prevention of teenage pregnancy in schools, by Hendricks 
and Wood, uses participatory research methods to 
demonstrate that the voices and subsequent involvement 
of youth are valuable when considering the impact and 

Prof LC Jita
Editor-in-Chief

Prof ML 
Mokhele-Makgalwa
Co-Editor 



effectiveness of programmes aimed at the intervention of teenage pregnancies that are 
prevalent and growing in numbers within schools. 

In their article, Understanding learner attitudes towards the use of tablets in a blended 
learning classroom, Laher and Boshoff, take us into a project that explores how learners 
perceive the use of devices, such as iPads in schools. The authors argue the importance 
of integrating learner attitudes as a means to successfully implement and adopt electronic 
technologies within schooling environments, while further underscoring the importance of this 
research at policy and practical implementation levels. Teachers’ perceptions of how they 
develop self-regulated learning, by Geduld, presents a case study of 14 secondary schools 
as a means to investigate perceptions of teachers in relation to self-regulated learning. The 
article advocates the importance of enhancing teachers’ knowledge and use of self-regulated 
learning as a core means to enhance academic success. The sixth article, Aligning school 
discipline with the best interests of the child: Some deficits in the legislative framework, a 
product of the research done by Reyneke and Pretorius, again places the learner at the 
core of the initiatives aimed at addressing discipline in schools. The ethic of caring comes to 
the fore, once again, in the argument on the importance of developing a school disciplinary 
framework that subscribes to the best interest of the child. 

The next four articles shift focus to higher educational contexts. The work of Naudé and 
Botha, in their article It’s a Virtual Child!: Postgraduate students’ experiences in a developmental 
psychology class, investigates postgraduate students’ development within the discipline of 
Psychology, in relation to a web-based program My Virtual Child. Naudé and Botha argue 
that this platform of learning provides students with a comprehensive and authentic basis of 
learning and helps to translate theory into practice at comprehensive and relevant pragmatic 
levels. Aligning with Psychology within the context of university-based research, van den 
Berg, Jacobs and Weideman questioned why adults tend to negate therapeutic services. The 
article, Factors contributing to the negation of therapeutic services by emerging adults at a 
South African university explores the factors related to the fear of judgement, uncertainty of 
confidentiality, the fear of vulnerability and hurt and how help is rather sought from family and 
peers or religion than from therapeutic centres. In the series on higher education, Applying 
a humanistic pedagogy to advance and integrate humane values in a medical school 
environment, Jama discusses how medical school environments at universities are often 
perceived as impersonal spaces of heightened stress. The research advocates the need to 
apply a humanistic pedagogical approach and illustrates its implementation within a context of 
a School of Medicine at one university in South Africa. The next article, by Bhagwan, adopts 
a qualitative inquiry with academics and community engagement administrators in an effort to 
understand how community engagement is conceptualised within the higher education space. 
Subsequently, the article Towards a conceptual understanding of community engagement in 
higher education in South Africa draws on data accumulated from six South African universities 
and explores the four prominent themes that emerged: context, process, mutual beneficial 
relationship and knowledge production. 

The following article by Muthama and Mckenna, The contradictory conceptions of research 
in historically black universities, investigates and troubles the manner in which research is 
conceived and the implications thereof for research output. Using critical discourse analysis, 
it is argued that four dominant conceptions are often contradictory to one another within 
historically black universities, namely research as integral to academic identity, research for 
social justice, research as an economic driver and research as an instrumentalist requirement 
for job security, promotion and incentives. In their article, Investigating the role of non-academic 
support systems of students completing a Master’s degree in Open, Distance and e-Learning, 
Fynn and Janse van Vuuren explore the concept of support through connectivism theory. 
Specifically, the traditional linear model and rigidity of the student-supervisor relationship 
as a core means to distance education at postgraduate level is challenged. The authors of 



this article reflect strongly on the manner in which the success and performance of students 
do not depend solely on the traditional conception of supervision, but instead focus on the 
myriad of different non-academic nodes and networks that shape student success at this 
level. To conclude this section on Higher Education-based research and perspectives, we 
include the article, Internet use among university students: A reason for concern? In the 
article, Geyer, Hall, le Roux and Crafford contribute to the discussion on possible risks in the 
use of the internet by students at a tertiary level institution. By using items from two screening 
instruments, viz. the Internet-Related Addictive Behaviour Inventory and the Problematic 
Internet Use Questionnaire, the authors examine the nature and impact of internet usage 
among students at a tertiary level institution and conclude that the students scored low on 
indicators of problematic internet use (PIU) except on two items that could indicate potential 
risk areas. In the final section, the authors engage with suggestions on evidence-based 
intervention strategies to prevent, treat and manage PIUs among this population group.

The final two articles bring us full circle and return to secondary schooling level research 
and perspectives. The first of the final two articles, The promotion of sustainable environmental 
education by the Zimbabwe Ordinary level science syllabi, authored by Tsakeni, adopts a 
mixed method approach to explore a case study of a rural school in the Murewa district in 
Zimbabwe as a means to engage with place-based education within physical sciences. The 
recommendations of the study include the need for such approaches to be emphasised 
within environmental education, education for sustainable development, as well as during 
assessment practices. In the final article of this issue, Overcoming language barriers: Lessons 
learnt from migrant children, Ke and Shandu reflect through a lens of agency on the literature 
underscoring high school achievement of migrant children in spite of language barriers. 
The authors draw on the important need to consider non-conventional factors, specifically 
beyond the normative lens of social economic status, such as aspirations, expectations 
and creativities.