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EDITORIAL
The current issue is a unique collection of articles covering 
school and higher education, and can be divided into three 
broad themes: higher education, teaching and learning and 
teacher professional development. 

We open this issue with an article by John Mendy and 
Maria Madiope on curriculum transformation in South 
Africa. The article raises a number of important questions 
and insights in a time when the ideas of Africanisation 
and the decolonialisation of the curriculum have gained in 
importance. The article by Rachel Barnett links with the first 
and looks at one of the most topical challenges related to 
diversity, equity and inclusion and why leadership of higher 
education in this regard matters in US higher education. 
Aradhana Ramnund-Mansingh and Mariam Seedat-Khan 
join in with a thought-provoking article on understanding 
the career trajectories of black female academics in South 
Africa. The last two articles on higher education interrogate 
the institutionalisation of community engagement in higher 
education while Carina America and Philip Mallon write 
on Connectedness in Business Studies pedagogy, which 
nicely ties into the second cluster of articles on teaching 
and learning.

Teaching and learning include articles from early 
childhood development to art education. The articles explore 
different teaching pedagogies and approaches. Salochana 
Lorraine Hasan leads us in a discussion on problem-based 
learning using semantics in legitimation code theory while 
Meredith Armstrong and Chrissie Boughey explore children’s 
language and literacy development in a marginalised 
community in Port Elizabeth. Also discussing early childhood 
education challenges is the paper by Keshni Bipath and 
Hantie Theron that focuses on pedagogy-in-participation 
and the contesting of “schoolification” in early childhood 
development centres. Liezl Myburgh, Janet Condy and Elna 
Barnard explore pedagogical approaches to develop social 
skills of learners with autism spectrum disorder. To close 
this section, Raita Steyn looks at the use of the element of 
surprise as a teaching strategy in art education.

The third cluster of articles explores issues of teacher 
development and teachers’ perceptions on various aspects 
in teaching. Bernadette Geduld and Humphrey Sikwanga 
argue that teachers are expected to be self-directed and 
to instil in their learners the ability to self-regulate their own 

AUTHOR:
Jan Nieuwenhuis 

Editor-in-Chief.

DOI: http://dx.doi.
org/10.18820/2519593X/pie.v38.
i2.ed

e-ISSN 2519-593X

Perspectives in Education 

2020 38(2): i-iii

PUBLISHED:
04 December 2020

Published by the UFS
http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie

© Creative Commons  

With Attribution (CC-BY)

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0205-2042
http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593X/pie.v38.i2.ed
http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593X/pie.v38.i2.ed
http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593X/pie.v38.i2.ed
http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie


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learning processes. The authors argue that there are, however, personal and contextual 
factors that promote or inhibit teachers’ abilities to develop self-regulated learning skills. The 
article presents what these factors could be. A phenomenon that is often reported in literature 
is teachers’ resistance to curriculum changes. Arrie van Wyk looks at the views of teachers 
and how the effect of resistance to curriculum changes could be minimised. Van Wyk argues 
that principals must be in a better position to steer the curriculum changes in schools in the 
right direction. He premises that, as a result, teachers will be in a better position to do their 
work properly to the benefit of the learners and, eventually, to the benefit of society. The 
proposition of Van Wyk is of course premised on the leadership approach/style of the school 
principal. Van der Vyver, Kok and Conley’s article departs from the idea that transformational 
and transactional leadership dimensions could positively contribute to teachers’ professional 
wellbeing, whereas laissez-faire leadership has a potentially negative influence on their 
professional wellbeing. The use of transformational and transactional leadership behaviour 
results in teachers reporting positive job-related affective wellbeing, which can in turn, influence 
teachers to remain in the profession due to their experience of enhanced professional wellbeing. 
The last two articles then explore two related aspects of leadership, vis-à-vis mentoring and 
capacity development of teachers. Nontsikelelo Msimango, Kathleen Fonseca and Nadine 
Petersen discuss the role of mentoring in preparing primary school mathematics teachers for 
their roles, while Jabulani Khanyi and Parvathy Naidoo discuss the role of principals in the 
leadership capacity development of post level one teachers for school leadership. 

The year 2021 promises to be a very interesting time in the history of Perspectives in 
Education: 2020 was our Butterfly Effect year. 

Gleick (1987), in his renowned book, Chaos, recalls the story of Edward Lorenz, a 
meteorologist, who one day in the winter of 1961, was examining one sequence of weather 
events at greater length. Lorenz decided to take a shortcut. Instead of starting the whole 
run over, he started midway through. To give the machine its initial conditions, he typed the 
numbers straight from an earlier printout. Then he walked down the hall to get away from the 
noise and get a cup of coffee. When he returned an hour later, he saw something unexpected; 
something that planted the seed for a new science. The change in a small detail changed the 
whole weather simulation (Gleick, 1987:16). In a paper read by Lorenz on his findings he asked 
the question: “does the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas?” A tiny 
cause can generate big consequences! While the Butterfly Effect remained known to the few 
scientists who followed Lorenz’s work, it was not until “chaos” became a cultural phenomenon 
via James Gleick’s (1987) popular book Chaos and that the metaphor of the “butterfly effect” 
gained widespread public exposure. Gleick entitled the first chapter of his book: “The Butterfly 
Effect.” It is interesting to note that he explained the concept of sensitive dependency by 
applying the Butterfly Effect (prophetically) to “…the notion that a butterfly stirring the air in 
Peking can transform storm systems next month in New York” (Gleick, 1987:8). Maybe chaos 
theory and the “butterfly effect” can best describe the events of 2020.

But the “Butterfly effect” has also come to mean a turning point in history. Education, 
and especially higher education will never be the same after 2020. The “new normal” will 
see an expansion in online and blended learning as delivery modes taking prominence in 
higher education. Perspectives in Education had its Butterfly Effect in 2020! Perspectives 
in Education is proud to include a number of international articles in the journal and in the 
planning for 2021 you will find this dimension growing in importance in the journal. The special 
edition in March 2021 will have a truly international essence, but more importantly, it will 



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engage with the international Butterfly Effect of 2020 in education. Finally, as from 2021, 
Perspectives in Education is returning to four issues per year, of which one will be our annual 
special issue.

Enjoy the journey with us.


	EDITORIAL
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