http://thejournal.org.za open access page 1 of 1 reviewer acknowledgement acknowledgement to reviewers in an effort to facilitate the selection of appropriate peer reviewers for transformation in higher education, we ask that you take a moment to update your electronic portfolio on https://thejournal.org. za for our files, allowing us better access to your areas of interest and expertise, in order to match reviewers with submitted manuscripts. if you would like to become a reviewer, please visit the journal website and register as a reviewer. to access your details on the website, you will need to follow these steps: 1. log into the online journal at https:// thejournal.org.za 2. in your ‘user home’ [https://thejournal.org. za/index.php/the/user] select ‘edit my profile’ under the heading ‘my account’ and insert all relevant details, bio statement and reviewing interest(s). 3. it is good practice as a reviewer to update your personal details regularly to ensure contact with you throughout your professional term as reviewer to transformation in higher education. please do not hesitate to contact us if you require assistance in performing this task. publisher: publishing@aosis.co.za tel: +27 21 975 2602 tel: 086 1000 381 the editorial team of transformation in higher education recognises the value and importance of the peer reviewer in the overall publication process – not only in shaping the individual manuscript, but also in shaping the credibility and reputation of our journal. we are committed to the timely publication of all original, innovative contributions submitted for publication. as such, the identification and selection of reviewers who have expertise and interest in the topics appropriate to each manuscript are essential elements in ensuring a timely, productive peer review process. we would like to take this opportunity to thank all reviewers who participated in shaping this volume of transformation in higher education. we appreciate the time taken to perform your review(s) successfully. anne becker anthony brown chantelle gray crain soudien dennis francis eli bitzer gregory swer jako olivier janien linde jean du toit malesela j. lamola petro du preez suriamurthee maistry sylvan blignaut thomas schlag yolandi coetser http://thejournal.org.za� https://thejournal.org.za https://thejournal.org.za https://thejournal.org.za https://thejournal.org.za https://thejournal.org.za/index.php/the/user https://thejournal.org.za/index.php/the/user mailto:publishing@aosis.co.za http://thejournal.org.za open access page 1 of 1 reviewer acknowledgement acknowledgement to reviewers in an effort to facilitate the selection of appropriate peer reviewers for transformation in higher education, we ask that you take a moment to update your electronic portfolio on https://thejournal.org. za for our files, allowing us better access to your areas of interest and expertise, in order to match reviewers with submitted manuscripts. if you would like to become a reviewer, please visit the journal website and register as a reviewer. to access your details on the website, you will need to follow these steps: 1. log into the online journal at https:// thejournal.org.za 2. in your ‘user home’ [https://thejournal.org. za/index.php/the/user] select ‘edit my profile’ under the heading ‘my account’ and insert all relevant details, bio statement and reviewing interest(s). 3. it is good practice as a reviewer to update your personal details regularly to ensure contact with you throughout your professional term as reviewer to transformation in higher education. please do not hesitate to contact us if you require assistance in performing this task. publisher: publishing@aosis.co.za tel: +27 21 975 2602 tel: 086 1000 381 the editorial team of transformation in higher education recognises the value and importance of the peer reviewer in the overall publication process – not only in shaping the individual manuscript, but also in shaping the credibility and reputation of our journal. we are committed to the timely publication of all original, innovative contributions submitted for publication. as such, the identification and selection of reviewers who have expertise and interest in the topics appropriate to each manuscript are essential elements in ensuring a timely, productive peer review process. we would like to take this opportunity to thank all reviewers who participated in shaping this volume of transformation in higher education. we appreciate the time taken to perform your review(s) successfully. aida c. terblanché-greeff anne becker carolina botha cas wepener christo van der westhuizen christo lombaard dirk h. odendaal eli bitzer enos makhele erasmus masitera franciska bothma hans van deventer ida h.j. sabelis jean du toit johann tempelhoff labby ramrathan lesley j. wood lester shawa liam gearon louis oosthuizen mariana mendonça marilise smurthwaite maureen robinson sandiso bazana sarah godsell savo heleta shan simmonds suriamurthee maistry sylvan blignaut tamara shefer tertia oosthuizen willem van niekerk yolandi coetser zayd waghid http://thejournal.org.za� https://thejournal.org.za https://thejournal.org.za https://thejournal.org.za https://thejournal.org.za https://thejournal.org.za/index.php/the/user https://thejournal.org.za/index.php/the/user mailto:publishing@aosis.co.za the 6_2021_contents.indd http://thejournal.org.za open access table of contents original research why should an ethics of care matter in education? jerome p. joorst transformation in higher education | vol 6 | a127 | 29 october 2021 original research insights on student leadership using social dream drawing: six propositions for the transformation role of south african student leaders neo t. pule, michelle may transformation in higher education | vol 6 | a138 | 14 december 2021 original research reflections on covid-19 and the viability of curriculum adjustment and delivery options in the south african educational space hosea o. patrick, rhoda t.i. abiolu, oluremi a. abiolu transformation in higher education | vol 6 | a101 | 05 may 2021 original research higher education leadership responses applied in two south african comprehensive universities during the covid-19 pandemic: a critical discourse analysis kamvalethu kele, pedro mzileni transformation in higher education | vol 6 | a114 | 19 july 2021 reviewer acknowledgement transformation in higher education | vol 6 | a180 | 21 december 2021 59 68 79 88 97 page i of i table of contents original research colour-blind attitudes of students at the north-west university, potchefstroom campus jaime-lee ayford, johan zaaiman transformation in higher education | vol 6 | a97 | 08 april 2021 original research decolonising an introductory course in practical theology and missiology: some tentative reflections on shifting identities ian a. nell transformation in higher education | vol 6 | a103 | 21 may 2021 original research intersection of ubuntu pedagogy and social justice: transforming south african higher education nomalungelo i. ngubane, manyane makua transformation in higher education | vol 6 | a113 | 30 june 2021 original research exploring the nexus between transdisciplinarity, internationalisation and community service-learning at a university of technology in cape town masilonyane mokhele, nicholas pinfold transformation in higher education | vol 6 | a121 | 18 august 2021 original research the question of access and spatial justice in universities in sub-saharan africa: a capabilities approach nomanesi madikizela-madiya transformation in higher education | vol 6 | a124 | 26 august 2021 original research academic integrity of university students during emergency remote online assessment: an exploration of student voices anne h. verhoef, yolandi m. coetser transformation in higher education | vol 6 | a132 | 27 september 2021 1 13 20 28 37 47 vol 6 (2021) issn: 2415-0991 (print) | issn: 2519-5638 (online)transformation in higher education the 5_2020_contents.indd http://thejournal.org.za open access table of contents original research gender pronoun use in the university classroom: a post-humanist perspective marcos norris, andrew welch transformation in higher education | vol 5 | a79 | 25 may 2020 original research research ethics: examining the tension between principlism and rational self-interest in a neoliberal university context lesley le grange transformation in higher education | vol 5 | a88 | 15 october 2020 original research competency-based theological education in a postcolonial context: towards a transformed competency framework ian a. nell transformation in higher education | vol 5 | a74 | 11 march 2020 28 39 47 page i of i table of contents original research a reflective analysis of articles published in the journal of transformation in higher education (2016–2020): beyond transformation? anne becker transformation in higher education | vol 5 | a98 | 04 december 2020 original research towards a humane community: the search for disability justice in higher education through african moral thinking erasmus masitera transformation in higher education | vol 5 | a85 | 03 november 2020 original research philosophers’ debt to their students: the south african case bernard matolino transformation in higher education | vol 5 | a87 | 31 august 2020 1 9 19 original research the construction of a post-academic university: opportunity or status quo? ida h.j. sabelis transformation in higher education | vol 5 | a94 | 27 november 2020 original research national universities in argentina during the pandemic outbreak mariana mendonça transformation in higher education | vol 5 | a91 | 02 november 2020 56 64 reviewer acknowledgement transformation in higher education | vol 5 | a102 | 21 december 2020 73 vol 5 (2020) issn: 2415-0991 (print) | issn: 2519-5638 (online)transformation in higher education vol 5 (2020) special collection: covid-19 page 1 of 1 reviewer acknowledgement http://thejournal.org.za open access acknowledgement to reviewers in an effort to facilitate the selection of appropriate peer reviewers for transformation in higher education, we ask that you take a moment to update your electronic portfolio on https://thejournal.org. za for our files, allowing us better access to your areas of interest and expertise, in order to match reviewers with submitted manuscripts. if you would like to become a reviewer, please visit the journal website and register as a user. in order to be considered, please email submissions@thejournal. org.za indicating your intention to register as a reviewer for the journal. to access your details on the website, you will need to follow these steps: 1. log into the online journal at https:// thejournal.org.za 2. in your ‘user home’ [https://thejournal.org. za/index.php/the/user] select ‘edit my profile’ under the heading ‘my account’ and insert all relevant details, bio statement and reviewing interest(s). 3. it is good practice as a reviewer to update your personal details regularly to ensure contact with you throughout your professional term as reviewer to transformation in higher education. please do not hesitate to contact us if you require assistance in performing this task. publisher: publishing@aosis.co.za tel: +27 21 975 2602 the editorial team of transformation in higher education recognises the value and importance of the peer reviewer in the overall publication process – not only in shaping the individual manuscript, but also in shaping the credibility and reputation of our journal. we are committed to the timely publication of all original, innovative contributions submitted for publication. as such, the identification and selection of reviewers who have expertise and interest in the topics appropriate to each manuscript are essential elements in ensuring a timely, productive peer review process. we would like to take this opportunity to thank and recognise the following reviewers for their precious time and dedication, regardless of whether the papers they reviewed were finally published. we apologise for any names that have been inadvertently left out. these individuals provided their services to the journal as a reviewer from 01 october 2021 to 30 september 2022. andy carolin anine kriegler anja visser anthony brown bernadette geduld casper lötter celestin mayombe chris p.s. reddy christi van der westhuizen christo van der westhuizen crain soudien divan jagals doh w. nubia frans kruger gavin r. walker heinrich prinsloo ina ter avest jacques rothmann jako olivier jean du toit liam gearon louise postma malve von möllendorff markus r. breines mary ooko maximus m. sefotho mbali mazibuko michael samuel oscar o. eybers pedro mzileni simon b. khoza suriamurthee maistry virimai v. mugobo vusi msiza yusef waghid zayd waghid http://thejournal.org.za� https://thejournal.org.za https://thejournal.org.za mailto:submissions@thejournal.org.za mailto:submissions@thejournal.org.za https://thejournal.org.za https://thejournal.org.za https://thejournal.org.za/index.php/the/user https://thejournal.org.za/index.php/the/user mailto:publishing@aosis.co.za acknowledgement to reviewers the_1(1).indb the editorial team of transformation in higher education recognises the value and importance of the peer reviewer in the overall publication process – not only in shaping the individual manuscript, but also in shaping the credibility and reputation of our journal. we are committed to the timely publication of all original, innovative contributions submitted for publication. as such, the identification and selection of reviewers who have expertise and interest in the topics appropriate to each manuscript are essential elements in ensuring a timely, productive peer review process. we would like to take this opportunity to thank all reviewers who participated in shaping this volume of transformation in higher education: we appreciate the time taken to perform your review/s successfully. in an effort to facilitate the selection of appropriate peer reviewers for transformation in higher education, we ask that you take a moment to update your electronic portfolio on http://www. thejournal.org.za for our files, allowing us better access to your areas of interest and expertise, in order to match reviewers with submitted manuscripts. if you would like to become a reviewer, please visit the journal website and register as a reviewer. to access your details on the website, you will need to follow these steps: 1. log into the online journal at http://www. thejournal.org.za 2. in your ‘user home’ [http://www.thejournal. org.za/index.php/the/ user] select ‘edit my profile’ under the heading ‘my account’ and insert all relevant details, bio statement and reviewing interest/s. 3. it is good practice as a reviewer to update your personal details regularly to ensure contact with you throughout your professional term as reviewer to the transformation in higher education. please do not hesitate to contact us if you require assistance in performing this task. publisher: publishing@aosis.co.za tel: +27 21 975 2602 fax: +27 21 975 4635 a. becker andré goodrich annamagriet de wet brigitte smit c. herman c. wolhuter chris reddy christo lombaard clive kronenberg cornelia roux d. postma heid leganger-krogstad ian a. nell j. orchard j. jarvis josef de beer joseph divala juliet perumal k. maree kobus lombard l.j. wood merridy wilson-strydom n. carrim n. davids r. albertyn s. maistry stefan ramaekers tilly moodley w. vass open access page iii of iii reviewer acknowledgementpage 1 of 1 transformation in higher education http://www.thejournal.org.za http://www.thejournal.org.za� http://www.thejournal.org.za� http://www.thejournal.org.za� http://www.thejournal.org.za� http://www.thejournal.org.za/index.php/the/user http://www.thejournal.org.za/index.php/the/user http://www.thejournal.org.za/index.php/the/user mailto:publishing@aosis.co.za http://www.thejournal.org.za� abstract introduction research methods and design paulo freire’s discourse of deliberative dialogical education theory deliberative dialogical theory application deliberative and decolonized implications in teaching and learning jürgen habermas’s epistemic affirmation of the deliberative dialogical theory in education conclusion acknowledgements references about the author(s) doniwen pietersen department of old and new testament, faculty of theology and religion, university of the free state, bloemfontein, south africa citation pietersen, d., 2022, ‘engaging paulo freire on deliberative democracy: dialogical pedagogy, deliberation and inclusion in a transformative higher education online education space’, transformation in higher education 7(0), a211. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v7i0.211 original research engaging paulo freire on deliberative democracy: dialogical pedagogy, deliberation and inclusion in a transformative higher education online education space doniwen pietersen received: 19 may 2022; accepted: 12 sept. 2022; published: 07 dec. 2022 copyright: © 2022. the author licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract an effective education system is an environment where students feel cared for, included and are able to deliver critical dialogical input in their learnings on learning management systems (lms) platforms. the article aims to epitomizes quality education where skills, values and equal distribution of resources can be accessed by all. this includes effectively trained lecturers who manages diversity and teach effectively, to foster success, and to provide a safe and friendly classroom environment for students. this article comes from a larger work done on how to administer clear dialogical and caring aims (policy) in higher online education spaces where students grow holistically and critically. the paper focuses on the kind of space lecturers need to create online in-order to provide students the opportunity to be part of a caring teaching and learning process in order to form part of an active citizenry beyond their immediate context. this article employed a qualitative research methodology, where a questionnaire was used for lecturers at the faculty of theology and religion at the university of the free state. these questionnaires covered 30 lecturers who made use of the university’s lms’ platform. the data was analyzed through the interpretivist paradigm. the finding in this article reveal that the little to no cultivation of critical pedagogical action vis-à-vis the enactment of activism and justice in and through higher education in the context of real pedagogical action in online (lms) higher education spaces are important. the study is significant because it emphasizes a topic that are helpful in understanding how critical pedagogical action through freire’s dialogical theory in the online (lms) higher education platforms ought to be engaged. contribution: the contribution in this article is an amendment to freire’s pedagogy frame work framed with the faculty of theology and religion and extending his notion of dialogical engagement to deliberative action in the online (lms) higher education space is critical tenant for student wholistic growth. keywords: paulo freire’s dialogical pedagogy; deliberation theory; learning management systems (lms); transformation; higher education; teaching and learning; inclusion. introduction several factors have affected university students, including those at the university of the free state (faculty of theology and religion), as have many other universities and faculties. these factors include the fourth industrial revolution, coronavirus disease 2019 (covid-19), and volatile and uncertain learning and teaching environments. using lms platforms such as blackboard and involving students with a critical and dialogical pedagogical need to critically engage could positively impact students’ academic success. moreover, when students participate in this: most people would probably agree that student success is about more than just academic performance. it relates to attributes, knowledge and skills students develop during their time in higher education. it also relates to these factors’ relevance to today and tomorrow’s real world. as a result of the socio-political history of our country, south africa also entails a sense of social justice manifested by a need to close achievement gaps, diversify access, and focus on developing critical, democratic citizens. (loots 2021:7) discussions of this kind can provide insights into how faculties at higher learning institutions can respond more effectively to the ever-changing external and internal worlds of learning and teaching. lecturers may even be able to use these insights to engage students socially and psychologically so that they can thrive in their studies. the centre for learning and teaching (ctl) and the students at the university of the free state, through the work of loots (2021), confirm this by positing that: the relationship between students and their lecturers is arguably the most important factor contributing to their success. lecturers play an essential role in assisting entering students to become accustomed to a new social and academic environment. as well as being accessible and relatable, lecturers are friendly and knowledgeable. students often comment on the value of residences as a primary source of support, as well as the disadvantage of not having access to this resource if they live off-campus. day residences on the bloemfontein campus were also recognized as valuable peer support structures by students who participated actively. lecturers, either as tutors or mentors, play an important role in managing expectations and assisting students in achieving their learning goals. in many cases, the relationship with a lecturer is a student’s entry point into academic disciplines, and the careers associated with these disciplines, as well as their primary connection to the institution. there is no doubt that lecturers can create an environment in which students feel academically guided, informed about how to get help, how to deal with institutional rules, and introduced to the interesting developments in the field. often, the ‘village’ of support and administrative staff develops and maintains support structures for students and lecturers that work behind the scenes. all students mentioned the value of academic and non-academic support structures that helped them succeed, even if they did not mention them specifically as contributors to their success. to ensure that students are successful in their educational journeys, all staff needs to have a profound understanding of and empathy for their students’ educational journeys. (p. 45) the article examines how well-trained lecturers and teachers are able to manage their pedagogy of engagement through teaching effectively by evaluating their learning management systems (lms) skills, values and equal distribution of resources when it comes to teaching and learning. aside from ensuring a safe and friendly learning environment, the goal is to facilitate the success of students. the article also discusses the possibility of providing students with a learning experience that encourages them to become active citizens. the methodological framework and the theoretical frameworks of freire and others underlying the study will be discussed. afterwards, the article will describe the proposed teaching approaches and conclude with some conclusions. research methods and design the methodology employed in this article has chosen ‘an interpretive perspective’ to critically engage and discuss how lecturers include students in the teaching and learning on online lms platforms such as blackboard. the article has utilised the ‘conceptual research methodology’ from which to move and understand deliberations between students and lecturers regarding this, including how students are cared for in the learning and teaching process. scholars who have written extensively on these issues are paulo freire, jurgen habermas and yusuf waghid, among others. the lenses of these scholars are foregrounded in this research in order to make critical deductions. if one considers this combined approach as one from which to extrapolate a conceptual study, the process of developing a systematic theoretical foundation for engagement becomes evident. terre blanche, durrheim and painter (2006) expressly agree with this paradigm of doing research. they posit that: conceptual paradigms act as systems of interrelated ontological, epistemological and methodological assumptions. in any formal research, a paradigm confines the research and allows for structure throughout the process, from the very beginning to the conclusion. in other word, a paradigm guides the researcher’s actions and ensures his commitment to a particular method. (p. 40) this in turn will heighten the intended purpose of a critical discussion, and it lays the foundation for lecturers and students in the teaching process to come up with meaningful and impactful change. the aforementioned scholars and their perspectives on issues of teaching and learning, deliberative pedagogy, democracy and ‘care and associated work (ethics, justice) in higher education’ (joorst 2021:1) have been solicited to help in engaging the minimal effort required to put greater emphasis on the critical relationship between lecturer and student on all learning and teaching platforms, but more specifically on online lms platforms, which have now become the norm in educational spaces in the post-covid 19 period. paulo freire’s discourse of deliberative dialogical education theory the methodology of brazilian educationalist and to some extent theological thinker, paulo freire, has a strong theological frame of reference when he reflects on teaching and learning settings (hazelton & haigh 2010). his theory of dialogue in educational situations can be summarised as ‘the encounter of men, mediated by the world, to pronounce it, not exhausting, therefore, in the i-you relation’ (freire 1972; heidemann & almeida 2011). for freire, any learning and teaching setting, including online platforms such as blackboard, needs to fulfil: [a] list of preconditions for this dialogue as a creative act: a deep love of the world and people, humility, an intense faith in people, in their capacity to do and create, a climate of trust, a move to hope and critical thinking. (streck 2017:55) freire’s (1972) modus operandi is a methodological approach that is effective, albeit not widespread. in this methodological strategy, the ‘culture circle’ is used, in which the teacher and facilitator and student create reflections and discussions about reality and collectively seek to unveil and identify the possibilities of learning. the ‘culture circle’ is a concept that speaks to the ‘critical consciousness of inequities and addresses their causes and insisting on transforming their social and their political circumstances’ (zulu 2020:252), to be able to be part of the online blackboard teaching and learning process. this would be in line with the perception of the university of the free state (ufs) of what good education ought to be. therefore, it is important for transformative higher education institutions to tap into this ‘action-reflection process’. this process lays bare how students positively and actively participate in an online learning process, even on a virtual platform such as blackboard, where the stories of students and who they are as persons from different backgrounds lend richness to the learning and teaching process (longo 2020:1–2). this ultimately allows all stakeholders in the learning and teaching process to strengthen and modify these practices (davids & waghid 2018:221). freire’s methodology is an approach that encourages a ‘reflective process’, where both lecturers and students from university faculties, which also include the faculty of theology and religion, are able to value the cultural and historical sources of individuals, which can be revealed in ‘culture circles’, which davids and waghid (2018) refer to as ‘active citizenry’. through the journey mapping project of loots (2021), it has been the aim to take a step back and look at the entire educational journey of ufs students – from their first interaction with the university, to getting ready to transition out of university and into the world of work or pursuing postgraduate qualifications. such an analysis allows us to see which aspects contribute to students’ success, at which times, and how these factors interact with each other over time. this, in turn, enables the university of the free state to align its curricular and co-curricular initiatives with students’ experiences, which includes not only caring for students outside of just assessments and content, but also allowing them to be co-deliberators of learning and teaching initiatives online that would have an impact on their success. to put this explicitly within a framework of theological and caring language, which would be important for transformative higher education institutions, i borrow from the words of habermas (2006), who posits in an interview where he was asked his opinion on the love for education (wisdom). he asserts: for the normative self-understanding of modernity, christianity has functioned as more than just a precursor or catalyst. universalistic egalitarianism, from which sprang the ideals of freedom and a collective life in solidarity, the autonomous conduct of life and emancipation, the individual morality of conscience, human rights and democracy, is the direct legacy of the judaic ethic of justice and the christian ethic of love. this legacy, substantially unchanged, has been the object of a continual critical reappropriation and reinterpretation. up to this very day there is no alternative to it. and in light of the current challenges of a post-national constellation, we must draw sustenance now, as in the past, from this substance. everything else is idle postmodern talk. (p. 149) in the above statement, habermas accentuates that any ethos, including any theological and religious ethos, climaxes ought to embrace education (teaching and learning). more importantly, the critical and dialogical and deliberative online teaching and learning platforms such as blackboard form part of the education process, and therefore, all stakeholders in such a process should: … [a]lways communicate and debate to each other in order to arrive at better rationality for the community. communication must be constant in the public sphere, an integration and inclusion of cultures and religion so that one understands each other, and one can learn from the other. without communication, rationality and common good is impossible. (ruga 2014:11) the three aforementioned theories in the forms of freire’s dialogical and critical pedagogy, the deliberation theory and habermas’s educational ethic of care and inclusion all intersect within the discussion of transformative higher education institutions, in order to necessitate fair action and redress in the teaching and learning process. this means that true transformation in online teaching and learning can take place. this can be described by freire (2018) as: … [r]eflection and action in close interaction are the necessary conditions for dialogical action and if one of them is prevented the word becomes an empty word, one which cannot denounce the world for denunciation is impossible without commitment to transform, and there is no transformation without action. (p. 87) deliberative dialogical theory application the teaching and learning processes of a transformative higher education institution such as the ufs are based on a system that aims to produce students who are able to identify, analyse and solve everyday problems. students must be able to think critically and creatively, both inside and outside of their discipline of study. once they have completed their studies, they must be able to take responsibility for their own actions in life. they must be able to manage themselves and their activities effectively and responsibly. in order to successfully develop, they must be able to communicate well using language skills, either visual or symbolic (bloch 2005:10). the efficient administration of instruction and learning in higher education ought to consider the appropriation of the democratisation of students’ learning to dialogue with their lecturers (jansen 2005:22). consequently, this will allow ‘students to demonstrate an understanding of the world as a whole and as a set of related systems’ (mashiyi 2000) by recognising the content learned in their courses. thus, the proper use of blackboard can be applied to the teaching and learning process, but also to how students should conduct themselves further afield. this means that lecturers and an lms such as blackboard ought to be viewed as critical tools in the development and growth of ufs students in general and faculty of theology and religion students in particular. the policy of the faculty of theology and religion provides an example of how technology and blackboard are critical for the learning process: the covid-19 pandemic and resulting remote learning response has changed the way we think about students’ academic and non-academic experiences and how technology could support and enhance these processes. for example, using technology to get the right information to students at the right time could include video clips linking career choices with study paths, or ‘how to’ clips guiding students through the most important hurdles in the learning and teaching process. in addition, online platforms that can integrate technology from chatbots and other avenues to create better support, could be carefully designed to provide students with learning and teaching support and other transitional guidance. a dedicated online presence, continuous orientation page can ensure that students know where to find important information shared with them [in the learning and teaching process]. (loots 2021:46) moreover, the lack of a strong emphasis on the importance of making connections and having critical engagement between students and lecturers in higher education institutions plays a vital role in mediating students’ expectations and learning experiences. it is the experience of many students in the faculty that there exists ‘a lack of communication from lecturers, as well as frustrations with a general lack of interactive communication between students, lecturers and peers’ (ufs centre for teaching and learning 2020:8–9). many students find it difficult to engage in online platforms with lecturers. this ultimately creates a culture of exclusion. some students actually verbalised this sense of exclusion from their teaching and learning process. their responses can be summarised from a ufs institutional report called ‘emergency remote teaching at the ufs’. when students were surveyed, they said things like: lack of communication from lecturers: we don’t get clear communication from the offset from lecturers, i still haven’t received any emails from lecturers for 3 modules second semester so i have no clue what the plans going forward is. some of the lecturers barely responded to concerns and would not reply to our messages. we would wait 2–3 days for a reply from them and some were very helpful. (ufs centre for teaching and learning 2020:9) the proliferation of students feeling excluded from the online (blackboard) teaching and learning process can also be particularly ascribed to lecturers’ lack of effective use of, and development and training in, the ufs learning system, blackboard. consequently, this then adds to the lack of creating and enabling an online environment that delivers quality students. deliberative and decolonized implications in teaching and learning the work of freire (1972) can be used to summarize the concepts of dialogical and critical engagement, care, and socially just pedagogies, who notes that: … [d]ialogue cannot be reduced to the act of one person ‘depositing’ ideas in another, nor can it become a simple exchange of ideas to be ‘consumed’ by the participants in a discussion. (p. 61) according to freire’s idea, educators and facilitators cannot simply consider themselves as people who force their opinions on those who are less educated or as passive recipients of information waiting to ‘digest’ it without question. this would be the result of deliberately ignoring the voices of the students on the online teaching and learning blackboard platform. this should never be the case, even if it means drawing stakeholders such as students out of their comfort zones (freire 2000). the following quotation serves to clarify the fundamental point stated by freire et al. (2005), which is truly the goal of this article: without humility, one can hardly listen with respect to those one judges to be too far below one’s own level of competence. it is indeed necessary, however, that this love be an ‘armed love’, the fighting love of those convinced of the right and the duty to fight, to denounce, and to announce. it is this form of love that is indispensable to the progressive educator and that people must all learn. tolerance is another virtue. without it no serious pedagogical work is possible; without it no authentic democratic experience is viable; without it all progressive educational practice denies itself. tolerance is not, however, the irresponsible position of those who play the game of make-believe. the act of tolerating requires a climate in which limits may be established, in which there are principles to be respected. that is why tolerance is not coexistence with the intolerable. (p. 15) moreover, lecturers have a lot of responsibility for ensuring that all parties involved in the process of any online education platform are included and that, they also need to be progressive in how they use and perform teaching and learning tasks on teaching and learning platforms like blackboard. adams and waghid (2005), in relation to the critical theory of dialogue of freire, use dialogical pedagogy to frame critical engagement of the teaching and learning process (dhungana 2021). in other words, students, as well as lecturers, add value to the learning and teaching process of lms platforms such as blackboard, and their input must be considered of primary importance. teaching and learning is a process of education. however, it is also measurable. according to peters (1966), for proper education to take place on any platform including lms platforms such as blackboard, being measurable must be central if teachers and facilitators are to be impactful. peters (1966), suggests: [t]hat ‘education’ implies the transmission of what is worthwhile to those who become committed to it; (ii) that ‘education’ must involve knowledge and understanding and some kind of cognitive perspective, which are not inert; (iii) that ‘education’ at least rules out some procedures of transmission, on the grounds that they lack willingness and voluntariness [on the part of the learner]. (p. 45) peters’ view that it is critical for a teacher and lecturer to also foreground the dialogical and deliberative pedagogies is noteworthy, and also that teaching and learning and education in general are transmitted by teachers and lecturers and that these also translate into how prepared they are in the use of learning tools such as blackboard. not only this, but also critically important is how students perceive the actual use of such tools in the knowledge and understanding process. moreover, biesta (2013) highlights what the underlining antithesis to the teaching and learning process is: the dialogical approach, both approaches ultimately rely on the possibility of truth and, more specifically, truth uncontaminated by power… this truth is learned from (and thus given by) the teacher; in the dialogical approach, this truth is discovered through a collective learning process. that the monological approach relies on the idea of truth uncontaminated by power has to do with the fact that emancipation is seen as a process of overcoming ideological distortions. here, emancipation operates as a process of demystification. in the dialogical approach, emancipation is the process that restores true human existence – or, in freirean language, true human ‘praxis’. (p. 11) therefore, the relationship between student facilitator or lecturer and how they relate and collaborate in the aforementioned process needs to be carefully considered, especially if the powers of lecturers and students are different from a power relation perspective (joorst 2021:6). the attempt to achieve this can be summarised by greene (1986:430), when she asserts that ‘[teaching and learning is a] joined to justice or equity process’. this process ought to prompt students, as well as lecturers, to question meanings and ideas, to imagine alternative possibilities and outcomes, to modify practical judgements and to develop respect and critical engagement in their field of study. in this way, critical assignation and deliberation is ‘unhindered communicative liberty that involves both rational opinion’ and wilful allowance of information, ‘which can almost always potentially lead to a transformation in people’s preferences and perceptions of their learning’ (adams & waghid 2005:28). before going any further, it is important to justify why and how the research problem arises out of this study. in other words, what are the factors that contribute to the research problem? because my experience is based in the faculty of theology and religion, i believe that the research problem unwittingly forms part of the ufs, and the ufs, like many transforming higher education institutions, also unwittingly forms part of an unevenly distributed education and training system that has too many barriers to growth. it is my conviction that quality education ought to be evenly distributed and should be available to all south african students regardless of background or location. therefore, educational entities such as the faculty of theology and religion, and many other transforming higher education institutions, need to set equitable teaching and learning standards for every student coming through their halls, and they also have the responsibility to create teaching and learning outcomes that are achievable in students ‘becoming’, as a means to empower students to be part of their own learning process. and, when setting the content and standards for teaching and learning online programmes such as blackboard, it should be kept in mind that all students need to be developed to reach their full potential as persons, not just for academic brilliance but also further afield (bloch 2005:9). factors that sustain excellent dialogical outcomes for a transformative higher education institution’s teaching and learning plans ought to include the views of students in the lms process such as blackboard, particularly when it comes to indigenous knowledge, as their views form part of their educational formation. if this is done well, students will feel that they have been included, and this will create depth and meaning. thus, higher education institutions would have wholly developed students that are both globally and locally engaged and not be restricted by geographical borders (bloch 2005:10). this problematisation can only be addressed by lecturers reviving the ‘eventalization of the intentional emancipation of education [online teaching and learning syst ems such as blackboard]’ (foucault 1991:41). and the way this could play out can be explained by foucault (1991) as follows: critique doesn’t have to be the premise of a deduction which concludes this then is what needs to be done. it should be an instrument for those who fight, those who resist and refuse what is. its use should be in processes of conflict and confrontation, essays in refusal. it doesn’t have to lay down the law for the law. it isn’t a stage of programming. it is a challenge directed to what is. (p. 12) this discourse does not allow the possibility for any individual or group of students to be excluded from critical and dialogical and deliberative educational matters that interest them and that determine their future; this means they critically engage in the teaching and learning process. after all, the rights of students to participate in deliberation and critical and dialogical engagement are legally institutionalised and should be measured against the effective use of teaching and learning tools, such as blackboard. this means that ‘each individual student has an equal opportunity to be heard during the deliberative and dialogue process’ (adams & waghid 2005), which in turn means that the viewpoints of the minority are heard, and the domination of the majority is limited. however, in order for critical and dialogical engagement and deliberation to be effective and truly beneficial, certain crucial aspects need to be constantly monitored from the perspective of the lecturer when using a teaching and learning platform, such as blackboard (bloch 2005:10). jürgen habermas’s epistemic affirmation of the deliberative dialogical theory in education one essential element pointed out by jürgen habermas, who offers great insights into the dialogical theory, from the perspective of how the theory of deliberation adds to the discussion. using habermas as a theorist juxtaposes the dialogical and deliberation pedagogies because they both foreground the conversation between the transformative higher education institutions and freire, because both entities’ ‘purpose of education is to serve and help develop a civilised and just society, through the development of well-read, thoughtful, scholarly individuals with a well-developed capacity for independent critical thought’ (gray & collison 2002). dialogical ‘consensus ought to grow out of deliberation’ (adams & waghid 2005), in order for it to be effective in learning and teaching. susen (2018) accurately summarises the habermasian view when she posits: every time we engage in the co-existential exercise of seeking mutual understanding (verständigung), we anticipate that we are capable of reaching agreements (inverständnisse). put differently, our communicative ability to understand one another equips us with the deliberative capacity to reach agreements with one another. thus, the emancipatory potential of communicative action manifests itself not only in our ‘weak’ orientation towards intelligibility (verständlichkeit) but also in our ‘strong’ orientation towards consensus-formation (konsensbildung). language use, irrespective of its quasi-transcendental features, is embedded in the pragmatics of interaction. symbolic forms emerge in relation to spatio-temporally contingent modes of existence, whose political constitution is reflected in the socio-ontological significance of discursively motivated practices, which are vital to the construction of democracy. (p. 43) according to habermas (2006), harmony should not be a qualification for dialogue, but rather it should reflect the autonomous treatise of knowledgeable discussion responsive to the weights that are responsible for vigorous community. habermas (2006) also states: [critical and dialogical theory] necessitates the deliberative paradigm as it offers as its main empirical point of reference a democratic process [in teaching and learning], which is supposed to generate legitimacy through a procedure of opinion and will formation that grants (a) publicity and transparency for the deliberative process, (b) inclusion and equal opportunity for participation, and (c) a justified presumption for reasonable outcomes. (p. 314) consequently, an expansive explanation of ‘democratic citizenship’ pursues enduring ‘deliberation’ so that it is able ‘to identify the better argument between majorities and minorities after the parties have temporarily reached a compromise for the sake of progress’ as they learn and participate together (waghid 2005). habermas’s perception of democratic citizenship in online teaching and learning (education process) has important implications for an institution such as a university (warren 2016:309), in particular the faculty of theology and religion at the ufs. conclusion students today have been impacted by their external environment, such as the fourth industrial revolution and covid-19, which has led to a volatile and uncertain learning and teaching environment. transformative higher education institutions’ use of an lms platform such as blackboard and the inclusion of students from a dialogical pedagogical point of view may serve as a valuable conversation with freire’s approach and adams and waghid’s theory of deliberation. because of the covid-19 pandemic ‘emergency critical dialogical changes in teaching and learning but has also created rare opportunities to think differently about the assumptions and processes that have become the norm’ (higher education and training 2020:10), for the interaction between the lecturers and students on online lms platforms such as blackboard. the necessitated move to ‘remote learning’ (akuffo & budu 2019:1) in higher education institutions should allow differentiation, but has also precipitated a relationship of dialogical, critical, deliberative care, as well as an ethics of care, in the online teaching and learning process, where student and lecturer are involved. for us at the ufs, it may help to acknowledge that these themes go together, and that they appropriate the purpose of this research in seeing the importance of identifying ‘how students are accessing and using different forms of learning materials, and to explore how students’ experiences’ of inclusion and exclusion during the current context (higher education and training 2020). lecturers need to think about including students more from a dialogical and critical perspective, around ‘policy and practice in more digitally advanced teaching and learning spaces’ such as what blackboard and other lmss may offer, because this is not negotiable if we are to remain in the business of creating quality, growing and successful students and graduates (higher education and training 2020:10). it is also important to note that student success at universities has increased significantly in the past few years. together with the surge in this research, with a particular focus on the lens of deliberation and creating relationships in the online space, it is also important to reflect on the efforts of institutions to help students transition, and successfully navigate their studies, into the future and far afield. however, what this research reframes is an invaluable contribution to our contextual understanding of student success and lecturer relations, which in turn will create the transformation of higher education spaces. acknowledgements this article is partially based on the author’s thesis of the degree of doctor of philosophy in the faculty of education, university of free state, south africa. competing interests the author declares that they have no financial or personal relationships that may have inappropriately influenced them in writing this article. author’s contribution d.p. is the sole author of this research article. ethical considerations ethical clearance to conduct this study was obtained from the university of the free state and research ethics committee (ufs hsd2022/0045/22). funding information this work is based on a research project supported by the centre of teaching and learning at the university of the free state. data availability data sharing is not applicable to this article as no new data were created or analysed in this study. disclaimer the views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any affiliated agency of the author. references adams, f. & waghid, y., 2005, ‘in defence of deliberative democracy: challenging less democratic school governing body practices’, south african journal of education 25(1), 25–33. akuffo, m.n. & budu, s., 2019, ‘use of electronic resources by students in a premier postgraduate theological university in ghana’, south african journal of information management 21(1), 1–9. https://doi.org/10.4102/sajim.v21i1.1026 biesta, g., 2013, ‘interrupting the politics of learning’, power and education 5(1), 4–15. https://doi.org/10.2304/power.2013.5.1.4 bloch, g., 2005, building education beyond crisis: development today, development bank of southern africa (dbsa), gauteng. davids, n. & waghid, y., 2018, ‘coda: democratic citizenship education and the notion of “bare life”’, in y. waghid & n. davids (eds.), african democratic citizenship education revisited. palgrave studies in global citizenship education and democracy, pp. 221–230, palgrave macmillan, london. dhungana, p., 2021, ‘a critical-appreciative approach as/for transformative professional development’, international journal of multidisciplinary perspectives in higher education 6(2), 156–181. foucault, m., 1991, ‘questions of method’, in g. burchell, c. gordon & p. miller (eds.), the foucault effect: studies in governmentality, pp. 73–86, university of chicago press, chicago, il. freire, p., 1972, pedagogy of the oppressed, transl. m.b. ramos, herder, london. freire, p., 2000, pedagogy of freedom: ethics, democracy, and civic courage, rowman & littlefield publishers, lanham, md. freire, p., 2018, pedagogy of the oppressed, 50th anniversary edition, bloomsbury academic, london. freire, p., macedo, d., koike, d., oliveira, a. & freire, a.m.a., 2005, teachers as cultural workers: letters to those who dare teach, routledge, london. gray, r. & collison, d., 2002, ‘can’t see the wood for the trees, can’t see the trees for the numbers? accounting education, sustainability and the public interest’, critical perspectives on accounting 13(5–6), 797–836. https://doi.org/10.1006/cpac.2002.0554 greene, m., 1986, ‘in search of a critical pedagogy’, harvard educational review 56(4), 427–442. https://doi.org/10.17763/haer.56.4.010756lh36u16213 habermas, j., 2006, ‘political communication in media society: does democracy still enjoy an epistemic dimension? the impact of normative theory on empirical research’, communication theory 16(4), 411–426. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2885.2006.00280.x hazelton, j. & haigh, m., 2010, ‘incorporating sustainability into accounting curricula: lessons learnt from an action research study’, accounting education: an international journal 19 (1–2), 159–178. https://doi.org/10.1080/09639280802044451 heidemann, i. & almeida, m., 2011, ‘friere’s dialogic concept enables family health programme teams to incorporate health promotion’, public health nursing 28(2), 159–167. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1525-1446.2010.00898.x higher education and training., 2020, emergency remote teaching at the ufs: an analysis of the #ufsteachon response, university of the free state centre for teaching and learning, bloemfontein. jansen, j.d., 2005, ‘image-ing teachers: policy images and teacher identity in south african classrooms’, south african journal of education 21(4), 243–245. joorst, j.p., 2021, ‘why should ethics of care matter in education?’, transformation in higher education 6, a127. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v6i0.127 longo, n.v., 2020, ‘deliberative pedagogy in the community: connecting deliberative dialogue, community engagement and democratic education’, journal of public deliberation 9(2), 1–18. https://doi.org/10.16997/jdd.172 loots, s., 2021, mapping ufs student’s journeys: what works for student success, centre of learning and teaching report, university of the free state, bloemfontein. mashiyi, l.n., 2000, ‘can old history textbooks be used to promote the new democratic ideals in the curriculum 2005?’, phd thesis, university of the witwatersrand. peters, r.s., 1966, ethics and education, george allen and unwin, london. pietersen, d., 2022, ‘exploring deliberative democracy in the higher education online space: towards dialogical and caring pedagogies’, phd thesis, dept. of education, university of free state. ruga, l.r., 2014, ‘an assessment on reason and religion in jürgen habermas’ philosophy’, phd thesis, university of santo tomas, manila. streck, d.r., 2017, ‘pedagogies of participation: a methodological framework for comparative studies’, in t. n’dri assié-lumumba (ed.), global comparative education: journal of the wcces, pp. 35–49, world council of comparative education societies (wcces), ottawa. susen, s., 2018, ‘jürgen habermas: between democratic deliberation and deliberative democracy’, in r. wodak & b. forchtner (eds.), the routledge handbook of language and politics, pp. 43–66, routledge, london. terr blanche, m., durrheim, k. & painter, d., 2006, research in practice: applied methods for social sciences, 2nd edn., uct press, cape town. university of the free state centre for teaching and learning, 2020, emergency remote teaching at the ufs: an analysis of the #ufsteachon response, university of the free state centre for teaching and learning, bloemfontein. waghid, y., 2005, ‘on the possibility of cultivating justice through teaching and learning: an argument for civic reconciliation in south africa’, policy futures in education 3(2), 132–140. warren, m.j.c., 2016, ‘teaching with technology: using digital humanities to engage student learning’, teaching theology & religion 19(3), 309–319. https://doi.org/10.1111/teth.12343 zulu, n.t., 2020, ‘the struggles and the triumphs of south african black women professors’, south african journal of higher education 35(6), 239–257. https://doi.org/10.20853/35-6-4272 abstract introduction situating he and the #mustfall protests: a statement on the inability to start new disruption and enframing: #rainbowisdead and the protest of shame loss and fall: ontological othering, the negative container and #feesmustfall enlightenment: violence, subjectification, #transformation and #hope concluding remarks acknowledgements references footnotes about the author(s) anne becker department of curriculum studies, university of stellenbosch, south africa citation becker, a., 2017, ‘rage, loss and other footpaths: subjectification, decolonisation and transformation in higher education’, transformation in higher education 2(0), a23. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v2i0.23 original research rage, loss and other footpaths: subjectification, decolonisation and transformation in higher education anne becker received: 10 may 2017; accepted: 15 june 2017; published: 22 aug. 2017 copyright: © 2017. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract the need to transform higher education in south africa is indisputable. this article explores how the recent #mustfall protests, as an event, could inform transformation. an event follows three phases: reframing (shattering the frame through which we understand reality), the fall (the loss of a primordial unity which is a retroactive illusion) and enlightenment (subjectivity itself as an eventuality). in conclusion, i pose that a shift towards who comes into presence in higher education and not (a pre-determined) what comes into presence, could provide possible footpaths to decolonialisation and transformation. through processes of subjectification, the subject(s) of higher education could reframe historic ontological othering and actively take part in the process(es) of becoming and being human in higher education in (post)colonial south africa. introduction ‘is reconciliation in fact where we want to go? and even if it is must the road lead us so directly there? must we travel always and only on what we might want to think about as ‘the national road?’ is it not possible to turn off, to take an arterial route, perhaps even to visit some other destinations first? what about the road to rage? what about the barely visible footpath to sorrow, mourning and grief?’ thomas (2012) davids (2016:1) argues that ‘universities, in their multiplex roles of social, political, epistemological and capital reform, are by their constitution expected to symbolise and enact transformation’. although the need for transformation in higher education (hereafter he) in south africa seems indisputable, there seems to be a wide range of views on the nature, purpose(s) and process(es) of that transformation (davids 2016; du preez, simmonds & verhoef 2016; heleta 2016; ramathan 2016; waghid 2016). this article explores the perspective on transformation the recent #mustfall protests, as an event (žižek 2014), could provide. the issues that led to the protests are complex. du preez, simmonds and chetty (2017) argue that a proper and full analysis can only be done after the discursive environments of the protests, as well as after the economic, political, psychosocial and historical intersections that influenced the protests have been explored. clearly, this would be a major undertaking. the exploration in this article is limited to six themes suggested by godsell et al. (2016:115–120), after documenting and analysing the #mustfall protests. their analysis includes data collected from acts of resistance (occupying, barricading, marches, toyi-toying, throwing stones and burning institutional structures and vehicles), and the use of social media (twitter, facebook), printed documents (press statements, court documents, open letters, worker documents, formal agreements) and art and music (fine art, poetry, theatre, music, songs, graffiti). the themes are: violence, #feesmustfall, protest of shame, #rainbowisdead, #hope and #transformation. i explore these themes in relation to žižek’s (2014) conceptualisation of an event, grounding subjectification in colonial contexts in the theories of fanon (1967, 2005) and biesta (2013). the notion of an event, for example, education as an event (biesta 2013) and ethics as an event (badiou 2002), has proved a useful lens. however, i have chosen to use žižek’s notion of the event and the possibilities of transformation it presents to shed light on the current protest movement in south african he (cf. du preez et al. 2017). for žižek (2014:5), an event can be material or immaterial, artistic, scientific, political and intimate. i explore the #feesmustfall protests as a sociopolitical and educational event. at first glance, an event is ‘the effect that seems to exceed its causes’ (žižek 2014:3). one might argue that the literal ‘falling’ of the rhodes statue and the effects did just that. the unexpected and unprecedented rapid spread, energy and power unleashed by the #mustfall protests came as a shock to many south africans. finding terms to describe the #mustfall phenomenon presented a challenge (booysen 2016:2). scholars positioned the student actions as uprisings or revolts. the students themselves used the term ‘movement’. the movement includes protests such as: #rhodesmustfall, #rhodessowhite, #openstellenbosch, #transformwits, #kinggeorgemustfall, #thestatuemustfall, #feesmustfall, #nationalshutdown, #feeswillfall, #ancmustfall, #feeshavefallen, #rapemustfall and #patriachymustfall. i refer to the #mustfall phenomenon as collective (although differentiated) protests. in žižek’s view, an event follows three phases: reframing (shattering the frame through which we understand reality) (žižek 2014:10), the fall (the loss of a primodal unity which is a retroactive illusion) (žižek 2014:49) and enlightenment (subjectivity itself as an eventuality) (žižek 2014:76). in exploring subjectification, biesta (2013:142) uses the notion of ‘coming into presence’. to ‘come into presence’ describes the subject of education in relation to who comes into presence rather than what is to come, ought to come or is allowed to come into presence (biesta 2013:142). this notion of who comes into presence is important in the context of transformation in he. ‘coming into presence’ concerns the subject(s) of higher education – not the nature, purpose(s) or process(es) of transformation. significantly, subjectification is relational. the subject ‘comes into presence’ in the presence of others (ibid). in a similar vein, fanon (1967:206) argues that the ideal of subjectification, inherent to freedom, can only be reached in the presence of, and for all of, humanity. it is important to point out that although the #mustfall protests have been described as a turning point in the south african sociopolitical and he contexts, it is not possible to predict the full effect of the protests. although the protests unleashed a new form of social and political power by challenging political order, institutional power and the social fibre of universities and society (booysen 2016:22), the nature of an event is that it changes the principles of change (žižek 2014:3). this article therefore does not aim to speculate on the effects and consequences of the #mustfall protests. its aim is to explore the possibilities they create. i pose the following question: what possibilities do the #mustfall protests, as an event (žižek 2014), present for rethinking transformation in south african he? before exploring the #mustfall protests in reference to the three stages of an event, i situate he and the #mustfall protests within global and local intersections. situating he and the #mustfall protests: a statement on the inability to start new south africa’s #mustfall protests are positioned within intersections of global and local youth protests. in recent years, social critics, scholars and observers have been struck by the level and intensity of youth rebellion(s) all over the globe. in countries such as south africa, sri lanka, kenya, venezuela, chile and egypt, it seems as if the ‘lost generation’ has risen from the dead (jaramillo 2015:93). one of the reasons suggested for this phenomenon is a global revolt against liberal capitalist relations of exploitation, alienation and social and ecological devastation (ibid). although the #mustfall protests during 2015–2016 in south africa intersect with global protests against neo-liberalism, capitalism, social inequality, lack of access to higher education and sociopolitical alienation, factors specific to the #mustfall protests include coloniality and humanist othering, racism, whiteness, patriarchy, sexism and rainbowism (booysen 2016:30). he in south africa is positioned in the complex intersection and overlapping of global and local past, present and future place, space and time. inherent in south africa’s apartheid and colonial legacy are humanist assumptions which classify and categorise humans and not-humans. the contesting of humanist white, western and european frames of reason, excluding the other and constructing meanings and understandings of humanity and reality, is central to the #mustfall protests. the movement between past, present and future spaces of meanings and understandings remains evident in continuous othering and alienation in he in south africa (roux & becker 2016). keet (2014:26), with reference to jensen, defines othering as the consequence of racism, sexism, classism and their intersections, which result in symbolic degradation and in turn influence processes of identity formation. othering defines and constitutes the included in and the excluded from both place and space in he. the #rhodesmustfall movement that originated at the university of cape town was a powerful catalyst for the national movement. žižek (2014) argues that the destruction of monuments, points to an inability to get rid of the past. in the south african context, the toppling of the rhodes statue pointed to the impossibility of eradicating the objective violence of past legacies. this sparked a sequence of events that expressed the fundamental discontent of many students and staff in he (booysen 2016:3). global youth movements, protests and struggles are often successful when their goals relate to the broader society, rather than specifically youth-defined goals (everatt 2016:127). despite this, the 2015–2016 #mustfall protests, which focused on student-related goals have achieved some success (ibid). in what follows, i explore the themes identified by godsell and chikane (2016) in relation to the three phases of an event (žižek 2014). disruption and enframing: #rainbowisdead and the protest of shame according to žižek (2014), an event is unexpected (181), a radical turning point (179) and a reframing of reality (25). the first phase of an event is therefore characterised by dissonance and disruption. dissonance occurs when experiences relating to the world and others dis-order prior meanings and understandings (jansen 2009:266). this dis-ordering, results in a paradoxical situation of unlearning and learning in which the self feels dis-connected from prior meaning or knowledge, but has not yet constructed new knowledge (becker 2013:28). while dissonance results in feelings of discomfort or disagreement, disruption is an active process which interrupts and disrupts assumed and illusionary meanings and understandings (ibid). south african society and he in south africa are trapped in what žižek (2014:9) refers to as ‘unknown knowns’. he poses that apart from the ‘known knowns’, ‘known unknowns’ and ‘unknown unknowns’, the ‘unknown knowns’ have the highest impact and possibilities for dissonance and disruption on societies (ibid). the ‘unknown knowns’ are the things we do not know that we know. students, for example, might not ‘know’ the specifics of historic struggles and survival in south africa but they carry with them thematic and meaning knowledge about conquest, humiliation, poverty, recovery, black and white, which is intellectual, emotional and partial (jansen 2009:261). using lacan’s notion of ‘the knowledge which doesn’t know itself’, žižek (2014:9) explains that this knowledge is the ‘disavowed beliefs and suppositions we are not even aware of adhering to ourselves’. this knowledge has profound consequences for how we live, learn and see the world and others (jansen 2009:261). thus, the only possibility of reframing is to become aware of ‘unknown knowns’, break the frame and allow a new relation to reality, premised on new knowledge, to be constructed. the first phase of the event is not a ‘change of reality but a change in the frame through which we perceive the world and engage with it’ (žižek 2014:10). it is a shift in our relationship to reality (žižek 2014:32). every individual constructs, frames and reframes reality through life experiences (cf. heidegger 2010:148). arendt (1994:20) argues: ‘i do not believe that there is any thought process possible without personal experience. every thought is an afterthought, that is a reflection on some matter or event’. the #mustfall protests were a dissonant display and documentation of the lived experiences of middle class and poor students in south africa, forcing south africans to reflect, think and re-think the south african illusionary utopia. under apartheid, structural racism displayed clear lines of inequality. although post 1994, legislation aimed to promote equality and the sense of a post-1994 society moving towards equality, the #mustfall protests proclaimed that this aim had not translated into reality (godsell et al. 2016:118). the protests illustrated the impossibility of poor black students and middle class students’ competing in a market-driven society. the ‘new’ post-1994 middle class students also realised that they, in fact, were poor (godsell et al. 2016:118). the illustration of their shame and their symbolic naked poverty dissolved the frame through which south africans viewed economic progress and the rise of the black middle class. students illustrated this with slogans such as: are the rich the only academically deserving and post racism society says ‘you are poor go get a degree’. colonial elitist universities says ‘you are too poor to take you out of poverty’ #wearefucked #shutitdown (godsell et al. 2016:117). waghid (2016), with reference to agamben’s notion of denudation, posits that transformation can be enacted ‘through an unconcealed disclosedness, that is, an unveiling of the self in which visibility and presence (nudity) hold sway’. within such a process, humans (i.e. students during the #mustfall protests) risk baring their nakedness to each other and reflect on the possibility of a new relation. this, however, requires a reciprocal unveiling from all involved in the process of transformation (waghid 2016). the #mustfall protests disrupted the illusion of a utopian, equal and dignified post-1994 south africa. it shattered the illusion of the rainbow nation ‘living democratically ever after’ (dlamini 2010:12; godsell et al. 2016:118). for the protesting students rainbowism is dead. the shattering of assumptions that democracy would bring social justice and equality was central to the protests. during the protests, photographs showed how white students formed a human shield around black students reminding south africans that the past is never dead. remembering the june 1976 protests when school children in soweto, as gordimer (2011:261) puts it ‘learned the terrible lesson of white power’, both black students and white students instinctively knew whose bodies are ‘allowed to exist without violence and questioning’ (godsell et al. 2016:118). loss and fall: ontological othering, the negative container and #feesmustfall the second phase of the event is characterised by loss; the loss implied in a disrupted and shattered illusion of a present and future south africa and the loss of a relation with an assumed reality that never existed. during the second phase of the event, a ‘rupture in the normal run of things’ occurs (žižek 2014:38). žižek (2014:49) refers to the moment of rupture as the fall. he poses that it is ‘the loss of some primordial unity and harmony which never existed, which is just a retroactive illusion’ (ibid). during the process of rupture, the event moves from ‘event as reframing – as a shift in our relationship to reality – to event as a radical change of this reality itself’ (žižek 2014:32). for žižek (2014:34), a fall has three elements. first, there is a rational formal structure, and, second, an atemporal classification of a totality into humans and not-humans. atemporal classification of humans in this way has its roots in ancient greece where humans were classified as either greek or barbarians. ‘barbarians’ was a ‘container’ for all who were not-greek (žižek 2014:33). third, there is a temporal actualisation of humans and not-humans in contingent material reality. the negative container of not-humans is historically inscribed in the rational formal structure and continually intervenes to enact the fall. the imploding of the formal structure into contingent material reality is therefore inevitable (žižek 2014:35). it is a historic and continual enactment by those bundled into the negative container (ibid). this can be illustrated by the imploding of humanism, enacted by the negative container of not-humans, which has resulted in the recent global, non-human turn and the post-human shift (cf. braidotti 2013:13). the fall of humanism into itself and its enactment by the negative container in material reality are mirrored in the #feesmustfall protests. within the historic enlightenment humanist structure, the negative container contains those who escape the structure of white (not-white), european (not-european) and male (not-male). since the enlightenment, the historical development of the humanist model shaped the idea of europe as the one with universalising powers, self-reflexive reason and the hegemonic cultural model (braidotti 2013:13). during the #mustfall protests, the negative container of sexualised, racialised, colonial, sociopolitical and economic others pierced and disrupted the humanist ideal of who and what is human and whose bodies matter. gordimer (2011:375) argues: ‘in the official south african consciousness, the ego is white: it has always seen all south africans as ordered around that’. within colonial contexts saturated by eurocentric humanism, the ‘human’ is not an objective statistical average, but a measure of sameness through which others are allotted a designated category and positioned in specific social locations (braidotti 2013:25). the historic enlightenment white, male, propertied human is thus not only posited as the one entitled to the rights of humans (kapur 2006), he is also posited as a categorical and qualitative standard, opposing the sexualised, racialised, naturalised other – the not-human (braidotti 2013:26). the #mustfall protests are driven by the negative container consisting of not-humans in (post)colonial and neo-liberal contexts. the historical positioning of ‘african’ during colonialism and apartheid has set up colonial and racialised othering as a conceptual and practical category (keet 2014:25). derrida and kamuf (1985:292) in racism’s last word pose that the word apart-heid, ‘concentrates separation, raises it to another power and sets separation itself apart’. by isolating being apart as an essence, the word itself ‘corrupts it into a quasi-ontological separation’ (derrida & kamuf 1985:292). othering in he, keet (2014:26) therefore argues, is both ontological and epistemological as epistemic ‘othering’ is both a precursor and a consequence of ontological separation. the #mustfall protests put the ‘othered’ experiences of the negative container, within white institutions, in the spotlight (godsell & chikane 2016:58). the call for radical decolonisation, the removal of historic symbols, the language debate, a revised curriculum and the empowerment of black students and staff is meant to address colonial and racialised ontological and epistemological othering. intersecting with colonial and racial othering is sexualised othering. spelman (2005:355) poses that sexism historically existed before racism. women and the lgbtiaq+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, asexual, queer and other sexual orientations and gender identities) communities were a visual and often raging presence in the protests. in the tradition of the humanist positioning of the white male as fully human and women, black people and members of the lgbtiaq+ as not-male and not-white, they are stereotyped and assumed to be not-human (ibid). black women, in particular, are positioned within interrelated experiences of classism, racism and sexism (hooks1 2005:345). black women cannot just be female – she is female and black (spelman 2005:356). it is ironic that during the protests, female activists were othered and marginalised by their male counterparts, adding layers of othering to the already othered negative container (du preez et al. 2017). classism as a category of othering also featured prominently in the protests. becker and du preez (2016) argue that educational systems and structures saturated in capitalist and neo-liberal ideologies normalise and reproduce exclusions. inequality in schooling is reproduced in post-school education which is then reproduced in the broader society (pillay 2016:268). exclusion and growing inequality have multi-layered effects for poor and middle class students: unaffordable fees are an entry barrier and rising fees result in debilitating student debt further contributing to the reproduction of inequality (pillay 2016:268). in sum, the negative container of sexualised, racialised, colonial, sociopolitical and economic others pierced and disrupted the illusionary post-1994 ‘primordial unity and harmony’ (žižek 2014). the protests forcibly moved ‘event as reframing – as a shift in our relationship to reality – to event as a radical change of this reality itself’ (žižek 2014:32). booysen (2016:28–39) argues that the protests forced the government to reconsider policies, forced budgetary restructuring and cemented the power of direct action (as opposed to voting) as a means of engagement with the government. by doing this, the #mustfall protests added a new axis to public protests in south africa (booysen 2016:30). enlightenment: violence, subjectification, #transformation and #hope the fall is a traumatic experience (žižek 2014:78). it is the traumatic intrusion of something new which is unacceptable from a dominant view and causes feelings of extreme loss, division, hatred and violence. it brings a division between those who want to uphold the status quo and those who see the need for change (žižek 2014:185). not only do the #mustfall protests symbolise the divide between categories of who and what constitutes human and who belongs in the negative container, but the negative container is also internally divided. deep divisions within the student body and between students and university management, government, society and the police force also resulted from the protests. these divisions are crucial to the project of finding a new unity. out of the trauma, the post-traumatic subject and possibilities of a new unity emerge (žižek 2014:76). the post-traumatic subject is a subject who survived the trauma of violent external intrusions and traumas which ‘destroy the symbolic structure of the subject’s identity’ (žižek 2014:95, 96). žižek (2009b), however, concedes that the post-traumatic subject is mostly a western luxury. he poses that there can be no post-traumatic subjects in many african countries, because in (post)colonial contexts the trauma of colonialisation is ongoing. for the traumatised subject to become a post-traumatic subject, the cause of the trauma needs to be resolved. for fanon (in bird-pollen 2015:159), resolving the cause of the trauma entails aggressive counter-violence and striving for a new humanity. fanon (2005:231) and lee (2015:157) argue that counter-violence in a colonised context is a conscious action towards the eradication of colonial identities, the possibility of subjectivity and a new humanism defined outside of european othering. godsell et al. (2016:115) argue that although violence had no hashtag, the ‘possibility of violence, the prevention of violence, what constitutes violence, the causes and effects of violence and the fear of violence all permeated the protests’. jansen (2017) argues that violence on south african campuses became routine, repeatable, predictable and sustainable, fitting the definition of institutionalisation. violence in south africa cannot be understood outside of south africa’s violent history (jansen 2017). in exploring the violence associated with the protests, a distinction needs to be made between subjective and objective violence. the violent acts of students such as stoning, burning and vandalising property constitute subjective violence. subjective violence is perpetrated by identifiable agents and is perceived from a non-violent zero point – an irrational explosion of violence against a background of normality and peace (žiźek 2009a:1–2). the unexpected and unpredictable violent nature of the #mustfall protests happened against the zero point of a constitutional democracy and the inclusion of all south africans in the bill of rights (1996). the normalised zero point is sustained by invisible symbolic and systemic objective violence (žiźek 2009a:2). subjective and objective violence are interrelated. both rely on principles of separation. perpetrators of subjective violence frame their targets by ‘setting a group apart as the enemy’ (jansen 2017:247), such as non-protesting students and staff, or the management of white colonial universities. symbolic objective violence concerns the violence inherent to language and meaning and the framing of others as separate from self. it points to relations of social dominance and their imposition on the universe of meaning, resulting in, for example, sexist, humanist, apartheid and colonial othering, exclusions and marginalisation. systemic violence concerns the functions of economic and political systems such as the effects of neo-liberal (classism) and political alienation (žiźek 2009a:1). for (post)colonial subjects to eradicate subjective and objective violence and move towards subjectification and renewed unity with others, there needs to be an engagement with the conflict between renunciation and self-consciousness inherent in freedom (fanon 1967:206). the conflict between renunciation and self-consciousness is inherent in the process of decolonisation and crucial to subjectification and freedom (cf. fanon 2005:228). from the very beginning of colonisation, decolonisation has been the project of the colonised. fanon (2005:228) defines the initial quest for equality and freedom in the freudian sense of replacement. he argues: ‘the native [sic] is the oppressed person whose permanent dream is to become the persecutor’. in the freudian notion of the oedipus complex, the confrontation between son and father is characterised by aggression. during the process of replacement, the son first becomes indifferent to the father and then seeks to replace him (bird-pollen 2015:157). the quest to replace, according to fanon (1967:192), should go beyond mere replacement towards the ideal of living in self-consciousness instead of bare existence. it is important to note, as lee (2015:188) points out, that fanon was never a one-dimensional advocate of violence. his writings were informed by a profound respect for people suffering oppression, a radical empathy and a love for humans (lee 2015:191). at the end of black skin, white masks, fanon (1967) muses: it is through self-consciousness and renunciation, through a permanent tension of this freedom, that man can create the ideal conditions of existence for a human world. superiority? inferiority? why not simply try to touch the other, feel the other, discover the other? was my freedom not given me to build the world of you, man [sic]? (p. 206) the process of subjectification towards ‘building the world of you, man [sic]’ (fanon 1967:206) is a process of becoming and being a subject of action and responsibility (biesta 2013:141). biesta (2013:20) defines the process of subjectification as double-sided. there is the subjectivity of self, defined with reference to the other: unique-in-difference. secondly, there is the subjectivity of self where uniqueness matters. self depends on the unique and irreplaceable other within the process of subjectification. this is because, uniqueness-as-irreplaceable becomes uniqueness-as-responsibility towards inter-subjectivity, mutual recognition and mutual freedom (ibid). it is only by being recognised as human by the other that self-consciousness becomes possible. fanon (1967:190) poses: ‘his [sic] human worth and reality depends on this other and on his recognition by the other. it is in this other that the meaning of life is condensed’. the need for recognition does not concern itself with what the self is: the colonial subject wants herself to be recognised (fanon 1967:191). during 28 individual encounters and 7 group discussions with student leaders at the university of the free state between november 2011 and december 2012, keet and nel (2016) found that one of the issues of major concern to student leaders was ‘not being recognised’. they argue that, in the context of he in south africa, recognition was mainly based on subjects’ status as subjects of human rights and the law; recognition of what they are. this, they conclude, can only result in misrecognition as it is based on the alienating principles of law (keet & nel 2016:134). furthermore, recognition only premised on principles of law or human rights may well add to the stabilising of objective violence in institutional cultures of he in south africa. recognition in he requires acknowledging who the subjects of he are: fully human included in an inclusive humanity (cf. fanon 1967:190). in striving towards this ideal, the subject of he therefore risks going beyond mere life towards an ideal: the ideal of breaking the cycle of oppression and the birth of a new human world, ‘a world of mutual recognition’ (fanon 1967:192). this cannot be done for the subject by merely announcing that colonialism is no more. the subject needs to develop the desire to be recognised as fully human and to risk life and education in pursuit of this (biesta 2013; fanon 1967:197). for biesta (2013:xii), education towards subjectification is ‘a beautiful risk’. the risk towards a human world requires reciprocal risk-taking and unveiling from all involved (waghid 2016). all subjects of he should come into presence so that ‘they recognise themselves as mutually recognising each other’ (hegel in fanon 1967:191). within this process, they risk baring their nakedness to each other and reflect on the possibility of a new relation (waghid 2016). through the acknowledgement of the naked other, once new knowledge is constructed, a new relationship with reality becomes possible. in analysing social media content, godsell et al. (2016:118) identify hope as one of the themes of the #mustfall narrative. hope is embodied in tweets between students such as: ‘another world is possible’ (@anele_nzimande, 30 october 2015, in godsell et al. [2016:118]). when the ideals of subjectification, decolonisation and transformation are ethical, the colonial subject becomes the origin of a new relation between humans premised on an inclusive human ontology. decolonisation then seeks to unify the world not by simply replacing the colonial master, but by overcoming that which the colonial master represents (bird-pollen 2015:155). the ontological and epistemological divisive colonial relation is replaced with a relation premised on mutual respect and recognition (ibid). concluding remarks this article explores the ways in which the #mustfall protests, as an event (žižek 2014), could inform rethinking of transformation in he in south africa. i highlight four aspects. firstly, the need for something new in he is indisputable. something new, in terms of an event, however, needs to be qualified. during an event, transformation should not be understood within a modernist paradigm of continual renewal perceived on an upwards curve (becker 2017). within a modernist conception of renewal, transformation happens within a stable context with stable constants against which transformation can be measured. the unexpected and unpredictable reframing and changing of reality, which an event enables, challenges such possibilities. renewal is understood as a double-sided and continually changing organic process in an event. an event, žižek (2014:180) argues, gives rise to the commitment of a collective subject to a new transformative or emancipatory project. although the original transformation ideals might unite a collective, the transformative ideals need to be continually transformed to prevent the transformation process from becoming impotent (žižek 2014:184). there should thus be continual transformation of transformation ideals. the continually changing demands of students illustrate this. an event changes the principles of change from a single and linear process to interrelated, multi-layered, organic and continually shifting processes. the breaking away, the starting new, therefore not only refers to the initial collective decision to transform towards assumed ideals but should also speak to the continual and radical transformation of ideals during the transformation process. related to the above is the second aspect: moving towards ethical ideal(s). du preez et al. (2017) argue for an ‘ethical approach at a time when critical transformation of higher education is urgently needed’. the ethical or the ‘ethic of truth’, they argue, with reference to badiou’s notion of ethics as event, emerges not from a current situation (such as the situation in he) but from the event when the boundaries of the situation are pierced. in the context of the #mustfall protests, they argue, the struggle would then be a striving towards finding ‘a good way of being’ towards which the collective should stay true (badiou 2002:1; du preez et al. 2017). the subjects of decolonisation and transformation in he should continually redefine their ethical ideal(s) as they come into presence and recognise each other as fully human. there can be no pre-determined ‘good way of being’. in the third place, ethical transformation should be concerned with the subjects of he and their mutual recognition as irreplaceable and unique-in-responsibility. it should primarily focus on who comes into presence rather than what is to come, ought to come or is allowed to come into presence (biesta 2013:142). transformation through subjectification is actional, and the subjects of transformation need to become and be unique subjects of action and responsibility (biesta 2013:141; fanon 1967:191). decolonisation within a transformative framework should therefore not concern itself with what the self is or should be or what he is or should be: the (post)colonial subjects want themselves to be recognised in he (fanon 1967:191). this implies, in the last instance, the necessity for historic ontological othering, within an enlightenment humanist paradigm, to be rejected. the rejection of the historic negative container provides possibilities of finding alternative schemes of thought, and of thinking critically about who and what the human in becoming is in (post)colonial contexts (cf. braidotti 2013:11). individual subjectification of the (post)colonised subject will not guarantee political or social decolonisation or the decolonisation of he (bird-pollen 2015:151). it is, however, impossible to attain any decolonisation without the reconstitution of the psyche as autonomous and decolonised. although the oedipal paradigm is characterised by the desire to have the power to dominate the master and not to share power, this negativity and aggression is a key element of a free society (bird-pollen 2015:151–152). it is a constant engagement with the conflict between renunciation and self-consciousness inherent in freedom. it is only by confronting this conflict and working towards a new humanity that the self (and he) can engage with subjectification, decolonisation, freedom and ethical ideal(s) (fanon 2005:228, 1967:206). acknowledgements competing interests the author declares that she has no financial or personal relationships that may have inappropriately influenced her in writing this article. references arendt, h., 1994, essays in understanding, 1930–1954, schocken books, new york. badiou, a., 2002, ethics: an essay on the understanding of evil, verso, london. becker, j.a., 2013, ‘curriculum and intra-dialogical spaces: consciousness and becoming in identity construction based on human rights values’, unpublished phd, north west university, potchefstroom. becker, a., in press, ‘moral responsibility and human rights: speaking to the “dark side of human rights”’, south african journal of higher education. becker, a. & du preez, p., 2016, ‘ideological illusions, human rights and the right to education: the in(ex)clusion of the poor in post-apartheid education’, journal of education 64, 55–76. biesta, g.j.j., 2013, the beautiful risk of education, routledge, new york. bird-pollen, s., 2015, hegel, freud and fanon: the dialectic of emancipation, rowman & littlefield, london. booysen, s., 2016, ‘two weeks in october: changing governance in south africa’, in s. booysen (ed.), fees must fall: student revolt, decolonisation and governance in south africa, pp. 22–52, wits university press, johannesburg. braidotti, r., 2013, the posthuman, polity press, cambridge. davids, n., 2016, ‘on extending the truncated parameters of transformation in higher education in south africa into a language of democratic engagement and justice’, transformation in higher education 1(1), a7. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v1i1.7 derrida, j., & kamuf, p., 1985, ‘racism’s last word’, critical inquiry 12(1), 290–299. https://doi.org/10.1086/448331 dlamini, j., 2010, native nostalgia, jacana, auckland park. du preez, p., simmonds, s. & verhoef, a.h., 2016, ‘rethinking and researching transformation in higher education: a meta-study of south african trends’, transformation in higher education 1(1), a2. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v1i1.2 du preez, p., simmonds, s. & chetty, j., in press, ‘critical transformation in higher education: ethical reflections on #mustfall movements and concomitant gender-based violence’, south african journal of higher education. everatt, d., 2016, ‘standing on the shoulders of giants? successive generations of youth sacrifice in south africa’, in s. booysen (ed.), fees must fall. student revolt, decolonisation and governance in south africa, pp. 126–147, wits university press, johannesburg. fanon, f., 1967, black skin, white masks, grove press, new york. fanon, f., 2005, ‘the wretched of the earth’, in e.c. eze (ed.), african philosophy: an anthology, pp. 228–233, blackwell, malden. godsell, g., & chikane, r., 2016, ‘the roots of the revolution’, in s. booysen (ed.), fees must fall: student revolt, decolonisation and governance in south africa, pp. 54–73, wits university press, johannesburg. godsell, g., lepere, r., mafoko, s. & nase, a., 2016, ‘documenting the revolution’, in s. booysen (ed.), fees must fall. student revolt, decolonisation and governance in south africa, pp. 101–124, wits university press, johannesburg. gordimer, n., 2011, telling times: writing and living 1950–2008, bloomsbury, london. heidegger, m., 2010, ‘the age of the world picture’, in g. delanty & p. strydom (eds.), philosophies of social sciences: the classic and contemporary readings, pp. 147–151, open university press, berkshire. heleta, s., 2016, ‘decolonisation of higher education: dismantling epistemic violence and eurocentrism in south africa’, transformation in higher education 1(1), a9. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v1i1.9 hooks, b., 2005, ‘black women: shaping feminist theory’, in e.c. eze (ed.), african philosophy: an anthology, pp. 338–345, blackwell, malden. jansen, j.d., 2009, knowledge in the blood: confronting race and the apartheid past, stanford university press, stanford. jansen, j.d., 2017, as by fire: the end of the south african university, tafelberg, cape town. jaramillo, n.e., 2015, ‘the art of youth rebellion’, curriculum inquiry 45(1), 92–105. https://doi.org/10.1080/03626784.2014.995064 kapur, j., 2006, ‘human rights in the 21st century: take a walk on the dark side’, sydney law review 28, 665–687. keet, a., 2014, ‘epistemic “othering” and the decolonising of knowledge’, africa insight 44(1), 23–37. keet, a. & nel, w., 2016, ‘rights, regulation and recognition: studying student leaders’ experiences of participation and citizenship within a south african university’, international journal of educational sciences 13(1), 129–144. lee, c.j., 2015, franz fanon: towards a revolutionary humanism, jacana, auckland park. pillay, p., 2016, ‘financing of universities: promoting equity or reinforcing inequality’, in s. booysen (ed.), fees must fall: student revolt, decolonisation and governance in south africa, pp. 256–268, wits university press, johannesburg. ramathan, l., 2016, ‘beyond counting the numbers: shifting higher education transformation into curriculum spaces’, transformation in higher education 1(1), a6, 1–8. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v1i1.6 roux, c. & becker, a., 2016, ‘humanising higher education in south africa through dialogue as praxis’, educational research for social change 5(1), 131–143. https://doi.org/10.17159/2221-4070/2016/v5i1a8 spelman, e.v., 2005, ‘the erasure of black women’, in e.c. eze (ed.), african philosophy: an anthology, pp. 355–359, blackwell, malden, ma. thomas, k., 2012, ‘photography, apartheid, and the “road to reconciliation”’, in h. binoe (ed.), transition, #107: blending borders, pp. 79–89, indiana university press, indiana. waghid, y., 2016, ‘transformation as an act of denudation: a response to petro du preez, shan simmonds and anné verhoef’, transformation in higher education 1(1), a3. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v1i1.3 žižek, s., 2009a, violence, profile books, london. žižek, s., 2009b, ‘living dead’ vampire terminology, viewed 22 march 2017, from https://youtu.be/ygkxfgzvhm žižek, s., 2014, event, penguin random house uk, london. footnote 1. gloria jean watkins is a world renowned scholar in feminism and social activism and goes by the pen name bell hooks. the unconventional lowercasing of her name is done intentionally to signify the nature of her work. abstract introduction unpacking ubuntu philosophy intersection of ubuntu philosophy and social justice ubuntu pedagogy and transformation in higher education ubuntu pedagogy: the guiding principles for possible implementation conclusion acknowledgements references about the author(s) nomalungelo i. ngubane medical school, faculty of health sciences, nelson mandela university, port elizabeth, south africa manyane makua teaching and learning development centre, mangosuthu university of technology, durban, south africa citation ngubane, n.i. & makua, m., 2021, ‘intersection of ubuntu pedagogy and social justice: transforming south african higher education’, transformation in higher education 6(0), a113. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v6i0.113 original research intersection of ubuntu pedagogy and social justice: transforming south african higher education nomalungelo i. ngubane, manyane makua received: 10 feb. 2021; accepted: 29 mar. 2021; published: 30 june 2021 copyright: © 2021. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract background: universities, globally, and in south africa, continue to be confronted with demands for transformation, humanisation of pedagogical practices and to embrace social justice. aim: in this article, we bring to the surface possibilities of ubuntu pedagogy within a social justice framework. we intersect collective fingers theory and social justice theory to propose the notion of ubuntu pedagogy, which draws from african philosophy of ubuntu. we argue that ubuntu pedagogy provides an alternation to the current pedagogies that draw from european theories for teaching and learning in the south african higher education context. we put forward that, ubuntu pedagogy, when embraced with understanding and dignity it deserves, has the potential, firstly, of initiating students from other cultures other than african cultures to the values of ubuntu and, secondly, of reconnecting students with their values and cultures, but it has a capacity to cultivate social justice values of equity, recognition and fair participation amongst students from diverse social backgrounds. setting: south african higher education. methodology: the authors draw from literature to position the article within ubuntu philosophical framework and social justice lenses. themes emerging from literature are as follows: intersection of ubuntu philosophy and social justice, ubuntu pedagogy and transformation in higher education and guiding principles for possible implementation of ubuntu pedagogy. results: at the intersection of ubuntu pedagogy and social justice, classroom practices are designed to respond to students’ cultural competencies and to embrace all linguistic repertoires that students bring to the classroom for learning. students are treated equally and with dignity and respect regardless of their social backgrounds. conclusion: we argue that higher education classrooms in post-apartheid south africa should enable equal access, equity and inclusivity for all students. we therefore recommend ubuntu pedagogy as a culturally and socially just pedagogy for transformative higher education classrooms. this article contributes to the continuing dialogues about transformative pedagogies, decolonisation and social justice in south african higher education. keywords: ubuntu philosophy; ubuntu pedagogy; social justice; collective fingers theory; epistemic violence; epistemic freedom. introduction transformation agenda remains at the heart of debates in south african higher education (badat & sayed 2014; blignaut 2020; leibowitz & bozalek 2016; maistry 2021). subsequently, there is a call for transformative pedagogies that are culturally responsive and cognisant of social justice issues in higher education (blignaut & koopman 2020). in the meantime, blignaut (2020:1) is concerned about the slow pace of transformation in south african higher education. there is no complete transformation in higher education without redressing ways of enacting the curriculum and without re-centering social justice issues such as equal learning opportunities, fair participation and language equity (leibowitz & bozalek 2016; maistry 2021). higher education pedagogical practices in south africa continue to draw from the western eurocentric views, which undermine and dismiss indigenous philosophies such as ubuntu as false assumptions and a simple illegitimate african thinking (letseka 2014:334). such negative assumptions about african indigenous knowledge systems result in students from african cultures feeling unwelcomed and alienated in higher education (ndlovu-gatsheni 2018:8). in fact, ndlovu-gatsheni refers to this rejection of knowledge that african students bring to higher education as ‘epistemic violence’. epistemic violence is considered as ‘violence at the level of curriculum, including pedagogies, perpetrated by untransformed and alienating higher education landscape’. heleta (2016:48) concurred that epistemic violence is an unacceptable form of oppression and marginalisation directed at indigenous students to make them feel inferior and undeserving of higher education. in response to ‘epistemic violence’ in higher education chilisa (2016) called for ‘epistemic freedom’, which departs from social justice and human rights perspectives. chilisa (2012) asserted that ‘epistemic freedom’ is not an event, but a process that involves enactment of decolonising research and pedagogical methodologies as means of achieving ‘epistemic freedom’ by formerly colonised people, women and indigenous people whose knowledge systems remain rejected and marginalised. in similar ways, ndlovu-gatsheni (2018) defined ‘epistemic freedom’ in the following way: epistemic freedom is different from academic freedom. academic freedom speaks to institutional autonomy of universities and rights to express diverse ideas including those critical of authorities and political leaders. epistemic freedom is much broader and deeper. it speaks to cognitive justice; it draws our attention to the content of what it is that we are free to express and on whose terms. epistemic freedom is about democratising ‘knowledge’ from its current rendition in the singular into its plural known as ‘knowledges’. it is also ranged against overrepresentation of eurocentric thought in knowledge, social theory, and education. epistemic freedom is foundational in the broader decolonisation struggle because it enables the emergence of critical decolonial consciousness. (p. 18) echoing ndlovu-gatsheni (2018) on the importance of critical consciousness about issues of equality and social justice in education are blignaut and koopman (2020:82) who argued that issues of social justice in education cannot be swiped under the carpet, especially amongst teacher educators as they play an important role enacting the curriculum. in fact, blignaut and koopman (2020) emphasised that: if teacher educators do not undertake this important task of focusing critically on social justice, their students will run the risk of perpetuating racism, stereotypes, and existing inequalities and thereby reproduce the old prevailing hegemony and the existing social order characterised by inequity and injustice. (p. 82) it is upon these debates and insights by blignaut and koopman (2020) and ndlovu-gatsheni (2018) that other south african scholars (heleta 2016; le grange et al. 2020; maistry 2021) call for urgent transformations in south african higher education that will put an end to epistemic injustices that devalue indigenous knowledge systems such as ubuntu whilst promoting scientific knowledge. in this article, we argue that the discrimination and marginalisation of indigenous knowledge systems such as ubuntu in higher education and the persistent preference of western scientific knowledge systems remain a throbbing issue, especially for people from indigenous knowledge systems. we therefore join transformational scholars such as maistry (2021) and le grange et al. (2020) in their call for socially just higher education, especially in south africa. in defence of ubuntu philosophy in education as a social issue, ramose (ed. 2002) proposed that despite ubuntu philosophy being a significant and a powerful education instrument that has been used for many centuries by indigenous african communities to educate, guide and maintain positive human interactions and relationships amongst african indigenous people, it has been excluded and oppressed in formal educational arenas in favour of western philosophies. ramose (ed. 2002) contended that such rejection of ubuntu philosophy has prevented this indigenous knowledge from being effectively transferred to the next generations. as a result, ramose (ed. 2002) thought that educational contexts such as universities are the most suitable for the restoration of ubuntu philosophy to its rightful position: that of being at the centre of preserving african values amongst young people. ukpokodu (2016) holds similar thoughts, he asserts that it is through ubuntu pedagogy that ubuntu philosophy can be accorded an honourable and fair recognition. besides, metz (2011) observed that ubuntu philosophy represents social justice in the sense that it embraces social values of inclusion, participation and respect for all and as a pedagogical tool, it has a potential to preserve indigenous knowledge systems and practices amongst students and restore their identities (le grange 2011). in consideration of the arguments raised by scholars (le grange 2011; ed. ramose 2002; ukpokodu 2016) on the connections between ubuntu philosophy and social justice, this article builds on such debates to advance justifications for the rethinking of teaching and learning in higher education from ubuntu pedagogical perspective. we argue that ubuntu philosophy, which is an indigenous knowledge system and way of life for african people, when embodied with esteem and dignity it deserves, has the potential not only of restoring indigenous values, heritage and cultures amongst students, but also ubuntu philosophy has a capacity to promote values of co-existence and social cohesion amongst students from diverse backgrounds. it has an ability to promote values of social justice such as inclusivity and fair participation amongst students (letseka 2014:547). we suggest that an understanding of ubuntu philosophy and social justice is essential for appropriate implementation. in the following section, we thus begin by unpacking, first, the concept of ubuntu philosophy and its intrinsic values and principles. we then move to the concept of social justice and we attempt to position it within the context of higher education, where we argue, it belongs. we draw from mbigi’s (1997) collective fingers theory and social justice theory (fraser 2008) to propose for ubuntu pedagogy, which draws from the indigenous ubuntu philosophy, as a transformative approach that can bring about co-existence, respect, inclusion and social justice in higher education classrooms. later in this article, we suggest practical guidelines for possible and effective implementation of ubuntu pedagogy in diverse higher education classrooms. unpacking ubuntu philosophy different african philosophers and scholars have grappled with the notions and constructions of ubuntu philosophy (broodryk 2005; le grange 2011; letseka 2014; metz 2014; mbigi 1997). firstly, they all agree that it is difficult to translate the concept of ubuntu into english since there is no equivalent meaning. these scholars also concur that during translation into english the concept of ubuntu loses its essence and true meaning. even though the term ‘ubuntu’ is mostly known to come from south african nguni languages (isizulu, isixhosa, isindebele, isiswati), it exists in different lexes across various bantu languages of sub-saharan africa. in chewa language of zambia, the term ‘ubuntu’ is referred to as umunthu. in yao language, malawi, it is known as umundu. amongst tsonga speakers in south africa, zimbabwe, mozambique and swaziland, they refer to it as bunhu. in shona language of zimbabwe, it is known as unhu, whilst venda speakers in south africa call it vhutu. nguni languages refer to it as ubuntu (letseka 2014; mbigi 1997). now, how do all these different african communities understand ubuntu? amongst south african philosophers, ubuntu refers to ancient african worldviews associated with humanness or being humane (ed. letseka 2000; metz 2014). in explaining ‘humanness’ or being human(e), johnstone (1981) in letseka (ed. 2000) expounded that: to be humane suggests that one’s conduct is guided by a respect for and tenderness toward other beings. it suggests a prizing of these beings and a desire to protect and nourish them. (p. 547) le grange (2011) argued that it is difficult to define ubuntu in a standard form as ‘the meaning is interwoven in the cultural practices and lived experiences of african peoples’ (p. 71). meanwhile, ramose (ed. 2002:26) stressed that humanity is ‘to be a human being and one’s humanity is affirmed by recognising the humanity of others and, on that basis, establish humane relations with them’, hence, a nguni axiom ‘umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu’ (i am because you are, you are because i am). at the same time, mbigi (1997) in his collective fingers theory emphasised that ubuntu philosophy is underpinned by social and human values of togetherness, solidarity, compassion and interdependence. all these constructions of ubuntu philosophy encapsulate social justice principles of respect for individuality ‘umuntu’ (a person) and his belonging amongst other people ‘abantu’ (chilisa 2012; sibanda 2019). furthermore, chilisa (2012) paid more attention to the ubuntu notions of ‘i/we’ which are more acceptive of interdependence, as opposed to the eurocentric ‘i/you’ relationships, which assert individualism. in furthering the conceptions of ubuntu axiom ‘umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu’ mbigi (1997) observed that: in traditional life, the individual does not and cannot exist alone except corporately. he owes his existence to people, including those of past generations and his contemporaries. he is simply part of the whole. the community must therefore make, create, or produce the individual; for the individual depends on the corporate group … whatever happens to the individual happens to the whole group, and whatever happens to the whole group happens to the individual. the individual can only say: ‘i am, because we are; and since we are therefore i am’. (p. 36) what mbigi (1997) is arguing for, is that in african cultures an individual is not complete without the group and the group is not privileged over the individual. equity is fundamental to ubuntu. in his ubuntu theoretical work, collective fingers theory, mbigi (1997) built on social justice principles of equity amongst members of the social groups. this is how mbigi (1997) related his ubuntu theory to social justice: an african principle behind the collective fingers theory is that a thumb although is strong cannot kill aphids on its own, it would require the collective cooperation and equal contribution of efforts from other fingers. from this african proverb we can construe three meanings. firstly, like fingers, individual persons need to work collectively and cooperatively to achieve any aspired goal. secondly, recognition as equals promote willingness to participate. thirdly, fingers in the proverb can represent core african values, which when internalised and nurtured, can promote a collective culture. the five core values of ubuntu are identified as survival, solidarity spirit, compassion, respect and dignity. (p. 33) it goes that survival was an essential aspect of indigenous communities as it enabled them to get through harsh environmental conditions, and to effectively do that, they relied on each other. despite their differences, they needed one another for existence. solidarity spirit was also fundamental for working together and cooperatively to achieve a common goal. the same goes for compassion that was also important to generate a feeling of belonging and interconnectedness amongst african communities. the collective fingers theory implies that even though there was little formal education for indigenous people centuries ago, ubuntu philosophy provided traditional education for indigenous people whereby they were socialised into respecting one another, being responsible for themselves and towards others and to co-exist. metz (2011) argued it is relatively impossible to bypass issues of social justice when addressing matters of ubuntu. therefore, in the following section we intersect ubuntu and social justice. intersection of ubuntu philosophy and social justice even though there is limited research that looks at the intersection of ubuntu philosophy and social justice in south african higher education, scholars such as leibowitz and bozalek (2016) have explored social justice in the context of scholarship of teaching and learning in south african higher education. blignaut (2020), on the other hand, continued to advocate for social justice in the south african schooling system as he believes that curriculum that is anchored on social justice is likely to cultivate compassionate citizens who have enthusiasm for sense of justice and creation of equal opportunities for all. another important work on social justice and curriculum comes from maistry (2021) who recently theorised curriculum in south african higher education from the social justice framework. elsewhere, scholars (chilisa 2016; sibanda 2019) have also attempted to explore ubuntu theory and social justice in global contexts such as zimbabwe. in this study, we largely draw from these recent works on social justice and ubuntu philosophy to bring together these two frameworks in the context of south african higher education. we argue that there is a compelling connection between ubuntu and social justice and that these two terms do not compete, but they harmonise each other. to base our argument, we draw from the notions provided by sibanda (2019) who contended that ubuntu embodies the essence of humanity in values such as respect, dignity, equity and interdependence. in that way, ‘social justice is part and parcel of what it means to be human’ (sibanda 2019:76). like ubuntu philosophy, social justice is more concerned with recognition and acceptance of shared values and resources amongst community members (metz 2011). social justice attests to and speaks of the acceptable and shared values of those who call themselves ‘abantu’ (people). this implies values of togetherness, communalism and respect amongst those who share similar values. both ubuntu and social justice are shaped by positive human relations, how people in a particular context accept and negotiate values for their togetherness (metz 2011). the values of ubuntu embrace principles of social justice such as equality (promotes equal opportunities), equity (encourages interdependence) and fairness (brings about equal sharing of resources such that all members survive). where there is no equal recognition and respect, principles of ubuntu philosophy are compromised (metz 2011). in the same way that ubuntu thrives on communalism and co-existence, fraser (2008) in her social justice theory, argued that social justice advances notions of equal participation and fair distribution of resources amongst members in a social context. expanding on the connections between ubuntu and social justice, sibanda (2019) contended that: social justice is therefore culturally specific, drawing on shared assumptions about the nature of being, how we arrive at this common understanding and the values that inform what is perceived to be in the best interest of all, and all possible relationships in that context. the importance of the, i/we relationship cannot be over emphasised in this understanding of social justice. justice, in this light is not based on individual rights but rather the collective rights of the ‘we’ in the i/we relationship which are aspects of ubuntu theory. (p. 77) from these constructions, we understand that living in a socially just, respectful and harmonious environment is central to ubuntu. this is possible when an individual respects himself and others. that also goes for respecting the rights and ideas of others, which are the desired principles of social justice. there are many ways in which ubuntu philosophy resonates with social justice. as a result of the limited number of words for this article, we highlighted a few. having defended connections between ubuntu philosophy and social justice, we now turn our focus to the pedagogical aspects of ubuntu, which ukpokodu (2016) conceptualised as ubuntu pedagogy. we situate ubuntu pedagogy within the context of social justice and higher education. ubuntu pedagogy and transformation in higher education south africa has a long history of racial oppression, segregation and social inequalities as a result of apartheid. after 28 years of democracy, higher education is still grappling with issues of socially just higher education (leibowitz & bozalek 2016) and transformative pedagogies (badat & sayed 2014). it has been noticed that there is little cooperation, co-existence and social cohesion amongst students from diverse cultural backgrounds in south african higher education (goduka 2000). such lack of social cohesion, cooperation and co-existence amongst students from diverse social backgrounds mainly stem from the fact that south africa during apartheid was divided according to racial and cultural lines. before 1994, different racial groups were confined into separated areas and attended different schools. consciously or otherwise, students bring along these social divisions and inequalities when they join universities. one group of students, mainly african students, and to some extent, indians and mixed race, come from a background of oppression, marginalisation, limited opportunities and exclusion whilst the other group, white students, come from a privileged background of opportunities and higher status in society (badat & sayed 2014). suddenly, all these students come together in higher education and they are expected to harmoniously build relations and live happily. it is not easy to achieve social cohesion without any interventions geared towards promoting social co-existence amongst students from diverse backgrounds. ubuntu pedagogy thus has a potential to promote togetherness, coexistence, respect and cooperation amongst students. ukpokodu (2016) clarified this in the following way: ubuntu pedagogy draws from the ubuntu philosophical values of compassion, care, cooperation, respect and dignity to provide a learning environment that brings together students from different cultural backgrounds to value each one another’s cultures, opinions, ideas and learn to cooperate and to co-exist. (p. 155) from the above ukpokodu (2016) discussion it emerges that the main tenet of ubuntu pedagogy is that all students, regardless of the racial, educational, economic and linguistic backgrounds and sexual orientations, all have potential to excel in their learning if their humanity is positioned at the forefront of their learning processes. in furthering his defence of ubuntu pedagogy, ukpokodu (2016) asserted that: as human beings, students naturally aspire to feelings of compassion and care, dignity and respect. ubuntu pedagogy encourages teachers to create empowering learning spaces which affirms, validate and treat all students as dignified human beings. (p. 155) in this way, ukpokodu (2016) affirmed ubuntu pedagogy values equity, dignity, compassion and respect of all students in the classroom. it has a potential to bring together students such that they perceive each other as significant others who bring unique backgrounds, experiences and prior knowledge to build on towards the development of new knowledge and create meaningful learning spaces. in that way, all students perceive each other as equal partners and begin to understand that they need each other for effective learning. one is not complete without the other. hence, the essence of ubuntu pedagogy lies in the recognition of equal partnerships and co-existence between the teachers and students as co-creators of knowledge. thus, the ubuntu maxim ‘umuntu ungumuntu ngabantu’ (a person is a person through other people) comes into full blossom in the classroom (letseka 2014). ukpokodu (2016) argued that teachers embracing ubuntu pedagogy provide all students, irrespective of their cultural, linguistic, social class, religion and sexual orientations with equal opportunities to develop and to exercise their full capacities. at the intersection of ubuntu pedagogy and social justice, all students are treated with dignity and respect regardless of their backgrounds. the value of ubun tu pedagogy is to build positive relationships between diverse students and break down the barriers of diversity within the classroom settings (ukpokodu 2016). these are the goals of social justice in education (broodryk 2005). broodryk (2005) observed that ubuntu encompasses values of social justice and promotes relationships between learners breaking down barriers and stereotypes with regard to race, gender, ability, language and culture. for teachers in higher education to fully practice social justice, they should first be influenced by ubuntu values. ubuntu, therefore, can be regarded as a weapon that can be used by teachers to challenge the inequity and injustices. when higher education teachers understand and embrace ubuntu it is likely that ubuntu values can empower them to combat exclusion and employ pedagogies that aim to reach all students in the classrooms. inclusive pedagogies thrive on the connectedness between students alone and between their teachers, which all provide a positive learning environment. this, in turn, positively influences students’ self-worth, self-belief and achievement. successful learning depends on these networks of support. inclusive education is the essence of ubuntu – ‘that we live in a delicate web of interconnectedness and interdependence with each other, i am because we are’ (ed. phasha 2016). like ubuntu, inclusive pedagogies embrace equal participation, cooperation and solidarity amongst students and between students and teachers. in this way, all learners feel a sense of belonging and acceptance. ubuntu pedagogy does not only encourage development of all students as individuals, but it also promotes active collaboration between students from diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds who bring different characteristics and learning needs into the classrooms. in this way, ubuntu pedagogy affirms diversity as an ordinary aspect of development in a higher education classroom. ubuntu pedagogy rejects exclusion, marginalisation and inequality in the teaching and learning spaces (ed. phasha 2016). these notions of ubuntu pedagogy further solidify the connections between ubuntu and social justices into the learning environments. there is limited information, especially in south africa, on the pedagogies that depart from an african indigenous knowledge systems framework such as ubuntu pedagogy within the realm of social justice. this study seeks to fill the existing gap. we further provide, in the following section, guidelines for possible implementation of ubuntu pedagogy in diverse higher education contexts, especially in south africa. ubuntu pedagogy: the guiding principles for possible implementation ubuntu pedagogy is anchored by six principles that underpin and guide its possible and effective implementation as a transformative and socially just pedagogical strategy in higher education settings: recognition of self and others, building positive relationships, getting students to work cooperatively, nurturing of the students’ minds, teaching from a position of love and care and utilising students’ linguistic resources to promote meaningful learning (ukpokodu 2016). recognition of self and others through participation and interactions humans develop identity and belonging. from an african perspective, teaching and learning suggest that it is through engagement with other people that a person grows more fully human, more truly in their identity. in other words, through participation and interaction with others we see ourselves – ‘i participate, therefore i am’ (tutu 2000). in other words, i see myself through others; therefore i feel that i belong. ubuntu pedagogy, therefore, places value in collective learning through interactions and participation. students understand more of what they know or do not know through interactions with others. active learning through participation, interactions, sharing of ideas, knowledge and experiences promotes effective learning. equally, understanding of self and others is critical in a learning process. if you understand yourself, you know your strengths and accept your weaknesses. if you understand others, you also understand their strengths and weaknesses. a learning process therefore becomes an interdependent and a mutual activity (le grange 2011). building positive relationships a second component of ubuntu pedagogy is building a positive relationship. it is this component of ubuntu pedagogy that is responsible for peace and a harmonious learning environment where students respect one another and their teachers as adults within the learning context. effective learning cannot take place unless students, firstly, embrace one another, and secondly, respect each other as individuals and human beings. love brings care for one another, sympathy, forgiveness, sharing and peace in the classroom. love amongst learners ensures that they share not only knowledge, but they also share learning tools and learning spaces with one another (ukpokodu 2016). where there is love for one another, there is respect and acceptance plus tolerance for diverse and unique social backgrounds and respect for one another’s ideas. when students love and respect each other, there are high chances that they will listen to one another’s ideas and thoughts and learn from them. pedagogical practices anchored by ubuntu bring about kindness, caring, togetherness, solidarity, cooperation and sharing amongst students and teachers, which all promote positive relationships (metz 2011; ukpokodu 2016). getting students to work cooperatively working together is another important principle of ubuntu pedagogy. it promotes unity and team spirit amongst students as they tackle learning problems. effective cooperation thrives on solidarity, sharing and respect for one another and equal opportunities. in an effective teamwork, each member is important for successful learning experiences. each member’s contribution is important and it is valued. working together promotes the ubuntu notion of ‘for i know, so you know’ classroom environment where learners not only take care of each other’s physical needs such as sharing classroom furniture and learning tools but they also share knowledge, thus extending each other’s cognitive development (ukpokodu 2016). supporting one another is a vital component of ubuntu pedagogy. in an african ubuntu perspective, sharing knowledge means i give you what i know, i am giving you what i have so that you can also have because tomorrow i will also need your help. therefore, ubuntu pedagogy ensures that students work together and assist one another to learn and understand the learning material. nurturing of students’ minds another important element of ubuntu pedagogy is the nurturing of students’ minds. ubuntu pedagogy prioritises participative and interactive learning. students learn best when they interact their ideas, thoughts and experiences with each other. interaction on the learning material maximises participation. an active learning promotes engagement with the learning material. students get opportunities to discuss the problems, to ask questions, to debate concepts and to share their thinking and experiences. such classrooms foster cognitive development amongst learners. they nurture learners’ minds and expand their learning opportunities (letseka 2014). teaching from a position of love and care it is rather impossible to speak of ubuntu without referring to acts of humanity such as love, kindness, sympathy and respect and solidarity. education without love becomes a mere ideology (blackwood 2018). teachers in higher education may draw from a variety of teaching strategies and techniques but if teachers lack love for the students and for the teaching, such efforts fail to inspire students. if good strategies are used by an unloving teacher who spends more time consciously or unconsciously speaking and acting in contrary to love, this may disempower students and they may lose respect for the teacher. that is, teaching that truly inspires, humanises and empowers students not only comes from good strategies and perfect curriculum, but it is also the pedagogy that is love-centred. teacher’s love makes a difference in the presence of effective teaching tools and strategies. without a loving and inspirational teacher in the classroom, subjects and learning can be boring and irrelevant. ‘as one develops towards love, one is capable of loving one’s self holistically and because of this holistic love of one’s self love, one can love the world holistically’ (blackwood 2018:30). teaching from a position of love does not only empower students in the classroom, but it also sparks a change for the better in students no matter what the situation is. teacher’s love helps students to preserve in time of academic challenges. love and care can embrace their students’ diverse personalities and they love their strengths and weaknesses in the classroom (blackwood 2018). such teachers never doubt the potential and capabilities of their students. instead they help students grow beyond their intellectual abilities. a classroom that is centred on teacher’ love towards students and amongst students is nurturing and supportive. students are motivated to help one another overcome learning barriers. in that way, students become willing to learn together and share information. such pedagogy is anchored by ubuntu (ukpokodu 2016). utilising students’ linguistic resources to promote meaningful learning: ubuntu translanguaging in the south african higher education system english language remains the most important resource for access, participation and success. this is despite english being home language to a small group of students, thus, denying majority of students who bring to the universities, languages other than english. at the same time, south africa is rich in multilingualism with 11 official languages. many students bring multilingual repertoires into higher education classrooms (makalela 2016:187). the presence of more than one language makes many higher education classrooms bilingual or multilingual. however, research shows that many higher education institutions, despite accepting multilingual students into their classrooms and despite recognising multilingualism policies, remain monolingual in their language of teaching and learning which, in the case of south africa, is english. higher education institutions continue to neglect languages that students bring with them from home to university classrooms and they persist in using a foreign language, english, for teaching and learning for multilingual students (makalela 2016:188). learning in a second language is one of the major learning barriers for second language students. makalela (2016:188) called for an urgent acknowledgement of students’ diverse languages for meaningful learning and teaching in multilingual classrooms. embracing language diversity is the ultimate goal of ubuntu pedagogy (ukpokodu 2016:188). it is through their languages that students make sense of the world and reflect meaningfully. embracing students’ home languages alongside the language of teaching and learning restores students’ identity and dignity of their cultural languages. besides, makalela (2016) felt: [t]hat it is time that boundaries that isolate and separate languages are broken so all languages that students bring to the university classrooms could be used for enhancing students’ learning. (p. 189) multilingual practices such as translanguaging enable multilingual teachers and students to draw from different linguistic repertoires for meaningful and purposeful learning. this type of learning can be transformative. however, successful multilingual practices such as translanguaging require that teachers accept and recognise all languages spoken by students as equal. linguistic equality means that no language is viewed in a superior way than other languages in the classroom (makalela 2016:188). conclusion in this article we argued that many years after democracy in south africa, higher education has not transformed. pedagogical practices, by and large, still draw from the western philosophies and world views, despite majority of students in higher education being students from african cultures. we join ndlovu-gatsheni (2018) in declaring this continuous oppression and neglect of belief systems and values that african students bring to higher education as ‘epistemic violence’. we also join scholars (blignaut 2020; chilisa 2016; maistry 2021) in their urgent call for ‘epistemic freedom’ through decolonial and transformative pedagogies. drawing from mbigi (1997) collective fingers theory and social justice theory (fraser 2009) we proposed for ubuntu pedagogy as an alternative teaching method that draws from indigenous ubuntu philosophical values. we argued that ubuntu pedagogy, when embraced with understanding and dignity it deserves, has the potential not only of initiating and reconnecting students with their values and cultures but it also has a capacity to cultivate social justice values of inclusion, recognition of self and others and activate participation. we have shown how ubuntu can foster understanding of self and others amongst learners, build positive relationships, encourage cooperation and respect amongst learners, inspire teachers to teach from a position of love and care and promote inclusion and social justice for all students and, thus, become a transformative pedagogical method for post-apartheid higher education. we hope to make contributions to ongoing debates on transformative pedagogies, decolonisation and social justice in higher education. acknowledgements competing interests the authors declare that they have no financial or personal relationship(s) that may have inappropriately influenced them in writing this article. authors’ contributions n.i.m. was responsible for conceptualisation of the article, introduction, concepts, discussions, conclusion and references. m.j.m. was involved in conceptualisation, methodology, theoretical framework, concepts, discussions and references. ethical considerations this article followed all ethical standards for a research without direct contact with human or animal subjects. funding information this research received no funding from any agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors. data availability data sharing is not applicable to this work. disclaimer the view and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy of position or any affiliated agency of the authors. references badat, s. & sayed, y., 2014, ‘post-1994 south african education: the challenge of social justice’, the annals of the american academy 652(1), 127–148. https://doi.org/10.1177%2f0002716213511188 blackwood, a., 2018, ‘transformative learning: improving teachers’ cultural competency through knowledge and practice of ubuntu’, phd thesis, college of education and human performance, university of central florida, viewed 12 february 2021, from https://stars.library.ucf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=7056&context=etd. blignaut, s., 2020, ‘transforming the curriculum for unique challenges faced by south africa’, curriculum perspectives. https://doi.org/10.1007/s41297-020-00104-6 blignaut, s. & koopman, o., 2020, ‘towards an embodied critical pedagogy of discomfort as a decolonial teaching’, alternations 31(2020), 81–96. https://doi.org/10.29086/2519-5476/2020/sp31a5 broodryk, j., 2005, ubuntu management philosophy: exporting ancient african wisdom into the global world, knowers publishing, pretoria. chilisa, b., 2012, indigenous research methodologies, sage, london. chilisa, b., 2016, indigenous research methodologies, 2nd edn., sage, london. fraser, n., 2008, ‘reframing justice in a globalizing world’, in k. olson (ed.), adding insult to injury: nancy fraser debates her critics, pp. 273–291, verso, london. fraser, n., 2009, scales of justice: reimagining political space in a globalising world, colombia university press, new york. goduka, i., 2000, ‘african/indigenous philosophies: legitimizing spiritually centered wisdoms within the academy’, in p. higgs, n.c.g. vakalisa, t.v. mda & n.t. assie-lumumba (eds.), african voices in education, pp. 63–83, juta, pretoria. heleta, s., 2016, ‘decolonisation of higher education: dismantling epistemic violence and eurocentrism in south africa’, transformation in higher education 1(1), 1–8. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v1i1.9 johnstone, c.l., 1981, ‘ethics, wisdom and the mission of contemporary rhetoric the realisation of human being’, central states speech journal 32(3), 177–188. https://doi.org/10.1080/10510978109368093 le grange, l. (ed.), 2011, the philosophy of ubuntu and education in south africa, sense publishers, boston, ma. le grange, l., du preez, p., ramrathan, l. & blignaut, s., 2020, ‘decolonising the university curriculum or decolonising the washing? a multiple case study’, journal of education 80, 25–47. https://doi.org/10.17159/2520-9868/i80a02 leibowitz, b. & bozalek, v., 2016, ‘the scholarship of teaching and learning from a social justice perspective’, teaching in higher education 21(2), 109–122. https://doi.org/10.1080/13562517.2015.1115971 letseka, m. (eds.), 2000, african philosophy and educational discourse, juta, pretoria. letseka, m., 2014, ‘ubuntu and justice as fairness’, mediterranean journal of social sciences 5(9), 544–551. https://doi.org/10.5901/mjss.2014.v5n9p544 maistry, s., 2021, ‘curriculum theorising in africa as a social justice project: insights from decolonial theory’, in k.g.f. kehdinga & b.k. khoza (eds.), curriculum theory, curriculum theorising and theories: the african theorising perspective, pp. 133–147, sense, leiden. makalela, l., 2016, ‘ubuntu translanguaging: an alternative framework for complex multilingual encounters’, southern african linguistics and applied language studies 34(3), 187–196. https://doi.org/10.2989/16073614.2016.1250350 mbigi, l., 1997, ‘images of ubuntu in global competitiveness’, flying springbok 4, 31–35. metz, t., 2011, ‘ubuntu as a moral theory and human rights in south africa’, african human rights journal of law 11, 532–559. metz, t., 2014, ‘just the beginning for ubuntu: reply to matolino and kwindingwi’, south african journal of philosophy 33(1), 65–72. https://doi.org/10.1080/02580136.2014.892680 ndlovu-gatsheni, s., 2018, epistemic freedom in africa: deprovincialization and decolonization, routledge, london. phasha, n. (ed.), 2016, understanding inclusive education from an afrocentric perspective, oxford university press, pretoria. ramose, m.b. (ed.), 2002, the philosophy of ubuntu as a philosophy, oxford university press, london. sibanda, s., 2019, ‘in search of social justice through ubuntu: a critical analysis of zimbabwe’s post-colonial education for all (efa) policy’, doctoral thesis, cantebury christ university, viewed 02 february 2021, from https://repository.canterbury.ac.uk/. tutu, d., 2000, no future without forgiveness: a personal overview of south africa’s truth and reconciliation commission, rider random house, london. ukpokodu, o.n., 2016, you can’t teach us if you don’t know us and care about us: becoming an ubuntu, responsive and responsible urban teacher, peter lang, new york, ny, viewed 20 january 2021, from https://dl.acm.org/doi/book/10.5555/3098726. abstract introduction doctoral education in russia literature review research methods and design results discussion conclusion acknowledgements references footnotes about the author(s) nurudeen abdul-rahaman department of education, faculty of education, the national research university, higher school of economics, moscow, russia evgeniy terentev department of education, faculty of education, the national research university, higher school of economics, moscow, russia issah iddrisu department of education, faculty of education, university for development studies, tamale, ghana citation abdul-rahaman, n., terentev, e. & iddrisu, i., 2022, ‘the social integration experiences of international doctoral students at russian universities’, transformation in higher education 7(0), a206. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v7i0.206 original research the social integration experiences of international doctoral students at russian universities nurudeen abdul-rahaman, evgeniy terentev, issah iddrisu received: 19 apr. 2022; accepted: 05 sept. 2022; published: 08 nov. 2022 copyright: © 2022. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract social integration (si) plays a critical role in doctoral students’ success. however, si experiences could differ depending on the characteristics of students and their programmes. the study investigates differences in the si of doctoral students at russian universities and identifies the main groups at risk who have more difficulties with si. to achieve this, the study utilized data from a cross-institutional online survey of doctoral students conducted in 2021 on behalf of the russian ministry of science and higher education. a total of 4,454 doctoral students from 249 universities responded to the survey. findings from the study indicate international students were less socially integrated in terms of having more friends and having problems interacting with others, either in person or remotely. generally, no clear and significant difference was observed between their experiences and all aspects of social integration analysed in the study. secondly, international doctoral students (ids) are divided into groups (groups with low si scores and groups with high si scores) and compared them in terms of their subjective assessment of their chances for defence during the normative period of their studies and their overall satisfaction with the doctoral programme. the results for both variables revealed significant differences between ids and varying degrees of si. significantly, the ids group with a higher si score reported high chances of defending their dissertation within the normative period of five years. the study concludes by suggesting that that activities that foster informal communication should be implemented and standardized within all departments in russian universities to properly absorb all doctoral students into the social and academic cultures of their universities. keywords: social integration; department; international student; domestic student; attrition persistence. introduction international students’ persistence in doctoral studies is greatly increased when they are fully incorporated into the social structure of their institutions and programmes (ruud et al. 2018). it is widely acknowledged that the compatibility between doctoral students and their various departments is critical in helping students integrate socially at their institution, further boosting their perseverance and success (hixenbaugh, dewart & towell 2012; settle 2011; hixenbaugh et al., 2012). however, doctoral students’ social integration (si) experiences are viewed generally rather than regarding various departments, despite the importance of the university department in ensuring that doctoral students are socially integrated (gardner 2010). furthermore, most of the research on si in doctoral education focuses on students in higher education without distinguishing between international and domestic students, as evidenced in studies by rockinson-szapkiw et al. (2014), rigler et al. (2017), sverdlik et al. (2018), holmes and rockinson-szapkiw (2020) and piepenburg and beckmann (2021). also, no such study investigates si between international and domestic doctoral students in the russian context. however, russia has a large doctoral education system and a significant share of international doctoral students (ids), making it interesting and important for the current analysis. this study explores the si experiences of doctoral students in russian university departments. the authors postulate that ids may find it challenging to integrate socially into their university departments in russia because of the diverse educational cultures of their home countries. the findings of this study will add vital knowledge and understanding of the elements inside university departments that promote si among doctoral students in the russian setting, which will influence departmental procedures at universities across the country. the following two research questions guided the study: is there a difference in the level of social integration between international and domestic doctoral students? does the lower level of social integration among ids relate to lower satisfaction with the doctoral programme and lower expectations regarding the time to degree? doctoral education in russia the russian doctoral education system is among the world’s top 10 biggest. in 2021, 90 156 doctorates studied at russian universities and research institutes, 27 992 new doctoral students entered doctoral programmes and 14 326 graduated from doctoral programmes.1 during the 1990s and 2000s, doctoral education in russia experienced dramatic massification, almost tripling the number of doctoral students (from 53 541 in 1994 to 157 437 in 2010). however, in the 2010s, it faced massive criticism regarding the quality of research produced by doctoral candidates and corruption (terentiev, bekova & maloshonok 2018). these critics laid the foundation for a list of reforms that dramatically changed the status and content of doctoral programmes and the structure of doctoral students’ bodies (maloshonok & terentev 2019). among the most prominent changes was the dramatic decrease in the number of doctorates. traditionally rooted in the master-apprentice model, before 2012, the doctoral education system in russia had a research training programme with very few educational activities and focused primarily on preparing a thesis. to obtain a candidate of science degree, the applicant had to pass through three qualification exams, publish at least one or two papers (depending on the area of research) in the approved list of journals and prepare and defend a text of a thesis (to see more: maloshonok & terentev 2019). after adopting the new federal law ‘on education in the russian federation’, doctoral programmes became the third higher education level. this resulted in substantial changes, which were made to the system of doctoral education. firstly, it significantly increased the volume of coursework. under the new model, doctoral students must take classes for 30 credits (mostly in their area of specialization) and complete research and teaching internships during their studies (terentev, bekova & maloshonok 2021). after the completion of the educational programme (in three or five years, depending on the area and mode of study), the doctoral candidate must pass through the comprehensive exam consisting of two parts – presentation of educational and methodological materials based on the results of the thesis and presentation of the research report with main results of the thesis study. completing the comprehensive exam enables one to receive the diploma with the qualification of ‘researcher. lecturer’ (which allows teaching in master programmes) and opens the way towards the defence. oral defence before the dissertation council is mandatory to obtain a degree. also, new requirements on publications for doctoral candidates were adopted, which increased the minimum number of papers published before the defence to two or three, depending on the study area. in the 2010s, many efforts were made for the internationalization of doctoral education in russia. the government and certain (especially leading) universities introduced special programmes aimed at financial support of incoming mobility for international students (woodman et al. 2022). as a result, there was a significant increase in ids at russian universities and research institutes – from 3471 in 2010 to 7871 in 2019. in 2019, the ids shared among all doctoral students were 9%. the main donors of ids for the russian system of doctoral education are post-soviet countries (about 40% out of all ids) and asia and the middle east region (about half out of all ids). despite many efforts made on the national and institutional levels, the quality of doctoral education is yet questionable and receives many critics (see terentev et al. 2021). among the main points of critics is the low completion rate of doctoral programmes. in 2021, only 1500 graduates of doctoral programmes defended their theses during the formative period, which equals 11% out of all graduates. another problem is the absence of financial aid. the government subsidizes doctoral studies, and doctoral students receive scholarships, but these are insufficient to be considered a principal source of income. as a result, many doctoral students seek full-time work elsewhere (bekova & dzhafarova 2019). other systematic issues discussed in the literature include poor supervision, incompleteness of reforms, ineffective mechanisms of doctoral students’ selection and unpreparedness of universities and research institutes for the massification of doctoral programmes (see maloshonok & terentev 2019). effective responses to these issues require further empirical studies on different aspects of doctoral education. this study aims to contribute to this task and focus on the si of doctoral students at russian universities (with a special focus on ids). literature review the concept of social integration social integration can be understood as the frequency and quality of interactions with colleagues (other doctoral students or faculty members) from the student’s department outside of the workplace and about matters other than academic ones (golde 2000; meeuwisse et al. 2010; van rooij, fokkens-bruinsma & jansen 2019). holmes and rockinson-szapkiw (2020) defined si as the student’s satisfaction with the nature and quality of non-academic interactions between students and professors inside the programme. the role of the department in the social integration of doctoral students international doctoral students’ first contact with their university department and its staff happens at admission, upon arrival at the institution and the commencement of their educational programme. this interaction continues throughout their studies (brooman & darwent 2014; hughes & smail 2015). it was discovered that positive interactions with departmental members and peers increase the likelihood that ids will persevere and succeed in their doctoral projects, demonstrating that departments significantly impact student integration into the social environment of universities (zhou & okahana 2019). scholars assert that positive student–department interactions facilitated students’ integration into academic disciplines and departments, a crucial factor for doctoral retention and completion (cockrell & shelley 2011; zhou & okahana 2019). researchers argued that doctoral student retention required integration and participation in disciplines (golde 2005) and academic departments (herzig 2002). other researchers found close relationships among departmental members and doctoral students were productive in helping students select dissertation committee members, which is crucial for the timely completion of doctoral programmes (wao & onwuegbuzie 2011). thus, it is unsurprising that departmental academic support, such as foundation language courses for ids, was associated with their success (gardner 2008; greene 2015). furthermore, doctoral completion was positively correlated with departmental activities and attitudes towards students (de valero 2001). in addition, ids who participated in engagement activities within the department, such as student groups and associations, experienced stress reduction and improved completion rates (kearns, gardiner & marshall 2008). other stream studies revealed high adaptability to the social systems of the university in which ids are enrolled reduces attrition (ellis 2001; gardner 2007; lovitts 2001). social integration in doctoral studies studies have found a high correlation between si and success, development and contentment (bair & haworth 2004; lovitts 2001; shin et al. 2018). individual factors, the microenvironment (such as the department, programme, classmates and professors) and the microenvironment influence the completion of doctoral degrees (lovitts 2005). researchers discovered that contacts with other faculty members and quality mentoring, encouragement and constructive criticism are among the most significant predictors of doctoral students’ satisfaction, persistence and general welfare (gardner 2007; lovitts 2001; vekkaila, pyhältö & lonka 2014). for instance, weidman and stein (2013) discovered an association between the number of interactions between faculty and students and their involvement in research initiatives. cockrell and shelley (2011) revealed a substantial association between support systems and student happiness, indicating that doctoral programmes should improve support systems to reduce student attrition. espino (2014) discovered in a study of minority graduate students that doctorate students benefited from socialization in academic contexts and support from their families, communities and graduate environments. vekkaila et al. (2014) found that doctoral students’ perceptions of participation in and belonging to academic communities affected their positive experiences, well-being, contentment and persistence in doctorate studies. according to piepenburg and beckmann (2021), ids who are not properly absorbed into their university’s social and intellectual culture will abandon their chosen field of study. according to reports, a lack of social interaction is one of the primary reasons german ids drop out (isleib, woisch & heublein 2019; piepenburg & beckmann 2021). considering the numerous positive effects of si on the success of ids, the literature has emphasized the department’s and faculty’s role in enhancing si. rigler et al. (2017) reported that isolation was a major factor in the attrition of doctoral students. through their departments, doctoral programmes must create effective offline and online socialization opportunities for students to combat student isolation. according to the best practices within departments in institutions, rockinson-szapkiw et al. (2014) and stallone (2011) reaffirmed that cohort models, social networking technologies and study or collaboration groups were effective ways to increase socialization among doctoral students. janta, lugosi and brown (2014) focused on how departments can enhance doctoral students’ si. among the interaction opportunities cited by the researchers are welcome parties for new participants, social gatherings to commemorate the achievement of significant milestones, lunchtime seminars that combine food and academic discussion and other social gatherings. according to merola et al. (2019), institutions should prioritize enhancing the social capital of students through techniques such as small-group instruction, which promotes interaction and academic performance. they further indicated that interventions that can improve students’ social capital and academic integration include working in groups or pairs during class and promoting peer tutoring. international doctoral students’ si is also unique to the discipline of study and research group status. the discipline, and its organizational structure in the university via a department, serves as the focal point for the student experience (golde 2005). vekkaila et al.’s (2014) research revealed that behavioural science doctoral students had a low sense of community involvement. the authors attributed this to the study style followed in their field. they underlined that the behavioural sciences are a subset of the soft sciences and are occasionally characterized by solitary research in libraries, archives or the field. golde (2005) found that doctoral students in the natural sciences have high si, which is in line with an earlier study by chiang (2003). walsh (2010) reported that ids in engineering and science had difficulty integrating with the student body because of their rigorous schedules and cultural and communication differences. a subsequent study (gardner 2010) discovered that doctoral students in english and oceanography were more socially integrated. a recent study by antilla, sullanmaa and pyhältö (2021) found that full-time domestic students felt lonelier and more insecure than domestic part-time students. they underlined that in contrast to full-time doctoral students who largely rely on the researcher community, having many responsibilities at once may shield part-time students from the social isolation or solitariness that has frequently been reported in related doctoral studies. antilla et al. (2021) also pointed out that doctoral students who worked primarily or partially in a research group experienced loneliness more frequently than those who worked alone. this resulted in students working in research groups having higher expectations for social support and a sense of belonging than students working alone. other studies comparing si between domestic and international students include cena, burns and wilson (2021) and spencer-oatey et al. (2017). only a few have examined these differences using large sample size, like this study. the study of terentev et al. (2021) indicated a high attrition rate among russian doctoral students. yet, the preceding literature demonstrates a few studies identified in the broader context investigating si among doctoral students based on nationality (domestic and international), the discipline of study and several years of study. there is a general lack of studies in the russian context on this research topic. theoretical framework tinto (1993) used the lens of integration to describe the phenomenon of doctoral student attrition. he emphasizes the importance of students’ social and intellectual integration within their universities for determining their perseverance in doctoral programmes (tinto 1993:50). he distinguished two unique integration systems: academic and si, and described both. academic integration is defined as students’ exposure to the research world and academic environment, whereas si is defined as students’ interactions within the university’s social structures (tinto 1993). he indicated that students enter university with various personal characteristics, including nationality, prior educational background and personal goal commitments. the successful interaction of these characteristics and university characteristics results in adequate integration. according to him, when students are thoroughly incorporated into the social systems of their host universities, their retention and perseverance in higher education improve significantly. he asserted that students who positively interact with their university environment are more likely to stay and eventually succeed in their studies and vice versa. this means that university structures must-have features that immediately make students feel accepted, engage them in university activities and provide a supportive environment for students to speak to one another, supervisors and other university employees. tinto’s theory was used to understand how various parts of interactive experiences within university departments vary between domestic and international doctoral students in various years of study and students in different fields. in this study, the nationality of students (domestic and international), field and year of study are considered individual attributes. in the departmental environment, which consists of other students, staff are the institutional attributes. the theory is used to analyse the effect of the interplay of these institutional and individual attributes on students’ social well-being. students perform better in situations that: (1) promote student-to-student connection; (2) promote student-to-staff engagement; (3) treat all students fairly; (4) promote a sense of belonging; and (5) actively engage students. while this theory was developed at the institutional level, the authors believe it is worthwhile to apply it at the departmental level to increase the understanding of what institutions can do to improve student retention and reduce dropout rates among doctoral students and what individual departments can do. research methods and design general overview a cross-institutional online survey was used to analyse doctoral students’ views on si experiences during their studies at russian universities. this survey was conducted in may – june 2021 on behalf of the russian ministry of science and higher education under the project ‘scientific and methodological support for the development of quality management system of higher education in the conditions of coronavirus disease 2019 (covid-19) pandemic and after’.2 the survey’s main goal was to analyse the challenges and opportunities for developing doctoral education quality at russian universities during the pandemic. the questionnaire covered the following topics: (1) satisfaction with the university learning conditions and services, (2) characteristics of interaction with a supervisor and other university staff and satisfaction with this interaction, (3) main obstacles during the doctoral study and (4) professional goals and plans. questions about si and its different dimensions were at the core of the second series of questions (interactions with a supervisor and university staff). study population and sampling strategy the targeted sample for the survey was all doctoral students who had studied at russian universities at the time of the survey. to access the respondents, the authors used letters of support from the russian ministry of science and higher education, which were delivered to all russian universities via the ministry’s electronic system. letters were addressed to rectors of universities and asked to share the link with their students. participation in the survey was voluntary. a total of 4454 doctoral students from 249 universities participated in the survey, which equals 9.0% of all doctoral students at russian universities. the main characteristics of the sample are presented in table 1: 91.2% of respondents are domestic students and 52.6% are male. most of the doctoral students were in their first year of study (38.7%). table 1: socio-demographics of the respondents. data collection to measure the si experiences of doctoral students, the authors used six the following questions, which were formulated in the form of statements: (1) ‘i have friends in my department’, (2) ‘i feel like i belong to the department’, (3) ‘i am proud to be a doctoral student of my department’, (4) ‘my department creates a welcoming and supportive environment’, (5) ‘i can always talk (in person or remotely) with my department’, and (6) ‘faculty of my department/school/institute treat me fairly’. all questions were measured on a five-point likert scale (ranging from 1 – strongly disagree to 5 – strongly agree). the authors used a four-point likert scale (ranging from 1– my chances are high to 4 – i don’t think i will be able to defend my dissertation in five years) to evaluate international students’ expectations about the defence period. lastly, the authors measured international students’ satisfaction with the quality of their programmes using a four-point likert scale (ranging from 1– satisfied to 4 – dissatisfied). data analysis after attaining the desired response threshold, the survey data were analysed separately based on six dimensions of si. a five-point likert scale (ranging from 1 – strongly disagree to 5 – strongly agree) was used to assess the themes of this research. the number of items used to measure each of the themes is presented in table 2. the chi-square analysis method was used to analyse the experiences of domestic and ids regarding the various aspects of social interaction within their university departments. the mean si scores were then compared between domestic and ids. table 2: doctoral students’ experiences with aspects of social integration. table 3: social integration score by nationality of respondents. results survey results show the generally high subjective evaluation of doctoral students’ si at russian universities (figure 1). more than 75% of doctoral students, who participated in the survey, somewhat or strongly agreed with all statements. bigger shares of those who responded with options ‘somewhat disagree’ and ‘disagree’ were observed for the statements about having friends and a sense of belonging to the department (19% and 18%, respectively). almost all participants agreed that the faculty of their department treated them fairly (91%) and that they could always talk with the faculty of their department (89%). figure 1: agreement of respondents with statements about the social integration. the results showed that 45% and 41% of the domestic and international students strongly agreed that they have friends in their department/school/institute (χ2 = 11.5, p = 0.022). in comparison, similar proportions of 40% and 45% of domestic and international students respectively felt like they belong to their department/school/institute (χ2 = 6.1, p = 0.192). at least half of the respondents, irrespective of nationality, strongly agreed with the other four questions on si, as summarized in table 2. the domestic students had a mean (+ standard deviation) si score of 25.200 + 4.800 compared with a mean si score of 25.400 + 4.800 among the international students (t = 0.600, p = 0.549). this indicates that si among domestic and international students in russian universities has little difference (table 2). in the next step, the authors analysed the experience of ids with different levels of si. to clarify the analysis, all ids were divided into two groups depending on their value of si score, using 24 points as a cutoff. the authors compared these two groups concerning their subjective evaluation of chances for the defence during the normative period (figure 1) and students’ general satisfaction with their doctoral programmes (figure 2). the results showed significant differences between ids with different levels of si for both variables. international doctoral students with lower si score significantly rarely responded about high chances for their defence in five years – 49% compared with 65% for the group of ids with higher si score (χ2 = 11.275, p = 0.010). similarly, among ids with lower si scores, almost 30% reported that they are dissatisfied with the doctoral programme compared with only 6% among ids with higher si scores (χ2 = 55.706, p < 0.001). figure 2: subjective evaluation of chances to defend a thesis during the normative period depending on the value of the social integration score. figure 3: satisfaction with the quality of the doctoral programme, depending on the value of the social integration score. discussion poor si into university departments is a big issue for doctoral education, resulting in students leaving their programmes and having lower academic achievements (ellis 2001; gardner 2007; lovitts 2001). previous studies showed that the level of si could differ depending on the individual characteristics of doctoral students as well as characteristics of the educational environment (for instance, antilla et al. 2021; cena et al. 2021; spencer-oatey et al. 2017). this study’s main goal was to investigate differences in the si of doctoral students at russian universities. it was focused mainly on the comparison of si between international and domestic doctoral students, as ids are traditionally seen as one of the main groups at risk for si because of language barriers, cultural specifics and other factors of their educational and social experience (gao 2021). the results of the study demonstrated that there is no significant difference in si between international and domestic doctoral students. in the educational departments, the only difference found between domestic and ids is that domestic students are more likely to make friends and talk with the department staff in person or online. this friendship networks within the departments promote interactions between domestic students and staff, which could help enhance knowledge transfer and improve their social well-being compared with ids. it could also get more domestic doctoral students to get involved in research initiatives (see weidman & stein 2013), which makes it more likely that they will finish their programmes in the normative time of five years before their international colleagues. the study also found that ids with lower si scores have limited chances of defending their dissertation within the normative period. this is a clear indication that si contributes a lot to improving the progress of ids, reducing dropout rates among ids within their programmes. isleib et al. (2019) found a lack of si as one of the key reasons why german international students drop out of their programmes. this necessitates that parties in higher education ought to execute reforms to help ids quickly and easily navigate their doctoral journeys. this study also revealed that ids with lower si scores are the group with less satisfaction with their doctoral programmes. this, again, adds up to the argument that si is crucial to students’ happiness in their programmes and universities (bair & haworth 2004; lovitts 2001; shin et al. 2018). the above-discussed results greatly improve the discussions on transformation in higher education by suggesting that activities that foster informal communication between domestic and international students, students and faculty should be standardized and implemented across every department of the various universities in russia. as doctoral students, they derive substantial benefit from these interactions through these informal activities (espino 2014; shelly 2011). these activities may include clubs, extracurricular events, cultural festivals and the addition of extra-group events to doctoral programmes, which increases the chance that ids will make friends in their departments and makes them more involved and less lonely (see janta et al. 2014; rockinson-szapkiw et al. 2014; merola et al. 2019; stallone 2011). rigler et al. (2017) found that one of the main reasons why so many doctoral students drop out is that they feel isolated. these suggested activities, if successfully implemented in russian universities, would ensure that ids are properly absorbed into the university’s social and academic culture, which will improve retention and persistence (piepenburg & beckmann 2021). this relates well with tinto’s theory, which argues that all students attend universities with previous experience. the experiences shape how students experience the selection of different societies and their educational departments. he also stated that departmental practices that foster informal communication improve students’ sense of belonging, which enhances their commitment to their department and nurtures their inspiration to persevere in the doctoral programme. conclusion the study investigates differences in the si of doctoral students in russian university departments. it provided a comprehensive understanding and knowledge of the factors in russian university departments that foster si among doctoral students in the russian context, with implications for departmental measures in all national institutions. the study found no significant difference in si, and ids were more likely to be socially isolated, less satisfied with their programmes and therefore had fewer chances of graduating within the required time frame of five years. the study suggested that activities that foster informal communication should be implemented and standardized within all departments in russian universities to properly absorb all doctoral students into the social and academic cultures of their universities. acknowledgements competing interests the authors declare that they have no financial or personal relationships that may have inappropriately influenced them in writing this article. authors’ contributions n.a.-r. analysed the data, interpreted the data and wrote the entire manuscript. e.t. supervised the entire research. i.i. contributed to the editing of the manuscript. ethical considerations this article followed all ethical standards for research without direct contact with human or animal subjects. funding information this research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors. data availability the authors confirm that the data supporting the findings of this study are available within the article. disclaimer the views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any affiliated agency of the authors. references antilla, h., sullanmaa, j. & pyhältö, k., 2021, ‘does it feel the same? danish and finnish social science and humanities doctoral students’ academic emotions’, frontiers in education 6, 758179. https://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2021.758179 bair, c.r. & haworth, j.g., 2004, ‘doctoral student attrition and persistence: a meta-synthesis of research’, in j.c. smart (ed.), higher education: handbook of theory and research, vol. 19, pp. 4481–4534, springer, dordrecht. bekova, s. & dzhafarova, z., 2019, ‘who is happy in doctoral programs: the connection between employment and learning outcomes of phd students’, вопросы образования 1(eng), 87–108. https://doi.org/10.17323/1814-9545-2019-1-87-108 brooman, s. & darwent, s., 2014, ‘measuring the beginning: a quantitative study of the transition to higher education’, studies in higher education 39(9), 1523–1541. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2013.801428 cena, e., burns, s. & wilson, p., 2021, ‘sense of belonging and the intercultural and academic experiences among international students at a university in northern ireland’, journal of international students 11(4), 812–831. https://doi.org/10.32674/jis.v11i4.2541 chiang, k.h., 2003, ‘learning experiences of doctoral students in uk universities’, international journal of sociology and social policy 23(1/2), 4–32. https://doi.org/10.1108/01443330310790444 cockrell, c.n. & shelley, k., 2011, ‘the relationship between academic support systems and intended persistence in doctoral education’, journal of college student retention: research, theory & practice 12(4), 469–484. https://doi.org/10.2190/cs.12.4.e de valero, y.f., 2001, ‘departmental factors affecting time-to-degree and completion rates of doctoral students at one land-grant research institution’, the journal of higher education 72(3), 341–367. https://doi.org/10.1080/00221546.2001.11777098 ellis, e.m., 2001, ‘the impact of race and gender on graduate school socialization, satisfaction with doctoral study, and commitment to degree completion’, the western journal of black studies 25, 30–45. espino, m.m., 2014, ‘exploring the role of community cultural wealth in graduate school access and persistence for mexican american phds’, american journal of education 120(4), 545–574. https://doi.org/10.1086/676911 gao, y., 2021, ‘understanding of international doctoral students’ challenges: a literature review study’, journal of international students 11(2), 505–513. gardner, s.k., 2007, ‘“i heard it through the grapevine”: doctoral student socialization in chemistry and history’, higher education 54, 723–740. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-006-9020-x gardner, s.k., 2008, ‘fitting the mold of graduate school: a qualitative study of socialization in doctoral education’, innovative higher education 33(2), 125–138. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10755-008-9068-x gardner, s.k., 2010, ‘contrasting the socialization experiences of doctoral students in high-and low-completing departments: a qualitative analysis of disciplinary contexts at one institution’, the journal of higher education 81(1), 61–81. https://doi.org/10.1080/00221546.2010.11778970 golde, c.m., 2000, ‘should i stay or should i go? student descriptions of the doctoral attrition process’, the review of higher education 23(2), 199–227. https://doi.org/10.1353/rhe.2000.0004 golde, c.m., 2005, ‘the role of the department and discipline in doctoral student attrition: lessons from four departments’, the journal of higher education 76(6), 669–700. https://doi.org/10.1080/00221546.2005.11772304 greene, m., 2015, ‘come hell or high water: doctoral students’ perceptions on support services and persistence’, international journal of doctoral studies 10, 501. https://doi.org/10.28945/2327 herzig, a.h., 2002, ‘where have all the students gone? participation of doctoral students in authentic mathematical activity is necessary for persistence toward the ph.d’, educational studies in mathematics 50, 177–212. https://doi.org/10.1023/a:1021126424414 hixenbaugh, p., dewart, h. & towell, t., 2012, ‘what enables students to succeed? an investigation of socio-demographic, health, and student experience variables’, psychodynamic practice 18(3), 285–301. https://doi.org/10.1080/14753634.2012.695887 holmes, j.l. & rockinson-szapkiw, a., 2020, ‘the development and validation of the distance doctoral program integration scale’, online learning journal 24(4), 182–203. https://doi.org/10.24059/olj.v24i4.1951 hughes, g. & smail, o., 2015, ‘which aspects of university life are most and least helpful in the transition to he? a qualitative snapshot of student perceptions’, journal of further and higher education 39(4), 466–480. https://doi.org/10.1080/0309877x.2014.971109 isleib, s., woisch, a. & heublein, u., 2019, ‘ursachen des studienabbruchs: theoretische basis und empirischefaktoren’, zeitschriftfürerziehungswissenschaft 22(5), 1047–1076. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11618-019-00908-x janta, h., lugosi, p. & brown, l., 2014, ‘coping with loneliness: an ethnographic study of doctoral students’, journal of further and higher education 38(4), 553–571. https://doi.org/10.1080/0309877x.2012.726972 kearns, h., gardiner, m. & marshall, k., 2008, ‘innovation in phd completion: the hardy shall succeed (and be happy!)’, higher education research & development 27(1), 77–89. https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360701658781 lovitts, b.e., 2001, leaving the ivory tower: the causes and consequences of departure from doctoral study, rowman and littlefield, lanham, md. lovitts, b.e., 2005, ‘how to grade a dissertation’, academe 91(6), 18–23. https://doi.org/10.2307/40252858 maloshonok, n. & terentev, e., 2019, ‘national barriers to the completion of doctoral programs at russian universities’, higher education 77(2), 195–211. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-018-0267-9 meeuwisse, m., severiens, s.e. & born, m.p., 2010, ‘the learning environment, interaction, sense of belonging, and study success in ethnically diverse student groups’, research in higher education 51(6), 528–545. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11162-010-9168-1 merola, r.h., coelen, r.j. & hofman, w.h.a., 2019, ‘the role of integration in understanding differences in satisfaction among chinese, indian, and south korean international students’, journal of studies in international education 23(5), 535–553. https://doi.org/10.1177/1028315319861355 piepenburg, j.g. & beckmann, j., 2021, ‘the relevance of social and academic integration for students’ dropout decisions. evidence from a factorial survey in germany’, european journal of higher education 12(3), 255–276. https://doi.org/10.1080/21568235.2021.1930089 rigler, k.l., bowlin, l.k., sweat, k., watts, s. & throne, r., 2017, ‘agency, socialization, and support: a critical review of doctoral student attrition’, in paper presented at the 3rd international conf erence on doctoral education, university of central florida. rockinson-szapkiw, a., spaulding, l.s., swezey, j. & wicks, c., 2014, ‘poverty and persistence: a model for understanding individuals’ pursuit and persistence in a doctor of education program’, international journal of doctoral studies 9, 181. https://doi.org/10.28945/2049 ruud, c.m., saclarides, e.s., george-jackson, c.e. & lubienski, s.t., 2018, ‘tipping points: doctoral students and consideration of departure’, journal of college student retention: research, theory & practice 20(3), 286–307. https://doi.org/10.1177/1521025116666082 settle, j.s., 2011, ‘variables that encourage students to persist in community colleges’, community college journal of research and practice 35(4), 281–300. https://doi.org/10.1080/10668920701831621 shin, j.c., kim, s.j., kim, e. & lim, h., 2018, ‘doctoral students’ satisfaction in a research-focused korean university: socio-environmental and motivational factors’, asia pacific education review 19(2), 159–168. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12564-018-9528-7 spencer-oatey, h., dauber, d., jing, j. & lifei, w., 2017, ‘chinese students’ social integration into the university community: hearing the students’ voices’, higher education 74(5), 739–756. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-016-0074-0 stallone, m.n., 2003, factors associated with student attrition and retention in an educational leadership doctoral program, texas a&m university-kingsville, kingsville, tx. sverdlik, a., hall, n.c., mcalpine, l. & hubbard, k., 2018, ‘the phd experience: a review of the factors influencing doctoral students’ completion, achievement, and well-being’, international journal of doctoral studies 13(1), 361–388. https://doi.org/10.28945/4113 terentev, e., bekova, s. & maloshonok, n., 2021, ‘three challenges to the russian doctoral education system: why does only one out of ten doctoral students defend a thesis?’, international journal of chinese education 10(1), 22125868211007016. https://doi.org/10.1177/22125868211007016 terentiev, e.a., bekova, s.k. & maloshonok, n.g., 2018, ‘the crisis of postgraduate studies in russia: what bears problems and how to overcome them’, university management: practice and analysis 22(5), 54–66. https://doi.org/10.15826/umpa.2018.05.049 tinto, v., 1993, leaving college: rethinking the causes and cures of student attrition, the university of chicago press, chicago, il. van rooij, e., fokkens-bruinsma, m. & jansen, e., 2021, ‘factors that influence phd candidates’ success: the importance of phd project characteristics’, studies in continuing education 43(1), 48–67. https://doi.org/10.1080/0158037x.2019.1652158 vekkaila, j., pyhältö, k. & lonka, k., 2014, ‘engaging and disengaging doctoral experiences in the behavioral sciences’, international journal for researcher development 5(1), 33–55. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijrd-09-2013-0015 walsh, e., 2010, ‘a model of research group microclimate: environmental and cultural factors affecting the experiences of overseas research students in the uk’, studies in higher education 35(5), 545–560. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075070903243092 wao, h.o. & onwuegbuzie, a.j., 2011, ‘a mixed research investigation of factors related to time to the doctorate in education’, international journal of doctoral studies 6, 115. https://doi.org/10.28945/1505 weidman, j.c. & stein, e.l., 2003, ‘socialization of doctoral students to academic norms’, research in higher education 44(6), 641–656. https://doi.org/10.1023/a:1026123508335 woodman, t., terentev, e., grigoryeva, a. & minaeva, e., 2022, academic (dis) engagement of international doctoral students at russian universities, star scholar book series, open journals in education, viewed n.d., from https://ojed.org/index.php/gsm/article/view/2992. zhou, e. & okahana, h., 2019, ‘the role of the department supports doctoral completion and time-to-degree’, journal of college student retention: research, theory & practice 20(4), 511–529. https://doi.org/10.1177/1521025116682036 zhou, g. & zhang, z., 2014, ‘a study of the first-year international students at a canadian university: challenges and experiences with social integration’, comparative and international education 43(2)article 7. https://doi.org/10.5206/cie-eci.v43i2.9253 footnotes 1. see https://rosstat.gov.ru/statistics/education. 2. for more information, see https://high-edu-quality.ru/research_project. abstract introduction the changing context decolonising the curriculum curriculum changes a new pedagogy conclusion acknowledgements references footnotes about the author(s) ian a. nell department of practical theology and missiology, faculty of theology, stellenbosch university, stellenbosch, south africa citation nell, i.a., 2021, ‘decolonising an introductory course in practical theology and missiology: some tentative reflections on shifting identities’, transformation in higher education 6(0), a103. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v6i0.103 original research decolonising an introductory course in practical theology and missiology: some tentative reflections on shifting identities ian a. nell received: 03 dec. 2020; accepted: 22 feb. 2021; published: 21 may 2021 copyright: © 2021. the author licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract background: the shifting identity of a first-year class over a decade in terms of demography and representation, inevitably led me to reflect deeply on what i teach them and how i facilitate the learning process. i had to pay close attention to decolonisation and contextualisation. the basic research question is: how does one reflect on the shifting identity of a first-year class and how does one decolonise a first-year module in practical theology and missiology? aim: to answer the research question by taking the following route. firstly, aspects of the changed context and shifting identity will be discussed and secondly, attention will be given to what is meant by decolonisation, with specific reference to the curriculum. thirdly, the focus will be on a proposed curriculum that uses a theo-dramatic approach. fourthly, i reflect on the learning process (pedagogy) and how it also contributes to a shift in my own identity. setting: the research is set against the backdrop of changes that took place over the last two decades in higher education in south africa including the commodification of higher education, the lack of adequate financial resources and the #feesmustfall movement. methods: as the research design, a case study is selected for the study project. results: the development of a new pedagogy. conclusion: with this contribution i attempted to reflect, in the light of the changing profile of the class composition of a first-year module in practical theology and missiology in terms of demography (bci students), to what extent it also leads to a shift of identities. keywords: decolonisation; contextualisation; practical theology; #feesmustfall movement; pedagogy; curriculum; theo-drama. introduction at the beginning of 2020, i visited an art exhibition at the sasol art museum of stellenbosch university. the curator showed us a video known as ‘the invisible gorilla’. in the video, there are six people, three men wearing black shirts and three women wearing white shirts. they are throwing a ball to each other. the curator asked us to count how many times the ball is thrown back and forth between the players in white. at one stage, a gorilla walks into the middle of the group, looks at the camera, pats his chest and leaves again after being on screen for nine seconds. furthermore, the curtains change colour and one of the women disappears from the screen along with the gorilla. after the curator stops the video, he asked us: ‘who saw the gorilla, the curtains changing and that one of the women disappeared?’ more than half of the group of 30 did not see any of the three things happen, myself included. he then showed the video again and amazingly, there were all three of these things in full glory. this same experiment was performed at harvard university a few years ago and it was also found that half of the people who watched the video were correct in counting the number of times the ball was thrown, but missed the other three completely. it was as if these three things were invisible. what this experiment teaches is that firstly, we miss many things going on around us whilst concentrating on one thing, and secondly, we have no idea that we are missing out so much. to everyone’s surprise, it has become one of the most famous experiments in psychology. nowadays, it is used by everyone, from teachers and pastors to leaders in the corporate world and film directors. everyone uses it to explain what we see and do not see and to make us aware of how our intuitive views about our own thinking and preconceived ideas can be completely wrong. the video1 is based on the book by chabris and simons (2010): the invisible gorilla: and other ways our intuitions deceive us. i like to use this video as an analogy of what often happens in curriculum development. many hours of preparation go into finding the right learning content (watching the ball), with little to no attention to the changing context (the curtains’ colour changing), the so-called gorilla in the room (decolonisation) and the disappearance of the student (attention to pedagogy and assessment). the changing context i started 2020 with 130 first-year students enrolled for practical theology and missiology at the faculty of theology, stellenbosch university. the students represent 20 different denominations, 75% of the students are black, coloured and indian (bci) and 25% are white. ten years ago, the same first-year class consisted of 30 students, of whom 95% were white and almost all were part of the reformed tradition. the shifting identity of the class over a decade, and also shifts in my own identity as a lecturer, inevitably led me to reflect deeply on what i teach them (curriculum) and how i facilitate the learning process (pedagogy). things have changed dramatically over the past decade in the field of higher education and at least four major factors had an impact on identity politics during this time. the first is the so-called commodification of higher education related to the packaging of knowledge and its sale on global and local markets (le grange 2009). the commodification of higher education is further related to the way in which even students are often treated as commodities and data that are swallowed up and spit out as potential job-seekers, and where higher education is often reduced to a form of coaching for the job market (giroux 2014). the second factor relates to the case that universities are increasingly driven by a so-called knowledge economy that experiences pressure from two sides. on the one hand, there is the inner pressure associated with epistemological challenges relating to the shift from mode 1 knowledge, which refers to pure, disciplinary, homogeneous, expert-driven, peer-reviewed and exclusively university-based knowledge, to mode 2 knowledge, which is applied, problem-based, transdisciplinary, heterogeneous, entrepreneurial and network-embedded knowledge (gibbons et al. 1994). on the other hand, there is external pressure related to the socio-economic burden for change in terms of patterns of participation; who gains access to education and the broadening of admission (watson 2003:27). these influences are also very evident from policies such as the education white paper 3: a program for the transformation of higher education (doe 1997). the third factor is that universities, specifically in african countries, face the challenge of a lack of adequate financial resources, unresolved social crises, nepotism, political interference and environmental degradation. furthermore, it is also the case that most students in africa grow up with indigenous ways of knowing that create all sorts of epistemological challenges for them when they come to university and are confronted with epistemologies associated with the developed world. at the same time, when westernised graduates and students enter traditional african communities, they in turn experience the tension of being epistemological at a distance from these communities (costandius & bitzer 2015:16). the combination of the three changes formed the backdrop for the fourth challenge that is the #feesmustfall movement, arguably the most important challenge higher education has faced since the dawn of democracy, and it obviously had a huge impact on identity formation amongst students and lecturers. this movement originated on the campus of the university of cape town early in 2015 and was initially known as the #rhodesmustfall movement, which demanded that the statue of cecil john rhodes be removed from the campus. the latter was related to the disappointment with the colonial culture and colonial figures in higher education institutions. as the movement gained momentum, it was demanded that universities be decolonised, and the students later also insisted that the fees for tuition and student debt be written off and the ideal of free higher education be pursued. badat (2016) named a myriad of problems in higher education that led to #feesmustfall: … debt burdens, high drop-out rates, poor throughput rates, inadequate facilities and accommodation, largely unreconstructed epistemologies and ontologies, questionable quality of learning and teaching to ensure meaningful opportunities and success and alienating and disempowering academic and institutional cultures that are products of colonialism, racism, and patriarchy. (p. 10) as part of the #feesmustfall movement, some other issues also came to the fore. in this regard specifically, racism played an enormous role. the structures of historically entrenched power can unfortunately not be separated from racism, as it deals with aspects such as land ownership and the role of public places. white privileged lecturers and students find the experience of campus culture at historically white universities generally as natural, and find themselves at home within that culture. previously disadvantaged students and lecturers often do not find themselves at home within this culture at all and find it alienating, discomforting, exclusionary and disempowering (biscombe et al. 2017). in research conducted by jawitz (2016) at the university of cape town, it was revealed that white male academic staff honestly wrestled with the privileges and limitations of their white identity. he found that many of them distanced themselves from the ‘white’ stereotyping by remaining silent about injustice and by not interfering in aspects related to race as a result of feelings of guilt. this approach of selective silence can, of course, easily lead to the continuation of dominant white discourses and the ideal of higher education to contribute to democratic citizenship, social justice and social and economic development may be jeopardised. this brings us to the ‘gorilla on the stage’. decolonising the curriculum from the previous section, it is very clear that the decolonisation of the curriculum has become a matter of great urgency. one can approach decolonisation from different angles. i was privileged to be part of a group of seven researchers from five different faculties who undertook empirical research amongst stellenbosch students and lecturers during 2017–2018 on the #feesmustfall movement and the decolonisation of the curriculum (see costandius et al. 2018). as the research design, a case study (cf. creswell 2003) was selected for the study project. in a case-study design, one of the most important components is the context in which the case being studied is situated (denscombe 2007:37). we used various theoretical perspectives, which included affective theory, decolonisation and social justice. concerning decolonisation, we worked with the following concepts: african centrality: this concept relates to the fact that europe and the developed world are considered the centre of the world within colonial education. if one sees education as a way to develop self-knowledge, it should start at the local level and from there circle outwards to discover more knowledge of people in the wider world. therefore, africa and curricula from africa should be at the centre, and then not merely as an appendix to the canon of the developed world and europe. where the truth is attributed only to the developed worldperspectives of acquiring knowledge, it must be decentralised, and it is essential that the focus should fall on africa and moving towards the decolonisation of the attainment of knowledge (mbembe 2016; wathiong’o1986). knowledge production: the binary contrast of the enlightened and a modern developed world over and against the traditional and primitive africa is still noticeable in many academic discourses, and even in the reports of journalists. therefore, we must be vigilant for the invisible dynamics of colonialism, as it influences learning processes, and especially for the way in which colonial perspectives are presented as true knowledge developed through research;in the process of justifying and maintaining the unjust colonial structures. we must not forget that universities in south africa developed from the colonial project, and the research was specifically aimed at serving the colonial agenda. in our research therefore, we must deliberately deconstruct the historical development of the disciplines in academia, in the form of their archives, but at the same time not lose sight of the fact that knowledge systems cannot be isolated from global systems. it is therefore about the decentring of developed world knowledge systems and attempts to decolonise curricula to give indigenous african knowledge systems a valid and equal place amongst the knowledge systems in the world. the way knowledge is transferred and the classrooms of universities need to be decolonised, because in africa we need knowledge that addresses our own challenges and needs (le grange 2016; luckett 2016; mbembe 2016). settler perspectives: these relate to a way of speaking that allows one to illuminate a certain perspective. although people generally do not like to talk about a ‘native’ or a ‘settler’, especially if we are striving for a united south african identity, such terminology helps one to talk about decolonisation from a certain perspective, namely the settler perspective. what is meant by this is that it is performed from the point of view of white south africans. according to tuck and yang (2012), it is the case that decolonisation from a settler’s perspective unsettles and implicates us all, and it is often asked in debates that white people do not speak on behalf of the colonised. it is a given that white south africans cannot renounce their colonial heritage, but it is still possible, if they are willing to participate with humility and caution, in the recognition and dismantling of colonial structures. part of this work is to then seriously expose the underlying settler perspectives. according to tuck and yang (2012:9), settler perspectives include aspects such as the desire to remove the ‘native’, anxiety and a movement towards innocence. in south africa, this settler anxiety finds expression as white guilt experienced by white lecturers and students. according to leibowitz (2016:10), ‘decolonizing the curriculum cannot happen outside of the pursuit of social justice. it cannot happen outside of a view that sees power and privilege as of central importance’. student experiences: this refers to students’ experiences and perceptions of higher education. research has shown that bci students often experience contradictions between the linguistic and cultural demands placed on them and the policies that grant them admission to higher education institutions. in this regard, it is important to provide the right information and advice to first-generation students. unfortunately, the lack of information and advice often leads to academic exclusion, and many of these students fail (luckett 2016). subreenduth (2012) believes that the importance of student-centred teaching and learning should be expanded if we are serious about student-centredness; that we should see the student protests as a call for help and that it is the responsibility of academics to help with this process. as a result of the nature of the matter, it is important that access to higher education must increase, and south africa will have to invest more in higher education institutions and universities. concerning the point of inclusion, it is important to pay attention to cultural access for bci lecturers and students where they can experience a sense of belonging in the spaces of learning and teaching (mbembe 2016). in response to the foregoing and with a view to the possible redesign of the curriculum of practical theology and missiology 112, i have taken my starting point from the work of braidotti (2013). she is of the opinion that we should follow a bottom-up approach, where the initiative should come from the lecturers instead of from management. we must realise that we as lecturers are inherently part of the problems around us and it will not work if we idealise philosophical meta-discourses. we need to take a more pragmatic approach and through humble experimentation work towards self-transformation. the latter should include aspects such as body, mind, curriculum and classroom. the decolonisation of spaces includes things such as architecture, photographs, artefacts, symbols, buildings and statutes, and some of the approaches can be replacement or reinterpretation. this situation requires vulnerability, honesty, courage, awareness, the willingness to engage in and take ownership of the processes and many creativity (costandius et al. 2018:84). curriculum changes in view of all the above, i have made a deliberate decision to start with the first two aspects, which are both related to the decentralisation of the developed world knowledge system in formulating a new curriculum. i decided to work with an african perspective on the life and ministry of jesus christ and began using the film son of man a few years ago to create a specific frame of reference. it is the first film in the jesus film genre to have an entirely black cast, including the leading role of a black jesus (mokoena 2017). the film son of man son of man places the story of jesus in the contemporary south african context, with jesus as a black person who speaks isixhosa and embraces isixhosa tradition and culture. son of man is a transcultural story of jesus that connects the gospel story with the everyday experience of black people in south africa. son of man changes the idea that the image of jesus can only be portrayed as belonging to the developed or the middle eastern societies. there is no doubt that the film uses the ideology of black consciousness and the practice of black theology, artistically and creatively. chattaway (2006) explains that in adapting the story for the silver screen, the director of the film, mark dornford-maywas not interested in studying other retellings of jesus’ story. instead, he was fascinated by the stories of political activist steve biko. therefore, he makes biko a christ figure and builds the story around three themes: ideology, non-violence and disappearance and death. what follows are brief notes on each of the three themes, making use of the insights of mokoena (2017:1–6). in terms of ideology, one can assume that if one imagines a person like biko as a christ figure, he would not be interested in personal morality in the first place, but more in institutional morality. during the apartheid years, a message of self-condemnation was preached to black christians, which resulted in black people pointing the finger at themselves rather than at the oppressive system of apartheid. the fact that so many black people are landless, unemployed, poor and without proper housing is not because of personal sin, but because of the structural sin of apartheid. the jesus in son of man was very adamant about this when he preached to a small group of followers in a house: we are too busy with moral trivialities, as if they are the most important things. if you constantly find fault with yourself, you will lose the struggle against real sin. all authority is not divinely instituted. if you follow me, we will have peace. (mokoena 2017:2) many of the problems in the townships are not the work of black people, but of white people who were greedy for money and deprived people of their land, which led to institutional poverty. one must therefore understand it as a history of colonialism and the imperialist misrepresentation that gives rise to many of africa’s current problems. in the words of the jesus in son of man: when those with imperial histories pretend to forget them and blame africans’ problems on tribalism and corruption while building themselves new economic empires, i say we have been lied to. evil did not fall. (mokoena 2017:2) africa’s resources have been looted prodigiously and people have been expropriated from their land by european agencies. this is why the jesus of son of man speaks in two places in the film about the importance of land. in fact, the film begins with jesus pushing satan away and declaring,‘this is my world’. overpopulation, unemployment and poverty in africa are all consequences of colonialism. the next element is related to non-violence and goes back to the initial efforts of the african national congress (anc) that tried in a non-violent way to acquire land since 1912. biko (1978:151) describes how the black consciousness movement was committed from the beginning to achieve their goals in a non-violent way and planned to use a peaceful approach to the oppressive system with each of their programmes. they worked with the belief that the white person would eventually listen to the black voice –without the use of force. the purpose of the black consciousness movement was to liberate the black person from a sense of inferiority; to learn self-pride; to be economically independent and to determine their own destiny. more (2004:213) speaks of a strategy that consisted of two phases, namely on the one hand the psychological liberation and on the other hand the physical and economic liberation. with this approach, the black consciousness movement gained considerable international support. in the film son of man we also find a jesus who advocates non-violence. for example, we see how he asks his disciples to hand over their weapons, as they did not need weapons for their battle. jesus emphasises that they must prove to the people who dominate them that they will deal with poverty, epidemics and corruption in a non-violent way. the militant forces in son of man did their job with fear and intimidation to suppress the liberation initiatives of the people. jesus is eventually arrested and taken to a place of seclusion, where he is tortured, but he remains committed to the cause of social justice until his death. the last element has to do with disappearance and death, which, according to zwick (2011), goes back to the white terror regime, where it was commonly used to kill the anti-apartheid activists and to get rid of their bodies in secret. during the time of apartheid many people ‘disappeared’, of which people only became aware during the sessions of the truth and reconciliation commission. the jesus of son of man identifies with the story of biko, who also disappeared and was tortured and eventually died. the filmmaker mentions that the people familiar with the circumstances of biko’s death will know that the jesus of son or man was carried to his grave from a ‘bakkie’ similar to the one with which biko was transported before his death. in the film, jesus is interrogated and tortured, after which he is executed with a pistol and buried in a shallow grave. mary is later informed of jesus’ death and where he was buried. however, mary had the body of jesus exhumed and placed on a cross so that the whole community could see him. the purpose of this was to make known to the community what had happened to jesus when he disappeared. once again, it reminds one of biko’s death, where it was alleged that he died of a hunger strike whilst being transported naked in the back of a police force bakkie over a 1000 km. biko’s death indeed captured the imagination of the international community and what followed was increasing pressure on the south african government to abandon this way of police detention, and initiated an international investigation into his death. christ in the figure of biko has become a symbol of courage and bravery. he stood for social justice and paid for it with his life. in the light of the film, biko’s death should not be seen as a defeat, but as a victory, as he did not give in to the intimidation. in this way, the death of jesus in son of man gave new energy and courage to mary and jesus’ followers, so much so that they protested around the body of jesus and ended up in direct confrontation with the military forces. with this scene, the film also highlights the prominent role that women play in the struggle for liberation, which is so often overlooked. a theo-dramatic approach in connection with the four aspects related to the change of the curriculum, i also decided to structure the module differently in order to justify the curriculum changes. for this purpose, i sought some guidance from aesthetics and found theo-drama an interesting conversation partner. the origin of this approach can be traced back to the work of hans urs von balthasar, as developed in his five-volume work theo-drama: theological dramatic theory (1988–1998). other works also had an influence, such as nicholas healy (2000)’s church, world and the christian life: practical-prophetic ecclesiology and the protest play titled woza albert!, which was published in 1981 by percy mtwa and mbogeni ngema, with the help and creative input from renowned playwright and political activist barney simon.2 what made this protest play so striking was the fact that it retold the christ story, as contained in the gospels, in the context of apartheid, with jesus, or morena (as he is called in sesotho, and also refered to as king), who unexpectedly arrived at the passport office in albert street, johannesburg, to preach the good news to those suffering under the apartheid regime. one also sees clear parallels in this play with the film son of man. the choice for a dramaturgical approach is related to the need that exists in practical theology to supplement action-communicative models from the social sciences, with models that are developed in the humanities and arts. the fruitfulness of this type of dialogue between theology and the humanities has begun to gain momentum in recent decades with the emergence of narrative as an important category in theology and ethics. the metaphorical complex of drama joins and retains the benefits of narratology. drama is ‘storied’ with nature, with an intriguing plot that unfolds and emphasises the unity of action over a period. but dramas also go further by placing the role of action through dramatic realisation in the foreground. in other words, dramas are not only read, but also performed. applied to the teaching of practical theology, lecturers and students are part of an ongoing dramatic performance of the gospel with different role players on the stage. in my own approach to practical theology, i use the basic categories of drama to teach and reflect on four themes. in the course introduction to practical theology and missiology 112, i use the stage to explain something of the local, national and international context (culture) in which we theologise. as the script, we look at discipleship as it is discussed especially in the new testament and we dwell on various components of what it means to be followers of christ. we look at the actions and lives of the main actor, jesus christ, in search of pointers for the development of the plot. in the plot, we focus on various acts that result from discipleship, including celebration, proclamation, koinonia, teaching, care and service. it helps us understand the basic structure of the drama to which we are all invited to participate. in the last part we look at the different roles of the actors and at character development based on different gifts to find out what role we ourselves can and should play in the drama (nell 2020). a new pedagogy looking for a new pedagogy that considers the south african realities discussed above, it becomes clear that the appropriate way to work is with a social justice perspective and therefore, ultimately with a pedagogy of discomfort.3 the shift to a new pedagogy also causes a shift in the identity of the lecturer as pedagogue causing discomfort in oneself. that is the case because the purpose of social justice education is to disrupt presuppositions and favourite starting points that are often used in pedagogy (berlak 2004). if one listens to the traumatic stories of some of the bci students and the background from which some of them come, it is inevitable that i as a lecturer will experience discomfort. i have also learned from experience that when teaching results in some form of crisis in a student and is performed with care, the potential for transformation exists. i have this experience of discomfort every time the white students are confronted with a black jesus. as worded by felman (1992): if teaching does not hit upon some sort of crisis, if it does not encounter either the vulnerability or the explosiveness of a (explicit or implicit) critical and unpredictable dimension, it has perhaps not truly taught … i therefore think that my job as a teacher, paradoxical as it may sound, was that of creating in the class the highest state of crisis that it could withstand, without ‘driving the students crazy’, without compromising the students’ bounds. (p. 122) according to jansen (2009), what is important when teaching with a social justice perspective is to ensure that a framework for ‘classroom safety’ is created. although there is no clarity on what is meant by the framework for ‘classroom safety’, there is still a tension here that deserves our attention. on the one hand, we are working with the assumption that transformation will not take place without classroom safety. on the other hand, when students expect comfort, the possibility of growth is virtually taken away in advance. in other words, the assumption that classroom space is supposed to be a safe place does not imply that it should be a space without discomfort and stress. ultimately, it is about a basic respect for students’ emotions (leonardo 2009). boler and zembylas (2003) are of the opinion that there is really no such thing as safe classroom spaces when one considers that privilege and power are always present and at work. zembylas (2015) states: for example, marginalized students’ need for safety (i.e. not being dominated) seems incompatible with the privileged students’desire to not be challenged; for privileged students, safety may imply not having their values and beliefs questioned. (p. 165) consequently, there are major challenges in learning and teaching for social justice regarding the role of critical educators in creating classroom spaces where students can engage with their fellow students and lecturers in conversations whilst acknowledging the unequal power relations. therefore, safety in this regard could not be understood as the absence of discomfort, and at the same time, the fact that discomfort is experienced should not be confused with the absence of safety. what is important is that teachers in the classroom should open learning spaces where students can engage with one another in critical inquiry concerning their beliefs and values. conclusion with this contribution i attempted to reflect, in the light of the changing profile of the class composition of a first-year module in practical theology and missiology, in terms of the demography (bci students), to what extent it also led to a shift of identities. using the image of the invisible gorilla, i explained how easily one, when it comes to adapting and changing a curriculum, can focus on just one thing without being aware of other aspects that go along with it. therefore, i started by first looking at the changing context and the shift of identities. secondly, i looked at the decolonising of the curriculum and pointed to four factors related to it, namely african centrality, knowledge production, settler perspectives and student experiences. thirdly, i looked at real curriculum changes and finally also considered a new pedagogy for teaching these changes, all of which contribute in one way or another to the shifts that take place in identity. acknowledgements competing interests the author declares that they have no financial or personal relationships that may have inappropriately influenced them in writing this article. author’s contributions i.a.n. declares that he is the sole author of this research article. ethical considerations this article followed all ethical standards for research without direct contact with human or animal subjects. funding information this research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors. data availability the authors confirm that the data supporting the findings of this study are available within the article. disclaimer the views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any affiliated agency of the author. references badat, s., 2016, deciphering the south african higher education protests of 2015–16, viewed 28 june 2020, from https://mellon.org/resources/shared-experiences-blog/south-africa-protests/ berlak, a., 2004, ‘confrontation and pedagogy: cultural secrets and emotion in antioppressive pedagogies’, in m. boler (ed.), democratic dialogue in education: troubling speech, disturbing silence, pp. 123–144, peter lang, new york, ny. biko, s., 1978, i write what i like, picador africa, northlands. biscombe, m., conradie, s., costandius, e. & alexander, n., 2017, ‘investigating “othering” in visual arts spaces of learning’, education as change 21(1), 137–154. https://doi.org/10.17159/1947-9417/2017/1070 boler, m. & zembylas, m., 2003, ‘discomforting truths: the emotional terrain of understanding difference’, in p.p. trifonas (ed.), pedagogies of difference, pp. 115–138, pscychology press, routledge. braidotti, r., 2013, the posthuman, polity press, cambridge. chabris, c.f. & simons, d.j., 2010, the invisible gorilla: and other ways our intuitions deceive us, harpercollins, london. chattaway, p.t., 2006, ‘son of man gets people talking’, film chat with peter t.chattaway, viewed 28 january 2016, from http://www.patheos.com/blogs/filmchat/2006/02/son-of-man-gets-people-talking.html costandius, e. & bitzer, e., 2015, engaging higher education curricula: a critical citizenship perspective, african sun media. costandius, e., blackie, m., nell, i., malgas, r., alexander, n., setati, e. et al., 2018, ‘#feesmustfall and decolonising the curriculum: stellenbosch university students’ and lecturers’ reactions’, south african journal of higher education 32(2), 65–85. https://doi.org/10.20853/32-2-2435 department of education (doe), 1997, education white paper 3: a program for the transformation of higher education. felman, s., 1992, ‘education and crisis, or, vicissitudes of listening’, in s. felman & d. laub (eds.), testimony: crises of witnessing in literature, psychoanalysis, and history, pp. 57–75, routledge, london. gibbons, m., limoges, c., nowotny, n., scwartzman, s., scott, p. & trow, m., 1994, the new production of knowledge: the dynamics of science and research in contemporary societies, sage, los angeles, ca. giroux, h.a., 2014, neoliberalism’s war on higher education, haymarket books, chicago, il. havenga, m., 2018, ‘performing christ: a south african protest play and the theological dramatic theory of hans ursvon balthasar’, dissertation, stellenbosch university. healy, n.m., 2000, church, world and the christian life: practical-prophetic ecclesiology, vol. 7, cambridge university press, cambridge. jansen, j., 2009, ‘on the clash of martyrological memories’, perspectives in education 27(2), 147–157. jawitz, j., 2016, ‘unearthing white academics’ experience of teaching in higher education in south africa’, teaching in higher education 21(8), 948–961. le grange, l., 2009, ‘challenges for curriculum in a contemporary south africa’, in e. bitzer & n. botha (eds.), curriculum inquiry in south african higher education, pp. 79–92, sun press, stellenbosch. le grange, l., 2016, ‘decolonising the university curriculum’, south african journal of higher education 30(2), 1–12. https://doi.org/10.20853/30-2-709 leibowitz, b., 2016, ‘power, knowledge and learning: a humble contribution to the decolonisation debate’, keynote address delivered in, 10th annual teaching & learning in higher education conference, 20–22 september 2016, southern sun elangeni & maharani, durban. leonardo, z., 2009, race, whiteness and education, routledge, new york, ny. luckett, k., 2016, ‘curriculum contestation in a post-colonial context: a view from the south’, teaching in higher education 21(4), 415–428. https://doi.org/10.1080/13562517.2016.1155547 mbembe, a., 2016, ‘decolonizing the university: new directions’, arts and humanities in higher education 15(1), 29–45. https://doi.org/10.1177/1474022215618513 mokoena, k.k., 2017, ‘steve biko christ-figure: a black theological christology in the son of man film’, hts teologiese studies/theological studies 73(3), a4667. https://doi.org/10.4102/hts.v73i3.4667 more, m.p., 2004, ‘albert luthuli, steve biko, and nelson mandela: the philosophical basis of their thought and practice’, in k. wiredu (ed.), a companion to african philosophy, pp. 207–215, blackwell publishing, oxford. nell, i.a., 2020, together in god’s theatre: practical theology in an african context, clf publishers, wellington. subreenduth, s., 2012, ‘disrupting mainstream discourses in teacher education through decolonising pedagogies’, in b. leibowitz (ed.), higher education for the public good: views from the south, pp. 127‒138, trentham books, london. tuck, e. & yang, w.k., 2012, ‘decolonization is not a metaphor. decolonization: indigeneity’, education & society 1(1), 1–40. von balthasar, h.u., 1988, theo-drama: theological dramatic theory. vol. i, prolegomena, transl. g. harrison, ignatius press, san francisco, ca. von balthasar, h.u., 1990, theo-drama: theological dramatic theory. vol. ii, the dramatis personae: manin god, transl. g. harrison, ignatius press, san francisco, ca. von balthasar, h.u., 1992, theo-drama: theological dramatic theory. vol. iii, the dramatis personae: the person in christ, transl. g. harrison, ignatius press, san francisco, ca. von balthasar, h.u., 1994, theo-drama: theological dramatic theory. vol. iv, the action, transl. g. harrison, ignatius press, san francisco, ca. von balthasar, h.u., 1998, theo-drama: theological dramatic theory. vol. v, the final act, transl. g. harrison, ignatius press, san francisco, ca. wa thiong’o, n., 1986, ‘the quest for relevance’, in n. wathiong’o (ed.), decolonising the mind: the politics of language in african literature, pp. 87–109, james currey, east african educational publishers, oxford, nairobi. watson, d., 2003, ‘the university in the knowledge society’, in s. bjarnason & p. coldstream (eds.), the idea of engagement: universities in society, pp. 18–33, association of commonwealth universities, london. zembylas, m., 2015, ‘“pedagogy of discomfort” and its ethical implications: the tensions of ethical violence in social justice education’, ethics and education 10(2), 163–174. https://doi.org/10.1080/17449642.2015.1039274 zwick, r., 2011, ‘between chester and capetown transformations of the gospel in son of man by mark dornford-may’, journal of religion and film 15(1), viewed 22 april 2016, from https://www.unomaha.edu/jrf/vol15.no1/zwicktranforms.html footnotes 1. to watch the video, go to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjg698u2mvo&ab_channel=danielsimons. 2. see in this regard the excellent dissertation by havenga (2018). 3. ‘there is an important distinction that needs to be made upfront between “discomfort” on the one hand, and “pain and suffering” on the other. discomfort is linked to one’s “comfort zones”, the feeling of uneasiness that is disturbing someone’s comfort. pain and suffering are not the same feelings as discomfort; they are much stronger, and they are linked to injury or harm’ (zembylas 2015:173). abstract acknowledgements references footnotes about the author(s) willemien froneman africa open institute for music, research and innovation, faculty of arts and social sciences, stellenbosch university, stellenbosch, south africa stephanus muller africa open institute for music, research and innovation, faculty of arts and social sciences, stellenbosch university, stellenbosch, south africa citation froneman, w. & muller, s., 2022, ‘editing for change: from global bibliometrics to a decolonial aporetics of form in south african journal publishing’, transformation in higher education 7(0), a175. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v7i0.175 original research editing for change: from global bibliometrics to a decolonial aporetics of form in south african journal publishing willemien froneman, stephanus muller received: 08 dec. 2021; accepted: 26 apr. 2022; published: 28 july 2022 copyright: © 2022. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract the scholarly journal is an increasingly homogenised global institution marked by pro forma writing, standardised processes of review and production and uniform design aesthetics. recognising that this model does not necessarily serve the interdisciplinary agenda of a small community of music scholars in south africa, the journal south african music studies has resisted absorption into large corporate publishing houses. the importance of remaining independent became clear in 2015 and 2016 when the most important student revolts since 1976 forced the editors to reconsider the responsibility of the journal to publish content that responded in interesting and significant ways to the national #feesmustfall crisis. this paper discusses some of the strategies followed by the editors to foreground – and indeed, to privilege – africa-centred modes of writing and reasoning during this turbulent time. these decolonial strategies included reconceptualising the role of editor as a proactive figure and employing novel modes of structural and visual design. not without its pitfalls, this editorial approach and its resultant controversies raised important legal questions about freedom of expression and about the scholarly journal as an institution of knowledge production and transformation in africa. keywords: south africa; decolonial music scholarship; #feesmustfall and academe; decolonising academic publishing; samus: south african music studies; publication metrics. in 2015, just as we were settling into our new roles as co-editors of the small society journal south african music studies, we found our editorship and our journal implicated in a series of challenges. for the journal, this was an inopportune time for disruption. after a period during which the board was unable to appoint a permanent editorship, we were running a year late in our publication schedule and had received alarmingly few submissions. many of those submissions we did receive required extensive and difficult revisions. the south african system of peer-reviewed subsidy and the imperative of demonstrating regular publication for institutional advancement means that delays to peer-reviewed publications potentially discourage authors from publishing in such journals. whilst this could account for the quantity of submissions received by samus, the national journal(s) serving the small field of music studies in south africa, including samus, have long functioned as vehicles for scholarship by less-established academic writers, often requiring not editorship as such, but mentorship in the expectations of academic writing. but some of these problems also related to the structural changes that had occurred within the small community of music researchers in south africa in the mid-2000s. mirroring south african civil society, music studies were split into two distinct branches. whilst a disciplinary split between musicology and ethnomusicology is prevalent throughout the world, this split had particular political meanings in postapartheid south africa: the musicological society of southern africa – as it was then called – studied white music, especially that of the western classical tradition, in a mostly formalist, conservative way; the ethnomusicology symposium, a group of progressive scholars outspoken in their critique against apartheid, studied everything else (lucia 2005:xxxv–xxxvi); the mouthpiece of the former was the south african journal of musicology (samus), the proceedings of the latter were published in a more zine-like (and subsequently much-photocopied) fashion by the international library of african music (ilam) between 1981 and 2002. in 2005, volume 25 of samus was published for the last time as the academic journal of the musicological society of southern africa. when it next appeared in 2007, edited by christine lucia, who had assumed the editorship in 2004, samus was published as a double volume, having become the official journal of the new south african society for research in music (sasrim) – a society formed through the amalgamation of the musicological society of southern africa and the ethnomusicology symposium in 2006 (muller 2005:159–161). although the acronym samus remained unchanged during the society’s transition (thus ensuring the continuation of the journal’s accreditation status), the publication had changed its title from samus, acronym of south african journal of musicology, to samus, south african music studies.1 thus, samus had managed to continue and change as part of the transition. whilst this signalled new and exciting possibilities given the journal’s expanded authorship, readership and review board across previous lines of exclusion, it also resulted in a loss of support of some of the most established scholars in the field. in her first editorial of the new samus, lucia (2007) wrote that, ‘just as the society is cross-disciplinary within the field of music, so is the journal’ (p. iii). quoting barbara titus, she noted that sasrim and its new journal had emerged not only from disciplinary factionalism, but from ‘a far more destructive form of segregation’ (lucia 2007). the shadow of apartheid thus loomed over the decision to bring disciplines and scholarship together, but lucia also noted the pragmatism of the development: ‘south africa is a large landmass with scarce resources and a scattered scholarly community that needs to work together’ (lucia 2007). foregrounding the ideological shift that was envisioned for the journal, lucia’s editorship of the ‘new’ samus saw a number of changes. she introduced an extensive interview with a personality who has made a significant impact on south african music studies, starting with andrew tracey (2006/2007) and continuing with mzilikazi james khumalo (2008). in doing so, she managed to highlight the life work of a scholar important to the former ethnomusicology symposium in the journal formerly dedicated to musicology, shifting the focus from academic composition dominated by european-trained white composers to a composer renowned as both a choral conductor and composer of african choral music. as editor, lucia also issued themed calls for papers, changed the cover of the journal to reflect the name change (south african music studies) and continuity (samus) with an outline of the south african coastline opening up to the north as a graphic reminder of our newly united disciplinary society and the receptiveness to the continent on which we do our work. she appointed a new publisher and a new editorial board (both of which remain unchanged) and presided over the publication of ‘themed volumes’, of which volume 29 (2009) on kevin volans was an example. the latter was an unambiguous acknowledgement of the importance of a composer whose early work had effected a breakthrough in ideas of how the boundaries between african music and western art music could be problematised, and as such it signalled an acknowledgement of pioneering political and musical work that had elicited much criticism when it had first appeared. continuities with the old samus included the journal’s familiar dimensions, layout and design and the academic decorum of the writing and style. these practices were largely upheld by the series of guest editors that succeeded her (see footnote 1). this was the status quo to which we were appointed as co-editors in 2015. our task was to bring the publication schedule up to date, but also to rethink the design and thrust of the journal going forward. at the outset, we agreed on what we thought of as a rather conservative agenda: we wanted the journal to reflect the debates that were actually happening between scholars in the field at our meetings and conferences, and we wanted to publish an academic journal in touch with the realities of south african life. potentially, the latter aspiration presented a problem. music studies – at least the kind that have taken the strongest institutional foothold at most south african universities – are stubbornly resistant to the idea that aesthetics and politics converge (froneman & muller 2020; muller & froneman 2015). however, retreating into the ivory tower of south african academe has become increasingly difficult since 2015, when some of the most violent student protests since 1976 focused attention on unequal access to and ongoing patterns of discrimination at universities, as well as on students’ demand for a decolonised education (le grange 2016). for music departments, these could be radical and frightening ideas and a direct onslaught on their sustainability. arguing that these demands would be rightfully directed at such departments, stephanus muller pointed to ‘indifference to the local’, ‘overwhelming orientation towards the past’, ‘deference towards geographically distant cultural centres’, ‘isolation from art’, ‘alienation from critical thinking’ and a ‘curious enchantment with what is derivative’ as symptoms of a music discipline in crisis. if statues and works of art could be set alight in what he called ‘an exteriority of force with no regard for the system’s capacity to afford it’, muller predicted that demands for radical reform would eventually also engulf music departments that constituted ‘enclaves of privilege’ and embraced ignorance (muller 2016). increasing financial strictures on south african universities could not help but affect music departments across the country. these departments, often staffed by a majority of practising musicians rather than academics, could easily be considered marginal within the intellectual life of the university, with time-honoured models of one-on-one instrumental instruction and low student-to-staff ratios making them expensive to maintain. in responding to the #feesmustfall movement, we viewed it as a decolonial imperative to publish a journal that responded to the history that was being made around us, one committed to unsettling the colonial matrix of power (mignolo & walsh 2018). in their reflections on the student protests of 2015–2016, prominent academics have subsequently published deeply personal and highly critical interpretations of these historical events on the intellectual culture of south african universities (benatar 2021; habib 2019; jansen 2017). but there have also been other perspectives, notably not of senior university managers or academics, that have put forward different understandings of how the protests could be understood or put to work in reconsidering decolonial academic practices (mbao 2016; ngcaweni & ngcaweni 2018; thomas 2018; wa azania 2020). we held the conviction that music played an important role ‘in the self-expression and strategies of students’, and that: [r]eflections on music practices are important to understanding and articulating intergenerational transmission of trauma, advancing democratization of expression, assertion of marginal identities and allowing the claiming of space by black bodies. (muller s 2017:137–138) based on those convictions, our concern was with the praxis of decoloniality in the context of journal publishing in south africa. how could we, in the words of catherine walsh, ‘make visible, open up and advance radically distinct perspectives and positionalities that displace western rationality as the only framework and possibility of existence, analysis and thought’ (mignolo & walsh 2018:17)? how could we get our readership to look at rather than away from the disturbing realities around us? how could we begin to re-assess our roles as scholars and researchers after the violence of the #feesmustfall protests and the watershed of the marikana massacre? what might it mean for our small discipline that universities had adopted the discursive mantra of excellence, whilst reconfiguring the intellectual and creative project into a client-service model of corporate responsiveness and responsibility (cini 2019), and how could we as journal editors provide resistance against this co-option of the university? lucia’s commitments to creating a new journal for a new south africa arguably set the tone for an epistemic revaluation of the south african scholarly journal in the wake of apartheid, an attempt to undo apartheid’s ‘university discourse in which a mnemotechnics of race enabled a technics of invention’ (lalu 2019:51). the ‘strategic’ concerns highlighted in the report on a strategic approach to research publishing in south africa of 2006 by the academy of science of south africa (assaf), though, pointed towards an agenda rather more focused on neoliberal ‘excellence’.2 from this report, one can deduce the role the academy envisioned for the scholarly journal in south africa at the time. in the report, the word ‘apartheid’ is mentioned only twice – and then only to point to the imperative of ‘overcoming the isolationist effects of the apartheid era’ by increasing the international relevance of south african scholarship, mainly by advancing international publication of south african research in isi journals and elevating local journals to publications of ‘international quality’. instead of probing the legacy of apartheid in south african scholarship, focusing on the content of local journals or prioritising transformation in south african scholarship, the concerns of the report were mostly bibliometric: if the trends are compared for the same articles in terms of local versus foreign journals … the numbers of articles appear to have nearly converged by 2002. there may soon be a situation, if it has not already happened, where south african scientists and scholars publish in equal numbers in local and overseas journals. if one looks at the situation in 1990 – the heyday of apartheid academic isolation – where only 36% of all articles were published in foreign journals with the situation in 2002 where nearly half (47%) were published in foreign journals, great strides have been made in breaking out of the isolation mould. (academy of science of south africa 2006:34) a ‘quality’ south african journal (so suggested the report) was one that had ‘acceptable impact factors, recorded moderate to high citations from non-south african authors and generally present[ed] an “international” profile’ (academy of science of south africa 2006:58). the ‘substantive cluster’ of ‘parochial’ south african journals, on the other hand, did not have any international visibility; their content remained uncited outside of south africa, and the production of content in many of them ‘was dominated by one or two institutions and in some cases by the same institution (or department) that publishes the journal’ (academy of science of south africa 2006). additionally, the report highlighted what was ‘strategically require[d] of the national publishers of research journals’: that ‘they should aspire to the same quality as their international comparators’, that this be done by adhering to ‘editorial best-practice and the use of a mix of both international and local reviewers, tested and tried by the editor(s) for full compliance with best-practice peer-reviewing’, that journals should provide electronic access to ensure a wide readership and that local journals be indexed in international databases to enhance their impact (academy of science of south africa 2006:xv). in the 2006 report, then, the key indicators of ‘quality’ were the extent to which a south african journal was cited by an international (mostly english-speaking) scholarly community and its compliance with the homogenised norms of the international journal publication industry. mutatis mutandis, a ‘quality’ south african scholar submitted their work to ‘high-impact’ journals and adopted the theoretical concerns, language, style and conventions of these journals in order to access the top tiers of academia. as fiormonte and priego (2016) have pointed out, though: it has to be emphasised that these mechanisms to index and rank university researchers’ outputs are not neutral. they remain designed with commercial interests in mind, and deeply biased from a cultural view. in fact, journals not published in english and not published by any of the top academic publishers, regardless of their distribution model, can remain virtually invisible to these proprietary metrication and reputation-enhancing mechanisms … scholars … are forced to submit their work to these core journals – mostly published in english. (p. 2) in a section titled ‘special considerations concerning south african visual and performing arts journals’, the academy of science’s 2018 report on grouped peer review of scholarly journals in humanities ii: visual and performing arts took a more nuanced approach to the tension between international visibility and local concerns in south african journal publishing. although this report reiterated assaf’s goal to improve the quality of scholarly publication in the country, it now recognised that ‘no [visual and performing arts] journal can be really excellent and fit for its purpose if it is not in conversation with a living local tradition’ (academy of science of south africa 2018:15). and yet, arts journals had ‘to participate in a global conversation if they want[ed] to serve their public well and make the research of their authors globally visible’ (academy of science of south africa 2018). ‘the present debate on decolonization’, the report continued, underscored this challenge: that a journal: [c]annot … simply publish articles that imitate or repeat international research but should rather, in conversation with the living local tradition, try to publish research that breaks new ground and that reconfigures the local and the global, challenges global theories and procedures and develops insights relevant to africa and to the global south. (academy of science of south africa 2018) these concerns were not new in south african music studies, nor to our shared understanding of the challenges and opportunities presented by language and writing in the postcolony. six years before he published nagmusiek (muller 2014), a three-volume work predominantly written in afrikaans, muller reflected on the ongoing process of writing this book by detailing a painful splitting of registers, audiences, desires and scholarly responsibilities, culminating in the paradox that in order ‘to stake out an authentic voice in a postcolonial south african position in a global discourse dominated by english’, the line of communication with that global discourse needed to be shut down (muller 2008). what froneman identified as ‘the aporetics of peripheral writing’ in this project meant that nagmusiek’s ‘canonical potential was severely restricted because it was not written in english, just as its decolonial ambitions were compromised by its canonical claims’ (froneman 2018:191). this aporetic sensibility, articulated in a different context, informed our work on samus throughout. the exigencies of working in a small field (and one in which derivative scholarship had developed during the apartheid years not because of ‘local’ obsessions but because of an ideological and parochial over-commitment to the non-south african and the aspirationalism embedded in the delusions of establishing a european culture in africa) meant that we had adopted an approach to the academic journal as an apparatus, rather than as a calculus of metrics ‘amenable to judicious bibliometric analysis’ (academy of science of south africa 2006:xv) aimed at achieving parity with yet another construction of an international elsewhere of supposedly exemplary quality. this approach to the publication of samus acknowledged foucault’s notion of the dispositif (foucault 1980:194–95), not only in its recognition of the historical present and its urgent requirements (about which we write above), but also in its recognition of systems of relations inherent in discursive heterogeneity and how those relations maintain themselves, erase others and allow for shifts of position. in other words, an independent south african journal published by a disciplinary society, such as we envisioned the new samus to be, would enable a continued and continuous engagement with the modes and politics of local knowledge production and not only mediate an eventual, internationally homogenised, countable knowledge product. in this regard, we took seriously the radical potential of what keyan tomaselli has described as small but legitimate ‘cottage-industry’ journals that do not score high on stem-driven metrics for visibility (and are often excluded from dhet-accredited lists) but that nevertheless publish innovative material focusing on local and regional concerns and speak to audiences operating outside of the neoliberal publishing machine (tomaselli 2019). but importantly – and unlike other journals who operationalise decolonial agendas through content, but keep intact homogenised notions of metric-based journal management, layout norms, style guides and form – we had intuited that an alertness to discursive activity outlining a decolonial rationality and sensibility required a sense of the apparatus also as a proposition of material arrangements radically problematising the notion of academic journals as neutral platforms enabling of bibliometric accounting practices. this decolonial potential of the physical apparatus of the journal was hinted at in the 2018 peer review of arts journals: that the so-called ‘value-added features’ of journals, such as editorials, correspondence and book reviews, could serve as dialogic instruments between the local and the global (academy of science of south africa 2018:15) and that supplanting, or at least, supplementing the traditional research article format with alternative scholarly work such as photo essays, scores and other performance-oriented formats operationalised the decolonial imperative in important ways – especially in the context of arts research (academy of science of south africa 2018:15–16). in a very modest way, we endorsed the baradian notion that meaning is entangled with matter and that the material practices of alternative academic writing, layout, design and curation – enabled by the independent status of samus – were as important in producing decolonised forms of knowledge than the relational embeddedness of the articles we published. already in samus 28, lucia had started to write expanded editorials that engaged critically with the contents published in samus. the pattern of earlier editorials was one of brief, self-effacing content delineation, but lucia charted a different course, focusing in this editorial on the way in which ‘theory’ was employed in the different articles published in that edition and developing an editorial voice in the contextualisation of the links between articles and the broader discipline. unfortunately, it was a precedent discontinued in the rotating editorships of subsequent volumes, with a more expanded editorial only published again in volume 33 (2013) by co-ordinating editor jeffrey brukman (ingrid monson was the guest editor of that volume, focused on jazz studies). from the onset of our editorship, the double volume 34/35 (2015), the editorial was envisioned as much more than a summary of content or even a critical overview of how articles and themes connected or contradicted one another. the editorial was regarded as a text that established communication between editors and readers, engaged in argument, made explicit positions and curatorial decisions of content and addressed issues the editors regarded as important to the discipline generally as would be appropriate to the journal of a national disciplinary society. our first editorial addressed disciplinary crisis, the second engaged with the fallism of the national student movements and the third ruminated on ethics.3 the explicitly situated editorial was a result of the decision to present content in the journal in a radically new, curated fashion (in nodes), thus requiring explanation of how we thought about possible connections and amplifications of meaning in the content we had published. but it was also a deliberate decision to break from what we regarded as an unconvincing pseudoneutral stance in academic publishing generally that seemed to imply neutrality, objectivity and disinterested management. editing for change, we felt, had to speak its name. central to staking out an editorial position in this way was the prior decision, as mentioned above, to do away with the traditional format of the academic journal and to organise the content in samus in what we decided to call ‘nodes’. applicable in both its biological and technical forms, the term ‘node’ was meant to convey the idea that the journal content cohered around certain points of growth or intersected in certain coherent and/or unexpected ways. this reorganisation of material necessitated a new design for the journal and the idea of the ‘node’ became one of the principal design elements of the new look of samus introduced in volume 34/35. this design featured a minimalist white cover with the name of the journal embossed on the front and spine. a thumb-index visually demarcated the nodes on the exterior of the volume, whilst inside the journal we incorporated photographs by willem boshoff to create visual breaks between the nodes. including art in the journal was a practice continued in volume 36/37 and volume 38: the former featured the work of manfred zylla and the latter featured still images from william kentridge’s multimedia installation the head and the load. organising samus in nodes had a number of implications. it made explicit our editorial agency; it allowed us to organise writing around thematic content rather than form, leading to a juxtaposition of different kinds of writing suggested by content, as opposed to a segregation of content according to register or academic conventions; it positioned academic engagement as fundamentally dialogic; it contributed to discursive engagement and amplification by suggestively grouping material together in ways writers might not have foreseen; it justified commissions for material to address certain lacunae or to balance controversial or important pieces; it enabled the inclusion of visual art and works of fiction, thereby stressing the connections between music and the other arts and bringing those discourses within the purview of music studies; and it flattened out the differentiation and hierarchies between peer-reviewed and non-peer-reviewed content (and their authors). the decision to create nodes in samus, it should be clear, had significant impact in creating a critical voice for the journal. aligned to the expanded editorial, this ‘nodally organized’ voice made it clear that editorial work was not primarily administrative drudgery or mere academic midwifery. on the contrary, it was interventionist, creative, activist, supportive, curatorial and participatory. it put paid to the idea that the most central activity of the academic endeavour, the communication of research through publication, was something that happened best in an oblivious aloofness of where and when the work was published or that the value of publication had devolved into academic rent-seeking (muller s.m. 2017). the nodes we published in double volume 34/35 included the ones entitled ‘academic freedom’, ‘tracing lines’, ‘andrew tracey’, ‘jazz’, ‘music/vision/blindness’, ‘performance’ and ‘futures’. in double volume 36/37, our node titles had become more playfully creative, including ‘all the king’s men’, ‘the lit’, ‘the “de-” in front of “colonise”’, ‘the edition’, ‘the law of genre’, ‘de lô’ and ‘clare loveday’.4 volume 38 – the last volume we edited together – featured ‘the ethical incomplete’, ‘jazz dialogics’ and ‘todd matshikiza: towards critical perspectives’. the latter two nodes, as well as the node on ‘andrew tracey’ in double volume 34/35 and on ‘clare loveday’ in double volume 36/37, were guest-edited (by stephanie vos, lindelwa dalamba, kathryn olsen/christopher cockburn and mareli stolp respectively), and this involvement of guest editors allowed projects, interests, research foci and research teams to use samus as a vehicle for publication with a considerable degree of devolved editorial control. as an initiative towards the democratisation of academic publishing culture and responsiveness to local scholars’ publication needs, the decision to organise the journal content around content-based nodes effortlessly enabled a space for different contributors to develop new agendas without sacrificing the continuity of the journal. in this way, the nodal structure of the journal also had a pragmatic implication that impacted on perceptions of the academic journal as a disinterested conduit of content, administered by the conclave-like secrecy and undeclared ideological prejudices and preferences of peer review. twice in the 5 years we edited samus, we were faced with difficult publication decisions regarding controversial material. in volume 34/35, an article that we felt made an important contribution to exploring the complicity of western art music composition and apartheid (stimie-behr 2015) necessitated the editors to approach the executive committee of sasrim for support in obtaining legal advice on publication. and, reporting on the contesting freedoms colloquium of 2014, we received a commissioned submission that again required careful legal consideration before we could proceed to publication in volumes 36/37 (king 2018). in both instances, the editors were supported by the executive committee of sasrim in our assessment that the texts were important and that taking academic freedom of speech seriously meant that shying away from taking difficult editorial publication decisions or hiding behind academic diffidence to avoid publishing courageous scholarship or important points of view would be an abrogation of editorial responsibility. the processes of publishing these articles were as important as the publication of the work itself: the work was scrutinised by many different readers and refined many times over; the issues were vigorously debated by the executive committee of sasrim; the importance of editorial independence was fleshed out and the nature and degree of academic freedom were considered. in taking on this kind of material and opening debate on controversial issues, we hope to have advanced certain benchmarks of critical public thinking in a country where the culture of freedom has to be asserted against a history of scholarship conducted in the shadow of obeisance, threats, censorship and intimidation. despite what we regard as a series of positive interventions and deliberate delinking strategies from a homogenising local (and global) publishing industry that values uniformity and efficiency above content and creativity, the reception of the new samus was not uniformly positive. our curatorial approach, concern with aesthetics and investment in the work of our contributors, combined with the logistics of producing an annual journal within a disciplinary environment where resources are limited, meant that publication of the journal mostly fell behind the annual cycles of sasrim conferences or that of performance reviews and the reporting of research outputs at universities. time was the cost of our vision of creating a new kind of academic journal grounded in a new kind of academic conversation, and our publication schedule was, understandably, a point of near-permanent contention with the executive committee of sasrim and some of our contributors during the course of our editorship. the concern with timely publication was also the main point of criticism in the peer review report of scholarly journals in the visual and performing arts issued by the academy of science of south africa in 2018. whilst it highlighted the consistently high quality and originality of the articles published in samus up to volume 33 and commended the journal for its focus on south african contemporaneity, the panel was unsympathetic to delays in the publication schedule experienced with volumes 34/35 because of the legal advice that had to be obtained. ‘the difficulty of timely publication is viewed in a most serious light and should be urgently addressed’, the report noted. ‘there is an obvious danger here’, it continued: [i].e. that authors may look to publish their work elsewhere given current pressures on academics. it is suggested that non-problematic content is published on time, with an editorial note to explain any relatively ‘thin’ volumes. otherwise the impression might be created that the journal serves controversy and in so doing muzzles its authors rather than giving them freedom of speech. (academy of science of south africa 2018:33–34) the implications of this reasoning are troubling. it seems to misconstrue editorial agency in defence of freedom of expression as the unwarranted wielding of authority and the disarticulating of editorial objectivity and robust defence of academic freedom as an overstepping of our editorial mandate and, absurdly, a way to silence our contributors. comments such as these left us disappointed that the responsibility for effecting change did not disperse through the academic body in the ways we had expected. for the academy of science of south africa, the danger to academic excellence as expressed in journal publication was not the publication of watered-down content, the potential legal prosecution of academics and editors, the erosion of editorial independence or the intrusion of universities on academics’ freedom of expression – all of which we had confronted in our publication of challenging articles – but rather the prospect of disrupting the instrumentalised model of the academic journal that views it merely as an output-vehicle for academics in service of the university of excellence. despite this, the most serious criticism of the model we had developed from the journal newly established by christine lucia as samus, south african music studies, our editorship saw an increase in the number of submissions, more letters to the editor, more offers and suggestions for guest-edited nodes, more engagement and, undoubtedly, more controversy. we conceived of our editorial selves as agents-amongst-agents, trusting that our readers, contributors and peer-reviewers would increasingly recognise, value and support the journal for what we think it was supposed to be: an independent society journal coproduced by a community of scholars and artists, a flexible platform for scholarly debate and academic and artistic expression, a catalyst for transforming south african music studies and a powerful and tangible means of summoning a communal sense of responsibility and courage. in this sense, our ‘editing for change’ echoed what sharon stein has called the necessity to disrupt ways of knowing, being and relating as an approach to education (stein 2019:683), which, broadly speaking, we viewed our editorship as contributing towards. citing spivak’s description of education as ‘the uncoercive rearrangement of desires’, samus took up the challenge of rearranging and for affording an expanded horizon of scholarly desire as constitutive of change in scholarly publishing in our field. our commitment to decoloniality, articulated as our main theory of change throughout this article, meant that nothing about this approach could be prescriptive or normative (stein et al. 2020); rather, to misquote from trisos, auerbach and katti (2021), we were concerned with changing the ecology of our discipline (rather than the other way round) by paying attention to the conditions of knowledge production in the bibliometrics-dominated discourse of south african journal publishing and insisting that these be qualified by creative and ethical editorial practices ‘at a moment when the perils of entrenched thinking have never been clearer’ (trisos et al. 2021:1205). acknowledgements competing interests the authors declare that they have no financial or personal relationships that may have inappropriately influenced them in writing this article. authors’ contributions all authors contributed equally to this work. ethical considerations this article followed all ethical standards for research without direct contact with human or animal subjects. funding information this research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors. data availability data sharing is not applicable to this article as no new data were created or analysed in this study. disclaimer the views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any affiliated agency of the authors. references academy of science of south africa, 2006, report on a strategic approach to journal publishing in south africa, academy of science of south africa, pretoria. academy of science of south africa, 2018, report on grouped peer review of scholarly journals in humanities ii: visual and performing arts, academy of science of south africa, pretoria. benatar, d., 2021, the fall of the university of cape town: africa’s leading university in decline, politicsweb, johannesburg. cini, l., 2019, ‘disrupting the neoliberal university in south africa: the #feesmustfall movement in 2015’, current sociology 67(7), 942–959. https://doi.org/10.1177/0011392119865766 fiormonte, d. & priego, e., 2016, ‘knowledge monopolies and global academic publishing’, the winnower, viewed 29 october 2021, from https://openaccess.city.ac.uk/id/eprint/15230/8/. foucault, m., 1980, power/knowledge: selected interviews and other writings, 1972–1977, pantheon book, new york, ny. froneman, w., 2018, ‘ex-centric hermeneutics in stephanus muller’s nagmusiek’, royal musical association research chronicle 49, 179–194. https://doi.org/10.1080/14723808.2017.1328013 froneman, w. & muller, s., 2020, ‘music’s “non-political neutrality”: when race dare not speak its name’, in j. jansen & c. walters (eds.), fault lines: a primer on race, science and society, pp. 203–218, african sun media, stellenbosch. habib, a., 2019, rebels and rage: reflecting on #feesmustfall, jacana, johannesburg. hofmeyr, b., 2012, ‘nut of gees? die stand van die geesteswetenskappe in suid-afrika: navorsings-en oorsigartikel: besinning oor die geesteswetenskappe en menslike geestelikheid’, tydskrif vir geesteswetenskappe 52(4), 719–731. jansen, j., 2017, as by fire: the end of the south african university, tafelberg, cape town. king, g., 2018, ‘whose, which, freedoms? the “contesting freedoms” colloquium at unisa’, samus: south african music studies 36(1), 1–12. lalu, p., 2019, ‘what is the university for?’, critical times 2(1), 39–58. https://doi.org/10.1215/26410478-7615003 le grange, l., 2016, ‘decolonising the university curriculum’, south african journal of higher education 30(2), 1–12. https://doi.org/10.20853/30-2-709 lucia, c., 2007, the world of south african music: a reader, cambridge scholars press, newcastle-upon-tyne. mbao, w., 2016, ‘rearranging the furniture at stellenbosch’, in africa is a country, 16 february 2016, viewed 27 march 2022, from https://africasacountry.com/2016/02/rearranging-the-furniture-at-stellenbosch/. mignolo, w.d. & walsh, c.e., 2018, on decoloniality, duke university press, durham. muller, s., 2005, ‘position statement on the founding of a southern african ethno/musicology association’, samus: south african journal of musicology 25, 159–161. muller, s., 2008, ‘arnold van wyk’s hands’, in g. olwage (ed.), composing apartheid, pp. 281–297, wits university press, johannesburg. muller, s., 2014, nagmusiek, fourthwall books, johannesburg. muller, s., 2016, openings, inaugural lecture presented on 10 may 2016, stellenbosch university, stellenbosch. muller, s., 2017, ‘musique et cohesion sociale lors d’un moment decolonial en afrique du sud’, revue internationale d’éducation de sèvres 75, 129–138. https://doi.org/10.4000/ries.5984 muller, s.m., 2017, ‘academics as rent seekers: distorted incentives in higher education, with reference to the south african case’, international journal of educational development 52, 58–67. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijedudev.2016.11.004 muller, s. & froneman, w., 2015, ‘crisis? what crisis?’, samus: south african music studies 34/35(1), vii–xviii. ngcaweni, a. & ngcaweni, b., 2018, we are no longer at ease: the struggle for #feesmustfall, jacana, johannesburg. stein, s., 2019, ‘navigating different theories of change for higher education in volatile times’, educational studies 55(6), 667–688. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131946.2019.1666717 stein, s., andreotti, v., suša, r., amsler, s., hunt, d., ahenakew, c. et al., 2020, ‘gesturing towards decolonial futures: reflections on our learnings thus far’, nordic journal of comparative and international education (njcie) 4(1), 43–65. https://doi.org/10.7577/njcie.3518 stimie-behr, a., 2015, ‘the politics of musical meaning: the case of jeanne zaidel-rudolph’s masada’, samus: south african music studies 34/35(1), 1–28. thomas, k., 2018, ‘decolonisation is now: photography and student-social movements in south africa’, visual studies 33(1), 98–110. https://doi.org/10.1080/1472586x.2018.1426251 tomaselli, k.g., 2019, ‘humanities, citations and currency: hierarchies of value and enabled recolonisation’, critical arts 33(3), 16–29. https://doi.org/10.1080/02560046.2019.1690534 trisos, c.h., auerbach, j. & katti, m., 2021, ‘decoloniality and anti-oppressive practices for a more ethical ecology’, nature ecology & evolution 5, 1205–1212. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-021-01460-w wa azania, m., 2020, corridors of death: the struggle to exist in historically white institutions, blackbird books, johannesburg. footnotes 1. volume 23 (2003) had been the last volume edited by long-standing editor beverly parker and assistant editors christopher cockburn and eric akrofi. volume 24 (2004) was published under the editorship of christine lucia and guest-edited by stephanus muller (the first such a guest-edited volume in the history of the journal), and volume 25 (2005) was edited by christine lucia with assistant editors eric akrofi, lara allen and christopher cockburn. after publishing the first edition of samus, south african music studies as a double volume (26/27) in 2007, lucia continued to edit volume 28 (2008) and was succeeded by jaco kruger and nishlyn ramanna as co-editors of volume 29 (2009). ramanna and jeffrey brukman co-edited a double volume 30/31 (2010/11); ramanna was the sole editor of the next issue, volume 32 (2012), and ingrid monson guest edited volume 33 (2013) with jeffrey brukman as co-ordinating editor. willemien froneman and stephanus co-edited the journal from 2015 to 2018, during which time double volumes 34/35 (2015), 36/37 (2017) and volume 38 (2018) were published. these five volumes are the subject of this paper, although many of the strategies discussed here were retained and refined in volume 39 (2019) and volume 40 (2020) that appeared under the co-editorship of stephanus muller and mia pistorius. 2. for other critiques of assaf’s neoliberal presuppositions, see hofmeyr (2012) and tomaselli (2019). 3. in the subsequent two volumes, edited by pistorius and muller, the editorials were entitled ‘on loss’ (vol. 39) and ‘scholarship and cultures of care’ (vol. 40). 4. the fact that the nodes in the subsequent two volumes edited by pistorius and muller took a somewhat darker turn (as did the editorials) confirms the notion that journal curation is not impervious to editorial style and concerns, nor to changing historical and disciplinary contexts. the nodes in pistorius and muller’s co-edited editions were ‘racial melancholia’, ‘precarious lives’, ‘futures imperfect’ (vol. 39) and ‘regard’, ‘reciprocity’, ‘reform’ and ‘resoundings’ (vol. 40). abstract digital technology in phd education the changing scene of doctoral education communities of learning for (doctoral) education the need for capacity building of african phd fellows a community of learning for african phd students conclusions acknowledgements references footnotes about the author(s) mindel van de laar maastricht graduate school of governance, unu-merit, maastricht university, netherlands martin rehm learning lab, university of duisburg-essen, germany shivani achrekar maastricht graduate school of governance, unu-merit, maastricht university, netherlands citation van de laar, m., rehm, m. & achrekar, s., 2017, ‘“community of learning” for african phd students: changing the scene of doctoral education?’, transformation in higher education 2(0), a17. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v2i0.17 original research ‘community of learning’ for african phd students: changing the scene of doctoral education? mindel van de laar, martin rehm, shivani achrekar received: 13 nov. 2016; accepted: 06 june 2017; published: 27 july 2017 copyright: © 2017. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract african phd fellows who are interested in completing (part of) their research in europe cannot always afford to leave their place of residency for prolonged periods of time. yet, young researchers from african countries might be searching for particular guidance from experts in their field that might not be accessible in their home countries. consequently, both phd fellows and universities and postgraduate research institutes require more flexible educational formats that cater for these circumstances. with the growing availability and potential of online tools and methodologies, it is possible to choose from a range of options for phd education. communities of learning (col) have emerged as an approach to support the exchange of knowledge and experience among participants on the internet. participants can collaborate in developing research skills, while at the same time creating a feeling of belonging, which helps individuals to establish personal ties and relations. the paper introduces the research and educational project: community for learning for africa (cola). it was designed to help participating actors from africa and europe to get and to stay connected online, to collaborate in joint training activities and projects, as well as to openly exchange ideas and thoughts, all in relation to underlying phd research trajectories via the internet. the paper offers results from a needs assessment undertaken in spring 2015, among phd fellows and supervisors in africa on what they would need cola to include, as well as template of what cola could include. digital technology in phd education digital technology increasingly is infiltrating higher education. it is used to offer tools in research and teaching, as well as in administration and management. there is a large debate about the chances and risks of various degrees of digitisation of the academia. some hope that digital technology will open new chances to access education and disseminate knowledge to a larger public whereas others fear that it will question national educational systems in a global commercial competition (kim 2015). in the discussion on digital technology in (higher) education, digital technology is often attributed a potential of transforming current educational systems and learning practices. the question is, to what extent digital technology has the potential to transform phd education and to open up new horizons that otherwise could not have been addressed before. or does digital technology ‘only’ improve phd education to some extent, for example to improve opportunities to apply for education abroad or accelerate the access to international knowledge over the internet (wildy, peden & chan 2015)? these ‘improvements’ should be seen as important and as prerequisites for scholars if they want to participate in the world-wide network of research and knowledge. yet, they do not automatically constitute a transformation of education. the following paper will address a new way of using digital technology in phd education. with a community of learning (col) we explore how digital technology can help doctoral students in african universities to participate in global scholarly communication. in section two, we discuss ongoing global developments in phd education, impacting doctoral programme access, discourse and outreach. with doctoral education in general becoming more global, reaching target groups beyond traditional full-time phd students, developing new and different ways in which programmes are offered, and using digital technology to disseminate research results, the sector as a whole has been transformed in the last few decades. in section three, we cover the use of col in phd education and debate how the use of col potentially improves and adds to the educational offerings. the case we discuss in section four and five, the community of learning for africa (cola), combines both the changing doctoral education scene and use of col, in order to support african phds in obtaining their degree. section six includes a discussion around the improvements to be achieved with this type of approach. the changing scene of doctoral education the increasing demand and supply of graduate education has led to a massification of graduate education (clark 2007; jablonski 2001; pearson 1999:270; pearson, evans & macauley 2004:350; wellington & sikes 2006; wildy et al. 2015). research is no longer solely conducted by a small, selected group within specialised institutions. instead, there is a scale of options to follow a phd, including the traditional phd, professional doctorate, practice-based doctorate and part-time doctorate (park 2007). with an extension of offerings from full-time traditional phd programmes to part-time and professional phd programmes, phd research has become an activity that is increasingly incorporated in employees’ regular job descriptions and everyday working environment (lee & boud 2003; wildy et al. 2015). lifelong learning gains in importance, as employees need to continuously update their knowledge and skills to face the challenges and tasks of today’s turbulent economic environment (craswell 2007; gherardi & nicolini 2000). consequently, a growing number of employees has decided to become a doctoral student, return to university, acquire specialist knowledge and research skills (pearson et al. 2004:348) and thereby enhance their chances to improve their career paths (pearson 1999). since the early 2000s, we also see a gradual change within the programme offering of non-traditional doctoral programmes taking place. initially differences between traditional doctoral education and professional or part-time doctoral education were mainly visible in a changed structure of the offered material. over time the differences became more clear, with a move towards an adjustment of content to suit the knowledge acquisitions within the workplace better, towards shift in roles and responsibilities to be more demand-driven rather than supply-driven (chapman 2008; costley & lester 2014; lester 2004; park 2007; scott et al. 2004; wildy et al. 2015). motivations to enrol in programmes include, among others, research skill development, professional development, intrinsic interest in the topic and interest in lifelong learning (guerin, jayatilaka & ranasinghe 2015). phd trajectories with dyadic student or supervisor relationship (malfroy 2005) are replaced with alternative communities to support the different learning process (smith & bath 2006). yet, while facing an increasingly diverse group of phd fellows, the vast majority of providers still assume ‘an on-campus, full-time student experience’ (pearson 1999:270). the growing availability and potential of online learning tools offers universities and postgraduate research institutes considerable flexibility to cater to the diversity in doctoral learning and to foster their development (e.g. allan & lewis 2006; chalmers & keown 2006). in this context, col have been suggested to allow for an effective exchange of knowledge and experience between and among participants (rehm 2013). here, participants collaborate in developing research skills, while establishing and strengthening personal ties and relations, which in turn contribute to a feeling of belonging. as a result, learning processes and outcomes can be positively affected (romsdahl & hill 2012). communities of learning for (doctoral) education more specifically, col have received a growing amount of attention among practitioners and researchers alike (e.g. allan & lewis 2006; rehm, gijselaers & segers 2014, 2015; rehm et al. 2016; swan, scarbrough & robertson 2002). col are defined as groups of people that ‘engage in collaborative learning and reflective practice involved in transformative learning’ (paloff & pratt 2003:17). furthermore, three distinctive aspects of col can be identified that differentiate the concept from alternative approaches, such as communities of practice (lave & wenger 1991; wenger, mcdermott & snyder 2002; wenger & snyder 2000). firstly, col provide structure to the underlying learning processes. secondly, col are monitored and facilitated by dedicated supporting staff. finally, learning processes and outcomes are monitored, validated and assessed in order to safeguard the quality of the learning process and to legitimise all diplomas and degrees. a considerable amount of research has investigated the main characteristics of learning communities based on their growing importance and popularity (e.g. alavi, kayworth & leidner 2005; roblyer & wiencke 2003; stacey, smith & barty 2004). however, considerable uncertainty remains about how to effectively construct a meaningful col for the new type of phds, namely working professionals who have started a (part-time) phd trajectory. previous research on the topic has already highlighted that research findings from similar groups of individuals (e.g. bachelor’s and master’s students) only have limited relevance for the context of working professionals (rehm & van de laar 2015). more specifically, research has revealed considerable differences in the activity patterns (rehm, giesbers & rienties 2009), as well as behaviour towards facilitators (rehm et al. 2012) between regular students and working professionals. additionally, working professionals have been shown to experience a certain level of apprehension when engaging in collaborative learning processes or providing feedback (caffarella & barnett 2000). malfroy (2005) has attributed this feeling to a perceived loss of authority and leadership. while they tend to certain responsibilities and tend to be accustomed to certain privileges in their daily (professional) work, the classroom setting can work against these circumstances, creating a level playing field, where they are expected to, among others things, to listen to and respond to feedback and possibly critique. hence, an investigation of the social context of online learning in relation to behaviour and performance has been proposed (e.g. de laat & lally 2003). the main characteristics of col can be categorised into six aspects, namely open dialogue, flexibility, public and private spaces, informal discussions, interaction and rapid feedback (e.g. amin & roberts 2006; rienties et al. 2006). taken together, these aspects make col an appealing option for providing teaching and learning opportunities for a diverse group of phd fellows. open dialogue: everybody is stimulated and encouraged to contribute to each other’s learning process. flexibility: professional doctoral students are subject to considerable time constraints as they will remain a vibrant part of their working environments. a high level of flexibility allows individuals to remain active in the col, continue their research irrespective of time and place, and show progress in their phd trajectory. public and private community spaces: public spaces stimulate the overall exchange of information and knowledge among all participating actors in a col. private spaces foster discussions within a more confined space, allowing participants to more easily establish and strengthen personal ties with their fellow researchers (gannon-leary & fontainha 2007). informal discussions: here, individuals can get to know each other better and stay connected. scholars like gannon-leary and fontainha (2007) have proposed that these types of discussions substantially contribute to the success of col by creating a sense of belonging and trust between the participating individuals. interaction: in order to bridge the often vast geographical distance between members of a col, participants should be stimulated to actively use various (a)synchronous communication tools, such as discussion forums or web conferencing portals (hung & der-thanq 2001). on the one hand, this allows for a more fluent and direct dialogue between peers. on the other hand, this also enhances the opportunities to communicate with (academic) supervisors. rapid feedback: similarly to the previous aspect, in order to tackle the often vast geographical distance between members of a col, individuals should always receive (rapid) feedback when they pose questions or answers. this enhances the communication flow between all members of col and has advantageous effects on the overall performance of the individuals. the need for capacity building of african phd fellows doing a phd is a distinct career choice. when starting, it is often unclear to the fellow what kind of education he or she is actually starting and only once he or she is well under way does it becomes clear what challenges are taken up. rough estimations indicate that about 20% of all starting full-time phd students will not finish their phd thesis, and thus will not obtain their degree (jump 2013). this number is referring to phd students, starting their phd education in a university in a developed country, where facilities such as library access, journal subscriptions, internet access and office space are available, and staff with capacity to supervise is present. it is thus likely that the failure rate of obtaining a phd will be higher, when conditions to work on the phd deteriorate. in the case of the cola, we specifically focus on phd students working in sub-saharan africa. more recently, research on higher education in africa has become more prominent – although research and literature is generally focused on the south african case and is mainly conducted by south african researchers. when research and literature does originate in other countries, authors tend to be affiliated to established universities, located in relatively well-off african countries (van de laar et al. 2016). research shows that there is a clear need for capacity development in higher education in africa. enrolment in graduate programmes is low, dropout rates in undergraduate programmes are high and the higher education system in general remains inefficient (cloete 2016b). cloete, mouton and sheppard (2015) illustrate that enrolment in doctoral programmes, while high in south africa, remains very low across the rest of africa. with the majority of focus and funding aimed at primary and secondary education, the development of higher education is lagging behind and scientific output is limited. while the african quality and quantity of research output increased greatly over the past decade, the research output remains below 1% of total global research output (i.e. world bank & elsevier 2014). there is a need to build capacity in universities; however, the supply of people qualified to increase skill levels is limited. cloete et al. (2015) and bunting et al. (2014) illustrate that enrolment in doctoral programmes has seen an overall increase. however, most of this increase is seen in south africa and completion rates remain relatively low. less than 20% of initially enrolled doctoral students graduate from south african programmes and this number is even lower in other countries (bunting et al. 2014; cloete et al. 2015). while phd education is a good pathway to locally increase higher education capacity, there is a shortage of good applicants for doctoral programmes, a shortage of doctoral programmes, a shortage of in-house content capacity to supervise phd students, a shortage of funding phd research in africa, a shortage of studies on how to build capacity in higher education and a shortage of studies on doctoral education in africa (cloete et al. 2015; smit, williamson & padayachee 2013; van de laar et al. 2016). the relevance and need to boost higher education in africa is clear. yet, how to do so is less evident. the doctoral landscape is transforming, and the african continent feels the impact of this change beyond average. enrolment in doctoral programmes remains low and graduation rates are even lower (bunting et al. 2014; cloete et al. 2015). the percentage of the population that graduated from doctoral programmes in developed countries ranges broadly between 1.5% and 2%. in sub-saharan african countries, recent numbers indicate that between 0% and 0.5% of the population has obtained their phd degree (unesco uis n.d.).1 with a globalising world and with transparent open application systems, we see an increase in mobility of the top students, creating brain drain in developing countries. however, institutions in developed countries will accept only a limited number of in-house fellows. in addition, african individuals, specifically mid-career professionals, may not always be interested to move continents to be higher educated. with families to support and jobs to fulfil, they benefit more from better education at home. educating people in developing countries is costly and often only beneficial to the direct recipient if there is support from the community and family (bharuthram & kies 2013; cloete 2016a). needs assessment among african phd students in order to see if it is possible to support african phd students by means of digital technology, specifically by offering a col, more knowledge was required on the specific needs of the potential users of the platform. in this context, we designed and implemented an electronic needs assessment among african phd fellows and their supervisors. direct information from local doctoral students on what content materials could be potentially useful for them to be offered, and what services would be interesting for local phd fellows and their supervisors to use or benefit from sharing. the needs assessment supported the creation of a network of universities, faculties, departments and institutions engaged in phd education that shares content interest, and an inventory of full professors in the field willing to participate in cola. the needs assessment adds to better understanding of the potential scale of users of the platform and ensures future willingness to cooperate with us jointly on the initiative2 (van de laar et al. 2016) the needs assessment survey was developed based on examples of similar surveys, as well as literature guidance on what is essentially needed in higher educational institutes in africa (van de laar et al. 2016).3 there was a clear target population for our needs assessment, being phd fellows and their supervisors based in a sub-saharan african institute. based on publications within the web of science, we created a list of approximately 16 000 researchers, working in the target research area of our study.4 between 26 march 2015 and 20 april 2015, data were collected using an electronic survey tool. a total of 269 respondents completed the survey. these responses are not representative for the target population in africa, but the data collected are sufficiently rich to serve the purpose of verifying if our intended cola offerings are in line with the actual needs of phd fellows in africa. respondents to our survey are more likely to come from south africa, zimbabwe and nigeria than other countries, and are more likely to be employed by better established universities within their countries, and from cities with better infrastructure such as internet access. the sample is further biased towards individuals that have already published a paper because of the nature of our sampling with 57% of respondents being supervisors and the remaining 43% phd fellows. despite this, a snowball feature (asking respondents to forward the survey to their peers) allowed broadening to include fellows that had not published yet (van de laar et al. 2016). of the 269 respondents in the survey, 36% were female and 64% were male. more than half hold a phd (58%), 35% hold a master’s degree and are currently working on their phd and 7% indicate to have a bachelor’s or other degrees, obtained from institutions both in african countries as well as in western europe, north or south america, or asia. respondents currently work most often in african institutions, mainly from south africa, followed by nigeria, zimbabwe and fewer responses came from the other countries as illustrated in figure 1. several respondents currently work in developed countries, but filled out the survey based on past experiences. figure 1: number of respondents per country, by country of host institution and nationality of respondents, including non-africans. in line with global transforming the doctoral education landscape literature, we notice that 50% of the phd fellows cannot be considered traditional phd fellows. they are not paid to do their phd (see figures 2 and 3). of the phd fellows, 15% are teaching staff, 10% are research staff and 24% are not funded or self-funded for the phd. half of the people indicate that the phd research is not financially their main source of living. figure 2: position of the phd fellow (number of respondents by job title or position name in which participants work on their dissertation). figure 3: main income for african phd fellows (number of respondents by main source of income). about 95% of the responding phd fellows indicate that they have one or more assigned supervisors. supervisors are consulted on a regular basis, mainly in person or via email. fellows feel supported by their supervisors, but also indicate that in almost all elements of the research cycle they appreciate more support. figure 4 shows that both students and supervisors indicate a need for support in defining research questions, doing literature reviews, data collection and analysis and skills development. the responses of supervisors and fellows almost perfectly aligned, which indicates the request for support comes from staff and students. figure 4: additional support required from community for learning for africa (cola) platform. in the case of education in africa, public institutions, particularly those in rural areas, do not have the capacity or funding to give their students access to technology or ict education in general. most students get their first computer lessons during their first year of university. consequently, african phds are already disadvantaged, having just learned a skill that students in more developed countries pick up at the primary school level. moreover, they continue to have poor access to internet and icts in general outside of major cities (bharuthram & keis 2013; evans & le roux 2016; marais & blignaut 2016). it therefore comes as no surprise that respondents to our survey asked for more interaction and feedback from supervisors, better access to literature and training, user-friendly platforms and easy access to learning materials and softwares, both online and offline. a community of learning for african phd students the overall aim of the unu-merit & mgsog is to set up a community for learning for africa (cola) on the general topic of ‘innovation’ and ‘governance’, where participants from a wide variety of target groups are enabled to get connected and stay in touch, collaborate in learning activities and projects, as well as to openly exchange ideas and thoughts. more specifically, the envisioned target groups of the cola include phd fellows as main receivers of support and researchers, working professionals and alumni as providers of knowledge. phd students will remain affiliated with their home university, their supervisory teams stay in place and all services offered by cola are complementary to the already offered phd education and support by the home university. the basis for this community will be a range of different activities that will build on three main pillars, namely courses, repository and community. each of these aspects will contribute to an active exchange of information, experiences, knowledge and expertise, as well as the further (academic) development of participating actors. in order to be functional, cola will need to take into account the limited infrastructural support locally (e.g. lack of electricity, lack of internet and requirement to use telephone), the 24/7 availability (to service people with other commitments to use cola at a moment they have time to work on their phd – based on the new type of phd engagement), the complementarity of services (as cola does not compete with supervisors, but functions as add-on) and the sustainability criteria (with limited input from all partners, and increased knowledge sharing by participants – the community aspect). the col will introduce the main concepts and methodologies related to the two overarching topic domains (e.g. innovation and governance), which will include a wide range of educational activities. the underlying goal is to create an environment in which theory and practice are effectively interlinked and an open exchange between the two is stimulated. more specifically, cola will provide access to three types of col: online training modules: the modules provide the means for members of all identified target groups to engage in (collaborative) learning activities, thereby expanding the knowledge and skills of all participants. online research support: while young researchers (e.g. phd fellows) have access to valuable expertise in their home institutes, they might sometimes be looking for additional guidance from (international) experts. this can range from occasional questions to structural phd supervision projects. cola will cater for these types of support by providing a portal where young researchers can communicate with international experts on an ongoing basis (via various communication channels). repository of services: with an increased availability of free of charge open access research support services, the need to develop new material becomes small. an inventory of links to those services, with the option to add new items and contribute to the repository by all participants as the needs assessment shows, there is a clear need for support in the area of research skills and topic specific knowledge. institutions of higher education are continuously looking for new ways and methods to teach and train their target groups. in this context, the use of ict-tools and the development of online learning methodologies constitute a vital development that has received ever-increasing attention. this demand is mainly driven by the increasing diversity of learners from various educational backgrounds, and although international participants might fulfil all necessary application requirements, their educational backgrounds are often so diverse that they are effectively hindered from starting their studies. additionally, new target groups, such as phds from african countries, cannot afford to leave their place of residency for prolonged periods of time, therefore requiring flexible educational formats that cater for these types of circumstances. furthermore, in the context of phd supervision, past experience has shown that young researchers from african countries might sometimes be searching for particular guidance and support that might not be easily accessible at their home institutes. as a consequence, numerous types and formats for online modules and support mechanisms have been developed. in this context, col have been suggested as a useful tool to meet these new requirements, by stimulating collaborative knowledge sharing among diverse individuals within social networks and irrespective of time and place. in order to overcome these challenges, cola will begin with the development and implementation of online modules that have been identified as important building blocks in the educational process of the target groups in question. an initial set of courses that will be developed contains basic methodology courses, but also topic-specific introduction courses as well as topic-deepening courses. the sustainability of the community is based on two main activities. firstly, cola will provide a means to construct a growing repository of information and resources, as well as research activities. the repository will include access to external websites and support services that are offered open access and are related to the support we offer to our participants but also to live video conferences, lectures, podcasts and other multimedia resources. with participants able to comment on the items posted or items that are lacking, the project team will be supported with valuable feedback and suggestions, which can then proactively be incorporated in the further development of the cola repository. secondly, building on the interest of cola phd beneficiaries today, the cola participants will foster the creation of an alumni network, which can serve multiple purposes. the purpose of the alumni network is not only to create a network of african graduates working in related topics, but also to create an environment for lifelong learning. the network can also assist matching the demand for advice and support from more junior participants (e.g. phd fellows) with the academic knowledge and expertise of more senior participants (e.g. working professionals and researchers). the main benefit of keeping cola alumni involved will be a growing support network of researchers based in africa, which will hopefully foster research output on the african continent through cooperation and support of each other’s activities. cola will provide the possibility for phd fellows from different participating institutes and organisations to connect with and identify ‘like-minded’ colleagues, who work in similar research fields and who can potentially become partners in future research or project activities. it is generally acknowledged that alumni, as well as (inter)national partners, can play a crucial role in contributing to the career opportunities of current phd fellows. similarly, if these groups are more actively incorporated in activities such as career services, it would also be possible to create a stronger link between the university and the alumni, which in turn would facilitate the process of ‘staying connected’. while there are already databases containing vacant jobs and internships, faculties and institutes could better capitalise on their personal contacts with alumni and other external partners. this in turn could create favourable conditions contributing to more tailor-made solutions for phd fellows. as a result, this also provides additional benefits for the applicable alumni and external partners providing a job opportunity, as the matching process between ‘demand’ and ‘supply’ would be enhanced. in order to contribute to the development of such a matching process, cola will be based on the virtual learning environment moodle, which will be hosted by unu-merit & mgsog. this environment is password-protected, only available to identified community members (african phd fellows, their supervisors and other contributing actors). here, interactivity will really be a collaborative process, allowing all participating actors to play an active role in this process. conclusions with the changing phd landscape, including more diverse ways to obtain a phd, a global playground and opportunity to use technology to enhance lifelong learning, this paper discusses the opportunities to use a col to specifically service sub-saharan african phd students. as literature suggests and research output shows, academic productivity in sub-saharan africa is lagging behind the rest of the world, and targeting phd students to build academic capacity locally might be a valuable way to support scientific development. theoretically, an additional support service for phd education, based on a col, can benefit the scholarly development of phd students. it can address new and traditional groups of phd students and offer new ways to develop research skills to become part of a global community of scholars. our needs assessment, held among african phd students and their supervisors, indicated the necessity to systematically support the development of research skills and topic knowledge in such a community. it can be supported with a virtual environment that provides access to scholarly materials as well as a communicative tool for social exchange and supervision. what is specifically innovative about the current proposal is the extra layer of support that is developed in the virtual environment, offered by external parties combined in an online community. actors, not institutionally connected to the phd fellow, cooperate in the col with the aim of increased knowledge building and improved dissemination. yet, while innovative in approach, and potentially transformative for the phd sector, the success depends on various factors, and successful implementation remains to be seen. with cola offered on an open platform, and in principle being open for all african doctoral students and their supervisors, access to the material is secured. yet, the actual use of the platform by the fellows, enrolling in classes, engaging in debate and feedback loops and benefitting from and contributing to a repository of information that is up to date and valuable, is not yet fully tested. even though phd fellows indicate in the needs assessment that they would value these services if offered, we have not been able to evaluate the actual use of the platform by phd fellows yet. with time being scarce, even more so when the phd is done part-time, in addition to being employed, it remains to be seen that phd fellows choose to use the services offered consistently. until the platform has been more thoroughly piloted and tested for a prolonged period of time, we cannot fully assess if there are positive results coming from using the col. learning analytics about the actual use of the services, course completion rates, and paper publication data must be collected in order to assess true impact. before we can begin to speak about transformation, we would need to see voluntary consistent use of the add-on service, positive outcomes in terms of publications and course completion and longer term capacity development and even contributions to the col. in future research we want to further analyse what measures in col help to improve the scholarly development of phd students and what measures could contribute to a further transformation of doctoral education. acknowledgements the authors thank limburg university fund swol for funding the needs assessment of cola and the worldwide universities network for the rdf funding to pilot the platform. the authors thank prof. michael kerres (learning lab, university of duisburg-essen), the participants of the aace conference 2016 in vancouver, the participants of the e-learning africa 2015 conference in addis ababa and the participants of the appam spring conference 2015 in washington dc for their feedback. the authors thank lucy larbi and friederike rühmann for their research assistance in the needs assessment. competing interests the authors declare that they have no financial or personal relationships which may have inappropriately influenced them in writing this article. authors contributions m.v.d.l. is project leader of the cola project, and responsible for the needs assessment design and analysis, and pilot project implementation. s.a. was research assistant implementing the needs assessment and project coordinator of the cola pilot project. m.r. made conceptual contributions on col and was advisor on the cola project. references alavi, m., kayworth, t.r. & leidner, d.e., 2005, ‘an empirical examination of the influence of organizational culture on knowledge management practices’, journal of management information systems 22(3), 191–224. https://doi.org/10.2753/mis0742-1222220307 allan, b. & lewis, d., 2006, ‘the impact of membership of a virtual learning community on individual learning careers and professional identity’, british journal of educational technology 37(6), 841–852. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8535.2006.00661.x amin, a. & roberts, j., 2006, communities of practice: varieties of situated learning, draft paper prepared for eu network of excellence dynamics of institutions and markets in europe (dime), viewed 21 august 2007, from http://cops.dime-eu.org/files/active/0/amin_roberts.pdf. bharuthram, s. & kies, c., 2013, ‘introducing e-learning in a south african higher education institution: challenges arising from an intervention and possible responses’, british journal of educational technology 44(3), 410–420. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8535.2012.01307.x bunting, i., cloete, n. & van schalkwyk, f., 2014, an empirical overview of eight flagship universities in africa: 2001–2011, center for higher education transformation, viewed 16 june 2017, from https://www.chet.org.za/books/empirical-overview-eight-flagship-universities-africa-2001-2011 caffarella, r.s. & barnett, b.g., 2000, ‘teaching doctoral students to become scholarly writers: the importance of giving and receiving critiques’, studies in higher education 25(1), 39–52. https://doi.org/10.1080/030750700116000 chalmers, l. & keown, p., 2006, ‘communities of practice and professional development’, international journal of lifelong education 25(2), 139–156. https://doi.org/10.1080/02601370500510793 chapman, a.p., 2008, ‘the professional doctorate in transnational education: a narrative inquiry into student experience’, in l. dunn and m. wallace (eds.), teaching in transnational higher education: enhancing learning for offshore international students, pp. 171–179, routledge falmer, london. clark, l., 2007, ‘motivating factors for the professional development of a cohort of professional doctorate students in education’, unpublished thesis, victoria university, melbourne, viewed 16 june 2017, from https://core.ac.uk/display/10827071 cloete, n., 2014, ‘the south african higher education system: performance and policy’, studies in higher education 39(8), 1355–1368. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2014.949533 cloete, n., 2016a, free higher education: another self-destructive south african policy, center for higher education, cape town, south africa, viewed may 2017 from https://www.chet.org.za/papers/third-force-south-african-higher-education-activism cloete, n., 2016b, the third force in south african higher education activism, center for higher education, cape town, south africa. viewed may 2017 from http://www.chet.org.za/papers/third-force-south-african-higher-education-activism cloete, n., mouton, j. & sheppard, c., 2015, doctoral education in south africa, african minds. center for higher education, cape town, south africa. viewed may 2017 from https://www.chet.org.za/books/doctoral-education-south-africa craswell, g., 2007, ‘deconstructing the skills training debate in doctoral education’, higher education research and development 26(4), 377–391. de laat, m. & lally, v., 2003, ‘complexity, theory and praxis: researching collaborative learning and tutoring processes in a networked learning community’, instructional science 31(1–2), 7–39. https://doi.org/10.1023/a:1022596100142 evans, n.d. & le roux, j., 2016, ‘modelling the acceptance and use of electronic learning at the university of zululand’, south african journal of libraries and information science 81(2), 26–38. https://doi.org/10.7553/81-2-1562 fowler, c.j.h. & mayes, j.t., 1999, ‘learning relationships from theory to design’, alt-j 7(3), 6–16. https://doi.org/10.1080/0968776990070302 gannon-leary, p. & fontainha, e., 2007, communities of practice and virtual learning communities: benefits, barriers and success factors, elearning papers 5, 20–29. issn 1887–1542 gherardi, s. & nicolini, d., 2000, ‘the organizational learning of safety in communities of practice’, journal of management inquiry 9(1), 7–18. https://doi.org/10.1177/105649260091002 guerin, c., jayatilaka, a. & ranasinghe, d., 2015, ‘why start a higher degree by research? an exploratory factor analysis of motivations to undertake doctoral studies’, higher education research and development 34(1), 89–104. https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2014.934663 hung, d.w.l. & der-thanq, c., 2001, ‘situated cognition, vygotskian thought and learning from the communities of practice perspective: implications for the design of web-based learning’, educational media international 38(1), 3–12. https://doi.org/10.1080/09523980121818 jablonski, a., 2001, ‘doctoral studies as professional development of educators in the united states, european’, journal of teacher education 24(2), 215–221. https://doi.org/10.1080/02619760120095606 jump, p., 2013, ‘phd completion rates, 2013’, times higher education, viewed 16 june 2017, from https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/phd-completion-rates-2013/2006040.article kim, j.h., 2015, ‘pedagogical approaches to media literacy education in the united states’, in m.n. yildiz & j. keengwe (eds.), handbook of research in media literacy in the digital age, pp. 52–74, hershey pa, igi global. hershey, pa. https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-4666-9667-9 lave, j. & wenger, e., 1991, situated learning: legitimate peripheral participation, cambridge university press, cambridge, uk. lee, a. & boud, d., 2003, ‘writing groups, change and academic identity: research development as local practice’, studies in higher education 28(2), 187–200. https://doi.org/10.1080/0307507032000058109 lester, s., 2004, ‘conceptualising the practitioner doctorate’, studies in higher education 29(6), 757–770. https://doi.org/10.1080/0307507042000287249 malfroy, j., 2005, ‘doctoral supervision, workplace research and changing pedagogic practices’, higher education research and development 24(2), 165–178. https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360500062961 marais, d.v.v. & blignaut, s., 2016, ‘e-literacy skills mismatches at a south african university: a case study’, pp. 242–252, presented at the edmedia: world conference on educational media and technology, association for the advancement of computing in education (aace), viewed 16 june 2017, from https://www.learntechlib.org/p/172958 park, s., 2007, redefining the doctorate, discussion paper, the higher education academy, york. paloff, r. & pratt, k., 2003, the virtual student: a profile and guide to working with online learners, jossey-bass, san francisco, ca. pearson, m., 1999, ‘the changing environment for doctoral education in australia: implications for quality management, improvement and innovation’, higher education research and development 18(3), 269–287. https://doi.org/10.1080/0729436990180301 pearson, m., evans, t. & macauley, p., 2004, ‘the working life of doctoral students: challenges for research education and training’, studies in continuing education 26(3), 347–353. https://doi.org/10.1080/0158037042000265917 rehm, m., 2013, unified yet separated – empirical study on the impact of hierarchical positions within communities of learning, uitgeverij boekenplan, maastricht. rehm, m., galazka, a., gijselaers, w. & segers, m., 2012, ‘managing communities of learning for working professionals: the impact and role of facilitators’, paper presented at the edineb 2–4 may, haarlem, the netherlands. rehm, m., giesbers, b. & rienties, b., 2009, ‘comparing communities of learning for incoming bachelor students & working professionals’, in n. brouwer, b. giesbers, b. rienties & l. van gastel (eds.), student mobility and ict: dimensions of transition, pp. 143–150, feba erd press, amsterdam. rehm, m., gijselaers, w. & segers, m., 2014, ‘effects of hierarchical levels on social network structures within communities of learning’, frontline learning research 2(2), 38–55. https://doi.org/10.14786/flr.v2i2.85 rehm, m., gijselaers, w. & segers, m., 2015, ‘the impact of hierarchical positions on learning’, international journal of computer-supported collaborative learning 10(2), 117–138. rehm, m., mulder, r.h., gijselaers, w. & segers, m., 2016, ‘the impact of hierarchical positions on the type of communication within online communities of learning’, computers in human behavior 58, 158–170. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2015.12.065 rehm, m. & van de laar, m., 2015, ‘the potential of communities of learning for dual career phd programs – a case study’, in a. dailey-hebert & k.s. dennis (eds.), transformative perspectives and processes in higher education, vol. 6, pp. 155–177, springer international publishing, cham, switzerland. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-09247-8_9 rienties, b., tempelaar, d., waterval, d., rehm, m. & gijselaers, w., 2006, ‘remedial online teaching on a summer course’, industry and higher education 20(5), 327–336. https://doi.org/10.5367/000000006778702300 roblyer, m.d. & wiencke, w.r., 2003, ‘design and use of a rubric to assess and encourage interactive qualities in distance courses’, american journal of distance education 17(2), 77–98. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15389286ajde1702_2 romsdahl, r.j. & hill, m.j., 2012, ‘applying the learning community model to graduate education: linking research and teaching between core courses’, teaching in higher education 17(6), 722–734. https://doi.org/10.1080/13562517.2012.678325 scott, d., brown, a., lunt, i. & thorne, l., 2004, professional doctorates: integrating professional and academic knowledge, society for research into higher education & open university press, maidenhead. smit, b., williamson, c. & padayachee, a., 2013, ‘phd capacity-building, from aid to innovation: the sanpad-santrust experience’, studies in higher education 38(3), 441–455. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2013.773218 smith, c. & bath, d., 2006, ‘the role of the learning community in the development of discipline knowledge and generic graduate outcomes’, higher education 51(2), 259–286. https://doi.org/10.2307/29734977 stacey, e., smith, p.j. & barty, k., 2004, ‘adult learners in the workplace: online learning and communities of practice’, distance education 25(1), 107–123. https://doi.org/10.1080/0158791042000212486 swan, j.a., scarbrough, h. & robertson, m., 2002, ‘the construction of “communities of practice” in the management of innovation’, management learning 33(4), 477–496. https://doi.org/10.1177/1350507602334005 unesco uis, n.d., uis, viewed 17 march 2017, from http://data.uis.unesco.org/ van de laar, m., achrekar, s., larbi, l. & rühmann, f., 2016, proceedings of edmedia: world conference on educational media and technology, association for the advancement of computing in education (aace), pp. 506–522, viewed 1 september 2016, from https://www.learntechlib.org/p/172996 wellington, j. & sikes, p., 2006, ‘“a doctorate in a tight compartment”: why do students choose a professional doctorate and what impact does it have on their personal and professional lives?’, studies in higher education 31(6), 723–734. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075070601004358 wenger, e., mcdermott, r. & snyder, w.m., 2002, cultivating communities of practice, harvard university press, boston, ma. wenger, e. & snyder, w., 2000, ‘communities of practice: the organizational frontier’, harvard business review 78(6), 139–146, viewed on 15 may 2016 from https://hbr.org/2000/01/communities-of-practice-the-organizational-frontier wildy, h., peden, s. & chan, k., 2015, ‘the rise of professional doctorates: case studies of the doctorate in education in china, iceland and australia’, studies in higher education 40(5), 761–744. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2013.842968 world bank & elsevier, 2014, a decade of development in sub-saharan african science, technology, engineering & mathematics research, viewed 15 may 2016, from http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/237371468204551128/pdf/910160wp0p126900disclose09026020140.pdf footnotes 1. with doctoral education as the highest isced level of education an individual has successfully completed. this is usually measured with respect to the highest educational programme successfully completed which is typically certified by a recognised qualification. recognised intermediate qualifications are classified at a lower level than the programme itself. the most recent number between 2010 and 2015 was taken as reference. 2. cola is an initiative of unu-merit and maastricht university. we obtained a university funds limburg/swol subsidy to do a needs assessment, map the actors in africa interested in phd capacity building, define activities and courses needed to support the phd fellows in africa, as well as support their supervisors to execute their supervision job. we obtained a wun subsidy to pilot the first platform among phd fellows of selected african universities. 3. the first preliminary instrument was elaborately discussed with african phd students and african professors in the netherlands, who from personal experience know the situation in one or more institutions (four interviews). the adjusted instrument was tested using an online survey link. during this test phase, african in-house phd students filled out the instrument, while research assistants monitored their answering behavior in person. feedback was discussed and small changes were made to the instrument. lastly, we piloted among purposefully selected african master’s and phd students located in sub-saharan africa and asked them to test the instrument, before sending it out in the mass mailing. 4. individuals working in the research area poverty or migration or conflict or crisis or institutions or economic development or capacity building or policy or governance or technology or innovation or entrepreneurship. abstract introduction research methodology and design results discussion conclusion acknowledgements references footnotes about the author(s) lufuno sadiki department of social work and criminology, faculty of humanities, university of pretoria, pretoria, south africa francois steyn department of social work and criminology, faculty of humanities, university of pretoria, pretoria, south africa citation sadiki, l. & steyn, f., 2022, ‘decolonising the criminology curriculum in south africa: views and experiences of lecturers and postgraduate students’, transformation in higher education 7(0), a150. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v7i0.150 note: special collection: covid-19. original research decolonising the criminology curriculum in south africa: views and experiences of lecturers and postgraduate students lufuno sadiki, francois steyn received: 31 aug. 2021; accepted: 23 nov. 2021; published: 27 jan. 2022 copyright: © 2022. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract background: for many years, the lived experiences, knowledge systems and histories of previously colonised people have been misinterpreted, removed and devalued in university teaching. the present curricula of african universities are predominantly eurocentric and criminology is no exception. in the wake of the #rhodesmustfall student protest action, there is a recognition and need to include african epistemology within the discipline of criminology. aim: the study investigated the views of lecturers and postgraduate students regarding the content, transformation and decolonisation of criminology curricula. setting: south african universities offering criminology as a degree and/or academic subject. methods: a total of 87 respondents, 42 lecturers and 45 postgraduate students, voluntarily participated in an online survey. lecturers were purposively selected whilst postgraduate students were recruited via snowball sampling. results: nearly all the respondents had heard of decolonisation before, with the majority of the academic staff members being aware of it prior to #rhodesmustfall. respondents agreed that the criminology curriculum needs to be decolonised, with statistically significant differences emanating between black lecturers and white lecturers. conclusion: decolonisation and transformation have been debated for many years without meaningful translation in and changes to criminology curricula. keywords: criminology; curriculum; transformation; decolonisation; teaching and learning. introduction institutions of higher learning (ihl) in africa continue to replicate western ideologies without considering the continent’s context and realities (mswazie & mudyahoto 2013:170). it is almost three decades since apartheid was abolished and south africa became a democratic country, yet neo-colonialist, structural imbalances and imperialist practices continue to persist in many spheres of society, including higher education (heleta 2016:2). many universities have been struggling to transform from their colonial past of being characterised by white dominance and european worldviews, to becoming more inclusive ihl that cater for the educational needs of a diverse south africa (ndlovu-gatsheni & zondi 2016:4). historically, south african knowledge systems have been suppressed by colonialism and apartheid (luckett 2010:5) with apartheid manifesting in epistemologies, methodology, ontology, gender biases, patriarchy and racism (denzin, lincoln & smith 2008:22; keet 2014:23). the #rhodesmustfall student protest actions in 2015 ignited the call to decolonise south african universities and their curricula. the student movement laid bare fundamental problems of post-apartheid higher education, highlighting issues concerning access, institutional racism and exclusion (le grange 2019:29). initially, the movements called for the removal of the statue of the british imperialist cecil john rhodes from the campus of the university of cape town (uct). the movement petitioned for a free, decolonised and african-centred curriculum (sadiki 2020:640). the statue was interpreted as a symbol of colonial empire and the call for its removal was a means of challenging orthodox historical consciousness. therefore, what remains is to remove the ‘rhodes’ that underpins academic curricula (garuba 2015; jansen 2019:51). in addition, the student protest actions were marred by violence, which is not surprising because of the sudden awareness of the fundamental flaws within the system that remained unchanged and the continuation of a paradigm that simply did not match local reality, which is remnant of apartheid. fanon (1963), in his analysis of violence in the struggle for freedom, justified violence as an appropriate response when facing colonial oppression. decolonisation of south african ihl, epistemology and disciplines was an essential purpose of the student movements (ndlovu-gatsheni & zondi 2016:4–5; shay 2016). decolonisation is a contested term that has diverse meanings across different contexts (mackinlay & barney 2014:54; zembylas 2018:1). the term has a rich intellectual ancestry and was first introduced in the 1960s and gained steam in the 1980s as popularised by fanon (1963) and ngugi wa thiongi (1986). for ngugi (1986), decolonisation does not entail merely removing and completely doing away with eurocentric perspectives but placing africa at the centre of teaching, learning and research. the current curriculum marginalises and subjugates african perspectives and epistemologies in favour of eurocentric domination. the term entails dismantling the remnants of colonialism, which is prevalent in the eurocentric nature of the curriculum offered at post-colonial universities (jansen 2019:52), which privileges western knowledge system above the rest (keet 2014:23). within the south african context, decolonisation encapsulates power relations in knowledge production and begs the question ‘whose knowledge is at the centre of the continental contestation over the curriculum’ (jansen 2019:53). for students, decolonisation was the remedy for the lack of transformation at south african universities. as cogently captured by le grange (2019:31–32), ‘decolonisation does not have to mean or involve destruction’ and often what has ‘been decolonised has the potential to produce colonising effects and vice versa’. the terms transformation and decolonisation have erroneously been used interchangeably. transformation is not decolonisation. transforming the curriculum entails creating a curriculum that is responsive to the social context and prioritises previously marginalised narratives, voices and knowledge systems. however, decolonisation is far more salient than replacing western theories and authors with african ones (mgqwashu 2016). one of the menacing problems confronting decolonisation is determining how the concept relates to african epistemology and africanisation. african epistemology refers to how africans ‘conceptualises, interprets and apprehends reality within the context of african cultural or collective experience’ (anyanwu 1983:60). in the context of higher education, africanisation entails centring the life experiences, traditions, culture, histories and voices of the african people in the curriculum (thabede 2008:234). to africanise the curriculum, colonial roots that underpin it ought to be dismantled (jansen 2019:52) to make room for african modes of knowledge and understanding (udefi 2014:108). therefore, without decolonisation, africanisation cannot take place and ultimately transformation cannot be achieved without both decolonisation and africanisation (chimakonam 2019:182). the point of origin and theorising of texts being studied in criminology has colonial roots (williams & chrisman 1995:5) and presents a western perspective of the social world (kalunta-crumpton 2004:5). criminology is dominated by western scholars, literature and perspectives (moosavi 2018:230; williams & chrisman 1995:5), resulting in crime and the criminal justice system conceptualised from a western perspective (kalunta-crumpton 2004:5) and a discipline that fails to solve the crime problem (agozino 2004:351). instead of generalising criminology theories to the african continent, the discipline ought to discover better answers to solve crime (agozino 2004:351). no other social science has served colonialism more directly than criminology and the discipline has been classified as an imperialist science for the control of others (agozino 2004:343; king 2017:2–3; moosavi 2018:230–231). agozino (2010:i–ii) emphasises the oppressive and authoritarian nature of criminology by labelling the discipline as a ‘technology designed for the control of others’ and a ‘control freak discipline’. his views echo sentiments of foucault (1977) about the utility of criminology because the discipline itself is embedded in and reliant on western justice systems and how offenders are supposed to be ‘managed’ without acknowledging how remnants of colonialism continue to influence crime and criminality. furthermore, there is a lack of understanding of how the effect of colonialism has perpetuated the operation of systems such as the criminal justice system (cunneen & rowe 2014:49). to date there have been limited attempts to include theoretical and practical implications of african understandings and approaches within criminology and much of the discipline’s knowledge has always been concentrated in a few hands (agozino 2004:343; moosavi 2018). this in turn contributed to the marginalisation of the subjects it seeks to study (deckert 2014:49). decolonisation and post-colonial perspectives have had greater impact in disciplines such as literature, law, politics, philosophy and sociology, yet post-colonial perspectives in criminology remain constrained. therefore, decolonising criminology is necessary and can only be achieved by employing critical research (denzin et al. 2008:21). this article aims to explore the curriculum content of criminology at south african universities to determine to what extent african perspectives are reflected in the subject content and teaching approaches and unpacks the views of lecturers and postgraduate students regarding the content of the discipline’s curriculum. with the call to decolonise and transform institutions becoming more urgent, the curriculum is an important aspect of the decolonial project as it ultimately determines whose knowledge is learned, valued and reproduced. research methodology and design using a quantitative research method, a cross-sectional survey was administered to academic staff members and postgraduate students at south african ihl. the survey generated insights into the attitudes, opinions and expectations of respondents regarding transformation and decolonisation of criminology curricula (creswell & creswell 2018:49; maree & pietersen 2017:174). the non-probability sampling method entailed purposive and snowball sampling techniques. the study warranted respondents who were informative, useful and appropriate for the topic at hand (babbie 2016:187; neuman 2014:273–274). postgraduate students were selected on the notion that they have a higher level of understanding, critical thinking skills and specialised knowledge about criminology and should be able to work and learn independently as opposed to undergraduate students. academic staff members are primarily responsible for teaching and learning and curriculum development hence their inclusion in the study. lecturer respondents were purposively identified from the websites of the various criminology departments and were subsequently invited by email to participate in the survey. postgraduate students were considered an unknown population (registration information is not in the public domain), therefore, snowball sampling was used where academic staff respondents who participated in the survey were asked to forward the survey invitation to their postgraduate students (de vos et al. 2011:393; kumar 2014:244). data were collected by means of a rapid online survey administered through qualtrics (2020). the platform was user friendly and had quality control features that prevented multiple submissions from single respondents. the online survey was piloted with two respondents to test the procedures and ensure the content validity of the instrument (creswell & creswell 2018:154). respondents were sent an anonymous link and no information that could identify them (name, surname, institutions and email address) was captured. the survey was available for 2 weeks, after which the data were exported to statistical package for the social sciences (spss) (ibm corp 2020) for statistical analysis. considering the study’s sampling strategy and the data not showing normal distributions, the mann-whitney u test was used to determine any statistically significant differences (ibm 2020). in cases where a statistically significant difference featured (p < 0.05), effect sizes were calculated where r = – 0.1 indicates a weak, r = – 0.3 notes a medium and r = – 0.5 points to a large effect size. the study was approved by the research ethics committee of the faculty of humanities of the university of pretoria (hum026/1119) and all the participating universities agreed to have their criminology lecturers and postgraduate students complete the survey. the landing page of the survey had an ethics statement and a function for respondents to tick that they agree to voluntarily participate in the survey. an informed consent leaflet was attached that detailed the purpose of the study and assured respondents of anonymity and confidentiality of the information they shared. the sample is not representative of all south african universities and the findings should, therefore, be generalised with caution (neuman 2014:248). in addition, the sampling strategy could have resulted in selection bias (in other words, only those respondents who are interested in debates about transformation and decolonisation participated in the survey), thus giving rise to a skewed sample of criminology lecturers and postgraduate students. except for biographic information (gender, age, population group and academic position/highest qualification), the academic staff and postgraduate student data are presented jointly because of low n-values. where significant differences featured, these are indicated and unpacked as such. indian and mixed-race respondents were left out of statistical analyses because of low n-values. all respondents were asked closed-ended questions about their understanding of decolonisation and what it entails for higher education, the content of their criminology curricula and their views on the need for decolonisation. postgraduate students were asked about the extent to which they encountered indigenous versus eurocentric perspectives in their learning. both groups were offered the opportunity to motivate their answers in the form of open-ended questions. these insights are presented as direct quotes and are accompanied by supporting literature to validate their meaning. for the purpose of this paper each respondent’s response to the open-ended question is assigned a respondent number (i.e. respondent 1 to respondent 87). the researchers aimed to obtain data from at least 100 respondents and despite reminders, personalised emails and stating the average time it would take to complete the survey had a low response rate featured. the low response rate could be attributed to ‘survey fatigue’ and lack of data, especially on the part of postgraduate students because the respondents had to use their own data to complete the survey. ethical considerations ethical clearance to conduct this study was obtained from the university of pretoria humanities research ethics committee (no. hum026/1119). results sample characteristics a total of 87 respondents completed the survey of whom slightly more than half (n = 45; 52%) were postgraduate students and the remaining were academic staff members (n = 42; 48%). nearly a third (n = 28; 32%) of respondents were male and almost half (n = 41; 47%) were between the ages of 20 and 30 (table 1). table 1: biographic information of respondents. two in five (n = 17; 41%) of the academic respondents were lecturers and nearly a third (n = 13; 31%) were senior lecturers. very few respondents were junior lecturers (n = 2; 5%), associate professors (n = 3; 7%) and honorary professors (n = 2; 5%), with only 12% (n = 5) holding the position of full professor. respondents’ years of lecturing experience ranged between 1 and more than 20 years, with more than a quarter (27%) having had 6 to 10 years of lecturing, 2 in 5 (n = 9; 22%) with 1 to 5 years and 11 to 15 years’ experience, respectively. nearly a fifth (n = 7; 17%) had more than 20 years of lecturing experience. understanding of decolonisation and what it entails for higher education all the academic respondents (n = 42; 100%) and the majority of postgraduate respondents (n = 42; 93%) had heard of decolonisation before. a total of 56% (n = 23) of the academic respondents knew about decolonisation prior to the 2015 student protest action, one in five heard of it during the protest (n = 8; 20%), and 12% (n = 5) heard about it after the protest action. furthermore, 12% (n = 5) of the academic staff heard about decolonisation from other sources such as seminars and from the academic community. more than a quarter (n = 19; 28%) of the postgraduate students heard about decolonisation from their prescribed learning material and the media, respectively. only 2 (5.0%) postgraduate respondents heard about decolonisation from university management, 13% (n = 9) from the #feesmustfall protest action and student activist or leadership structures and a tenth (n = 7; 11%) of the student respondents learnt about decolonisation from their own research. the bulk of the respondents agreed that decolonisation of higher education entailed placing african knowledge on an equal footing with current western knowledge (n = 76; 94%) and reconstructing the current criminology curriculum to make it more inclusive (n = 77, 95%). a quarter of the respondents (n = 21; 26%) were neutral in recognising that knowledge is marked by power relations (table 2). table 2: what decolonisation entails for higher education. nearly two-thirds of black respondents (n = 22; 65%) compared with a third of white respondents (n = 11; 32%) agreed that decolonisation entails rooting educational paradigms in indigenous african epistemological frameworks, displaying a statistically significant difference with a medium to large effect size (p = 0.015; r = – 0.41). three quarters (n = 60; 78%) of the respondents stated that the current criminology curricula promoted western ideologies and epistemologies whilst nearly half (n = 37; 48%) reported that african traditional methods of conflict resolution were seldom included (table 3).1,2 table 3: content of criminology curriculum. a statistically significant difference with a medium effect size (p = 0.011; r = −0.28) featured between lecturers and students regarding the statement that criminology curricula cultivate an appreciation for diverse entry points, with most lecturers stating that it happens frequently (n = 24; 64%) compared with three in five (n = 24; 60%) students who stated that this seldom happened. nearly two-thirds (n = 23; 62%) of the academic staff indicated that they frequently provided students with opportunities to widen their circles of contact or experience in their learning, although more than half of students (n = 22; 55%) stated that these opportunities rarely occurred (p = 0.008; r = −0.30). furthermore, more than half (n = 22; 55%) of the students stated that african methods of conflict resolution were seldom incorporated in the curriculum compared with two in five (n = 15; 40%) of the lecturers who indicated it to be frequently included (p = 0.040; r = −0.23). decolonising criminology curricula more than half of the respondents (n = 40; 55%) agreed that the criminology curriculum need to be decolonised (figure 1), with statistically significant differences (p = 0.14; r = −0.41) between black academic staff respondents (n = 18; 60%) and white academic staff respondents (n = 11; 37%). in addition, significantly more black respondents (n = 20; 56%) than white respondents (n = 15; 42%) stated that their modules need to be decolonised (p = 0.41; r = −0.37). figure 1: should criminology and its curriculum be decolonised? nearly half (n = 18; 46%) of the student respondents stated that they seldom encountered indigenous perspectives in their criminology curriculum (table 4). furthermore, the greater proportion (n = 33; 85%) of the students reported frequently learning eurocentric theories of crime and criminality. table 4: indigenous versus eurocentric perspectives in criminology curriculum (postgraduate student responses) responses from the open-ended questions regarding decolonising and redesigning the curriculum, garuba (2015) posed two questions: do we simply add new items to an existing curriculum or do we restructure the curriculum by objectively thinking how the curriculum itself is constituted? many south african universities prefer ‘adding items’ to existing curricula as a means to maintain the status quo, which allows them to tick boxes as though transformation is taking place even though it is not (heleta 2016:5). there is a growing acknowledgement from academic staff of the importance of incorporating african perspectives into the discipline to ensure that the curriculum is founded on critical africa-centred epistemology (king 2017:10). the academic respondents held different views and approaches to decolonising and transforming their curricula. some respondents felt that decolonising their curricula entailed incorporating african philosophies and worldviews as stated below: ‘by incorporating the africanised philosophies and use sources and literature written by african scholars.’ (respondent 9) ‘currently incorporating african narratives to outline some theoretical perspectives.’ (respondent 29) ‘decolonisation and transformation is an ongoing project. in south african criminology, and the modules i teach, locally relevant research which puts african and south african indigenous knowledge systems at the centre of scientific enquiry is slowly emerging. i include such emerging scholarly work on an annual basis into my curricula for different modules i teach. further, i encourage critical thinking activities and co-construction of content in terms of what is learned during discussions in class.’ (respondent 87) some lecturer respondents followed student-centred approaches and included student voices in decolonising their curricula: ‘add in more context specific studies and examples. more interactions with students allowing them to take the lead. ensuring more student-centred approaches are adopted.’ (respondent 32) ‘working through design strategies and assessment strategies to include alternative views. adapting the lecturing method to allow for student voices.’ (respondent 47) criminology as a discipline needs to consider whether its teachings relate and reflect an african worldview, whether the curricula prepares students to engage with people from an african perspective and whether it is locally relevant (van de westhuizen, greuel & beaukes 2017:4). local relevance of curricula requires that criminology develops knowledge, understanding and skills based on an exploration of ‘life experiences, history and traditions of african people as the centre of analyses’ (thabede 2008:234). academic staff members observed various challenges in their attempts to decolonise their curricula: ‘fighting against the “white is right” subculture. this is not blatant but often subtle.’ (respondent 61) ‘the problem is that there are often different african explanations or interpretations for the same behaviour or phenomenon. in some cases, these insights are based on hearsay and word of mouth reports. it will be unethical to talk about one african explanation which makes the development of an african criminology even more challenging.’ (respondent 71) ‘there is limited written theories focusing on afrocentrism. most of african materials still seek approval from the global north for acceptance. all literature written by african is not well accepted by global south because they are the custodian of knowledge production (so they think).’ (respondent 77) respondent 87: ‘in the past, afrikaans only lectures were not conducive to exposing students to diverse views and voices. in future, the slow pace at which locally relevant research is published, may delay the pace at which i am able to decolonise my curricula. as stated though, decolonisation of our curricula is an ongoing project and not a moment in time.’ the project of decolonisation and transformation cannot be performed without the involvement of students. as recipients of knowledge, students play a central role in decolonising the curriculum (hendricks & leibowitz 2016). student respondents provided various explanations as to why criminology curricula needed to be decolonised: ‘as a south african criminology ma graduate, one would think i would be more informed with regards to what my country has to offer – with the wisdom that comes from african tradition, but i am not. it seems the answer is “just use ubuntu”, which is great, and i do, but i would like more african theory, more african-based intervention, more african voices not only in my findings but also in my literature review and theory chapters. i am working towards being part of that african voice, and i hope to be part of creating an inclusive and representative criminology for future students.’ (respondent 10) similar to the #rhodesmustfall movement, student respondents raised questions about the relevance and appropriateness of the criminology curriculum to the african context: ‘criminology is more based on the western context, it is vital to learn about criminology in an african context in order to easily relate and understand the content being studied.’ (respondent 22) ‘most of the curricula is biased, it gives too much focus only on western perspectives which at times do not even relate to us africans and our circumstances or how we experience crime. therefore, it would be great and informative to have perspectives that focus on the experience of africans.’ (respondent 36) ‘the theory and methods currently being studied are out of tune with our lived experiences and realities. there is a desperate need for an understanding of our own ways, that may, in effect, contribute towards the better understanding and management of high rates of crime within the african continent.’ (respondent 85) transforming the criminology curriculum will involve incorporating multiple independent pedagogies. criminology theories must be generated and informed by life as it is lived, experienced and understood by local inhabitants and underpinned by the african local experience (mgqwashu 2016). students appear to be aware of their responsibility in decolonising and transforming criminology: ‘challenging the west as credible knowledge producers by highlighting and learning about the african perspective on criminology.’ (respondent 35) ‘perhaps challenging/critiquing certain views/theories presented by the western world.’ (respondent 37) ‘to incorporate african theories into my research and to consider things from the perspectives of other cultural groups.’ (respondent 44) discussion south african universities have been built on the foundations of western models, which have always dehumanised the experiences and knowledge of the colonised (le grange 2019:34). to decolonise the curriculum, western knowledge ought to be decentralised and african knowledge moved from the margin to the centre, as was advocated by ngugi wa thiong’o (1986) decades ago. the purpose of this study was to explore the extent to which criminology curricula incorporates african perspectives as perceived by students and lecturers across south african ihl. the results indicate that all the academic staff and nearly all the postgraduate students had heard of decolonisation before. more than half of the academic staff were familiar with the notions of decolonisation even prior to the #rhodesmustfall student protest action, yet the decolonial project only gained momentum in the context of rapid political change triggered by the student movements (mahmood 2019:16). it was only in the wake of the 2015 and 2016 student protest action that institutions developed policy frameworks and plans geared towards decolonisation and transformation. these policy frameworks and plans were an attempt to formalise transformation and provide guidance for lecturers to transform and decolonise their curricula. clearly there was a level of awareness about decolonisation amongst academics, but very limited – if any – action prevailed on the part of universities and academics to ensure that decolonisation took place. this paralysis of action is concerning since the protest action occurred more than two decades after the dismantling of apartheid. although not a new phenomenon (cf. fanon 1963; mbembe 2001; nkrumah 1965; thiong’o 1986), very limited empirical work and scientific output featured regarding decolonisation before #rhodesmustfall. decolonisation and transformation of higher education slumbered given the academic profile of staff at south african universities. lange (2019) explored how the student protest actions played out at the university of free state (ufs) and the uct, which are both historically white universities. the student protest action had little to no impact at ufs, with students receiving minimal support from academic staff. yet uct, where the student movement and the call to decolonise the university curriculum ignited, had a mass of black academics to support and encourage students, which was not the case at ufs given that the bulk of academic staff members were white people (lange 2019:79–80). limited action from the academic staff might explain why so few students learnt about decolonisation through their course material. it is important to note that student respondents from this study were at postgraduate level, who might read outside their curriculum and have come across decolonisation as part of their own research. the results suggest that the media and advocacy were the main drivers to challenge the slow pace of decolonising ihl and their curricula. respondents acknowledged that african understandings need to be on an equal footing as western perspectives, but they presented more nuanced understandings of the intersections between power, hierarchy, knowledge production and dissemination. conflict and critical criminology – which focuses on power relations – are standard components of undergraduate teaching and learning, yet it appears that criminology lecturers are reluctant to cast these interrogative lenses on their own discipline. what is clear from the results is that a reconsideration is needed in terms of the curriculum regarding inclusivity. inclusiveness in terms of different perspectives and worldviews is an important element of decolonisation (ndlovu-gatsheni & zondi 2016:4). furthermore, there is a need for dialogue on decolonisation and the questioning of existing epistemologies, as well as the grounding of educational paradigms in indigenous systems of knowledge. the student protests made students aware of the need for transformation and decolonisation and the results suggest that there is acknowledgement in the curriculum for students to understand the origins of criminology in its historical context. the academic staff members acknowledged the need to decolonise the discipline, but the practical basis of exactly how a decolonised criminology curriculum will play out in learning appears wanting, for example, regarding the casual nature of crime and criminality from indigenous stances. some inroads have been made, especially in the form of child justice interventions and victim offender mediation where local philosophies and practices have infused remedial measures (cf. steyn & sadiki 2018). still, much more needs to be done to develop a truly transformed, african criminology. a worrying result relates to the low curricula intensity of engaging students with diverse local and global perspectives, as well as limited opportunities for criminology students to critically grapple with issues of discrimination, racism, inequality and exclusion. the results are not surprising given the disciplines reluctance to engage and explore the relationship between race and crime (choak 2020:46). these themes appear to be absent in the criminology curriculum and the gap opens the door for curriculum developers to include frameworks such as intersectionality and zemiology in their teaching and learning. in addition, more should be done to include hate crime and racism in the criminology curriculum. students appear aware of the shortfalls of the criminology curriculum with regards to an appreciation of diverse entry points and opportunities to widen circles of contact or experiences in their learning. in the past, double or parallel tuition, according to language, created structural divides between different race groups of students and lecturers. although this was mostly abolished (and only recently so) at former afrikaans whites-only institutions of higher education, the removal of such barriers could strengthen wider circles of learning among students. what is further evident is the mismatch between lecturers and students’ views about the curriculum. the results suggest that criminology lecturers are not engaging students on curriculum content, and they have little insight as to what students think about the curricula they study. even though many universities have student feedback evaluations, these relate more to lecturers’ performance than matters of curriculum and that could be a valuable opportunity to gauge students’ views and needs in terms of (a transformed) curriculum. as the end-users of the curriculum, academics may benefit from engaging and collaborating with students to decolonise and transform their curriculum. awareness about shortfalls in the curriculum is present yet changes to the curriculum content lag. the student voices are clear about the lack of indigenous perspectives in criminology and the appropriateness of the learning content, including the relevance of western theory to african conditions and cultures. much has been written on african traditional forms of conflict resolution such as the gacaca courts in rwanda, the mato oput in uganda and inkundla/lekgotla amongst the sotho and xhosa people in south africa (murithi 2009:228; sadiki 2020:647–651; wasonga 2009:31–32) although such knowledge is conspicuously absent in local criminology curricula. similarly, some voices about the methods of knowledge production emerged in criminology (cf. dastile 2017; keikelame & swartz 2019), but they appear unable to gain track in local research practice. more work is needed that embraces a research methodology that fosters an understanding of local experiences of crime and its origins and management. the results suggest some level of apathy amongst white criminology lecturers towards the transformation and decolonisation of their curriculum. white scholars may be more comfortable with western understandings of crime and criminality given their unfamiliarity with black culture and traditions. one of the barriers to the decolonial project is the desire to maintain the status quo, which upholds and supports white supremacy, patriarchy, gender inequality and racism (mehdi & jameela 2021:151). a major drawback of the decolonial project in criminology would be for white academics to sit on the side-line and not critically engage in the decolonisation scholarship. all academic scholars, regardless of race, can make meaningful contributions to decolonising the university curriculum. given that the criminology curriculum is more than just a selection of study material, the belief systems and attitudes of academics are central to transforming and decolonising the curriculum. to decolonise and transform the curriculum, all academics will need to collaborate and engage in rigorous debates concerning the curriculum of the discipline. conclusion decolonisation of universities has sometimes incorporated cosmetic changes, such as the renaming of buildings and updating policies, vision and mission statements, without real structural changes and thoroughly decolonising the curriculum and institutional frameworks. in the context of the present article, the debate is not whether criminology curriculum needs to decolonise because the answer is yes, it does, and urgently so. even with the call to include indigenous perspectives and to decolonise the discipline, south african criminology has continued with a ‘business as usual’ mindset. despite this, paradigms and frameworks are malleable. for example, feminist perspectives in criminology have helped to develop theoretical frameworks to explain female criminality (cf. artz, hoffman-wanderer & moult 2021). in a similar vein, a decolonised criminology curriculum can flourish by diversifying the discipline and its theoretical approaches. criminology must interrogate and engage in decolonial debates not as a matter of black people and white people, but as one of equipping criminology students to respond to the crime phenomenon in a manner that places africa at the centre of the criminological analysis. the focus should now shift to actions that will ensure a truly decolonised criminology. in its present form, criminology in africa will add little to no value in understanding crime and criminality without a strong nucleus of african perspectives, experiences and practices. western knowledge is not universal, therefore, the criminology curriculum should be embedded in the socio-cultural context of south africa and the broader continent. we found evidence that the current criminology curriculum is far removed from the lived experiences, cultures and identities of students who must take up the baton for future crime prevention and reduction. without immediate structural changes to the criminology curricula, western dominance will continue to prevail in the teaching and learning – and eventual practice – of criminology in south africa. to our knowledge, this article is the first attempt at determining views about decolonisation in south african criminology, as available research has predominantly been literature and qualitative studies. future research should critically analyse the criminology curricula in south africa, whilst at the same time being sensitive to the varying content and criminology curricula across different universities. in addition, the apathy of some scholars to the decolonisation project should be explored, as well as the views of criminology practitioners and undergraduate criminology students. acknowledgements competing interests the authors declare that they have no financial or personal relationships that may have inappropriately influenced them in writing this article. authors’ contributions l.s., a phd candidate conducted the research – administered the survey and did the write up of the entire article. f.s., who is the supervisor, did the data analysis via statistical package for the social sciences (spss), provided supervision throughout the project and edited the article and final analysis. funding information this work was supported by the national research foundation south africa under grant 129432. data availability the data is not available in the public domain at present, because future publications are foreseen. disclaimer the views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any affiliated agency of the authors, and the publisher. references agozino, b., 2004, ‘imperialism, crime and criminology: towards the decolonisation of criminology’, crime, law and social change 41, 343–358. https://doi.org/10.1023/b:cris.0000025766.99876.4c agozino, b., 2010, ‘editorial: what is criminology? a control-freak discipline!’, african journal of criminology and justice studies 4(1), i–xx. anyanwu, k.c., 1983, the african experience in the american market place a scaring indictment of western scholars and their distortion of african culture, exposition press, new york, ny. artz, l., hoffman-wandere, y. & moult, k., 2021, hard time(s): women’s pathways to crime and incarceration, the gender, health and justice research unit, university of cape town. babbie, e., 2016, the practice of social research, 14th edn., wadsworth, cengage learning, belmont, tn. chimakonam, j.o., 2019, ezumezu: a system of logic for african philosophy and studies, springer, cham. choak, c., 2020, ‘british criminological amnesia: making the case for a black and postcolonial feminist criminology’, decolonization of criminology and justice 2(1), 37–58. https://doi.org/10.24135/dcj.v2i1.17 creswell, j.w. & creswell, j.d., 2018, research design: qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches, 5th edn., sage, london. cunneen, c. & rowe, s., 2014, ‘changing narratives: colonised peoples, criminology and social work,’ international journal for crime, justice and social democracy 3(1), 49–67. https://doi.org/10.5204/ijcjsd.v3i1.138 dastile, n., 2017, ‘breaking bread with female “criminals”: towards generation of testimonial knowledge on female criminality in south africa’, gender and behaviour 15(3), 9722–9738. de vos, a., strydom, h., fouche, c. & delport, c., 2011, research at grass roots: for social sciences and human services professions, van schaik publishers, pretoria. deckert, a., 2014, ‘neo-colonial criminology: quantifying the silence’, african journal of criminology and justice studies 8(1), 39–60. denzin, n.k, lincoln, y.s. & smith, l.t., 2008, handbook of critical and indigenous methodologies, sage, los angeles, ca. fanon, f., 1963, the wretched of the earth, ballantine, new york, ny. foucault, m., 1977, discipline and punish: the birth of the prison, pantheon books, new york, ny. garuba, h., 2015, ‘what is an african curriculum?’, mail & guardian, viewed 29 july 2021, from https://mg.co.za/article/2015-04-17-what-is-an-african-curriculum/. heleta, s., 2016, ‘decolonisation of higher education: dismantling epistemic violence and eurocentrism in south africa’, transformation in higher education 1(1), 1–8. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v1i1.9 hendricks, c., & leibowitz, b., 2016, ‘decolonising universities isn’t an easy process – but it has to happen’, the conversation, viewed may 2021, from https://theconversation.com/decolonising-universities-isnt-an-easy-process-but-it-has-to-happen-59604. higgs, p., 2012, ‘african philosophy and the decolonisation of education in africa: some critical reflections’, educational philosophy and theory 44(2), 37–55. ibm, 2020, ibm spss statistics for windows, version 27.0, ibm corp, armonk, ny. jansen, j.d., 2019, ‘on the politics of decolonisation: knowledge, authority and the settled curriculum’, in j.d. jansen (ed.), decolonisation in universities: the politics of knowledge, pp. 29–47, johannesburg, wits university press. kalunta-crumpton, a., 2004, ‘criminology and orientalism’, in a. kalunta-crumpton & b. agozino (eds.), pan-african issues in crime and justice. interdisciplinary research eries in ethnic, gender and class relations, ashgate publishing limited. keet, a., 2014, ‘epistemic “othering” and the decolonisation of knowledge’, africa insight 44(1), 23–37. keikelame, m.j. & swartz, l., 2019, ‘decolonising research methodologies: lessons from a qualitative research project, cape town, south africa’, global health action 12(1), 1–7. https://doi.org/10.1080/16549716.2018.1561175 king, s., 2017, ‘colonial criminology: a survey of what it means and why it is important’, sociological compass 11(3), 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1111/soc4.12447 kumar, r., 2014, research methodology: a step-by-step guide for beginners, 4th edn., sage, london. lange, l., 2019, ‘the institutional curriculum, pedagogy and the decolonisation of the south african university’, in j.d jansen (ed.), decolonisation in universities: the politics of knowledge, pp 79–99, wits university press, johannesburg. le grange, l., 2019, ‘the curriculum case for decolonisation’, in j. jansen (ed.), decolonisation in universities: the politics of knowledge, pp. 29–47, wits university press, johannesburg. luckett, k., 2010, ‘knowledge claims and codes of legitimation: implications for curriculum re-contextualisation in south african higher education’, africanus 40(1), 4–18. mackinlay, e. & barney, k., 2014, ‘unknown and unknowing possibilities: transformative learning, social justice and decolonizing pedagogy in indigenous australian studies’, journal of transformative education 12(1), 54–73. mahmood, m., 2019, ‘decolonising universities’, in j.d. jansen (ed.), decolonisation in universities: the politics of knowledge, pp. 15–28, wits university press, johannesburg. maree, k. & pietersen, j., 2017, ‘surveys and the use of questionnaires’, in k. maree, j.w. creswell, l. ebersohn, i. eloff, r. ferreira, n.v. ivankova et al. (eds.), first steps in research, 2nd edn., van schaik publishers, pretoria. mbembe, a., 2001, on the postcolony, university of california press, los angeles. mehdi, n. & jameela m., 2021, ‘on the fallacy of decolonisation in our higher education institutions (heis)’, in d.s.p thomas & j. arday (eds.), doing equity and diversity for success in higher education, pp. 151–16, palgrave macmillan, london. mgqwashu, e., 2016, ‘universities can’t decolonise the curriculum without defining it first’, the conversation, viewed 26 july 2018, from https://theconversation.com/universities-cant-decolonise-the-curriculum-without-defining-it-first-63948. moosavi, l., 2018, ‘decolonising criminology: syed hussein alatas on crimes of the powerful’, critical criminology 27(2), 229–242. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10612-018-9396-9 mswazie, j. & mudyahoto, t., 2013, ‘africanizing the curriculum: an adaptive framework for reforming african education systems’, journal of merging trends in educational research policy studies 4(1), 170–177. murithi, t., 2009, ‘an african perspective on peace education: ubuntu lessons in reconciliation’, international review of education 55, 221–233. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11159-009-9129-0 kalunta-crumpton, a., 2004, ‘criminology and orientalism’, in a. kalunta-crumpton & b. agozino (eds.), pan-african issues in crime and justice. interdisciplinary research series in ethnic, gender and class relations, pp 5–22, ashgate publishing limited, aldershot. ndlovu-gatsheni, s.j. & zondi, s., 2016, decolonizing the university, knowledge systems and disciplines in africa, carolina academic press, durham. neuman, w.l., 2014, social research methods: qualitative and quantitative approaches, pearson education limited, london. ngugi, w.t.f., 1986, decolonising the mind: the politics of language in african literature, east african educational publishers ltd., nairobi. nkrumah k., 1965, neo-colonialism, the last stage of imperialism, thomas nelson & sons, london. qualtrics, 2020, qualtrics: experience management company, seattle, washington. sadiki, l., 2020, ‘towards an african criminology’, in c. bezuidenhout (ed.), a southern african perspective on fundamental criminology, pp. 640–668, pearson, cape town. schucan bird, k. & pitman, l., 2020, ‘how diverse is your reading list? exploring issues of representation and decolonisation in the uk’, higher education 79(5), 903–920. shay, s., 2016, ‘urgent strategy needed to decolonise university curricula’, mail & guardian, viewed 29 july 2021, from https://mg.co.za/article/2016-06-20-00-urgentstrategy-needed-to-decolonise-university-curricula-no-longer-a-luxury-but-a-necessity/. steyn, f. & sadiki, l., 2018, ‘diversion’, in c. bezuidenhout (ed.), child and youth misbehaviour in south africa: a holistic approach, 4th edn., van schaik, pretoria. thabede, d., 2008, ‘the african worldview as the basis of praxis in the helping professions’, social work/maatskaplike werk 44(3), 233–245. https://doi.org/10.15270/44-3-237 thiong’o, n., 1986, decolonising the mind: the politics of language in african literature, east african educational publishers ltd., nairobi. udefi, a., 2014, ‘the rationale for an african epistemology: a critical examination of the igbo views on knowledge, belief, and justification’, canadian social science 10(3), 108–117. van de westhuizen, m., greuel, t. & beaukes, j.w., 2017, ‘are we hearing the voices? africanisation as part of community development’, theological studies 73(3), 1–9. https://doi.org/10.4102/hts.v73i3.4512 wasonga, j., 2009, ‘rediscovering mato oput: the acholi justice system and the conflict in northern uganda’, africa peace and conflict journal 2(1), 27–38. williams, p. & chrisman, l., 1995, colonial discourse and post-colonial theory, columbia university press, new york, ny. zembylas, m., 2018, ‘the entanglement of decolonial and posthuman perspectives: tensions and implications for curriculum and pedagogy in higher education’, parallax 24(3), 254–267. footnotes 1. an inclusive curriculum is one that is representative of the diverse student body, their thoughts and lived experiences (heleta 2016:3; schucan bird & pitman 2020:904). 2. rooting educational paradigms in indigenous african epistemological frameworks entails that ‘all educational curricula in africa should have africa as their focus and as a result be indigenous-grounded and orientated’ (higgs 2012:39). abstract introduction methods and setting of the project an overview of internationalisation, transdisciplinarity and community service-learning a synthesis of st. mark’s church project towards a framework for the internationalisation of critical transdisciplinary community service-learning conclusion acknowledgements references about the author(s) masilonyane mokhele department of urban and regional planning, faculty of informatics and design, cape peninsula university of technology, cape town, south africa nicholas pinfold department of urban and regional planning, faculty of informatics and design, cape peninsula university of technology, cape town, south africa citation mokhele, m. & pinfold, n., 2021, ‘exploring the nexus between transdisciplinarity, internationalisation and community service-learning at a university of technology in cape town’, transformation in higher education 6(0), a121. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v6i0.121 original research exploring the nexus between transdisciplinarity, internationalisation and community service-learning at a university of technology in cape town masilonyane mokhele, nicholas pinfold received: 29 mar. 2021; accepted: 04 june 2021; published: 18 aug. 2021 copyright: © 2021. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract background: the ability of the south african citizenry to overcome a myriad of challenges (which include the triple challenges of inequality, poverty and unemployment) can be called into question. this alleged inability could, in part at least, be linked to the role of higher education, which is at a vantage point of equipping the citizenry with the requisite values, skills and knowledge. aim: the aim of the article is to discuss attempts that were employed towards imparting transdisciplinary and collaborative skills to students at cape peninsula university of technology (cput). setting: the article reports on the collaboration between a number of stakeholders, viz. cput, university of michigan, st. mark’s church and district six museum. the aim of the collaboration was to develop an interactive web map, which would display the socio-spatial information based on the baptismal records of the former residents of district six. methods: the article explores interconnections between transdisciplinary education, internationalisation of higher education and community service-learning. the discussion is based on the authors’ reflective analysis of the deployment of the triad of concepts in the initiative reported on. results: intricate interdependencies were discovered between transdisciplinarity, internationalisation of higher education and community service-learning. conclusion: it is proposed that future teaching and learning initiatives employ a critical lens and the notion of complexity to meticulously explore the aforesaid concepts towards extending the frameworks for higher education. keywords: higher education; internationalisation of higher education; transdisciplinary education; community service-learning; south africa; cape peninsula university of technology; university of michigan. introduction a multitude of countries across the globe, particularly those in the global south, experience a myriad of challenges, stresses and shocks, which include the ramifications of climate change, high levels of unemployment, poverty, inequality and pandemics that ravage the world at different times in history. characterised by the so-called triple challenges of inequality, poverty and unemployment (akanbi 2016a, 2016b; mzangwa 2016; statistics south africa 2013; van der westhuizen & swart 2015), south africa is definitely no exception. given that the triple challenges are on the perpetual rise in the country (statistics south africa 2013), the ability and efficacy of the south african citizenry to overcome the multifaceted challenges can be put into question. interrelated factors that could be responsible for this state of affairs include the following: (1) corruption and/or misuse of public funds (world bank 2018), (2) ineffective governance and leadership (mzangwa 2016) and (3) inappropriate physical and institutional infrastructures (akanbi 2016b). another related factor that could in part be responsible for this situation (and arguably embedded in some of the considerations here) is that whilst stakeholders may work together in addressing particular problems, they struggle to look beyond their disciplines and inadvertently work in silos. this rigidity could be related to the role of higher education. in the age where higher education is expected to continually evolve in response to complex problems that the changing world encounters (kromydas 2017:2; ramaley 2014:7), it can be argued that higher education institutions are at a vantage point of equipping the citizenry with the requisite knowledge and skills for collaboratively analysing societal issues and accordingly contributing towards their resolution. increased public attention is specifically drawn to the higher education fraternity in the light of its pivotal role in knowledge generation, augmentation, conservation and dissemination (kehm & teichler 2007). notwithstanding the aforementioned significance of education and training in equipping the citizenry with the essential knowledge and skills, there is lack of literature regarding ways the south africa’s higher education sector collaborates with communities and allied stakeholders towards implanting the culture of collaboration in students and in the process reconsider what it means to be educated in the ever-changing world (ramaley 2014:8). revolving around cape peninsula university of technology (cput) in cape town, south africa, the aim of this article is to present efforts that were undertaken by higher education institutions and allied stakeholders to lay the building block for collaboration and social consciousness in university students. the initiative that the article is based upon inadvertently explored interconnections between a triad of concepts, namely transdisciplinary education, internationalisation of higher education and community service-learning as defined herein. to the best of our knowledge, interconnections between these concepts have not been explicitly acknowledged and systematically unpacked in the existing literature on higher education in south africa. as evidenced by the literature cited herein, the existing studies tend to analyse the said concepts independently of one another. although each concept is useful in its own right, the nexus between them is the realm of knowledge that the article intends to contribute towards. subsequent to this introduction, the rest of the article is organised in five sections as follows: the second section provides an overview of the methods used in compiling the article, including a snapshot of the setting of the initiative that is reported on. the third section defines the underlying concepts of transdisciplinary education, internationalisation of higher education and community service-learning; whilst simultaneously indicating how these concepts were employed in the initiative reported on. the fourth section synthesises the project reported on against the interconnections between the three concepts. the penultimate part (section five) builds upon the synthesis to advance recommendations on the foundations for a framework that could be used to guide future service-learning initiatives. the sixth section concludes the article and suggests areas for future research. methods and setting of the project the article reports on a teaching and learning initiative that focussed on the topical neighbourhood of district six in cape town, south africa. as further discussed hereunder, the area is one of the quintessential examples of the aftermath of apartheid. it is important to emphasise at the outset that the initiative was not designed and implemented for research purposes or meant to be reported on and shared in the manner of this article. given that the idea of drafting this article was essentially an afterthought, cput team had not applied for ethics clearance from relevant committees of the university. as such, besides naming the institutions involved in the initiative, sensitive information (such as the names of students, church leaders and community members) is not disclosed in the article. the account herein provides a retrospective reflection of the processes and activities that were undertaken in the initiative that emerged and evolved organically in 2018 and 2019. the writing mode employed in the article has resemblance to the so-called ‘storytelling’ (maynes, pierce & laslett 2008; van hulst 2012; watson 2002), which relays the narrative of how the nexus between the concepts of transdisciplinarity, internationalisation of higher education and community service-learning was inadvertently teased out in the initiative reported on. the article refers to the initiative as either st. mark’s church project or district six project. as other aspects of the initiative are discussed elsewhere (refer to pinfold & mokhele 2019), the article overviews the origins, aim, evolution and other aspects of the project so far as they pertain to interconnections between the underlying triad of concepts. the discussion culminates in the exploration of how the fortuitous experience could be improved upon and be used as foundation for future higher education teaching and learning endeavours. resulting from intricate academic and social networks, the initiative included higher education institutions in south africa and the united states of america (i.e. different faculties and departments of cput in south africa and university of michigan in the united states of america), st. mark’s church and district six museum. the aim of the collaboration was to sensitise the students to the history of district six and ultimately develop an interactive web map, which would display (on the district six museum’s website) socio-spatial information based on the baptismal records of the former residents of district six. anticipated to be openly accessible in the public domain, it was intended that the web map would, amongst others, be used to enlighten local and international communities on the socio-cultural history of district six and accordingly provide the former residents a platform to take a trip down memory lane (cox et al. 2019). typifying the footprint of the apartheid regime, the original district six neighbourhood was demolished by the then government, the community was dismantled and a multitude of households were displaced to various locations in the cape metropolitan area. st. mark’s church was one of a few structures (mainly religious institutions), which were spared. following the dawn of democracy in 1994, efforts by the government to return the former residents to their beloved district six have however been extremely slow wherein only a few families have thus far returned to the area. the memories and stories of some of the last generation of people who were displaced at the height of apartheid would indeed go a long way in documenting, preserving, memorialising and sharing the rich history of district six. against this backdrop, after much deliberation, the aforementioned stakeholders agreed that the scope of the initiative would entail three main elements: (1) collection and analysis of social and geospatial information from the baptismal records kept by st. mark’s church, (2) deployment of geographic information system (gis) and associated technological tools and techniques to capture, process and display the said data as a web map and (3) collection of the stories of the former residents of district six so far as they related to the selected community members on the baptismal records analysed and ultimately integrating those personal tales into the web map (pinfold & mokhele 2019). an overview of internationalisation, transdisciplinarity and community service-learning as observed in the methods and setting of the project above, the educational initiative that the article reports on was inadvertently based on interconnections between the concepts of transdisciplinary education, internationalisation of higher education and community service-learning. in this regard, the outline presents a synopsis of the three concepts, portrays their relevancy in higher education, highlights cput’s general position as a point of reference and shows how each concept was applied in the initiative that the article revolves around. community service-learning although the origins of community service-learning cannot be identified with accuracy, some scholars posit that the term service-learning was coined in the 1960s (giles & eyler 1994:78) to denote a particular form of partnership between communities and universities. community service-learning affords students an opportunity to collaboratively work with community members on projects that would in one way or another be of benefit to a given community. this type of learning intends to develop the analytical and problem-solving skills of students, trains them to adjust and function in challenging, unpredictable environments (sletto 2010) and accordingly provides students with social aspects of knowledge generation (elwood 2004). it is believed that community service-learning contextualises the production of knowledge through educating students in society’s problems (conner & erikson 2017; hall 2010; petersen & osman 2017; thomson et al. 2011). in this way, the meaning of being educated shifts as it relates in the main to the ability of students to engage and work with communities towards analysing and in part resolving particular challenges. in this teaching and learning pedagogy, the students move from the comfort zone of a classroom or university campus to learn directly from communities. as a point of reference to the initiative that the article reports on, it should be observed that cput regards community engagement as programmes provided by the university that involves collaboration with external organisations, groups and individuals towards realising social and economic objectives. this collaboration is fulfilled through teaching and learning, research, community service-learning and cooperative education (cput n.d.). against this backdrop of a broad understanding of community engagement, community service-learning at cput is a credit-bearing educational endeavour in which students participate in organised activities that respond to identified community needs. the credit-bearing aspect of the pedagogy means that community service-learning has to be embedded in the curriculum and the assessment strategies of the relevant subjects. given the complicated and time-consuming nature of community service-learning projects, cput has a dedicated unit, which acts as a primary liaison in partnerships between university staff and communities and accordingly supports academic departments at the university with the logistics pertaining to service-learning projects (scheepers 2014). as part of a community service-learning process, students from cput and michigan university provided their respective disciplinary input towards the collection, analysis and visualisation of baptismal data at different stages of st. mark’s church initiative. in the spirit of service-learning, the project was meant to practically educate the students on the nuances of collaborating with community partners; whilst the students also assisted the community towards achieving their aspiration of creating a web map and capturing personal stories. the initiative was registered as a service-learning project as required by the university. the collaboration between the students from cput, university of michigan and the former residents of district six was mainly through st. mark’s church and district six museum where discussions and related activities were facilitated and held. as elaborated further in the subsequent sections, collaboration involving academic staff and students with diverse disciplinary backgrounds (at different levels of study) provided a unique, rich learning experience, as well as fertile foundation for revisiting the notion of being educated in the contemporary world. internationalisation of higher education institutions of higher learning establish international linkages with each other for several reasons, but more often than not they create alliances to be able to survive, adapt, remain relevant and compete in the ever-evolving higher education realm (chan 2004:32). internationalisation of higher education is however a highly ambiguous concept, which can be construed differently depending on context and time (knight 2004:5; meda & monnapula-mapesela 2016:283). nonetheless, contemporary definitions of internationalisation largely draw on the seminal work of knight (2004). for instance, building on knight’s foundation, de wit and hunter (2015:3) defined internationalisation as a process of mixing an intercultural and international aspects into the purpose and supply of post-secondary education to improve the value of education and research for students and staff, with the ultimate aim of contributing meaningfully to society’s welfare. this definition accentuates that internationalisation is a medium for enhancing the quality and relevance of higher education rather than a goal in itself (de wit & hunter 2015:3). as alluded to here, internationalisation of higher education is diverse and multidimensional (wu & zha 2018:273), resulting in non-mutually exclusive standpoints to internationalisation. firstly, in some circles, internationalisation means a range of international activities, for example, joint projects, partnerships, international linkages, mobility for students and/or academic staff and research initiatives. secondly, internationalisation could imply the provision of higher education internationally through arrangements such as distance learning or campus face-to-face learning methods. thirdly, in some instances, internationalisation could mean the incorporation of intercultural, international or global aspect into the curriculum and subsequent teaching processes and activities (knight 2004). this diversity and multidimensionality accordingly bring to the fore a number of related typologies of internationalisation of higher education, including the following: (1) internationalisation at home, wherein the approaches include relationships with local community groups, international and intercultural aspects in teaching and learning, extracurricular activities, research and integrating academic staff and students from other universities, (2) cross-border education signifying the movement of programmes, policies, education providers, knowledge, projects and services and ideas across national borders (knight 2012 as cited in wu & zha 2018:261). cape peninsula university of technology embraces the concept of internationalisation of higher education, which is typified by the slogan ‘smart internationalisation’. as part of a strategic plan for internationalisation of higher education, the so-called smart internationalisation is a manifestation of cput’s commitment to the strategic value of the university’s internationalisation efforts in achieving and sharing the advancements in technology and innovation and collaboratively blurring the lines between the university and its partners towards the achievement of multicultural and intra-national communities of practice for the mutual benefit and sustainability of the global environment (cput 2019). as a common practice across universities, cput has a dedicated ‘strategic initiatives and partnerships’ office, whose objectives include the identification, development and management of national and international partnerships, which enhance the attainment of the university’s research, technology and innovation strategy. against this backdrop, students from university of michigan sojourned in cape town (in two groups in 2018 and 2019, respectively) to jointly work with cput students and other stakeholders in the project. students from the university of michigan were part of the 2018 and 2019 global information engagement program (giep) facilitated by their university. global information engagement programme aimed to explore the intricate relationships amongst people, information and various forms of technology. upon their arrival in cape town, university of michigan students learnt about the diverse cultures and history of south africa particularly in so far as district six was concerned. in a true spirit of collaboration, the students did not bring preconceived ideas to the project and were accordingly willing to learn from other stakeholders. different skills were subsequently transferred (formally and informally) between the south african and american students and academic staff at different stages of the project. transdisciplinary education as is the case with internationalisation of higher education, transdisciplinarity is difficult to define with precision (nicolescu 2010). definitions of the various concepts of disciplinary collaboration tend to be confused with each other, hence the definition of transdisciplinarity needs to be considered relative to the associated concepts, (gehlert et al. 2010) that is, interdisciplinarity and multidisciplinarity. according to nicolescu (2014:187), the concepts are complementary and not in opposition to each other. interdisciplinarity is dependent on individual discipline’s concepts, methods, theories and techniques in understanding and addressing a particular problem. although the underlying process is largely informed by the frameworks and methods of one discipline, methods from other disciplines are acknowledged (leavy 2011; repko 2008). multidisciplinarity is the combination of a variety of disciplines in answering a given question or resolving a particular problem. insights from various disciplines are brought together without trying to fundamentally fuse them (leavy 2011; repko 2008; wall & shankar 2008). in transdisciplinarity, members with diverse disciplinary backgrounds (students and stakeholders in the context of the article) collaborate, providing methods that go beyond the views of individual disciplines (stokols et al. 2010; wall & shankar 2008). in doing so, experiences, knowledge, ideas, values and expectations are exchanged (du plessis, sehume & martin 2014). shared frameworks are developed by academics, professionals and/or researchers in a transdisciplinary approach when addressing a particular problem (stokols et al. 2010). transdisciplinarity is based on the principle that reality is too complex, intricately connected and multidimensional. this supports the proposition of using multiple disciplines in analysing reality (du plessis et al. 2014; martin 2017) and finding solutions to a specific problem (hoffman-riem et al. 2008) in collaboration with non-academic interested and affected parties (palmer, owens & sparks 2006). contrary to community service-learning and internationalisation of higher education, cput does not yet have a policy, framework or at least a publicised position on transdisciplinary education. however, typical of catchwords, the word ‘transdisciplinarity’ tends to be mentioned here and there at cput. notwithstanding the lack of overarching university guidance, the department of urban and regional planning had conducted some exploratory work on transdisciplinary education prior to the district six initiative (see mokhele & pinfold 2020). it should further be observed that regardless of the lack of clear position on transdisciplinary education, the academic structure of cput makes provision for students to enrol in subjects across departments and faculties. however, the crossover (which is arguably a crucial part of transdisciplinarity) is not practised in earnest at the university (mokhele & pinfold 2020:4). as regards the initiative that the article reports on, approximately 117 students from 2 faculties (faculty of informatics and design and faculty of engineering and built environment) and 2 departments (urban and regional planning and geomatics, respectively) of cput and 7 students from various departments of university of michigan participated in st. mark’s church project in 2018 and 2019. the activities of the project were linked to the respective disciplinary subject requirements of the departments and universities. as alluded to here, the students did not enrol in subjects across departments, faculties and universities. university of michigan students were from diverse disciplines, including information science, social work, public policy and urban planning. they were also studying at different levels ranging from undergraduate degrees to doctoral programmes. as noticed in the preceding section, students from university of michigan were part of the 2018 and 2019 giep programme, whose aim was to explore the relationships and interconnections between people, information and technology; hence it was anticipated that the students would learn from the project whilst also providing valuable input and sharing their knowledge for the realisation of the aim of the project. during their stint in cape town, university of michigan students worked closely with the department of urban and regional planning where they were offered a dedicated working space with the necessary computer infrastructure. the students also had a working space at the district six museum (pinfold & mokhele 2019). the participants from cput included academic staff and first-year and third-year students completing the diploma-level qualifications in urban or town and regional planning and third-year students enrolled in the national diploma in geomatics. with the project largely related to mapping the socio-spatial history, the project activities were associated with the so-called ‘technology-related’ subjects at cput. to reflect this state of affairs, urban and regional planning first-year students were enrolled in the subject named ‘information systems’ whilst third-year students were completing the subject ‘geographic information systems’. in that specific subject, students learn ways to analyse numerical information in a spreadsheet and relate tables using database management systems. students are particularly taught to ascertain what data are needed for particular problems and how the data could be collected, organised and disseminated. the practical part of the subject teaches students the rationale and processes of applying computer-aided design (cad) in urban planning. geographic information systems deal with spatial concepts, spatial analysis and geospatial information. the subject consists of practical lessons where students use both commercial and open-source gis software. the practical assignments require a significant commitment that takes time. group work is required to encourage peer learning and to introduce the spirit of collaboration. the subject prepares students as planning technicians who work in private sector, non-governmental sector and government (pinfold & mokhele 2019). although not wittingly and meticulously designed and set-up as such, a transdisciplinary space emerged in the attempts towards integrating the various disciplines and providing shared meaning and connection to the socio-spatial history of district six. this integration was meant to provide an opportunity for groups with diverse disciplinary perspectives to contribute to the process whilst willing to learn from the standpoint of fellow project members. a synthesis of st. mark’s church project intricate overlaps that exist between the concepts of internationalisation of higher education, transdisciplinary education and community service-learning are apparent in the overview and application of the concepts in the preceding section. this is the space that the article attempted to explore relative to st. mark’s church initiative in district six (figure 1). figure 1: nexus between service-learning, transdisciplinary education and internationalisation. st. mark’s church initiative incorporated both horizontal and vertical dimensions of collaboration in the learning and sharing of diverse disciplinary knowledge and the inherent codified and tacit knowledge. on the one hand, the students who participated in the project were enrolled at different levels of study at the respective universities: from the first year and third year of diploma qualifications to the apex of doctoral level. this embodied vertical integration. in the resultant teaching and learning milieu, no particular students or groups of students were considered superior notwithstanding their level of study, programme of study or country of their institutions. on the other hand, and relatedly, horizontal integration was realised in that the students came from various programmes of study, and got acquainted with different disciplinary knowledge, methods, techniques and processes. horizontal integration also blurred international borders and socio-cultural disparities as the initiative included students from two countries on different continents. at the heart of the initiative was the strive to assist the community (represented by the former residents, st. mark’s church and district six museum) wherein the students explicitly and tacitly learned about academic disciplines other than theirs. the two groups of students also got acquainted with the history and cultures of south africa, and particularly the socio-spatial realities of the community of district six, which was destroyed by the apartheid government. significantly, the students had a rare opportunity to learn about the community needs directly from the horse’s mouth instead of participating in the project with preconceived ideas on what the needs and expectations of the community were. the students in the process learnt to interrogate, navigate and respond to the requirements and expectations of community members and/or their representatives. st. mark’s church project had elements of engagement, knowledge-building and involvement in community activism. stakeholders of different ages and backgrounds participated in discovering historical and contemporary issues of identity and intersectionality pertaining to district six. through dialogue and collaborative partnering, the students were able to apply theoretical knowledge in a real community setting. the collaborative partnering resulted in knowledge co-creation, citizen empowerment, engagement and the promotion of social justice and resilience. the action-oriented experiential nature of the project allowed students with different academic backgrounds to gain common skills in community engagement. it prompted critical thinking about facts (and fiction), the stories people tell and the reasons such stories are important. the process taught students flexibility and creativity towards capturing and analysing knowledge as it arose. internationalisation encouraged the students to articulate the opportunities and navigate barriers to collaboration. students from the united states of america were confronted with the challenge of visualising community facts, values, visions, stories and geographic information in an unfamiliar context. in these circumstances, the students needed to be comfortable, adjust and deliver a co-constructed representational outcome that had a direct bearing on the community of district six. this required collective thinking, open-mindedness and willingness to engage thoughtfully, creatively and flexibly within their group and with the community members. each student brought their unique passion, experience, consciousness and social justice considerations. kindness, patience and the ability to listen were therefore some of the skills that the students developed and/or imparted. the students’ diversity in terms of identity, background and perceptions about community places provided enhanced learning for all the students. teaching and learning activities in the initiative included lectures, addresses by guest speakers, discussions, brainstorming and problem-solving sessions, field trips, community-engaged exercises and teamwork on community-based mapping. in general, 1 day a week was spent in class learning about community mapping methods and matters pertaining to ethics, particularly when engaging with community members. the rest of the week involved collaborative work with the community and/or its representatives. students were also assessed on their willingness to engage and reflect in class and their active contribution to the team’s work. each team member was expected to contribute in their own way towards the achievement of the project aim and expected to share the information and communicate effectively at all times with fellow team members. together, the students focussed on a mosaic of self-contained mapping exercises that directly contributed to a greater picture and a more collaboratively developed outcome. teams of students were responsible for developing and nurturing community relationships, listening and facilitating knowledge gathering, co-creation and appropriate presentation of findings. towards a framework for the internationalisation of critical transdisciplinary community service-learning a number of scholars (e.g. battistoni 2000; gardinier 2017a) argue that the pedagogy of community service-learning is not apolitical. against this backdrop, instead of continuing on the trajectory of traditional approaches, mitchell (2008) advocated for a critical stance to service-learning. the literature therefore unpacks critical service-learning in contradistinction to charity-oriented approaches that do not necessarily work towards fundamental changes in society (kinefuchu 2010:78). acknowledging the importance of structural analysis of society (gardinier 2017a), critical service-learning cultivates a culture of consciousness in students by giving them a platform to examine significant historical occurrences in the communities that universities collaborate with. all in all, the critical approach allows students to become aware of the various forms of oppression and inequalities that exist in society. the overarching aim of university-community collaborations should therefore be to bring to the fore the political nature of a pedagogy that sensitises students towards the dismantling of inequality and oppression in the long term (mitchell 2008:54). marullo (1999) as cited in mitchell (2008:62) argued that critical service-learning has potential to develop the citizenry, activists and leaders who are committed to the promotion of a socially just world. in this regard, the proponents of critical service-learning advocate for the transformation of students and society through carefully identified, well planned and systematically implemented service-learning initiatives. whilst it is acknowledged that critical service-learning approach may be difficult to implement within the confines of society and higher education institutions that may not be amenable to fundamental social change, the relevancy and potential of this pedagogy call for it to be the future direction of service-learning initiatives (mitchell 2008). having resemblance to critical service-learning, the aim of district six project was not only to develop a web map but also to sensitise the south african and american students on the socio-spatial history of south africa and district six. as discussed throughout the article, this history is intertwined with the ramifications of the unjust political system of apartheid; hence it is argued that the project brought the apolitical nature of service-learning to the fore. in the process, the former residents of district six (who were oppressed during apartheid) were given a platform to tell their stories. learning from the district six project, it is recommended that future service-learning initiatives in south africa and beyond focus on areas that have particular political and social significance. this would sensitise students and the citizenry to the long-lasting ramifications of political systems and how the problems can be circumvented or resolved. the article argues that the approach of critical service-learning should be framed against the notion of complexity, which can be viewed in two ways, viz. complex problems that higher education tries to unravel and challenges or complexities encountered in the delivery of critical service-learning initiatives. as noticed earlier in the section on the overview of concepts, tackling complex social issues using a single-discipline approach tends to downplay or misconceive complexity. a complexity-based approach is thus needed to avoid a mistake of isolating a single variable in favour of a network of interconnecting events, individuals and the underlying relationships. this approach brings to the fore the notion of transdisciplinarity, which the article argues is useful for unpacking complexity because it transcends individual disciplinary boundaries (montuori 2013:47). in this regard, arguably the most effective way of analysing complexity is through collaborating with partners who have similar interests and objectives within the ambit of critical service-learning. with relevance to service-learning and transdisciplinary education, martin and pirbhai-illich (2015) as cited in gardinier (2017b:66) advance a framework for classifying ideologies and associated educational aims for global service-learning (gsl), which has resemblance to our notion of the internationalisation of service-learning. the argument raised in the article is aligned with martin and pirbhai-illich’s (2015) critical ideology of gsl, whose educational aim is to develop the citizenry that are critical of systems and processes that perpetuate injustice and inequalities in society. it is hoped that with such consciousness, the citizenry would strive in the long run to unsettle the unjust systems (martin & pirbhai-illich 2015 as cited in gardinier 2017b:66). drawing lessons from the district six project, it is recommended that future initiatives adopt a critical orientation to underpin and bind community service-learning, transdisciplinary education and internationalisation of higher education. although it is not ideal to make normative assertions on the basis of one case study, the district six project showed that the pedagogy of internationalised critical transdisciplinary community service-learning is feasible. future initiatives can therefore build upon this experience through identifying projects that have potential to make meaningful contribution and in the long term bring social change in society. conclusion a number of scholars maintain that there is a need to rethink the meaning of education in the world that faces a number of challenges (e.g. ramaley 2014). in this regard, collaborative efforts are required between stakeholders with different disciplinary backgrounds and with community members. tackling complex social issues using a single-discipline approach tends to ignore or misconceive complexity. a complexity-based approach is thus needed to avoid isolating a single factor at the expense of a network of interconnecting events, individuals and fundamental relations (montuori 2013:47). against this backdrop, the article presented an organic way in which cput and university of michigan collaborated with st. mark’s church, district six museum and selected former residents of district six to at least in part lay a foundation for transdisciplinarity and community service-learning. this collaboration sensitised the students to the ramifications of apartheid and culminated in the successful implementation of a preliminary web map on the district six museum’s website. although the actual activities of the initiative reported on are not novel per se, as a contribution to the extension of existing literature on higher education, the article explored the nuanced interconnections between the concepts of transdisciplinary education, internationalisation of higher education and community service-learning through the use of a critical lens. the teasing out of this nexus could contribute towards inculcating the skills, consciousness and values required for analysing and resolving some of the socio-economic challenges (epitomised by the so-called triple challenges) in south africa and beyond. it is hoped that future efforts would further explore the interconnections and systematically integrate them into the curricula, policy and frameworks of the institutions involved. this critical nexus can ultimately be of importance towards extending the theoretical and practical aspects of what we refer to as ‘internationalisation of critical transdisciplinary community service-learning’. it should however be declared that one of the limitations of the article is that it does not incorporate the voice and views of the students and/or community members on the efficacy of the educational approach employed. to solidify the argument presented in the article, it is suggested that future research integrates ex post engagement with the stakeholders (community, students and university staff) to critically decipher the nature and level of the benefits derived from the internationalised critical community service-learning pedagogy and the complexities and challenges encountered. with such comprehensive assessment, the approach proposed in the article could be systematically tested in different contexts and potentially be developed into one of the quintessential frameworks or dimensions of internationalisation of higher education. this would indeed contribute towards rethinking, reimagining and redesigning the notion of what it means for the citizenry to be educated in the realm of contemporary higher education. acknowledgements competing interests the authors declare that they have no financial or personal relationships that may have inappropriately influenced them in writing this article. authors’ contributions all authors contributed equally to this work. ethical considerations this article followed all ethical standards for research without direct contact with human or animal subjects. funding information this research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors. data availability data sharing is not applicable to this article as no new data were created or analysed in this study. disclaimer the views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any affiliated agency of the authors. references akanbi, o.a., 2016a, ‘the growth, poverty and inequality nexus in south africa: cointegration and causality analysis’, development southern africa 33(2), 166–185. https://doi.org/10.1080/0376835x.2015.1120654 akanbi, o.a., 2016b, ‘addressing africa’s triple challenges: to what extent do physical and institutional infrastructures matter’, inaugural lecture, department of economics, university of south africa, viewed from http://uir.unisa.ac.za/bitstream/handle/10500/21896/inaugural%20lecture_akanbi…pdf?sequence=1&isallowed=y. battistoni, r.m., 2000, ‘service learning in political science: an introduction’, ps: political science and politics 33(3), 614–616. https://doi.org/10.2307/420866 chan, w.w.y., 2004, ‘international cooperation in higher education: theory and practice’, journal of studies in international education 8(1), 32–55. https://doi.org/10.1177/1028315303254429 conner, j. & erickson, j., 2017, ‘when does service-learning work? contact theory and service-learning courses in higher education’, michigan journal of community service learning 23(2), 53–65. https://doi.org/10.3998/mjcsloa.3239521.0023.204 cox, v., dall, v., qiu, v. & yelk, j., 2019, district six museum st. mark’s memory capture and interactive mapping, project report. cput (cape peninsula university of technology), 2019, smart internationalisation: strategic plan, 2020–2025, cput, cape town, viewed 5 july 2019, from https://www.cput.ac.za/research-technology-and-innovation/internationalisation-2020. cput (cape peninsula university of technology), centre for community engagement and work integrated learning (ccewil), viewed 04 may 2021, from https://www.cput.ac.za/services/ccewil. de wit, h. & hunter, f., 2015, ‘the future of internationalization of higher education in europe’, international higher education 83(special edition), 2–3. https://doi.org/10.6017/ihe.2015.83.9073 du plessis, h., sehume, j. & martin, l., 2014, the concept and application of transdisciplinarity in intellectual discourse and research, real african publishers, woodmead. elwood, s.a., 2004, ‘experiential learning, spatial practice, and critical urban geographies’, the journal of geography 103(2), 55–63. https://doi.org/10.1080/00221340408978576 gardinier, l., 2017a, ‘mind-set, critical theory, and the ethics of engagement’, in l. gardinier (ed.), service-learning through community engagement, pp. 151–164, springer, new york, ny. gardinier, l., 2017b, ‘global community engagement: transformation, paradoxes and fumbling forward’, in l. gardinier (ed.), service-learning through community engagement, pp. 57–69, springer, new york, ny. gehlert, s., murray, a., sohmer, d., mcclintock, m., conzen, s. & olopade, o., 2010, ‘the importance of transdisciplinary collaborations for understanding and resolving health disparities’, social work in public health 25(3–4), 408–422. https://doi.org/10.1080/19371910903241124 giles, d.e. jr. & eyler, j., 1994, ‘the theoretical roots of service-learning in john dewey: toward a theory of service-learning’, michigan journal of community service learning 1(1), 77–85. hall, m., 2010, ‘community engagement in south african higher education’, in the south african council on higher education (ed.), community engagement in south african higher education, pp. 1–52, jacana media, pretoria. hoffman-riem, h., biber-klemm, s., grossenbacher-mansuy, w., hardon, g.h., pohl, d.c., wiesmann, u. et al., 2008, ‘idea of the handbook’, in g.h. hardon, h. hoffman-riem, s. biber-klemm, w. grossenbacher-mansuy, d. joye, c. pohl, et al. (eds.), handbook of transdisciplinary research, pp. 3–17, springer, bern. kehm, b.m. & teichler, u., 2007, ‘research on internationalisation in higher education’, journal of studies in international education 11(3–4), 260–273. https://doi.org/10.1177/1028315307303534 kinefuchu, e., 2010, ‘critical consciousness and critical service-learning at the intersection of the personal and the structural’, journal of applied learning in higher education 77–93, viewed n.d., from https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ej1188509.pdf knight, j., 2004, ‘internationalization remodelled: definitions, approaches, and rationales’, journal of studies in international education 8(1), 5–31. https://doi.org/10.1177/1028315303260832 kromydas, t., 2017, ‘rethinking higher education and its relationship with social inequalities: past knowledge, present state and future potential’, palgrave communications 3, 1. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-017-0001-8 leavy, p., 2011, essentials of transdisciplinary research: using problem-centred methodologies, routledge, new york, ny. martin, v., 2017, transdisciplinarity revealed: what librarians need to know, libraries libraries unlimited, santa barbara, ca. maynes, m.j., pierce, j.l. & laslett, b., 2008, telling stories: the use of personal narratives in the social sciences and history, cornell university press, new york, ny. meda, l. & monnapula-mapesela, m., 2016, ‘going wide, not wild: varying conceptualizations of internationalization at a university of technology in south africa’, journal of studies in international education 20(3), 282–294. https://doi.org/10.1177/1028315316637340 mitchell, t.d., 2008, ‘traditional vs. critical service-learning: engaging the literature to differentiate two models’, michigan journal of community service learning 14(2), 50–65. mokhele, m. & pinfold, n., 2020, ‘foundation for transdisciplinary education at cape peninsula university of technology’, the journal for transdisciplinary research in southern africa 16(1), a749. https://doi.org/10.4102/td.v16i1.749 montuori, a., 2013, ‘the complexity of transdisciplinary literature reviews’, complicity: an international journal of complexity and education 10(1/2), 45–55. https://doi.org/10.29173/cmplct20399 mzangwa, s.t., 2016, ‘socio-economic inequalities, triple challenges and consequences of ineffective leadership in south africa’, journal of public administration and development alternatives (jpada) 1(1.1), 57–74. nicolescu, b., 2010, ‘methodology of transdisciplinarity – levels of reality, logic of the include middle and complexity’, transdisciplinary journal of engineering and science 1(1), 19–38. https://doi.org/10.22545/2010/0009 nicolescu, b., 2014, ‘methodology of transdisciplinarity’, world futures 70(3–4), 186–199. https://doi.org/10.1080/02604027.2014.934631 palmer, m., owens, m. & sparks, l., 2006, ‘interdisciplinary (retail) research: the business of geography and the geography of business’, environment and planning a: economy and space 38(10), 1775–1783. https://doi.org/10.1068/a3810com petersen, n. & osman, r., 2017, ‘an introduction to service learning in south africa’, in r. osman & n. petersen (eds.), service learning in south africa, pp. 2–32, oxford university press, cape town. pinfold, n. & mokhele, m., 2019, ‘mapping memories through geographic information system: the case of st mark’s transdisciplinary service-learning project in district six, cape town’, alternation 29, 223–244. https://doi.org/10.29086/2519-5476/2019/sp29a10 ramaley, j.a., 2014, ‘the changing role of higher education: learning to deal with wicked problems’, journal of higher education outreach and engagement 18(3), 7–22. repko, a.e., 2008, interdisciplinary research: process and theory, sage, los angeles, ca. scheepers, j., 2014, an integrated curriculum model for service-learning in faculties: design implementation and quality, presentation (on behalf of cput’s service-learning unit) to cput’s faculty of informatics and design, june 19. sletto, b., 2010, ‘educating reflective practitioners: learning to embrace the unexpected through service learning’, journal of planning education and research 29(4), 403–415. https://doi.org/10.1177/0739456x10362771 statistics south africa, 2013, millennium development goals: country report 2013, statistics south africa, pretoria, viewed 01 june 2021, from www.statssa.gov.za. stokols, d., hall, k.l., moser, r.p., feng, a., misra, s. & taylor, b.k., 2010, ‘cross-disciplinary team science initiatives: research, training, and translation’, in r. frodeman, j.t. klein, c. mitcham & j. b. holbrook (eds.), the oxford handbook of interdisciplinarity, pp. 471–493, oxford university press, new york, ny. thomson, a.m., smith-tolken, a.r., naidoo, a.v. & bringle, r.g., 2011, ‘service learning and community engagement: a comparison of three national contexts’, voluntas: international journal of voluntary and nonprofit organizations 22(2), 214–237. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11266-010-9133-9 van der westhuizen, m. & swart, i., 2015, ‘the struggle against poverty, unemployment and social injustice in present-day south africa: exploring the involvement of the dutch reformed church at congregational level’, stellenbosch theological journal 1(2), 731–759. https://doi.org/10.17570/stj.2015.v1n2.a35 van hulst, m., 2012, ‘storytelling, a model of and a model for planning’, planning theory 11(3), 299–318. https://doi.org/10.1177/1473095212440425 wall, s. & shankar, i., 2008, ‘adventures in transdisciplinary learning’, studies in higher education 33(5), 551–565. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075070802373008 watson, v., 2002, change and continuity in spatial planning: metropolitan planning in cape town under political transition, routledge, london. world bank, 2018, an incomplete transition: overcoming the legacy of exclusion in south africa, republic of south africa systematic country diagnostic, report no. 125838-za, viewed n.d., from https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/bitstream/handle/10986/29793/wbg-south-africa-systematic-country-diagnostic-final-for-board-secpo-edit-05032018.pdf?sequence=1&isallowed=y. wu, h. & zha, q., 2018, ‘a new typology for analysing the direction of movement in higher education internationalization’, journal of studies in international education 22(3), 259–277. https://doi.org/10.1177/1028315318762582 abstract introduction defining comprehensive universities in context social justice theory and south african higher education methodological note discussion concluding observations acknowledgements references footnotes about the author(s) kamvalethu kele department of sociology and anthropology, faculty of humanities, nelson mandela university, gqeberha, south africa pedro mzileni department of sociology and anthropology, faculty of humanities, nelson mandela university, gqeberha, south africa citation kele, k. & mzileni, p., 2021, ‘higher education leadership responses applied in two south african comprehensive universities during the covid-19 pandemic: a critical discourse analysis’, transformation in higher education 6(0), a114. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v6i0.114 note: special collection: covid-19. original research higher education leadership responses applied in two south african comprehensive universities during the covid-19 pandemic: a critical discourse analysis kamvalethu kele, pedro mzileni received: 16 feb. 2021; accepted: 03 may 2021; published: 19 july 2021 copyright: © 2021. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract background: this article explored the leadership responses that were used by two comprehensive universities in south africa (nelson mandela university and university of johannesburg) during the coronavirus disease 2019 (covid-19) pandemic in continuing with the rolling out of their teaching and learning programmes safely and digitally under disruptive conditions. aim: whilst universities in the developing world such as south africa were expected to face challenges during the pandemic, this article showed that the leadership executives and general staff in two of its large universities, instead, crafted equitable and flexible improvisations to overcome the social challenges that could have posed a threat to their academic project. setting: the selection of these two specific universities provided a unique opportunity to engage with comprehensive, massified and post-merger former technikon-university institutions that mainly cater for working-class students. methods: the social justice theory was utilised to frame the study, whilst critical narrative analysis was the methodology. results: this research reveals that south african comprehensive universities possess capacity to adapt and innovate in the middle of an institutional crisis using their flexible systems and agile personnel to drive the academy under such circumstances. the study also reveals that the process of social justice is full of contradictions. as the universities created equitable measures to assist underprivileged students, these measures also generated injustices for others. conclusion: this generated admirable and productive systematic traits to observe about some of our universities, as the south african higher education sector continued to engage with difficult conversations such as transformation. keywords: online learning; higher education transformation; leadership response; comprehensive universities; social justice; coronavirus disease 2019 (covid-19). introduction universities located in the developing countries were largely expected to fail in the running of their learning and teaching responsibilities under the social conditions imposed by the coronavirus disease 2019 (covid-19) pandemic (salmi, arnhold & basset 2020). in south africa specifically, the focus of the higher education response to this issue emphasised the material inequalities that exist between historically white urban universities and historically black rural universities (czerniewicz et al. 2020:961), with the former possessing the necessary technology and infrastructure to migrate its systems to the online space, whilst the latter was compelled to put its systems to a hold. in this article, we want to reveal the leadership improvisations implemented by the other type of a university that is ‘missing’ from the conversation: the comprehensive university. south africa has six comprehensive universities,1 but in this study, we will focus on two of them: nelson mandela university in port elizabeth and the university of johannesburg in gauteng. we make the case that these two universities are located in the developing country, south africa, and have a lowand middle-income student profile (nelson mandela university 2019:46; university of johannesburg 2019:210) with teaching and learning systems that were underprepared for the pandemic (foxcroft2 & bosire3 2020; marwala4 2020a). yet, their leadership structures in collaboration with student organisations and other stakeholders managed to frame equitable, socially just and innovative plans that largely accommodated their working-class students to overcome the challenges of the pandemic. to breakdown this argument, the article has been divided into eight parts. firstly, we define comprehensive universities in context. secondly, we outline the study’s theoretical concept. thirdly, we state the case for our methodological approach. fourthly, we critique how existing higher education literature frames equitable interventions in an environment of social deprivation and political crisis. the fifth part presents how nelson mandela university managed its teaching and learning affairs during the pandemic, whilst the sixth part looks at the university of johannesburg’s case. on the seventh part, we table a critical discussion of the findings and then conclude the article on the eighth part. defining comprehensive universities in context comprehensive universities can be generally defined as post-apartheid institutions of higher learning that are modelled around the following: diversifying their academic programmes into an astute combination of short and distance learning programmes, vocational and skills training courses, higher certificates, diplomas and undergraduate and postgraduate qualifications (department of education [doe] 2004:5) they are post-2004/2005 multi-campus mergers between traditional universities, colleges, and former technikons into being the contemporary comprehensive universities as we know them today (nel 2007:2). observing a public mandate to massify student enrolments for purposes of offering targeted skills training courses that are related to industry, particularly for students who come from working-class backgrounds (doe 2004:4) they are overwhelmed with major infrastructural shortfalls ranging from a lack of conducive student accommodation, lack of access to internet connectivity and updated library services amongst other basic services (department of higher education and training [dhet] 2014:6) embracing innovative and flexible practices of learning, teaching and systematic leadership (brink 2010:259) preparing to adapt to rapid technological changes and requirements to optimise the employability of their graduates (brink 2010:259) having closer relations with both urban and rural-township communities and other external stakeholders, which ‘localises’ them as universities that are in service to society (doe 2004:5). we have selected the university of johannesburg and nelson mandela university as case studies for this article because of their institutional similarities and for three other major reasons. firstly, their urban locations in the south african landscape and profile of their student bodies – this refers to their ‘middle-income’ status as city-based institutions that are made up of urban main campuses (auckland park kingways campus for university of johannesburg and summerstrand campuses for nelson mandela university) and township campuses (soweto campus in university of johannesburg and missionvale campus in nelson mandela university) and they have a growing enrollment of students from poor and working-class families (nelson mandela university 2019:46; university of johannesburg 2019:210) who needed equitable material support from these two universities to (1) travel back to their homes when the pandemic began (nelson mandela university 2020a) and (2) be provided with devices by their universities to begin studying online during the pandemic (foxcroft & bosire 2020; marwala 2020a). secondly, their productive and proactive public engagement with covid-19 – where they supported their local neighbouring communities and health institutions with protective equipment to fight the pandemic (nelson mandela university of johannesburg 2020) and, as mentioned earlier, also formulated alternative ways of delivering teaching and learning processes during the pandemic for their students despite the generally limited resources in the higher education sector (dhet 2014:8). thirdly, their general appetite to redefine themselves as ‘new-generation’ and ‘dynamic’ universities in africa – where they seek to spearhead the country’s social and innovative possibilities (brink 2010:259; fraser-moleketi 2019:4). we define ‘leadership response’ for this article’s context as the collective effort applied by the university executive, middle management, lecturers and heads of departments, financial and support service administrators, technical staff such as security guards, cleaners, electricians, medical practitioners, covid-19 screening and testing coordinators and volunteers, property maintenance officers, student leaders, trade union leaders, government officials and general students who all converged systematically and on an ad hoc basis, driven by a social justice ethos, to ensure that the 2020 academic year for these comprehensive universities was a ‘success’.5 social justice theory and south african higher education the leading higher education studies scholars and practitioners in south africa such as badat (2009:459), pityana (2010:39), jansen (2017:1), swartz (2015a:2) and habib (2019:x) contextualise the concept of social justice as being the key instrument in the utilisation of the post-apartheid university for purposes of addressing poverty, underdevelopment and inequality. in this framework, south africa is understood as a society with deep-seated patterns of socioeconomic inequality mainly categorised according to race, gender, class and geographic origin (black, spreen & vally 2020:41). to systematically and comprehensively address these challenges, equitable access to higher education and training for the poor is one of the progressive options advanced by the country’s national consciousness (national development plan 2012:296). it is on this basis that south african vice chancellors interviewed by jansen (2017:xiii) have broadly supported the #feesmustfall movement’s campaign for free education in principle (2017:222–228) despite their numerous disagreements with its tactics, which they deemed to be violently inhumane (habib 2019:26) and infringing on other people’s rights (swartz 2015b). keet, sattarzadeh and munene (2017:2) harmonised these differences by emphasising that ‘violence is not a prerequisite for radicalism and militancy in the current south african context’. in other words, the social justice struggle can be advanced under contradictory conditions of a radical approach and/or sometimes in a peaceful, systematic, negotiated and consensus-generated method. when south african comprehensive universities were faced with the covid-19 pandemic that mainly posed a threat to the learning experiences of poorer students, they overwhelmingly made public commitments to do what was feasible at their disposal to equitably make their systems accessible to these students (foxcroft & bosire 2020; marwala 2020a; university of south africa 2020; walter sisulu university 2020; university of venda 2020; university of zululand 2020). this mainly entailed providing technological gadgets (computers/laptops, data and study material) to poorer students for free, the flexible application of assessment deadlines to cater for those who might have connectivity breakdowns in their underdeveloped communities and applied socio-political pressure by student political organisations to secure the learning rights of disadvantaged students. it is on these grounds that we argue that universities applied a social justice framework in operationalising their systems during the pandemic – where equitable, flexible and politically astute methods of accessibility to the university practices were enabled for underprivileged students to integrate and succeed within the genre of ‘equal opportunities for all’. from #feesmustfall to covid-19: higher education and socio-political crisis south africa’s socioeconomic profile characterised by high levels of inequality, poverty and unemployment has filtered into the higher education landscape. the 2015/2016 free education protests emphasised this case. students from poor communities, unable to pay university fees and also facing diminishing chances of obtaining employment in a crumbling economy, took to the streets and revolted against the unaffordability of higher education and the untransformed patterns of coloniality that still define the epistemic and sociocultural makeup of universities (ndlovu-gatsheni 2013, cited in godsell & chikane 2016:59). these protests although had macroand micro-characteristics. macro-characteristics were in the form of the struggle for the transformation of the country’s political economy to begin prioritising the needs of the poor and the working class, such as public investment in free education and training to create a skilled workforce with better opportunities to make livelihoods (bond 2016:196–198). micro-characteristics were in the form of the day-to-day struggles that students faced in university campuses where they lacked access to basic needs such as food, transport, toiletries, clothing items, stationery and subsistence allowances to participate in student social life (godsell & chikane 2016:60). the micro-struggle is what we want to underscore in this article. from our experience, the everyday lives of poor students in universities tend to be overlooked in conversations about student protests. these conversations emphasise statistics, slogans and political statements, which tend to envelope poor students under a single talk of statistical averages. however, when the life of each poor student gets broken down into different pieces of stories and experiences, the conversation changes and begins to reveal the deep-seated patterns of inhumanity and indignity that students endure as a result of being poor in urban universities. for instance, the national students financial aid scheme (nsfas) is widely known in south africa for its administrative incompetence, which compels poor students in universities to live without access to food and other basic needs for at least half of their academic year (habib 2019:64–65). as such, student political organisations organise protests in universities to fight for these basic needs by asking universities themselves to intervene in these challenges and provide food and basic needs to poor students (jansen 2017:172). it is on this score that nelson mandela university institutionalised a food feeding scheme as part of its annual budget programme to cater for the food shortages that its poor students endure as a result of state failure to administrate financial aid efficiently and on time as per the academic calendar (nelson mandela university 2019:48). the shifting of university responsibilities in this instance towards the constant provision of food to poor students has generated criticism from some practitioners in the higher education sector. jansen (2017:172) is concerned that the south african university has become a ‘welfare university’ where the core function of quality and internationally competitive research, teaching, learning and engagement has been compromised in favour of food aids for poor students – a function that should have been performed by the state. jansen (2017:174–176) goes further to argue that students themselves have come to be entitled to these benefits as although they are an expected function of the university – similar to the government functions of providing social grants to the older members of the families where these students come from. in our view, the framing of providing poor students with food aid as being a shift to a ‘welfare university’ is not a neutral observation. it is informed by a single orientation of understanding what a university is and its purpose, which is an orientation of a western university in the case of jansen. the western university derives its value, purpose and sustainability from undertaking research that is globally relevant to attract prestige and generate revenue subsidies, endorsements and competitive student fees from international students (ginsberg 2011:81–82). without these economic assets, the university would be unable to maintain its credibility, relevance and prestige and could possibly collapse. vice chancellors of top south african universities such as wits university (habib 2019:ix–x) and university of cape town (phakeng 2019) have also publicly endorsed such positions, arguing that their universities seek to participate in this ‘global research prestige’ contest to keep their universities competitive. our critique towards these viewpoints is based on four observations. firstly, our understanding is that there are many different kinds of universities and their purposes, depending on the context of such institutions. many different parts of the world are experimenting with agricultural universities (nieuwenhuis, verhaar & hoeve 2003:171) and medical universities (pepeta 2019) with a purpose of servicing their local communities and societies as public institutions. the notion of a western university concerned about abstract research that has a universal appeal for revenue generating purposes is but a single model of a university that is not preferred in other societies. in this instance, other universities located in other societies favour a ‘down-to-earth’ approach where they do not only theorise people’s challenges but are also placed in context to serve humanity and their local communities (van rooy 2003:xiii). in this regard, south africa can also generate from its own context and define its own model of a public university that would be best suited to service its society that is mainly faced with challenges of poverty and unemployment. secondly, the notion of a ‘welfare university’ grossly minimises the socioeconomic legacy of the (post)apartheid system, its generational impact and its intersectional reach. colonialism dispossessed and displaced the entire african family. the poverty wages earned by adult workers in the untransformed economy of south africa that still resembles apartheid wage scales is replicated by the student’s inability to pay for their basic needs in university (satgar 2016:222). a south african university that exists out of these social challenges ought to be redesigned to prepare itself to enrol students with such challenges and avail social support services to integrate such students into its university life. thirdly, the ‘welfare university’ thesis fails to comprehend what the decolonisation argument tabled by students seeks to achieve. one of the significant legacies of colonialism is the proletarianisation of black people and their communities to the extent where they cannot cater for their basic needs (hendricks, ntsebeza & helliker 2013:3–4). in this instance, the theory of decolonisation entails a fight for both macroand micro-dividends of a political breakthrough, which are (1) the right to own land, wealth, identity and self-determine (macro) and (2) also the right to dignity, employment, food, water, housing and social welfare (micro). in other words, a decolonised society would be to live in a social reality that has all the characteristics of colonialism dismantled. part of this social transformation attempt entails the work carried out by universities during the covid-19 pandemic to make equitable measures to accommodate and support underprivileged students with basic needs. this article adds to the conversation by tabling how comprehensive universities improvised their systems to support these challenged yet resilient students. finally, the covid-19 pandemic in south africa demonstrated how a public university located in south africa is supposed to shape itself. south african conditions call for a social justice-oriented university that must (1) produce research for humanity (the production of covid-19 protective equipment, sanitisers and vaccine research for the country’s public healthcare strategy is a case in point) and (2) be driven by the ethos of ubuntu (masitera 2020:6) and provide welfare for vulnerable students in the form of food, transport, laptops, data and flexible learning and teaching programmes to achieve equitable access to higher education. in this regard, the south african university must redefine itself to be an active agent in service of humanity to dismantle social inequalities through an equitable provision of university services. these attributes of a university anchored on social justice demonstrate that being a university that is in service of society does not necessarily have to come at the expense of research excellence. instead, being a people-centred university that is in service to society should be viewed as a prerequisite for research excellence and institutional sustainability – where we get to possess, as mamdani (2009:215–216) proposed, african public universities that will produce knowledge to address the unique challenges of our continent. methodological note a critical narrative analysis was utilised to conduct the study. this critical analysis involved the reading and interpretation of textual data from newspaper commentary and the decision statements taken and published by these two universities under study (mcalpine 2016:33). we also used our own personal experiences from working and studying directly in one of these universities, at nelson mandela university. our intimate experiences of working and studying at nelson mandela university during the pandemic were used as a source of data generation, analysis (mcalpine 2016:34–35) and triangulation (holtzhausen 2001). the covid-19 crisis was extensively covered in newspaper commentary given its widespread effects on every community as a communicable disease (park et al. 2020, cited in hess & waller 2021:22). it then becomes obvious as to why the media was one of the useful sources to analyse the pandemic. in addition, media coverage of the pandemic carried a heavier form of government oversight, where public content about the pandemic had to be carried out accurately to keep the citizenry armed with valuable and coordinated information as an attempt to minimise misinformation (eck & hatz 2020:603) – as one higher education practitioner stated: [t]he covid-19 pandemic remains a communicable disease that can be defeated through collaborative strategies … it will be the spirit of sacrifice, self-discipline, information sharing, and collective consciousness that will see our society overcome this period. (jack 2020 para. 2) newspaper articles as research tools have been widely commended in the social sciences mainly for their investigative, brief, flexible and first-hand information reporting and analysis of complex events (waldman 2004:71–72). in addition, as the digitalisation of information and the rise of the smartphone industry accelerated, the public space of news reporting has been democratised as individual citizens are able to publish material from their gadgets without the institutional regulations of traditional media houses (obi-ani, anikwenze & isiani 2020:1). what we have also observed although during the course of this study is that the traditional news agencies themselves have also reconfigured their operations by tapping into the social media space to distribute information. the period of the covid-19 pandemic saw these flexibilities in information sharing productively converging at the benefit of readers and researchers. our methodological engagement although with these pieces of data – newspaper articles and university statements – was both ‘empathetic and critical’ (jansen 2017:xiii). put differently, we appreciated the convenient availability of information, whilst at the same time putting the same information under close scrutiny and critique guided by our social justice orientation. nelson mandela university: equitable learning pathways nelson mandela university used public statements and opinion pieces written by its senior executive members on nationwide online newspaper platforms to communicate its covid-19 teaching and learning measures to students, staff and the public. its communication patterns covered two aspects: (1) the ethos and value system driving its covid-19 teaching and learning measures and (2) the improvisations taken in collaboration with all relevant stakeholders to continue with the teaching and learning project through digital platforms. on the ethos and value system of the university in applying equitable and socially just measures to continue with studies online: a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach, such as only adopting online learning to complete the first semester, would exclude many of our students. given our strong commitment to social justice and equality, this is not an acceptable option for us, hence we have developed two learning and teaching pathways (and variations of these) to enable our students to complete their first semester modules and the academic year. (jack 2020: para. 2) the university then applied the following strategy to amend its teaching and learning programme to suit students who might have been affected by the pandemic: many of our students live in the townships, informal settlements and rural areas where they do not have online access or a private space to study. we estimate that about 55% of our students have laptops and connectivity and a further 10% could learn via their smartphones. this means that about 35% of our students are currently not able to participate in digital learning and teaching off campus … the pathways range from digital to face-to-face when classes resume, to a blended approach which are combinations of the two. navigating them will take collective, ongoing effort from the university to care for and support our students and staff. we have consulted our staff and students and colleagues at other universities in south africa and internationally and we have studied a wider range of articles on teaching during times of disruption. we are now in the preparation phase and the pathways will start on 28 april. (foxcroft & bosire 2020 para. 11) pathway 1 consisted of digital teaching and learning methods, which took place from april 28, and underprivileged students were provided with monthly 20gb data and laptops to participate. pathway 2 students were scheduled to receive face-to-face classes under covid-19 regulations later in the year. the student counselling service of the university switched its services to a 24/7 online interface to provide social support for the challenging conditions. the university also provided training to its teaching staff to manage digital migration including devices and data for them to work from their homes. digital training was also provided for frontline technical staff to operate their securitisation, cleaning, communication and maintenance services under carefully observed covid-19 regulations – mask-to-mask interaction, social distancing, regular sanitising and screening. university of johannesburg: commitment to innovation and stakeholder engagement the university of johannesburg also utilised its official website and online public newspaper platforms to communicate with students, staff and the general public during the pandemic. the university’s framework to continue with classes under covid-19 conditions was driven by two aspects: (1) a pedagogy of care for its students and (2) its reliance on stakeholder engagement and ‘technological traditions’. on the university’s ethos of care: there were several uncertainties, and the threats loomed large … the odds seemed heavily stacked against the university, more so when uj has many first-generation and international students, many of whom live in university-owned student residences or private accommodation … for many of them, returning home was simply not an option. physical distancing was required, but more than ever before, social solidarity was needed … whatever the decision, the safety and wellbeing of our students took priority over other considerations … our goal was that the academic year must not be lost and that, in our approach, no student should be left behind. (parekh6 & sinha7 2020 para. 3) the university’s prior investment on technology and stakeholder accord made its coping mechanisms with covid-19 manageable: as south africa’s reality is one of inequality, it was vital that we recognise our vulnerabilities. more than ever before, we required innovation and collaboration. in this regard, our teaching, research, internationalisation strategy and trajectory proved indispensable. (parekh & sinha 2020 para. 6) i wish to thank the representations made by the interim src8 regarding online teaching and learning. as a university that embraces inclusivity, i am pleased to announce that the president and secretary-general of the interim src are invited to the covid-19 coordination committee online meetings, as full members of the committee. i also reiterate my gratitude to the tremendous work that is being done by our academic and support staff in recent weeks, who have worked tirelessly to ensure that our operations continue uninterrupted. special thanks to our academic and administrative staff for their efforts to ensure that our transition to online learning and teaching is as seamless as possible. (marwala 2020a para. 10) in 2018, when i took over the reins as vice-chancellor and principal of the university of johannesburg (uj), i embarked on a journey to position the university at the forefront of the fourth industrial revolution (4ir). the goal of uj is to foster a platform for innovative and ground-breaking research to produce graduates who are agile and curious and able to be active participants in a technology-driven and digital environment. (marwala 2020b:2) a newspaper report also revealed that marwala announced that the university’s online attendance superseded physical attendance and that undergraduate success rate was 86.3% compared with 84.7% of the previous year (pretoria news 2020). marwala later shared these statistics on twitter to spark the debate (figure 1). figure 1: university of johannesburg’s vice chancellor using social media, twitter, to communicate covid-19 learning and teaching successes with students, staff and the general public to generate open debate. discussion the leadership responses applied by nelson mandela university and university of johannesburg ranged between numerous forms of equitable care and flexible management of their systems. a modern university, generally, is known for its rigid systems of certainty and predictability that are tailored around an academic year. these systems are determined a year before their scheduled implementation. this involves university teaching timetables, examination dates, graduation periods, planned enrolments and research seasons for sabbaticals, visiting scholars, thesis defences and annual conferences. added to these systemic certainties are the middle-class sensibilities that universities operate under where students are expected to have cash flow with them to participate in the urban daily life of a university (godsell & chikane 2016:60) – commuting to attend classes and library activities, visiting coffee shops and restaurants for peer interaction, and going out to night evening, book launches and career expos for social networking (jansen 2017:180). the covid-19 pandemic disrupted all these traditional arrangements of operationalising a university system in two ways: (1) the lockdown period in south africa between march and june 2020 resulted in the cancellation of many traditional university ceremonies and events such as graduations. the academic year was also extended into 2021 and (2) universities realised that poorer students are at an extremely vulnerable position than ever before and social measures had to be made quickly to provide basic needs for them such as food allowances, counselling services, data and laptops. these are equitable measures that these universities have not taken before. previously, a threat to a traditional layout of a university academic calendar year posed a potential collapse to the university system (habib 2019:50). however, the covid-19 pandemic necessitated that universities dig further into their social justice orientation and recognise the potential of the university system to exclude especially when it is aided by the social conditions of the pandemic. as a result, we witnessed flexible forms of assessment being applied wherein (1) students were given many opportunities to resubmit their assessments, (2) they interfaced with lecturers over social mediums such as whatsapp and telephone calls for consultation purposes and (3) university administrative systems adjusted their registration, examination, fees payment, graduation and marks completion dates to accommodate all possible setbacks imparted by the pandemic. although these leadership improvisations were equitably applied by universities, they were not without their fair share of challenges and injustices. in some instances, nelson mandela university and university of johannesburg were also complicit in driving institutional exclusion by overemphasising their macro-achievements and underemphasising the micro-experiences of students during the pandemic. these contradictions, as keet et al. (2017:2) indicated, are part and parcel of the ‘messiness’ of the efforts towards attaining social justice. in other words, the inequality climate of south africa entangles social transformation in a constant battle of reproducing other injustices as it tries to resolve others. fairly, both universities provided equitable provisions under the challenging conditions, but they also displayed other layers of unfairness. at nelson mandela university, where we are based, the planned concept of pathway 1 and pathway 2 did not get implemented as planned. the covid-19 lockdown measures in south africa continued for the whole of year and this made it impossible for the second group of students to return to the university campus for face-to-face classes. as a result, they had to also form part of the pathway 1 group and operate on similar online conditions. this created a challenging working environment for lecturers and administrators, resulting in the academic year to carry on until april 2021. at the time of writing this article, the nelson mandela university was facing student protests over the registration irregularities for the 2021 academic year, outstanding examination results from the 2020 academic year and the lack of food allowances to students by nsfas and the university’s scholarship scheme (nelson mandela university 2021). for the university of johannesburg, their leading student political organisation, the economic freedom fighters student command (eff sc), issued a public statement on their facebook account criticising the university and its vice chancellor for not catering for the needs of all poor students and for also using social media to censure comments from students who publicly disagree with him: we have sent numerous communications to the university pleading with them to suspend online learning during the lockdown period until the demands contemplated above [in the previous page of their statement] have been implemented – however the university continued to ignore the submission made and went ahead to implement online learning … the vc went further to pull media stunts on twitter and facebook … deleting our comments from his posts … we further submit to uj students finance to pay nsfas allowances to all students who have not received their allowances. currently, there are students who still have not received their nsfas allowances since february, which is very much unacceptable and we call for a rectification on this matter as soon as possible. (eff sc university of johannesburg 2020) in essence, the leadership improvisations driven by these universities might have been eloquently communicated in public newspapers and social media by their executives as being progressive, equitable, flexible, and socially just, but it is equally important to triangulate such perspectives with personal experiences and other people’s everyday encounters to generate a critical conversation. both universities registered commendable and agile leadership styles during the pandemic, but they also generated numerous injustices that emanate from the structural obstacles that the comprehensive universities in south africa are faced with. concluding observations essentially, this study has revealed that beyond the usually dominant and extreme comparisons between privileged white research universities and poor black teaching universities, there is another layer of universities in the sector that should receive scholarly attention in order for us to critically understand the post-apartheid higher education trajectory and its potential. the comprehensive universities analysed in this study have demonstrated that they do possess management and leadership assets to navigate crisis and innovate for purposes of realising a socially just higher education experience for their underprivileged students. it is these narratives of institutional creativity and perseverance that should also get more research attention alongside other emerging discourses in higher education studies such as transformation, decolonisation and africanisation. the diversification of studying all kinds of universities and their various experiences and practices would broaden our tools of comprehension and language to better understand and theorise the social experiment of our post-apartheid higher education landscape. acknowledgements the authors would like to gratefully thank the academics and students in the department of sociology and anthropology in nelson mandela university for the critical comments made to this study at its preliminary stages when it was publicly presented at the postgraduate research colloquium hosted in the department on 27–28 october 2020. competing interests the authors have declared that no competing interests exist. authors’ contributions k.k. conducted the literature study and presented the study as an honour article. p.m. was the supervisor and assisted with the literature study, guided data interpretation and then wrote the journal article. ethical considerations this article followed all ethical standards for a research without direct contact with human or animal subjects. funding information this research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors. data availability data used for this study are publicly available on the university’s communication platforms and newspapers. disclaimer the views, opinions, findings and recommendations expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not reflect the policy or position of affiliated agencies of the authors. references badat, s., 2009, ‘theorising institutional change: post-1994 south african higher education’, studies in higher education 34(4), 455–467. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075070902772026 black, s., spreen, c.a. & vally, s., 2020, ‘education, covid-19 and care: social inequality and social relations of value in south africa and the united states’, southern african review of education 26(1), 40–61. bond, p., 2016, ‘to win free education, fossilised neoliberalism must fall’, in s. booysen (ed.), fees must fall: student revolt, decolonisation and governance in south africa, pp. 192–213, wits university press, johannesburg. brink, e., 2010, the university for a new generation, division for institutional advancement: university of johannesburg, johannesburg. czerniewicz, l., agherdien, n., badenhorst, j., belluigi, d., chambers, t., chili, m. et al., 2020, ‘a wake-up call: equity, inequality and covid-19 emergency remote teaching and learning’, postdigital science and education 2(0), 946–967. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42438-020-00187-4 doe, 2004, creating comprehensive universities in south africa: a concept document, government of south africa, pretoria. dhet, 2014, building higher education: infrastructure renewal, revitilisation, and development, government of south africa, pretoria. eck, k. & hatz, s., 2020, ‘state surveillance and the covid-19 crisis’, journal of human rights 19(5), 603–612. https://doi.org/10.1080/14754835.2020.1816163 eff sc university of johannesburg, 2020, uj apk eff student command statement on uj’s management failure to respond to 21 demands to e-learning, viewed 17 april 2021, from https://www.facebook.com/uj-apk-eff-student-command-272883529574218/photos/pcb.1342370495958844/1342370382625522. foxcroft, c. & bosire, s., 2020, nelson mandela university’s conundrum – online teaching when 35% of students don’t have digital access, daily maverick, viewed 14 april 2021, from https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2020-04-23-nelson-mandela-universitys-conundrum-online-teaching-when-35-of-students-dont-have-digital-access/. fraser-moleketi, g., 2019, chancellor’s graduation address, ceremony 1, faculty of arts, faculty of law, nelson mandela university, port elizabeth. ginsberg, b., 2011, the fall of the faculty: the rise of the all-administrative university and why it matters, oxford university press, new york, ny. godsell, g. & chikane, r., 2016, ‘the roots of the revolution’, in s. booysen (ed.), fees must fall: student revolt, decolonisation and governance in south africa, pp. 54–73, wits university press, johannesburg. habib, a., 2019, rebels and rage: reflecting on #feesmustfall, jonathan ball publishers, johannesburg. hendricks, f., ntsebeza, l. & helliker, k., 2013, ‘land question in south africa’, in f. hendricks, l. ntsebeza & k. helliker (eds.), the promise of land: undoing a century of dispossession in south africa, pp. 1–28, jacana media, auckland park. hess, k. & waller, l.j., 2021, ‘local newspapers and coronavirus: conceptualising connections, comparisons and cures’, media international australia 178(1), 21–35. https://doi.org/10.1177/1329878x20956455 holtzhausen, s., 2001, ‘triangulation as a powerful tool to strengthen the qualitative research design: the resource-based learning career preparation programme (rblcpp) as a case study’, presented at the higher education close up conference 2, lancaster university, 16th–18th july 2001, viewed 09 april 2021, from http://www.leeds.ac.uk/educol/documents/00001759.htm. jack, l., 2020, ‘the core value of ubuntu in our praxis to navigate the covid-19 pandemic’, discourse of student life 2(7), viewed 08 april 2021, from https://studentaffairs.mandela.ac.za/discourse-of-student-life/august-2020-(1)/the-core-value-of-ubuntu-in-our-praxis-to-navigate. jansen, j., 2017, as by fire: the end of the south african university, tafelberg publishers, cape town. keet, a., sattarzadeh, s.d. & munene, a., 2017, ‘an awkward, uneasy (de)coloniality higher education and knowledge otherwise’, education as change 21(1), 1–12. https://doi.org/10.17159/1947-9417/2017/2741 mamdani, m., 2009, scholars in the marketplace: the dilemmas of neo-liberal reform at makerere university 1989–2005, hsrc press, johannesburg. marwala, t., 2020a, covid-19 update 08, dear uj community, university of johannesburg media releases, viewed 14 april 2021, from https://www.uj.ac.za/newandevents/pages/covid-19-update-08.aspx. marwala, t., 2020b, closing the gap: the fourth industrial revolution in africa, pan macmillian, johannesburg. marwala, t, 2020c, uj is ha s now started the second semester: the success rates for the first semester is 86.3% compared to 84.7% [tweet], viewed 10 june 2021, from https://twitter.com/txm1971/status/1288009976183771136 masitera, e., 2020, ‘towards a humane community: the search for disability justice in higher education through african moral thinking’, transformation in higher education 5(0), a85. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v5i0.85 mcalpine, l., 2016, ‘why might you use narrative methodology? a story about narrative’, estonian journal of education 4(1), 32–57. https://doi.org/10.12697/eha.2016.4.1.02b national development plan, 2012, our future – make it work, vision 2030 national development plan, national planning commission, pretoria. ndlovu-gatsheni, s., 2013, ‘decolonising the university in africa’, the thinker 5(2), 46–51. nel, h., 2007, ‘enhancing the student experience in a merged multi-campus university in south africa’, paper presented at the annual conference of the society for research into higher education, december 2007, nelson mandela university, port elizabeth. nelson mandela university, 2019, integrated annual report 2019, viewed 14 april 2021, from https://publications.mandela.ac.za/publications/media/store/documents/annual%20reports/88-annual-report-2019.pdf. nelson mandela university, 2020a, mandela university students head home, viewed 15 april 2021, from https://news.mandela.ac.za/news/mandela-university-students-head-home. nelson mandela university, 2020b, mandela university plays its part in the fight against covid-19, viewed 15 april 2021, from https://www.mandela.ac.za/news-and-events/coronavirus-information/covid-19-memos/mandela-university-plays-its-part-in-the-fight-aga. nelson mandela university, 2021, nelson mandela university registration update, viewed 17 april 2021, from https://news.mandela.ac.za/news/nelson-mandela-university-registration-update. nieuwenhuis, l., verhaar, k. & hoeve, a., 2003, ‘networking between economy and education: regional knowledge transfer in dutch agriculture’, in r. rutten, f. boekema & e. kuijpers (eds.), economic geography of higher education: knowledge infrastructure and learning regions, pp. 171–185, routledge, london. obi-ani, n., anikwenze, c. & isiani, m.c., 2020, ‘social media and the covid-19 pandemic: observations from nigeria’, cogent arts & humanities 7(1), 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1080/23311983.2020.1799483 parekh, a. & sinha, s., 2020, uj’s top executives explains how the institution steered the 2020 academic year, viewed 16 april 2021, from https://www.uj.ac.za/newandevents/pages/ujs-top-executives-explains-how-the-institution-steered-the-2020-academic-year.aspx. park, s., fisher, c., lee, j.y., mcguinness, k., sang, y., o’neil, m. et al., 2020, ‘digital news report: australia 2020’, news and media research centre, university of canberra, viewed 09 april 2021, from https://apo.org.au/node/305057. pepeta, l., 2019, ‘new medical school to open in 2021’, mail and guardian, viewed 17 april 2021, from https://mg.co.za/article/2019-10-18-00-new-medical-school-to-open-in-2021/. phakeng, m., 2019, ‘uct leaps up in world rankings’, uct news, viewed 17 april 2021, from https://www.news.uct.ac.za/article/-2019-09-12-uct-leaps-up-in-world-rankings. pityana, b.n., 2010, higher education, transformation and africanisation – a paradigm shift? study south africa: the guide to south african higher education, 9th edition, international education association of south africa, viewed 07 april 2021, from http://studysa.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/study-sa-9th-edition.pdf. pretoria news, 2020, blending learning in the covid-19 era: uj’s agility in the 4ir space, pretoria news, 05 august 2020, p. 4. salmi, j., arnhold, n. & basset, r.m., 2020, the big bad wolf moves south: how covid-19 affects higher education financing in developing countries, world bank blogs, education for global development, viewed 13 april 2021, from https://blogs.worldbank.org/education/big-bad-wolf-moves-south-how-covid-19-affects-higher-education-financing-developing. satgar, v., 2016, ‘bringing class back in: against outsourcing during #feesmustfall at wits’, in s. booysen (ed.), fees must fall: student revolt, decolonisation and governance in south africa, pp. 214–234, wits university press, johannesburg. swartz, d., 2015a, vice-chancellor’s report to council, fourth quarter review: 2015, nelson mandela university, port elizabeth. swartz, d., 2015b, vice-chancellor’s communique to students and staff, 23 october 2015, nelson mandela university, port elizabeth, viewed 07 april 2021, from https://www.facebook.com/mandelauni/posts/984405631611170. university of johannesburg, 2019, university of johannesburg annual report 2019, viewed 14 april 2021, from https://www.uj.ac.za/about/documents/annual%20reports/uj_annualreport2019.pdf. university of johannesburg, 2020, uj creates open-source, cheap ventilators as covid-19 cases rise, viewed 15 april 2021, from https://www.uj.ac.za/newandevents/pages/uj-creates-open-source-cheap-ventilators-as-covid-19-cases-rise.aspx. university of south africa, 2020, delivery of laptops to nsfas students, viewed 10 june 2021, from https://www.unisa.ac.za/sites/myunisa/default/announcements/delivery-of-laptops-to-nsfas-students. university of south africa, 2020b, communique to students on the changes being made as a result of the covid-19 lockdown, viewed 14 april 2021, from https://www.unisa.ac.za/sites/myunisa/default/announcements/communique-to-students-on-the-changes-being-made-as-a-result-of-the-covid%e2%80%9319-lockdown. university of venda, 2020, dr nthambeleni affirms univen’s preparedness for the return of some students amid covid-19, viewed 14 april 2021, from https://www.univen.ac.za/news/dr-nthambeleni-affirms-univens-preparedness-for-the-return-of-some-students-amid-covid-19/. university of zululand, 2020, distribution of laptops, viewed 14 april 2021, from http://www.unizulu.ac.za/distribution-of-laptops/. van rooy, y., 2003, ‘foreword’, in r. rutten, f. boekema, & e. kuijpers (eds.), economic geography of higher education: knowledge infrastructure and learning regions, pp. xii–xiv, routledge, london. waldman, m., 2004, ‘international newspapers and research’, the serials librarian 45(4), 71–80. https://doi.org/10.1300/j123v45n04_06 walter sisulu university, 2020, wsu invests r98 million in remote learning programme, viewed 14 april 2021, from https://www.wsu.ac.za/index.php/component/content/article/286-wsu-newsletter/296-wsu-invests-r98-million-in-remote-learning-programme?itemid=437. footnotes 1. south africa has six comprehensive universities, namely, (1) university of johannesburg, (2) nelson mandela university, (3) walter sisulu university, (4) university of zululand, (5) university of venda and (6) university of south africa. 2. professor cheryl foxcroft is deputy vice chancellor: learning and teaching at nelson mandela university. 3. dr sam bosire is a chief information technology officer at nelson mandela university. 4. professor tshilidzi marwala is a vice chancellor at the university of johannesburg. 5. our notion of ‘success’ in this article refers to what the higher education sector has rather gained from the covid-19 pandemic, which is systematic capabilities and flexible improvisations that many disadvantaged students and comprehensive universities displayed under tough conditions to complete the academic year. 6. professor angina parekh is a deputy vice chancellor: academic at the university of johannesburg. 7. professor saurabh sinha is a deputy vice chancellor: research and internationalisation at the university of johannesburg. 8. student representative council (src) carries the student’s voice to university committees. the srcs in south africa are generally made up of different student political organisations. the 7_2022_contents.indd http://thejournal.org.za open access table of contents original research ‘they are just women, what do they know?’: the lived experiences of african women doctoral students in the mathematics discipline in south african universities zamambo mkhize transformation in higher education | vol 7 | a218 | 19 october 2022 original research education in a ‘neoliberalised’ online teaching and learning space: towards an affirmative ethics lesley le grange, suriamurthee maistry, shan simmonds, anja visser, labby ramrathan transformation in higher education | vol 7 | a205 | 03 november 2022 original research the social integration experiences of international doctoral students at russian universities nurudeen abdul-rahaman, evgeniy terentev, issah iddrisu transformation in higher education | vol 7 | a206 | 08 november 2022 original research engaging paulo freire on deliberative democracy: dialogical pedagogy, deliberation and inclusion in a transformative higher education online education space doniwen pietersen transformation in higher education | vol 7 | a211 | 07 december 2022 reviewer acknowledgement transformation in higher education | vol 7 | a243 | 20 december 2022 59 70 79 87 94 page i of i table of contents original research decolonising the criminology curriculum in south africa: views and experiences of lecturers and postgraduate students lufuno sadiki, francois steyn transformation in higher education | vol 7 | a150 | 27 january 2022 original research what literary studies can offer sexuality education: pre-service teachers’ responses to an animated film andy carolin transformation in higher education | vol 7 | a162 | 17 march 2022 original research academic identities of south african black women professors: a multiple case study ncamisile t. zulu transformation in higher education | vol 7 | a151 | 24 may 2022 original research black feminist killjoy reading group: informal reading groups as spaces for epistemic becoming sharlene khan, fouad asfour, zodwa skeyi-tutani transformation in higher education | vol 7 | a152 | 08 june 2022 original research the role of institutional practice, non-educational actors and social networks in shaping refugee student lifeworlds in ugandan higher education rovincer najjuma, michael gallagher, rebecca nambi transformation in higher education | vol 7 | a184 | 26 july 2022 original research editing for change: from global bibliometrics to a decolonial aporetics of form in south african journal publishing willemien froneman, stephanus muller transformation in higher education | vol 7 | a175 | 28 july 2022 1 10 19 31 40 52 vol 7 (2022) issn: 2415-0991 (print) | issn: 2519-5638 (online)transformation in higher education abstract introduction a succinct contextualisation of the south african educational landscape theorising the localisation of teaching and learning techniques in south africa: what is the reality? e-learning in the south african educational landscape internet, mobile telephony, computer accessibility and government’s strides assessing the practicality and implications of online pedagogy concluding remarks acknowledgements references about the author(s) hosea o. patrick global migration and community development, faculty of built environment and development studies, university of kwazulu-natal, durban, south africa rhoda t.i. abiolu the centre for general education, durban university of technology, durban, south africa oluremi a. abiolu the federal university of technology, akure, nigeria citation patrick, h.o., abiolu, r.t.i. & abiolu, o.a., 2021, ‘reflections on covid-19 and the viability of curriculum adjustment and delivery options in the south african educational space’, transformation in higher education 6(0), a101. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v6i0.101 original research reflections on covid-19 and the viability of curriculum adjustment and delivery options in the south african educational space hosea o. patrick, rhoda t.i. abiolu, oluremi a. abiolu received: 23 oct. 2020; accepted: 18 feb. 2021; published: 05 may 2021 copyright: © 2021. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract background: the coronavirus disease (covid-19) pandemic brought unprecedented changes leading to ‘business unusual’ in all facets of life and livelihood on a global scale. the restrictions on gathering, social distancing and lockdown measures necessitated by the need to curtail its spread, had, and still have an enormous impact on the educational sector as indeed all spheres of life. these measures implied a change in the traditional modus operandi of curriculum and delivery options for educational institutions in south africa in the bid to continue academic sessions. hence, a transition of educational institutions from physical interactions to virtual meetings and the need to evolve curriculum contents and delivery. aim: with the peculiarity of the south african socioeconomic and political space, this article assessed the viability of curriculum change and delivery options (e-teaching and learning) for both students and instructors in the higher institution and the varied implications. it drew from discourses around the theory of localisation within educative context to create a more student-centred approach especially with the situation of less physical contact. setting: the discourse is set within the south african educational space. method: considering the novelty of covid-19 research and the challenge of contact, the study adopted a participatory action desktop research method to collect and analyse secondary data. the article vividly discussed how institutions transitioned to a localisation of frameworks and policies to ensure successful academic sessions. results: the educational landscape in south africa is still plagued with historical antecedents of social injustice, funding, and resource allocation as well as the ever-present pressure of making education affordable to majority of local students. also, the weakness of the online teaching methods to the physical contact method for learners and practitioners could be summed up into the issues of connectivity, technical knowledge, and attention span. conclusion: the conclusion enumerated the need for the implementation of policies and frameworks on proper utilisation of online systems to adjust to the demands of less contact-based approaches in favour of virtual approaches. the study called for adequate consideration to issues around the localisation of teaching and learning techniques considering the peculiarities of south africa with focus on the opportunities, feasibility, and challenges of online measures especially for those in economically disadvantaged spaces. keywords: covid-19; curriculum adjustment; e-learning; internet accessibility; delivery options; south africa; localisation. introduction the coronavirus disease (covid-19) has been declared by the world health organization (who) as a global pandemic owing to its spread across the globe (who 2020). the devastating effect of this disease has led to the literal standstill of world socioeconomic and political operations and the crippling of most sectors of states’ and global economies. the impact of covid-19 on the educational sector has been enormous bearing in mind the many obvious policy responses adopted since the emergence of the disease. at least, an average of 1.6 billion students are out of school in over 161 countries because of the covid-19 pandemic (saavedra 2020). institutions in africa are left to grapple with the problems this pandemic poses in terms of completing their academic calendars, even as developed countries continue e-teaching and learning. various levels of lockdown, face masks and the use of ‘physical distancing’ (otherwise known as social distancing) were proposed by policymakers around the world as strategies to curtail the spread of the disease (ramaphosa 2020; south african government 2020a). to this effect, the south african government announced a restriction on all forms of gatherings, apart from essential activities related to health and funerals in the early phase of the pandemic in the republic (south african government 2020a). by implication, the educational sector took a big knock as campus-based interactions became prohibited and universities resorted to virtual meetings. institutions and colleges traditionally engaged largely in contact teaching and learning were encouraged to shift to remote (digital, analogue delivery of learning materials) and e-teaching and learning (south african government 2020b). the rationale for this decision was based on the need to ensure low risk of contracting and spreading the virus. the consequence of this policy directive for the educational system is enormous because the traditional mode of teaching adopted for most institutions in south africa was via physical contact (cruywagen & potgieter 2020; motala & menon 2020). the challenge this pandemic posed is vast as it brings to bear the issue of vertical and horizontal inequalities in terms of policy response and effect on the part of states, government and students. it is pertinent to note that whilst these governmental measures are a requirement, the end of these measures and the pandemic itself is not in near sight. this implies that as the world grapples and struggles to recover from the effects of the pandemic, the educational sector, like every other, will take a knock. institutions of learning are forced to evolve curriculum contents and delivery given the peculiar situation the system finds itself (crawford et al. 2020; shoba 2020). hence, delivery options by institutions have been the movement towards the use of online teaching rather than physical contact delivery options. the implication of this mode of delivery for institutions, staff and students, is of pertinent concern considering the peculiarities of the south african historicity and socioeconomic landscape (ndebele 2020). using the theory of localisation within the educative context, the article provides a commentary on the peculiarities of the south african educational system in view of the necessities of curriculum adjustment as a mechanism for teaching and learning sustainability in the covid-19 new normal. the article assesses the viability of curriculum change (and adjustment) and delivery options (e-teaching and learning) for both students and instructors in higher institutions bearing in mind the nation’s socioeconomic, cultural and political configuration. a succinct contextualisation of the south african educational landscape it is no gainsaying that the covid-19 pandemic has brought with it a gradual change in the world order leading to ‘business unusual’ in all facets of life and livelihood. the implications of the pandemic and the measures taken thus far in curtailing its spread imply a change in the traditional curriculum and delivery options for educational institutions. government restrictions on large gathering because of the covid-19 pandemic dictated a shift in the traditional technique of teaching and learning into an online method (mpungose 2020b). these measures saw an increase in the use of online alternatives such as zoom, whatsapp, moodle, blackboard and e-mails for teaching and learning across all educational spaces (mhlanga & moloi 2020; motala & menon 2020; mpungose 2020a). whilst the transfer to these modes of teaching seemed the viable option to adopt for an unabated academic year, its socioeconomic and psychological implications for curriculum adjustment, ‘disadvantaged’ students and educators required further discourse and considerations. a gap promptly filled by this discourse. south africa has 26 public higher institutions of learning (11 general academic universities, nine comprehensive universities and six universities of technology), which are distributed within the nine provinces of the country (department of higher education and training n.d., 2018; universities south africa 2021). the ‘core business’ and essence of these public universities in south africa are tied around ‘producing excellent research, preparing a labour force, or addressing societal inequalities’ (swartz et al. 2019:567). however, the educational landscape is still plagued with historical antecedents of social injustice, funding and resource allocation and the ever-present pressure of making education affordable to the majority of local students (statistics south africa 2019; swartz et al. 2019). out of over 950 000 students registered and enrolled in south african universities and technikons as of 2016, over 700 000 students were black as presented by statistics south africa (2019:37), a whopping 72.6% of the entire student population all over the country (see table 1 for a breakdown of racial categories). reference to the black racial categorisation is because reports indicate that ‘poverty is consistently highest amongst black south africans’ (sulla & zikhali 2018: unnumbered). table 1: student enrolment in south african universities and technikons, 2016. consequently, the need to contextualise the realities of south africa’s educational system is because of the historical configuration of economic privileges and systemic disadvantage with focus on the opportunities, feasibility and challenges of online measures especially for those in economically disadvantaged spaces (letseka & pitsoe 2013; letseka, letseka & pitsoe 2018; ndebele 2020). theorising the localisation of teaching and learning techniques in south africa: what is the reality? for the swift curriculum adjustment and delivery options within the south african educational landscape to be effective and efficient, it calls for adequate consideration to issues around the localisation of teaching and learning techniques considering the peculiarities of both advantaged and disadvantaged students (ndebele 2020). this implies a review of the distinct socioeconomic, political, psychological and physiological factors of students and instructors. the motive is to provide an inclusive aura where no student is left behind considering the dent of the covid-19 pandemic on academic activities. the availability of an inclusive and conducive educational environment both for facilitators and students is of utmost importance. and for e-learning to be successful, a student-centred approach should be adopted (council on higher education 2000; department of higher education and training 2001; ndebele 2020; yang 2010). the essence of a student-centred approach to e-teaching and learning is to cater to the needs of those students who are rather indigent and unable to cope with the challenges of education via technology (connectivity, remoteness, unaffordability of laptops and computers, etc.) (cruywagen & potgieter 2020; kumpu et al. 2016). however, it still begs the question, how can all these be achieved within the south african educational space? localisation of teaching and learning techniques recognises the importance of the culture and study environment and interests of the students (ndebele 2020; yang 2010). it brings into relatable terms, concepts, ideas, notions, global developmental, technological, economic and political frameworks within local contexts. localisation seems rather preferable because a more global, rather than local approach, has led to internationalisation of higher education in africa, but countries still struggle with resource allocation so as not to compromise quality or equity (geo-jaja 2013). therefore, global educational practices are to be assimilated into local terrains and educational institutions considering the needs, cultures and traditions of such backgrounds (cruywagen & potgieter 2020; ndebele 2020; olivier 2020). the relevance of the theory of localising teaching practices highlights the point that it can be a tool ‘in education [to] create more values for local developments if local creativity and adaptation can be [encouraged] in the process of [localised] change’ (cheng 2002:2). what works in another educational space may not be ideal for another; that is the sole argument of the theory of localisation. in view of this, there is an additional notion that content rooted in cultural and geographical contexts, in local languages and day to day experiences are more acceptable (jimes, weiss & keep 2013; ndebele 2020; olivier 2020). by fostering local knowledge for the development of the community and individuals (cheng 2002; ndebele 2020; olivier 2020), the theory of localisation engages local networks and initiates discussions around the peculiarities within such milieus. this is an argument of this study, examining the localisation process of e-learning and the implications of this for socially and economically disadvantaged students whose status remain unchanged further because of the limitations of covid-19. in addressing the concept of localisation, because of the sudden change of delivery options as a result of the new order of covid-19, there ought to be considerations for the state of e-learning, internet accessibility and proliferation of technological devices within the south african landscape. e-learning in the south african educational landscape e-learning is an educational practice that is enhanced by the convergence of internet, computer and mobile technologies (ali, uppal & gulliver 2018; azeez & van der vyver 2018; ndebele 2020). it is ‘flexible learning using information communications technology (ict) resources, tools and applications, focusing on; accessing information, interaction amongst teachers, students and the online environment, collaborative learning, and production of materials, resources and learning experiences’ (department of education 2004:15). by learning with technology (e-learning), facilitators find ways to appropriate technologies (information and communications technology [ict]) to achieve meaningful learning and interactions thus exposing the students to a worldwide web of information (bozalek & ng’ambi 2015:3; zimba, khosa & pillay 2020). within this premise, the role of ict is recognised as cogent in social transformation within the south african educational sector (council on higher education 2000; department of education 2004; department of higher education and training 2001; isaacs 2007; national working group 2002). information and communications technology practices range from emailing to online journaling, networked libraries, administration and developing creative software packages for the management of information tasks in teaching, examination and researching (bagarukayo & kalema 2015:168). other tools that have been used to facilitate active student engagement are youtube, whatsapp, blogs, podcasts and discussion forums online via laptops, desktops and mobile and wireless devices amongst others (naidoo 2017; zimba et al. 2020). universities in south africa engage e-learning systems such as zoom, microsoft teams and skype for web seminars (webinars), conference calls and videos to build interpersonal interactions (mhlanga & moloi 2020; mpungose 2020b). integrated into ict practices are the learning management systems (lms) employed by various universities such as moodle and blackboard, specifically localised into the institution’s interactive network for staff, non-staff and students (motala & menon 2020; mpungose 2020a). these have been found to be successfully used for e-teaching and learning (moonsamy & govender 2018; mpungose 2020a). if lms and ict are properly applied alongside other technological tools identified here, they can further support and sustain productive teaching encounters. all that is required is to ensure that their guiding policies and principles are properly implemented and easily accessible to students, especially those who are disadvantaged (motala & menon 2020; mpungose 2020a). e-learning is not a new phenomenon within teaching spaces in south africa (bozalek & ng’ambi 2015; ndebele 2020; olivier 2020). what was obtainable was the fact that institutions did not completely depend on virtual assistance without human contact or interaction (that is blended learning – cruywagen & potgieter 2020), as compared with now, in the era of covid-19. educative encounters were campus-based or facilitated online (motala & menon 2020). but things are different now because universities all over the world, south africa inclusive, are obligated to switch into a virtual system of learning with minimal or no physical contact (crawford et al. 2020; south african government 2020b). therefore, the need of the hour is to switch to e-learning in the face of the obstacles posed by covid-19. pre-covid-19, different trends were evident amongst students in their use of ict for e-learning. students used ict in support of their studies and as these became proliferated, institutions began to adopt more ict techniques and lmss for a more student-focused atmosphere (brown & czerniewicz 2008). the study of rohleder et al. (2008) revealed some positive and negative responses to e-learning within south african universities pre-covid-19. the study indicated that e-learning facilitated easy correspondence between students and teachers. another advantage was that information was readily available and access to learning materials was easier. however, the disadvantages students encountered were technical difficulties with power cuts and software challenges and unequal access to computers and laptops. they also encountered disjointed communication flow with facilitators and other students. for these reasons, the respondents preferred face to face interactions. similarly, in another study, kinuthia and dagada (2008) reported that learning management systems and software packages have been advantageous for e-learning in south african universities, but large class sizes, limited bandwidth, time and financial constraints hindered the effectiveness of e-learning although students still showed enthusiasm about incorporating ict into their learning encounters. the lack of technological know-how and readiness for the uptake of a new approach to teaching and learning for students and teachers has thus been of foremost concern (coopasami, knight & pete 2017; stoltenkamp & kasuto 2011). scholars have foregrounded that online platforms are viable means by which dialogic communication and e-learning can be established and fostered (abiolu & teer-tomaselli 2018; bosch 2009; bozalek & ng’ambi 2015; cruywagen & potgieter 2020; makoe 2010; moonsamy & govender 2018; ndebele 2020; zimba et al. 2020). student–lecturer engagement on online platforms takes on constantly interchangeable scenarios in which the producers of such contents, that is, the lecturers, at some point take on the role of their students as consumers, whilst the students take on the role of producers of educational content. this interchangeable role is appropriated to the concept of ‘prosumers’, an amalgamation of ‘producers’ and ‘consumers’, within the educational context (see komoski 2007). this is the true essence of dialogic communication and a student-centred approach to teaching and learning (freire 2005), which should be the aim of e-learning within south africa. the efforts of institutions in creating inclusive online environments are poised to ensure that the social transformation agenda within the educational framework of south africa is further entrenched and developed (council on higher education 2000; department of education 2004; department of higher education and training 2001, 2018; isaacs 2007; national working group 2002). these efforts are embedded in education and technology policies that guide e-learning within south africa. one of such effort is the policy concern of the council on higher education (2000:31), which states that ‘the higher education system must strive to achieve equity and aspire to excellence’. another such effort is the white paper on e-education (august 2004), which also categorically states that ‘if south africans are to participate in the knowledge economy, every effort must be made to prevent social exclusion’ (department of education 2004:10). the pertinent question we propose is how can social exclusion be prevented amongst socially disadvantaged groups in their access to education especially during this transition to e-learning intensified by covid-19? therefore, there is the need to contextualise the proliferation of internet and internet technology in south africa, and the availability of these digital platforms, which prove to be vital to the success of e-learning and active student engagement within south africa (masiu & chukwuere 2018; zimba et al. 2020). internet, mobile telephony, computer accessibility and government’s strides to mitigate human contact, countries are adopting the virtual mode of connectivity and human interaction, visible in the facilitation of business meetings, conference calls and delivering of lectures to students (united nations educational, scientific and cultural organization [unesco] institute for information technologies in education [iite] 2020). institutions of higher learning in south africa have also instantly embraced internet technology to facilitate interactions between students and lecturers (gerber 2020; mhlanga & moloi 2020). internet access in a globalised world opens the word to a flow of information and a borderless virtual community. as live updates and statistics are made available, people are kept abreast of current affairs relating to covid-19, measures that governments around the world are taking, casualties, confirmed cases and those who have recovered, as well as efforts to make vaccines available to combat the virus (who 2020; worldometers 2020). access to the internet (through mobile phones or computers) is a major factor that is to be considered in this new reality the world finds itself in. the growth in internet usage in south africa has been exponential over the years. as of 2018, statistics south africa (2018:57) reported that 64.7% of south africans had at least a member of the family who had access to the internet. there is an obvious disparity of data users depending on the places where they reside. those who have internet access at home and live in the metropolitan areas across the country amount to 93.9%, those in urban settlements amount to 77.4% whilst those in rural areas amount to 34.7% (statistics south africa 2018:58). those who access the internet through cafés or educational facilities across all provinces are 81.4% for those in the metropolitan areas, 73.8% for those in the urban region and 31% for those in rural settlements (statistics south africa 2018:58) (see table 2). table 2: statistics of internet access and data users. the statistics reveal the obvious disparity as a result of settlements. this comparison is peculiar because of the situations around lockdowns and having to stay at home, work from home or receive lectures from home (mhlanga & moloi 2020; mpungose 2020b). those who had access through cafés and campuses face enormous obstacles of data connectivity. although universities arranged for certain number of students to be back on campus, all within the covid-19 safety regulations (mpungose 2020b), these arrangements had to be shelved because of outbreaks of positive covid-19 cases amongst staff, student and especially in student residences. and because of the limitedness of internet access and how expensive data purchases are, there is a great concern for students who dwell in rural communities (mpungose 2020b). on the other hand, access to mobile telephones and computers prove to be pivotal in the success of online teaching and learning (cruywagen & potgieter 2020; masiu & chukwuere 2018; mhlanga & moloi 2020). of those who own at least one computer, 29.6% of these stay in the metropolitan area, 21.3% stay in the urban areas and 8.8% stay in the rural areas (statistics south africa 2018:63). ownership of computers seems to be luxurious as represented by the statistics (see table 3). table 3: computer ownership distribution by settlement. however, mobile phone penetration in south africa has experienced tremendous usage and subscription. mobile telephone users of 2019 grew rapidly as compared with the statistics of the previous 3 years, which were 43.5% at 2016, 74.2% at 2017 and 81.7% at 2018, indicated in table 4 (icasa 2019). smartphone penetration stood at 91.2% in 2019, whilst close to 28 million south africans have long term evolution (lte) devices for internet connectivity (icasa 2019:33–34). table 4: mobile phone proliferation in south africa. the mobile telephone has paved the way as an emerging technology that is more affordable and accessible to provide online awareness, presence and literacy (bozalek & ng’ambi 2015). therefore, if computers are a luxury, mobile phones suffice in enabling e-learning (see masiu & chukwuere 2018). internet or mobile telephony or computer accessibility is a major challenge to pinpoint towards the success of e-learning and a student-centred localised method of teaching and learning. but these do not by any means negate or relegate the strides of the government to cater to the needs of students. for instance, on a yearly basis, financial aid is offered by the national student financial aid scheme (nsfas) to students whose families are below an income of r350 000 as a salary threshold for basic education, determined by the organisation (department of higher education and training 2018; nsfas 2020a). this student bursary is a government initiative with the aim to assist underprivileged students in their academic journeys and to relieve their parents or guardians of such financial burdens because of their monetary incapability (nsfas 2020a). some of the items that the allowance covers include laptops, book and living allowances, some pocket money for their academic session and accommodation allowance. the higher education minister, blade nzimande, affirmed that students who were registered for the nsfas bursary year 2020 would have access to appropriate digital devices (tablets and laptops) to be procured by the government (makinana 2020). the government, as well as higher institutions of education, also made provision for data bundles for staff and students across the country (kubheka 2020). strategies to ease student access to their allowances have also been made available through online proxy, which implies that the needs of these students can still be met, even if it is online (maphanga 2020; nsfas 2020b, 2020c). these palliative measures for students from underprivileged families, not only bridge the gap between those who can afford basic education and those who cannot afford it but also enable e-learning. in line with the initiative of unesco, to grant every child the opportunity to have some form of basic education (unesco 2011), these initiatives are indications of strategic and localised planning within the transformative agenda of the south african educational system to cope with the uncertainties of the covid-19 era. however, in the bid to foster a conducive online community of teachers and students, it is vital that institutions of learning and especially the facilitators ensure that meaningful learning is achieved and accomplished. therefore, the motivating factor should not just be the bid to conclude academic sessions but to create educative and participatory academic virtual environments that culminate into meaningful learning. meaningful learning can only be measured or evaluated by aligning tasks with the learning outcome and teaching strategies of such interactions (bozalek & ng’ambi 2015). in addition, and importantly, the facilitator must take cognisance of the student’s prior knowledge, competencies, previous technological predisposition to learning, that is, computer anxiety or digital literacy and capabilities (ali et al. 2018; bozalek & ng’ambi 2015:3). the level of technological awareness amongst students can thus inhibit or aid educational encounters (zimba et al. 2020). tewari and ilesanmi (2020) argued that prior to covid-19, some of these students at higher institutions lacked adequate coping strategies and the ability to adapt within the university system because of low level of preparedness, unavailability of local resources or inputs and student support services amongst other factors. if, for instance, some of these students are not knowledgeable about how these platforms work, it is the sole responsibility of their institutions to provide user-friendly guidelines and tutorials through their lmss to equip these students for active and engaging teaching and learning experiences (moonsamy & govender 2018; motala & menon 2020; mpungose 2020a). the success of all these is dependent on the viability of online mode of teaching and learning. assessing the practicality and implications of online pedagogy scholars have argued that the use of e-teaching and learning is advantageous to the development of cultural, critical and operational skills for both students and facilitators (azeez & van der vyver 2018; isaacs 2007; kaliisa & picard 2017; mayisela 2013; mpungose 2020b; msomi & bansilal 2018; zimba et al. 2020). facilitators are also expected to be equipped with the knowledge about internet-mediated academic encounters seeing they are vital to achieving maximum success for e-teaching and learning in south africa (motala & menon 2020). this raises concerns about the ‘technological pedagogical content and knowledge’ (tpack) framework amongst teachers and facilitators prior to the emergence of covid-19, that is, their use, knowledge and experience of technology (o’carroll 2011; sebolai & ogutu 2012). pre-covid-19, there was an increasing awareness amongst educational facilitators in south africa about the advantages of tpack, which served as motivation to gain relevant knowledge on how to succeed in this innovative pedagogy (conger, krauss & simuja 2017; de freitas & spangenberg 2019). this also served as a nudge and unconscious preparation for the new realities that covid-19 ushered in. online pedagogy offers convenience and ease of engagement for facilitators and students in comparison with the traditional method (mpungose 2020b; ngubane-mokiwa & letseka 2015). for instance, facilitators and students can be connected in different parts of the world from the comforts of their spaces, without having to be in physical contact before engaging with one another. another advantage of online pedagogy provides users an unrestricted access to educational materials and resources available without being time bound (msomi & bansilal 2018). in this manner, if an online interaction between the facilitator and students was documented or recorded, this can be uploaded for reference and for those who were unavailable to attend the class. it extends the class discussions beyond the typical class timing and students can further engage with one another and their facilitators outside the class lectures. this encourages peer-to-peer collaborative learning (mpungose 2020b; msomi & bansilal 2018). however, with respect to socioeconomic and psychological consideration, we argue that the psychological support base innate in man is outrightly denied in a virtual environment in comparison to a present and physical process of teaching and learning (motala & menon 2020). physical interactions and body language, which are easily detectable in a physical classroom (mpungose 2020b) are absent in the virtual space. the online methods deny educational practitioners (students and facilitators), social interactions needed for physical and mental alertness (motala & menon 2020). this is also coupled with the loss of collaborative support in which physical interactions contribute to learning. when clarity is required, direct interactions with peers and faculty are needed in real-time. again, we maintain that the traditional physical contact method, through a practical-based curriculum, which requires contact supervision and modelling (e.g. laboratory experiments, field works) is more advantageous than online supervision that portrays some level of remoteness. these barriers are located within the technology (t), individual (i), pedagogy (p) and enabling conditions (ec) of ali et al. (2018). these are some of the inadequacies of e-learning. similarly, the traditional contact approach enables longer attention span amongst students compared with the online method. the online methods present the temptation of surfing other sites that are not educational and other distractions such as multitasking, which may hinder concentration and attention span as supported by various scholars (ali et al. 2018; fox, rosen & crawford 2009; msiza, malatji & mphahlele 2020; winter et al. 2010). we cannot relegate the reality of the digital divide experienced by students in rural communities who are disadvantaged in terms of connectivity, and other challenges of literacy, curriculum design and delivery structure, amongst others hereby, creating some level of inequality (letseka & pitsoe 2013; letseka et al. 2018; ndebele 2020). be that as it may, the option of transiting into the online teaching method in the light of the pandemic has become a necessary alternative to keep the education sector running and safeguard the lives of facilitators and students, in keeping with health regulations (motala & menon 2020; mpungose 2020b). in the same vein, scholars have foregrounded that this option can be successfully sustained if it is well applied locally and correctly managed (azeez & van der vyver 2018; masiu & chukwuere 2018; ndebele 2020; zimba et al. 2020). however, addressing south africa’s peculiarities in terms of internet accessibility, computer literacy and social inequalities are still fundamental policy and economic considerations for disadvantaged students engaging in e-learning (cruywagen & potgieter 2020; mayisela 2013; mhlanga & moloi 2020; motala & menon 2020; mpungose 2020b; ngubane-mokiwa & letseka 2015; kaliisa & picard 2017; zimba et al. 2020). concluding remarks we assessed the viability of e-learning in comparison to contact teaching and the obstacles or barriers to the successful running of this method of teaching and learning in the new covid-19 normal. these are called to view considering the unprecedented challenge of the covid-19 in adjusting to online teaching. the weakness of the online teaching methods in comparison to the physical contact method for students and practitioners could be summed up into three fundamental concerns. these are the issues of connectivity (in terms of internet access), technical knowledge or know-how (in terms of use of computers and other electronic teaching and learning aids) and attention span. again, the significance of these issues vis-à-vis the south african peculiarity cannot be ignored as a significant proportion of students are not only faced with the challenge of connectivity and internet access but also with little or no knowledge on the use of digital devices. even for those who have access and can operate these technologies, the need to maintain attention during online teaching is another task. it is plausible to posit that if these issues are adequately addressed, it will significantly shift the tide for effective online teaching as a preferable option for learning in the new world order created by the covid-19 pandemic. furthermore, it is left to observe how south africa’s educational sector navigates around the somewhat unimplemented national policy framework on how to integrate technological convergence and advancements into tangible and best practices for the educational sector. with the uncertainty of the covid-19 pandemic, there is the need for revisiting these policies (council on higher education 2000; department of education 2004; isaacs 2007; national working group 2002), and frameworks on proper utilisation of online systems to continue the seamless transition from campus-based approaches to virtual nationwide. as stated in the white paper on e-education of august 2004, implementation of policies around e-teaching and learning must ‘transcend the mere exchange of information and [be] transform[ed] into a range of [creative and inclusive] learning activities that meet educational objectives [to ensure] the meaningful interaction of students with information’ in south africa (department of education 2004:14). the reality of this policy statement must be plausible during this time of dire need within the educational sector and in the equitable distribution and access to educational resources. acknowledgements competing interests the authors declare that they have no financial or personal relationships that may have inappropriately influenced them in writing this article. authors’ contributions we all had different sections that we contributed to. h.o.p. conceptualised the idea, developed certain sections and assigned other sections to co-authors r.t.i.a. and o.a.a. who also fulfilled their quota. all authors proofread for correctness, before submitting the article for review. ethical considerations this article followed all ethical standards for research without direct contact with human or animal subjects. funding information this research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors. data availability below are links to public datasets that were accessed. department of basic education (2020) school realities report. https://www.education.gov.za/portals/0/documents/reports/school%20realities%202019%20final%20.pdf?ver=2020-02-07-101051-330 department of higher education and training (2001) draft national plan for highereducation in south africa. http://www.dhet.gov.za/hed%20policies/national%20plan%20on%20higher%20education.pdf icasa (2019) state of the ict sector in south africa – 2020 report. https://www.icasa.org.za/legislation-and-regulations/state-of-the-ict-sector-in-south-africa-2020-report statistics south africa (2018) general household survey 2018. http://www.statssa.gov.za/publications/p0318/p03182018.pdf who (2020) coronavirus disease (covid-19) pandemic. https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019 worldometer (2020) covid-19 coronavirus pandemic. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ disclaimer the views, opinions and statements in this article are those of the authors and are not necessarily reflections of the official policy of any affiliated agency of the authors. references abiolu, r. & teer-tomaselli, r., 2018, ‘media broadcasters as agents of participatory communication through audience involvement: multichoice’s strategies’, critical arts 32(5–6), 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1080/02560046.2018.1552979 ali, s., uppal, m.a. & gulliver, s.r., 2018, ‘a conceptual framework highlighting e-learning implementation barriers’, information technology & people 31(1), 156–180. https://doi.org/10.1108/itp-10-2016-0246 azeez, n.a. & van der vyver, c., 2018, ‘digital education: assessment of e-learning and m-learning adoption in tertiary institutions in south africa’, 2018 ieee conference on e-learning, e-management and e-services (ic3e), langkawi, malaysia, november 21–22, 2018, pp. 23–28. https://doi.org/10.1109/ic3e.2018.8632654. bagarukayo, e. & kalema, b., 2015, ‘evaluation of e-learning usage in south african universities: a critical review’, international journal of education and development using information and communication technology 11(2), 168–183. bosch, t.e., 2009, ‘using online social networking for teaching and learning: facebook use at the university of cape town’, communicatio: south african journal for communication theory and research 35(2), 185–200. https://doi.org/10.1080/02500160903250648 bozalek, v. & ng’ambi, d., 2015, ‘the context of learning with technology’, in w.r. kilfoil (ed.), moving beyond the hype: a contextualised view of learning with technology in higher education, a publication of the teaching and learning strategy group of universities south africa (universitiessa), pp. 1–7, universities south africa, pretoria. brown, c. & czerniewicz, l., 2008, ‘trends in student use of icts in higher education in south africa’, in south africa’s 10th annual conference of www application, cape peninsula university of technology, cape town, south africa, september 03–06, 2008, n.p. cheng, c.y., 2002, fostering local knowledge and wisdom in globalized education: multiple theories centre for research and international collaboration, hong kong institute of education, hong kong. conger, s., krauss, k.e. & simuja, c., 2017, ‘new pedagogical approaches with technologies’, international journal of technology and human interaction 13(4), 62–76. https://doi.org/10.4018/ijthi.2017100105 coopasami, m., knight, s. & pete, m., 2017, ‘e-learning readiness amongst nursing students at the durban university of technology’, health sa gesondheid 22(1), 300–306. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.hsag.2017.04.003 council on higher education, 2000, towards a new higher education landscape: meeting the equity, quality and social development imperatives of south africa in the 21st century, viewed 09 january 2021, from http://196.13.185.8/docs/new_he_landscape.pdf crawford, j., butler-henderson, k., rudolph, j., malkawi, b., glowatz, m., burton, r. et al., 2020, ‘covid-19: 20 countries’ higher education intra-period digital pedagogy responses’, journal of applied learning & teaching 3(1), 1–20. https://doi.org/10.37074/jalt.2020.3.1.7 cruywagen, s. & potgieter, h., 2020, ‘the world we live in: a perspective on blended learning and music education in higher education’, td: the journal for transdisciplinary research in southern africa 16(1), 1–9. de freitas, g. & spangenberg, e.d., 2019, ‘mathematics teachers’ levels of technological pedagogical content knowledge and information and communication technology integration barriers’, pythagoras 40(1), 1–13. https://doi.org/10.4102/pythagoras.v40i1.431 department of education, 2004, white paper on e-education transforming learning and teaching through information and communication technologies (icts), viewed 09 january 2021, from https://www.education.gov.za/portals/0/documents/legislation/white%20paper/doe%20white%20paper%207.pdf?ver=2008-03-05-111708-000 department of higher education and training, 2001, draft national plan for higher education in south africa, viewed 11 may 2020, from http://www.dhet.gov.za/hed%20policies/national%20plan%20on%20higher%20education.pdf. department of higher education and training, 2018, statistics on post-school education and training in south africa: 2016, released in march 2018, viewed 09 january 2021, from https://www.dhet.gov.za/research%20coordination%20monitoring%20and%20evaluation/6_dhet%20stats%20report_04%20april%202018.pdf department of higher education and training, n.d., universities in south africa, viewed 09 january 2021, from https://www.dhet.gov.za/siteassets/new%20site%20documents/universities%20in%20south%20africa1.pdf fox, a.b., rosen, j. & crawford, m., 2009, ‘distractions, distractions: does instant messaging affect college students’ performance on a concurrent reading comprehension task?’, cyberpsychology & behavior 12(1), 51–53. https://doi.org/10.1089/cpb.2008.0107 freire, p., 2005, pedagogy of the oppressed, 30th anniversary edn., continuum international, new york, ny. geo-jaja, m.a., 2013, ‘education localization for optimizing globalization’s opportunities and challenges in africa’, in s. majhanovich & m.a. geo-jaja (eds.), economics, aid and education, pp. 157–181, sense publishers, rotterdam. gerber, j., 2020, ‘blade’s plan to save the academic year’, news24, 14 may, viewed 18 may 2020, from https://m.news24.com/southafrica/news/blades-plan-to-save-the-academic-year-20200514 icasa, 2019, state of the ict sector in south africa – 2020 report, viewed 06 may 2020, from https://www.icasa.org.za/legislation-and-regulations/state-of-the-ict-sector-in-south-africa-2020-report isaacs, s., 2007, ‘ict in education in south africa’, survey of ict and education in africa: south africa country report 21, 15–54. jimes, c., weiss, s. & keep, r., 2013, ‘addressing the local in localization: a case study of open textbook adoption by three south african teachers’, journal of asynchronous learning networks 17(2), 73–86. https://doi.org/10.24059/olj.v17i2.359 kaliisa, r. & picard, m., 2017, ‘a systematic review on mobile learning in higher education: the african perspective’, tojet: the turkish online journal of educational technology 16(1), 1–18. kinuthia, w. & dagada, r., 2008, ‘e-learning incorporation: an exploratory study of three south african higher education institutions’, international journal on e-learning 7(4), 623–639. komoski, k., 2007, ‘21st century teachers as prosumers in a bi-literate knowledge-driven global economy’, in r. carlsen, k. mcferrin, j. price, r. weber & d. willis (eds.), proceedings of site 2007--society for information technology & teacher education international conference, association for the advancement of computing in education (aace), san antonio, tx, united states of america, march 26, 2007, pp. 1303–1311. kubheka, t., 2020, nzimande: online learning continues to be a key challenge during lockdown, viewed 13 may 2020, from https://ewn.co.za/2020/04/21/nzimande-online-learning-continues-to-be-a-key-challenge-during-lockdown kumpu, m., atkins, s., zwarenstein, m., nkonki, l. & arcade consortium, 2016, ‘a partial economic evaluation of blended learning in teaching health research methods: a three-university collaboration in south africa, sweden, and uganda’, global health action 9(1), 28058. https://doi.org/0.3402/gha.v9.28058 letseka, m., letseka, m.m. & pitsoe, v., 2018, ‘the challenges of e-learning in south africa’, in m. sinecen (ed.), trends in e-learning, pp. 121–138, intechopen, london. letseka, m. & pitsoe, v., 2013, ‘reflections on assessment in open distance learning (odl): the case of the university of south africa (unisa)’, open praxis 5(3), 197–206. https://doi.org/10.5944/openpraxis.5.3.66 makinana, a., 2020, ‘government wants to be in charge of university laptops procurement’, times live, 15 may, viewed 18 may 2020, from https://www.timeslive.co.za/politics/2020-05-15-government-wants-to-be-in-charge-of-university-laptops-procurement/ makoe, m., 2010, ‘exploring the use of mxit: a cell-phone social network to facilitate learning in distance education’, open learning: the journal of open, distance and e-learning 25(3), 251–257. https://doi.org/10.1080/02680513.2010.512099 maphanga, c., 2020, level 4 lockdown: students won’t return to campus, risk is too great –blade nzimande, viewed 13 may 2020, from https://www.news24.com/southafrica/news/level-4-lockdown-students-wont-return-to-campus-risk-is-too-great-blade-nzimande-20200430 masiu, t.m. & chukwuere, j.e., 2018, ‘the effect of smartphones on students’ academic life: a perceptive from a south african university and management dynamics’, in international conference on business and management dynamics (icbmd), cape town, south africa, august 29–31, 2018, pp. 174–183. mayisela, t., 2013, ‘the potential use of mobile technology: enhancing accessibility and communication in a blended learning course’, south african journal of education 33(1), 1–18. https://doi.org/10.15700/saje.v33n1a629 mhlanga, d. & moloi, t., 2020, ‘covid-19 and the digital transformation of education: what are we learning on 4ir in south africa?’, education sciences 10(7), 180. moonsamy, d. & govender, i., 2018, ‘use of blackboard learning management system: an empirical study of staff behavior at a south african university’, eurasia journal of mathematics, science and technology education 14(7), 3069–3082. https://doi.org/10.29333/ejmste/91623 motala, s. & menon, k., 2020, ‘in search of the “new normal”: reflections on teaching and learning during covid-19 in a south african university’, southern african review of education 26(1), 80–99. mpungose, c.b., 2020a, ‘beyond limits: lecturers’ reflections on moodle uptake in south african universities’, education and information technologies 25, 5033–5052. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-020-10190-8 mpungose, c.b., 2020b, ‘emergent transition from face-to-face to online learning in a south african university in the context of the coronavirus pandemic’, humanities and social sciences communications 7(1), 1–9. msiza, g.m., malatji, k.s. & mphahlele, l.k., 2020, ‘implementation of an e-learning project in tshwane south district: towards a paperless classroom in south african secondary schools’, electronic journal of e-learning 18(4), 300–310. msomi, a.m. & bansilal, s., 2018, ‘the experiences of first-year students in mathematics in using an e-learning platform at a university of technology’, south african journal of higher education 32(5), 124–129. https://doi.org/10.20853/32-5-2507 naidoo, v., 2017, ‘e-learning and management education at african universities’, in n. baporikar (ed.), management education for global leadership, pp. 181–201, igi global, hershey, pa. national working group, 2002, the restructuring of the higher education system in south africa, report of the national working group to the minister of education, pretoria, viewed 07 january 2021, from https://www.gov.za/sites/default/files/gcis_document/201409/herestructure0.pdf ndebele, h., 2020, ‘exploring the challenges of information and communication technology localization in south african higher education: a language management approach’, international journal of multilingualism 2020, 1–5. https://doi.org/10.1080/14790718.2020.1717496 ngubane-mokiwa, s. & letseka, m., 2015, ‘shift from open distance learning to open distance e-learning’, in m. letseka (ed.), open distance learning (odl) in south africa, pp. 129–142, nova publishers, new york, ny. nsfas, 2020a, the dhest bursary scheme, viewed 09 may 2020, from http://www.nsfas.org.za/content/bursary-scheme.html nsfas, 2020b, press release april 20, 2020 nsfas allowances update, viewed 09 may 2020, from http://www.nsfas.org.za/content/media-releases/media%20release%20-%20nsfas%20allowances%20update.pdf nsfas, 2020c, press release march 27, 2020 nsfas update on the nation-wide lockdown, viewed 09 may 2020, from http://www.nsfas.org.za/content/media-releases/media%20statement%20-%20nsfas%20update%20on%20the%20nation-wide%20lockdown.pdf o’carroll, s., 2011, ‘an exploratory study of early letter-sound knowledge in a low socio-economic context in south africa’, reading & writing 2(1), 7–26. https://doi.org/10.4102/rw.v2i1.10 olivier, j., 2020, ‘self-directed open educational practices for a decolonized south african curriculum: a process of localization for learning’, journal of e-learning and knowledge society 16(4), 20–28. ramaphosa, c., 2020, ‘sa on coronavirus lockdown: read president cyril ramaphosa’s full speech’, 23 march, viewed 07 april 2020, from https://www.iol.co.za/news/politics/sa-on-coronavirus-lockdown-read-president-cyril-ramaphosas-full-speech-45429127 rohleder, p., bozalek, v., carolissen, r., leibowitz, b. & swartz, l., 2008, ‘students’ evaluations of the use of e-learning in a collaborative project between two south african universities’, higher education 56(1), 95–107. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-007-9091-3 saavedra, j., 2020, educational challenges and opportunities of the coronavirus (covid-19) pandemic, viewed 29 april 2020, from https://blogs.worldbank.org/education/educational-challenges-and-opportunities-covid-19-pandemic sebolai, d. & ogutu, f., 2012, ‘electronic learning as a tool to enhance teaching and learning process: a case of taletso fet college’, proceedings of the 12th european conference on e-government eceg, barcelona, june, 14–15, 2012, pp. 416–423. shoba, s., 2020, tertiary education academic year set to continue into 2021, viewed 13 may 2020, from https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2020-05-01-tertiary-education-academic-year-set-to-continue-into-2021/ south african government, 2020a, ‘president cyril ramaphosa: south africa’s response to coronavirus covid-19 pandemic’, april 23, viewed 13 may 2020, from https://www.gov.za/speeches/president-cyril-ramaphosa-south-africas-response-coronavirus-covid-19-pandemic-23-apr-2020 south african government, 2020b, ‘minister blade nzimande: measures to phase out the coronavirus covid-19 lockdown and phasing in of pset strategic functions’, april 30, viewed 13 may 2020, from https://www.gov.za/speeches/minister-blade-nzimande-measures-phase-out-coronavirus-covid-19-lockdown-and-phasing-pset statistics south africa, 2018, general household survey 2018, viewed 06 august 2020, from http://www.statssa.gov.za/publications/p0318/p03182018.pdf. statistics south africa, 2019, education series volume v higher education and skills in south africa, 2017, viewed 09 january 2021, from http://www.statssa.gov.za/publications/report-92-01-05/report-92-01-052017.pdf stoltenkamp, j. & kasuto, o.a., 2011, ‘e-learning change management and communication strategies within a hei in a developing country: institutional organisational cultural change at the university of the western cape’, education and information technologies 16(1), 41–54. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-009-9114-z sulla, v. & zikhali, p., 2018, overcoming poverty and inequality in south africa: an assessment of drivers’, constraints and opportunities (english), world bank group, washington, dc, viewed 09 january 2021, from http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities swartz, r., ivancheva, m., czerniewicz, l. & morris, n.p., 2019, ‘between a rock and a hard place: dilemmas regarding the purpose of public universities in south africa’, higher education 77(4), 567–583. tewari, d.d. & ilesanmi, k.d., 2020, ‘teaching and learning interaction in south africa’s higher education: some weak links’, cogent social sciences 6(1), 1740519. https://doi.org/10.1080/23311886.2020.1740519 unesco, 2011, unesco and education: ‘everyone has the right to education’, the united nations educational, scientific and cultural organization, paris. unesco institute for information technologies in education, 2020, combat covid-19: keep learning. together we are on the move!, viewed 29 april 2020, from https://iite.unesco.org/combating-covid-19-together-we-are-on-the-move/ universities south africa, 2021, public universities in south africa, viewed 09 january 2021, from https://www.usaf.ac.za/public-universities-in-south-africa/. who, 2020, coronavirus disease (covid-19) pandemic, viewed 13 may 2020, from https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019 winter, j., cotton, d., gavin, j. & yorke, j.d., 2010, ‘effective e-learning? multi-tasking, distractions and boundary management by graduate students in an online environment’, alt-j 18(1), 71–83. https://doi.org/10.1080/09687761003657598 worldometers, 2020, covid-19 coronavirus pandemic, viewed 01 may 2020, from https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ yang, x., 2010, ‘the globalization and localization of “learner-centered” strategy from an international horizon’, asian social science 6(9), 78–81. https://doi.org/10.5539/ass.v6n9p78 zimba, z.f., khosa, p. & pillay, r., 2020, ‘using blended learning in south african social work education to facilitate student engagement’, social work education 40(2), 263–278. https://doi.org/10.1080/02615479.2020.1746261 abstract introduction methods conclusion acknowledgements references footnotes about the author(s) jerome p. joorst department of education policy studies, faculty of education, stellenbosch university, cape town, south africa citation joorst, j.p., 2021, ‘why should an ethics of care matter in education?’, transformation in higher education 6(0), a127. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v6i0.127 original research why should an ethics of care matter in education? jerome p. joorst received: 03 may 2021; accepted: 17 aug. 2021; published: 29 oct. 2021 copyright: © 2021. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract when a black 2nd-year student educator gets chased away from a school whilst doing his teaching practice for hair ‘not setting an appropriate example to learners’, the incident elicits questions about the rights of student educators during teaching practice, as well as the extent to which universities and schools care for, support and prepare student educators for the realities of schooling in south africa. i situate the article in transformation in higher education and the discourses of moral education concerning universities’ preparation of student educators in conjunction with schools in south africa. the purpose in this article is to critically evaluate the neoliberal regulatory environment that frames education in general and how this has led to ‘uncaring’ environments in which student educators must operate during the execution of their teaching practice. i applied an ethics-of-careapproach to conceptually discuss the central role that care should play in the professional development of student educators. a decline in the level of care for student educators during teaching practice by universities and schools has an increasingly negative impact on their professional preparation which might lead to increased teacher attrition and discourage new entrants to the profession. to achieve the kind of care among teachers we envisage through education, universities and schools will have to re-examine the role of care for student educators during teaching practice. keywords: neoliberalism; education; minimised care; ethics care; ubuntu-care. introduction the study draws on a recent incident where a student educator was chased away from a school whilst doing teaching practice (tp) for ‘not having appropriate hair’. the incident was discussed and debated on facebook1 between an education reporter, the lifestyle editor of rapport and two reporters and an education law specialist. an investigation by the education department2 found that the principal indeed acted wrongly prompting an apology from the provincial ministry of education3. this incident also drew criticism from political parties who believed the incident to be racially motivated4. the incident occurred when a black student educator from stellenbosch university (su) reported for duty at a former model c school and was asked to leave the school by the school’s white principal for allegedly not having hair ‘which sets an example to learners’. apart from the immediate racial tension that the incident generated, the school principal justified his actions to the media by making more racially insensitive comments in which he equated the student educator’s hair to that of circus animals. furthermore, he flouted ethical and procedural regulations when he unilaterally denied a student educator from the opportunity to complete his tp in a public school. neither su, nor the western cape education department (wced) restored the student educator’s right to continue his tp at this specific school. this contributed to the student educator’s traumatic experience. the student had to find another school on his own, where he could continue his tp. the incident is not only a vivid reminder of the continued precarious race relationships in south african schools and some hegemonic exclusionary practices that still exist in some schools but it also sheds light on the lack of sufficient care for student educators by universities and schools during tp. the relevance of this incident is that it resonates with similar incidents of systemic and structural racism against black bodies in south africa (delmas high 2020; pretoria girls high 2016; sans souci 2016)5 and around the world (bushby 2020; gatwiri 2018; sini 2018). the struggles of identity and culture these learners are facing in south african schools can be linked to broader struggles as seen in the black lives matter movement around the world (henkeman 2018). the social problem that is addressed is how educational institutions devoid of care can adequately prepare student educators to navigate schools as agents of ‘peacebuilding’ and ‘social cohesion’ (cappy 2016:122). the problem i address in this article is the place of care in student educators’ professional development in an education system strongly framed by neoliberalist (adams 2006; hall 2011; maistry 2014; marois & pradello 2015; rustin 2016; shenk 2015; sparkes 2007; van der walt 2017; welch 1998) and perfunctory logics (naidoo 2001:107). the concern is that, in quantitatively focused and highly regulatory environments, universities and schools’ caring for student educators’ professional development during teaching practice has become increasingly neglected. if left unchecked, the concern is that universities will produce teachers who can teach, but who are mechanistic in their approach to their work – robot-like teachers who simply deliver the curriculum uncritically without the intent of caring for the ‘enhancements of peoples’ lives’ whom they are teaching (wong & wong 2004:21). ‘minimised care’ says cherrington (2017:73), renders teachers to mere transferers of knowledge from books, apathetic to cultural diversity, social justice and how to live as active citizens. the institutional cultures of universities and schools have become focused on accreditation, assessment and pass-or throughput-rates, which are better than that of the competition. the traditional ideals of education as a vehicle to ‘transform society’; ‘to liberate people from the grasp of poverty’ and education as ‘the practice of freedom’ (hooks 1994:207) seem to have been largely replaced by a focus on skills acquisition for the market. values and community well-being in schools are mentioned in passing, whilst the real focus in terms of time, capital and infrastructure is geared towards production (of pass rates, throughput rates and international rankings). uncaring educational environments expect school teachers to be docile and compliant workers in prescribed bureaucratic school systems whilst universities are expected to produce readymade teachers who can fit into schools’ operating systems, seamlessly. the business of education at universities and schools is so fast-paced that there is little time for individual attention to student educators or learners. and whilst we are producing better pass rates and more graduates, education does not appear to change society for the better. as jacobs (2005:794) referred to ‘the essence of hope’, i would like to add that care too, is ‘a necessary condition for an education aimed at bringing about social change’. in the following section, i briefly discuss my methodological approach. the article aims to bring the issue of care for student educators during tp to academic consciousness. it draws from a recent incident at a school where a black student educator was chased off the school premises of a public school by a white school principal. the emphasis on race is important because the principal’s justifications for his actions speak to the ongoing issues of race and power in south african schools. more importantly although, which is also the focus of the article, is the apparent lack of care by the university (when it does not restore the student’s right to continue his tp at this particular school) and the school (in its punitive treatment of this student educator with complete disregard of legal, professional and ethical protocols). an ‘ethics of care’ is proposed as an alternative approach to student educators during tp irrespective of the highly regulated environments now dominating educational spaces. n.p methods this article followed an interpretive perspective to analyse the place of care for student educators during tp. i used a conceptual research methodology concerning the research on care in education by analysing the incident where the student educator was banished from a public school. following terre blanche, durrheim and painter’s (2006:557) claim that a conceptual study is a process whereby a researcher develops a clear and explicit theoretical image or idea of the issue to be understood, i combined previous research on care and associated work (ethics, justice) in education to critically discuss the current phenomenon of dwindling care for student educators during tp. based on various ethics of care approaches, i proposed alternative approaches to address the ‘lack of care’ crisis in education. teaching practice in a regulated environment under the current neoliberalist policy regulation and high quantitative demands, the culture in educational institutions has been corporatised, commodified and privatised. in his article, entitled: neoliberalism doesn’t care, koechlin (2021), describes neoliberalism amongst others as: [… t]he aggrandizement of the market and the disparagement of the state; the aggrandizement of private property and the disparagement of the commons; the privatization of social security and the relentless insistence that we ‘can’t afford’ medical aid; international monetary fund (imf) structural adjustment programs; tax cuts for the rich; the prioritization of property and the ‘freedom’ of property owners over people; profits before people; austerity; the insistence that we should thank big capital for exploiting human beings and the planet; the insistence that we should facilitate – by deregulation, liberalization and privatization – big capital’s exploitation of human beings and the planet. (n.p) one of the consequences of a neoliberalist education system is the dehumanisation of the educational project in which stakeholders (university teachers, schoolteachers and in this specific case, student educators), are often marginalised and exposed to exploitation. to this end, ball (2003:216) observed that ‘the new technologies of reform play an important part in aligning public sector organisations with the methods, culture and ethical system of the private sector’. educational policy reforms in south africa have shifted from their original people-centred, caring ideals to market-orientated objectives that seem far removed from caring for the people. mathebula (2018:97–99) in human rights and neo-liberal education in post-apartheid south africa, explained that neoliberalist agendas have rather sought to expand global capital accumulation through free trade, financial deregulation and privatisation. he quoted hanson and hentz’s (1999) research that indicates that the african national congress-government’s (anc) education budgets are now depoliticised and removed from the realm of public debate and placed in the hands of economists and technocrats (p. 97). furthermore, he argued, by drawing on harris (1997) that schools are now simply viewed as units of products whose performance is regulated by the mechanism of consumer choice based on information about their effectiveness and efficiency (p. 98). he added via chisholm and fuller (1996:693) that the government’s idea of ‘people’s education and robust community participation gave way to a technocratic discourse that ‘relieved the right and bewildered the left’. business interests in schools (through upskilling, life-long learning and transferable skills), he adds by drawing on phillips (1998), now seem to proliferate. finally, he asserted that the rights and responsibilities of communities, parents and learners and other interest groups in education (such as student educators) [my emphasis], seem to be defined ‘as those of consumers of the products of education rather than those of participants in education’ (fuller 1996:693). the ideas of collectivity, community and inclusivity in universities and schools have been reduced to public relations exercises. people in these sectors are now required to act as individuals who need to think for themselves and take care of themselves. the idea of a community of practice had to make way for a new kind of culture in higher education – that of commercialisation, corporatisation, commodification, privatisation and marketisation of the public university (giroux 2014; marginson 2016a, 2016b; shore & wright 2016; slaughter & leslie 1997). ‘financial motivations’ (rabovsky 2012), not ‘the public purpose’ (shapiro 2005), nor the ‘emancipation of the individual’ (mokyr 2002) seemed to have turned higher education institutions and schools into global market environments divorced from their redefined social contract (brennan 2004). in south african universities, similar impulses have led swartz et al. (2019:576) to assert that ‘the pressures both upon and within universities have led to serious reflection about the very nature of these institutions and what should constitute their “core business.”’ core business, a notion itself steeped in a history of corporate governance has subsequently been applied to higher education. amid deep prevailing inequalities in the south african higher education sector, the context in which they are located and the growing marketisation of higher education, bring the primary and overriding purpose of the university into question (swartz et al. 2019). in assuming the role as preparers of educators for south africa, universities (in collaboration with schools) serve as learning communities in which novice educators learn the theoretical and practical fundamentals of their profession. in such a community, one can reasonably expect the novice to make mistakes along the way, in the process of becoming a full member of the teaching community. mistakes, one would imagine, would be dealt with in a caring, supportive way, where the incumbent learns by doing, guided how to do, and redoing. teaching practice is intended to provide student educators with a learning-by-doing opportunity. teaching practice is the period during their training where student educators gain real-life experience in the actual teaching and learning environment (schools). learning about the profession in real-life situations is supposed to be a supportive and caring experience in nurturing spaces where novice educators are supposed to become embedded in communities of practice. teaching practice is framed by national and provincial regulations. to become a teacher in south africa, one must have a 3-year bachelor’s degree with a post graduate certificate of education (pgce) or a 4-year b.ed. degree at a recognised higher education institution. this will allow a newly qualified teacher to register with the south african council of educators (sace), the national regulatory body for teachers in south africa, and obtain a license to teach. universities take responsibility for the preparation of student educators. as part of this university’s teaching degree, a credit or ‘pass’ mark in tp is a prerequisite indicator that a student educator has acquired competence in the classroom. the minimum requirements for teacher education qualifications (mrteq) views work-integrated learning or tp as central to the professional development of teachers (department of higher education and training [dhet] 2011). teaching practice, the dhet envisages, has both a developmental and evaluative purpose and should thus be both supervised and assessed. practical learning provides student educators with an opportunity to engage with the realities of teaching in schools. teaching practice is an important condition for the development of tacit knowledge, which is an essential component of learning how to teach. to support their professional development, ruznyak and bertram (2013) asserted, tp provides students with opportunities to develop their tacit practical knowledge as they learn from practice (e.g. observing and reflecting on lessons taught by others), and learn in practice (e.g. preparing, teaching and reflecting on lessons they presented). in support of their professional development, the practicum provides students with opportunities to develop their tacit practical knowledge as they learn from practice (e.g. observing and reflecting on lessons taught by others), and learn in practice (e.g. preparing, teaching and reflecting on lessons presented by oneself) (dhet 2011:8). in the western cape (the province in which the incident took place), the education governing authority in the province, wced, su (one of three universities in this province), and its partnering schools have a mutual agreement and policy framework as a basis on which tp takes place in the province. the professional development strategy of the wced addresses the professional preparation of student educators and declares that preparing and recruiting student educators to become good is a central strategy in improving the quality of learning and teaching in every school in the province. close cooperation between universities and schools where students are engaged in tp is of critical importance for the wced to secure successful partnerships between role players, the effective delivery of competent educators, and a seamless introduction into schools and daily classroom realities (wced [protocol for teaching practice in western cape] 2020:3). universities, together with the wced prepare student educators for the world in which they will work based on a ‘work integrated learning’ (wil)-approach. work integrated learning is the range of approaches and strategies a student educator would use to integrate theory with practice. student educators are required to use a wil approach during their tp. paragraph 3.1 of the protocol for tp states that wil takes place in the workplace and can include aspects of learning from practice. work integrated learning is a key element of a holistic educational strategy to integrate real-life experiences into the education curriculum. when a student educator from a university in the western cape arrives at a school in the province, he or she does so in terms of national, provincial and locally agreed upon, rules, goals and expectations. but, not all schools in the province are the same (as is the case in the rest of the country). christy and mckenny (2017), in decoloniality and ‘model c’ schools: ethos, language and the protests of 2016, provide a useful description of the differences in schools as part of the country’s negotiated settlement in the early 1990s so this study will not cover that aspect. tensions about transformation and issues of diversity in ‘model c’ (former designated white schools and now just public schools’) however continue and might have been an underlying cause in this particular incident where a black student educator is chased off the premises of a public school by a white school principal. what are the challenges? the chasing away of this student educator raises legal, procedural and ethical challenges. although a student educator, whilst doing tp, is a guest of a school and can be expected to abide by the rules of the school, school rules or codes of conduct ought to be drawn up by a school’s governing body (sgb), board or council in consultation with all stakeholders and communicated to all concerned parties. in terms of the south african schools act (act 84 of 1996), school rules must be drawn up by a sgb in conjunction with all the stakeholders in the school. what is more important is that these rules should be communicated to all stakeholders as well. in this sense, this particular school’s rules or expectations around teachers’ hair should have been communicated to the university, but it was not. another thing about school rules is that they should be representative of the relevant school’s population. it is suspected that this was not the case in this instant and that this particular school, like many other public schools in the country, is still struggling with formulating such rules. ethically, educators’ (including school principals) interactions in schools are regulated by a code of professional ethics as set out in the guidelines of the south african council for educators (sace) (rsa act 31 of 2000) and include refraining from undermining the status and authority of an individual and avoiding any form of humiliation (doe 2000b). under normal circumstances and per procedures set out in sace, a principal would call a colleague or student educator aside, pointed out his unhappiness in a professional conversation with a colleague and reported the incident to the university’s liaison officer overseeing tp. this did however not happen in this instance. instead, the principal shouted at the student educator, gave him no chance to state his side of the story and ended his tp opportunity with immediate effect (slatter 2021). in an already politically charged environment, the altercation between a black student educator and a white school principal, evokes images of continued unfair treatment of particular groups of people in south africa. the inaction by the university and wced to restore the student educator’s right to continue his tp at the school of his choice, highlights the apparent reluctance to address the concerns of racism against black people in post-apartheid, x model c-schools. this situation is in stark contrast to aristotle’s views of the primary goal of education as teaching moral virtues, which encompasses two complementary parts (ethics and practical wisdom) (chen 2019:97). paul and elder (2006) defined ethics as ‘a set of concepts and principles that guide us in determining what behaviour helps or harms sentient creatures’. ethics, according to edwards (2008:78), refers to morality. caring is an overarching quality that gives the action its moral character (van hooft 1999; wadesango & machingambi 2015). in operationalising ethics of care within educational institutions, kgomotlokoa et al. (2016:93) argued that moral development is the responsibility of all those involved. jansen (2011) added that the moral growth of the members is the responsibility of the community such as student educators, universities and schools. but, as harvey (2007) warns in neoliberalism: creative destruction, the neoliberal character that has engulfed universities and schools signalled a noticeable transition in the purpose and character of educational institutions from places of social cohesion and care to places with hollowed-out corporate cultures defined by regulation, policies, rules and perfunctory routines. the result is that, in the absence of a community of care, student educators and even practicing educators find it more difficult to cope in school environments. botha and rens (2018) use the term, ‘reality shock’ to question the adequacy of universities’ teacher preparation programmes to adequately prepare south african teachers to cope with the ‘uncaring’ environments of south african schools. new teachers often find the transitioning from the missionary ideals at university to the rude realities of school classrooms, difficult. whilst the university often focuses on an inductive student-centred approach where the learner as co-constructor of knowledge is emphasised, schools demand a deductive teacher-centred approach where curriculum knowledge is transferred from teacher to student. classroom management and discipline remain huge challenges. teachers often find workloads (extramural activities, communication with parents and colleagues, and particular school leadership and management styles (botha & rens 2018:1–8), overwhelming. feiman-nemser (2001:1016) described the gap between student educators and the real world of school as the ‘challenges of reconciling learned experience with realities of teaching’. upon entering schools, teachers are faced with the highly regulative and quantitative demands of the education system; deep inequalities between schools in south africa in terms of resources and mentorship support and violence in communities beset with historic socio-welfare challenges, which often spill over into schools. universities’ teacher preparation programmes are often focused on pedagogical and theoretical knowledge and do not always deal with the practical challenges of schools. teacher preparation programmes at universities thus often fail to adequately prepare new entrants to the teaching profession for the uncaring realities of school, which leaves student educators and new teacher entrants fragile and vulnerable. what neoliberalism cleverly does is take liberal ideas and virtues and add to it a narrowly focussed laissez-faire economic twist. education, which is supposed to be a public good for all, through a neoliberalist lens, thus becomes another opportunity for profit and competition, which ultimately leads to exclusivity, inequality and elitism. the idea of individual rights becomes understood as minimum government interference in economic issues of individuals. neoliberalism often centres on individualism, independence and self-responsibility. ball (2003:129) used, ‘self-governance to refer to the responsibility on individuals’ shoulders in the current education environment. the ideas of self-governance and self-regulation assume that individuals take responsibility for their actions. the individual is now solely responsible for their own well-being in the education system. this seems almost antithetical to the idea of preparing aspirant educators who are dependent on a community of lecturers and practicing teachers for their professional development. during tp, student educators are still learning the trade and are bound to make mistakes. one can imagine that these individuals still need guidance in a caring, non-punitive manner. self-responsibility is the case referred to in this study, which appeared to have implied that the student educator takes ownership of the situation he finds himself in and manages the impasse between him and the principal himself. up against the power vested in the school principal (being a representative of the state and a member of the sgb at the same time) and the lack of intervention from his university or wced to restore his rights to continue his tp at that specific school, however, the student educator felt isolated, unsupported and left to his own devices. he had to go and ‘find another school by himself’ to continue his tp (slatter 2021). the hidden danger in the idea of outsourcing responsibility to the individual instead of the collective then is that it may lead to the exploitation of individual rights. in this specific case, the incident left the individual ‘feeling isolated, hurt and powerless’ (slatter 2021). although teaching practice is a valued and fundamental tradition in the development and socialisation of teachers, mukeredzi & mandrona (2013:1) argue that “it has challenges, especially in rural areas where lack of in-school support and guidance can reduce its effectiveness”. their research into students’ experiences of tp found that unsupportive school contexts and problematic interactions between student educators, mentors, other staff and the initial encounters with learners as some of the main sources of frustration, anger and bewilderment amongst student educators (p. 149). what alternatives can be offered? towards an ethics of care responsive educational institutions respond proactively and sympathetically to appeals, efforts and influences and address needs so that all can thrive in the institution. to be culturally responsive, maluleka (2020:141) expands, means that there are proactive and empathetic efforts to comprehend, respect, and meet the needs of those coming from dissimilar cultural backgrounds. for education departments, universities and schools this means being open to other ways of understanding and being in the world, having different hairstyles and different ways of expressing oneself in an educational space so that concerns of continued colonialism in our educational institutions (fataar & subreendith 2015:107) can be quelled. care ethics is rooted amongst others, in the writings of gilligan (1982) and brabeck (2000) in psychology, noddings (1984/2003) in philosophy and social policy (noddings 2002b); politics (tronto 1993) and ubuntu (waghid 2018). developing empathy for others is a fundamental component to forming active, curious, capable and caring citizens, says nussbaum (2010:72). but with education’s focus now highly premised on neoliberal market arrangements, a ‘crisis of care’ has developed (fraser 2016). for carol gilligan (1982) an ethics of care is central to democratic, inclusive human actions. in her book, in a different voice, she contends that caring is a form of human attachment (gilligan 1982:63) according to which humans do not act hurtfully towards others. caring is a relational act that is conceptually linked to inclusion. in the context of this case, it means that a student educator’s voice cannot be silenced when he or she speaks out when experiencing violation and exclusion. educational institutions that care for their students are attentive to their students’ concerns. for gilligan (1982), an ethics of care is an ideal relationship in which: … self and others will be treated as of equal worth, that despite differences in power, things will be fair; the vision that everyone will be responded to and included, that no one will be left alone and hurt. (p. 63) in nel noddings’s (1984) work, caring: a feminine approach to ethics and moral education, she argues for practical, relational acts of caring in education based on modelling, dialogue and recognition. extending gilligan’s notion of inclusive caring, noddings (1992:21) added, that caring also recognises the mutual part played by the cared-for in ‘an ethic of relation’. modelling, dialogue and recognition form the building blocks of her ideas of practical caring (noddings 1984). this implies that we show students that they are being cared for by creating caring relations with them. according to noddings (1992:25) recognition links the practice of caring to affirmation and encouragement of others. recognising and affirming who students are (historically, culturally, economically, politically) in the universityand by extension, schoolsis vital in re-orientating us toward a better vision of ourselves as human beings. in noddings’ terms, caring is thus an act of community underscored by practical acts of care. the freirean view of care in education is the advancement of human rights and the dignity of the people it is supposed to serve. as a tool for liberation and a pedagogy of caring, freire agitated for education in which justice and respect for the dignity of every person was an ethical imperative (freire 2001:59). at the centre of caring for freire, was the idea that communal action between students and educational authority ought to prevail. given the oppression suffered by the majority of black people in south africa, the many inequalities remaining and the repeated dehumanising experiences black people continue to suffer in the country, a freirean perspective encourages a more humanitarian approach. freirean mindedness requires us to become aware of oppressive situations, call them out for what they are and actively change injustice. tronto (1993:134–135) opined that caring is the moral element in responsiveness concerned with vulnerability and inequality that belies the myth of citizens always being autonomous and potentially equal. to provide ethics of care in an unequal education system, responsiveness requires a consideration of the other’s position as expressed by them. this implies an engagement with others from their standpoint, placing your assumptions of their experiences aside. tronto’s four-phased approach to care is useful to consider the potential gaps in our educational institutions’ pedagogy of care. tronto (2014a) bemoaned the fact that many theorists regard justice and care as separate spheres in which different forms of ethical reasoning are applied. yet the relationship between justice and care had been explicated adequately in moral boundaries (tronto 1993), which concluded with the assertion that: care is a necessary, though not by itself a sufficient part of our account of moral life. to address and to correct … [existing] problems with care … requires a concept of justice, a democratic and open opportunity for discussion, and more equal access to power. (p. 154) tronto regarded care as both a standard against which to assess ‘how well or how badly care is accomplished in any given society’ and a practice that ‘puts moral ideals into action’ in that ‘by focusing on care, we focus on the processes by which life is sustained, we focus on human actors acting’ (tronto 1993:153). if tronto’s (2010:32) assertion, that care ‘starts from the premise that everything exists concerning other things’ is to be believed, we must rethink our responsibilities of actively caring for student educators to protect their dignity during tp. active caring as a relational practice, says tronto (2015): [s]hapes what we pay attention to, how we think about responsibility, what we do, how responsive we are to the world around us, and what we think of as important to life. (p. 8) care-based pedagogical and management approaches in educational institutions relate to how people within an organisation identify, respond to and take responsibility for care (tronto 1993). care-based approaches to student educators during tp can provide a much-needed balance to the current one-dimensional views of them in our universities and schools. but caring is also a political act that requires the powers that be to acknowledge that there is a difference between being right and being just. the school principal could be legally right to address staff on any issue, but the way he does so in this case (equating the student educators’ hair to circus animals) brings into question whether his actions were just. section 9(3) of the constitution of the republic of south africa (rsa act 108 of 1996), indicates that: the state may not unfairly discriminate directly or indirectly against anyone on one or more grounds, including race, gender, sex, pregnancy, marital status, ethnic or social origin, colour, sexual orientation, age, disability, religion, conscience, belief, culture, language and birth. (p. 6) section 12 confirms that everyone has the right ‘to be free from all forms of violence and not to be treated or punished in a cruel, inhumane or degrading way’ (rsa 1996:30). furthermore, section 23 of the constitution also provides that everyone has the right to fair labour practices. school rules and values are supposed to be based on constitutional rights and national education policies and nobody can just make up their own rules as it appears to be the case here. slote (2007) linked empathetic caring with the recognition of pain and vulnerability of someone else and by extension, to justice. according to slote (2007:167–168), social institutions are just if they reflect empathetical caring with regard to marginalised people and do not turn a blind eye to development, intolerance and injustice. empathetic care towards student educators will go a long way to support novice educators’ professional development. human beings are interdependent on one another. to this end, waghid (2018:61) suggested ‘ubuntu [care] as a more humane alternative to uncaring environments’. ubuntu is the african philosophical idea of ‘i am who i am because of others’. according to metz (2007), ubuntu is the idea that a human being can sustain a harmonious relationship with other human beings through virtues of compassion, forgiveness, generosity and hospitality. the essential idea of a person being and becoming because of his or her community was embedded in south african societies before industrialisation and modernisation (mwipikeni 2018). however, he argues, the violent immersion of africa into colonial modernity brought about the disappearance of the communalistic sociocultural conditions and replaced them with the logic of individualism (mwipikeni 2018:323). the idea of ubuntu is very relevant as a moral framework in current times where society is dominated by a politico-juridical order and where neoliberal economic systems that promote individualism and unequal distribution of wealth continue to marginalise the majority of black people. for waghid, ubuntu care can affect hospitable and hostile encounters that are both respectful and compassionate. moral respect for all, waghid asserts, is a practice of ubuntu care (waghid 2018:90) whereby the recognition and acknowledgement of others is always prioritised. dismissing people based on cultural, political and ethnic differences, as has happened in the incident this study draws on would, for him, be ‘an act of remission in the sense that no one can or should wish others away or consider others as unworthy’. ubuntu caring provides an opportunity for human beings to treat one another with dignity and respect and to aspire towards moral actions such as humanness and non-violence (waghid 2018:91). in the face of diminishing care for student educators in our universities and schools, ubuntu caring is welcoming one another based on being human. this kind of caring can help educational institutions to move beyond the strangleholds of colonialism, post-colonialism and neoliberal market forces that beset universities and schools. ubuntu caring requires people to engage with one another’s cultural, political, socio-economical, and ethnic concerns. if this happens, ubuntu caring offers an opportunity to rehumanise societies (waghid 2018:162) and stimulate universities and schools to work towards decoloniality in the quest to undermine racism, exclusion, humiliation, deforestation and other forms of human and non-human injustices. conclusion a black student educator being chased away from a school with a white institutional culture not only reminds us to remain vigilant against continued prejudices in education but also offers us an opportunity to revisit the implications of care for student educators during tp. by working together in communities of practice (wenger 1999), universities and schools can create reflective spaces where issues such as hair, dress codes and behaviour can be discussed and ironed out. gilligan, noddings, freire and tronto show us the importance of ethics of care from various perspectives. waghid’s ubuntu care offers us another tool to use to move towards a caring mentality of respect in our universities and schools. if we take the time to reconsider ourselves in relation to others – to care again – we stand a better chance of speaking up back and disrupting uncaring and unjust practices in education. to understand individual lives, however, we need to understand the times in which we live and the circumstances of other people. if we are going to achieve the kind of future we envisage through education, then educational institutions must embrace an ethics of care based on shared values. acknowledgements competing interests the author declares that he has no financial or personal relationships that may have inappropriately influenced him in writing this article. author’s contributions j.p.j. is the sole author of this research article. ethical considerations this article followed all ethical standards for research without direct contact with human or animal subjects. funding information this research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors. data availability data sharing is not applicable to this article as no new data were created or analysed in this study. disclaimer the views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any affiliated agency of the author. references adams, f., 2006, ‘managerialism and higher education governance: implications for south african universities?’, south african journal of higher education 20(1), 3–14. ball, s., 2003, ‘the teacher’s soul and the terrors of performativity’, journal of education policy 18(2), 215–228. https://doi.org/10.1080/0268093022000043065 botha, c. & rens, j., 2018, ‘are they really “ready, willing and able?” exploring reality shock for beginner teachers in south africa’, south african journal of education 38(3), 1–7. https://doi.org/10.15700/saje.v37n3a1377 brabeck, m., 2000, ‘lawrence kohlberg’, in a. kazdin (ed.), encyclopaedia of psychology, vol. 4, pp. 453–454, american psychological association, washington, dc. brennan, j., 2004, ‘the social role of the contemporary university: contradictions, boundaries and change’, in ten years on: changing education in a changing world, pp. 23–54, centre for higher education research and information, open university press, maidenhead. bushby, e., 2020, pupil repeatedly sent home from school over afro hair wins £8,500 payout, viewed 11 march 2021, from https://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/afro-hair-discrimation-student-legal-action-payout-ruby-williams-urswick-school-a9323466.html cappy, l., 2016, ‘shifting the future? teachers as agents of social change in south african secondary schools’, education as change 20(3), 119–140. chen, s., 2019, ‘the stages of moral education in aristotle’s ethics and politics’, rhizomata 7(1), 97–118. https://doi.org/10.1515/rhiz-2019-0004 cherrington, a., 2017, ‘positioning a practice of hope in south african teacher education programmes’, educational research for social change 6(1), 72–86. https://doi.org/10.17159/2221-4070/2017/v6i1a6 chisholm, l. & fuller, b., 1996, ‘remembering people’s education? shifting alliances, state-building and south africa’s narrowing policy agenda’, journal of education policy 11(6), 693–716. christie, p. & mckinney, c., 2017, ‘decoloniality and “model c” schools: ethos, language and the protests of 2016’, education as change 21(3), 1–21. department of higher education and training (dhet), 2011, national qualifications framework act 67 of 2008: policy on the minimum requirements for teacher education qualifications, dhet, pretoria. edwards, t., 2008, ‘ethical fitness for accountable public officials: an imperative for good governance’, journal of public administration 42(5), 28–34. fataar, a. & subreendith, s., 2015, ‘the search for ecologies of knowledge in the encounter with african epistemicide in south african education’, south african journal of higher education 29(2), 106–121. https://doi.org/10.20853/29-2-468 feiman-nemser, s., 2001, ‘from preparation to practice: designing a continuum to strengthen and sustain teaching’, teachers college record 103(6), 1013–1055. https://doi.org/10.1111/0161-4681.00141 fraser, n., 2016, ‘contradictions of capital and care’, new left review, july–august 2016, pp. 99–117. freire, p., 2001, pedagogy of freedom: ethics, democracy, and civic courage, rowman & littlefield, lanham, md. gatwiri, k., 2018, the politics of black hair: an australian perspective, viewed 11 march 2021 from https://theconversation.com/the-politics-of-black-hair-an-australian-perspective-93270. gilligan, c., 1982, in a different voice: psychological theory and women’s development, harvard university press, cambridge, ma. giroux, h., 2014, ‘beyond the swindle of the corporate university: higher education in the service of democracy’, truthout, viewed 01 february 2011, from https://truthout.org/articles/beyond-the-swindle-of-the-corporate-university-higher-education-in-the-service-of-democracy/ hall, s., 2011, ‘the neoliberal revolution’, cultural studies 75(6), 705–728. hanson, m. & hentz, j., 1999, ‘neocolonialism and neoliberalism in south africa and zambia’, political science quarterly 144(3), 479–502. harris, a., 1997, ‘the deprofessionalisation and deskilling of teachers’, in k. watson, k. mogdil & s. mogdil (eds.), education dilemmas: debate and diversity – teachers, teacher education and training, pp. 57–65, cassell, london, uk. harvey, d., 2007, ‘neoliberalism as creative destruction’, in the annals of the american academy of political and social science, march 2007, vol. 610, nafta and beyond: alternative perspectives in the study of global trade and development (march 2007), pp. 22–44, sage, thousand oaks, ca. henkeman, s., 2018, how violence and racism are related, and why it all matters, viewed 11 march 2021, from https://theconversation.com/how-violence-and-racism-are-related-and-why-it-all-matters-65738. hooks, b., 1994, teaching to transgress: education as the practice of freedom, routledge, new york, ny. jacobs, d., 2005, ‘what’s hope got to do with it? towards a theory of hope and pedagogy’, jac 25(4), 783–802. jansen, j., 2011, ‘time to bring back the nuns’, in the interview created by emily gambade, daily maverick. kgomotlokoa, l., kanjere, m.m., malatji, s. & wadesango, n., 2016, ‘the importance of ethics of caring in south african higher education’, journal of social science 47(1), 90–97. https://doi.org/10.1080/09718923.2016.11893547 koechlin, t., 2021, ‘neoliberalism doesn’t care’, common dreams, viewed 26 march 2021, from https://www.commondreams.org/views/2021/03/20/neoliberalism-doesnt-care maistry, s., 2014, ‘education for economic growth: a neoliberal fallacy in south africa!’, alternation 21(1), 57–75. maluleka, k., 2020, ‘humanising higher education through a culturally responsive curriculum’, south african journal of higher education 34(6), 137–147. https://doi.org/10.20853/34-6-3764 marginson, s., 2016a, ‘public/private in higher education: a synthesis of economic and political approaches’, studies in higher education, 1–16. marginson, s., 2016b, higher education and the common good, melbourne university publishing, melbourne. marois, t. & pradello, l., 2005, polarising development – introducing alternatives to neoliberalism and the crisis, pluto press, united kingdom. mathebula, t., 2018, ‘human rights and neo-liberal education in post-apartheid south africa’, journal of education (71), 93–106. https://doi.org/10.17159/2520-9868/i71a06 mokyr, j., 2002, the gifts of athena: historical origins of the knowledge economy, princeton university press, princeton, nj. mukeredzi, t. & mandrona, a., 2013, ‘the journey of becoming professionals: student teachers’ experiences of teaching practice in a rural south african context’, international journal of education research 62, 141–151. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijer.2013.07.010 mwipikeni, p., 2018, ‘ubuntu and modern society’, south african journal of philosophy 37(3), 322–334. https://doi.org/10.1080/02580136.2018.1514242 naidoo, j., 2001, education decentralization in sub-saharan africa: a review of the literature, harvard graduate school of education, cambridge, ma. noddings, n., 1984, caring: a feminine approach to ethics and moral education, university of california press, berkeley, ca. noddings, n., 1992/2005, the challenge to care in schools, teachers college press, new york, ny. noddings, n., 2002b, starting at home: caring and social policy, university of california press, ca. nussbaum, m.c., 2010, not for profit: why democracies need humanities, princeton university press, princeton, nj. paul, r. & elder, l., 2006, the miniature guide to understanding the foundations of ethical reasoning, foundation for critical thinking free press, new york, ny. rabovsky, t.m., 2012, ‘accountability in higher education: exploring impacts on state budgets and institutional spending patterns’, journal of public administration research and theory 22(4), 675–700. https://doi.org/10.1093/jopart/mur069 ‘“racist school hair rules” suspended at sa’s pretoria girls’ high’, bbc news, august 20, 2016, viewed 11 march 2021, from https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-37219471. republic of south africa (rsa), 1996, constitution of the republic of south africa act 108 of 1996, government printer, republic of south africa, pretoria. rice, a., 2011, ‘jonathan jansen: ‘time to bring back the nuns’’. the daily maverick, viewed 03 june 2011, from https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2011-06-03-jonathan-jansen-time-to-bring-back-the-nuns/ rustin, m., 2016, ‘the neoliberal university and its alternatives’, soundings 63, 147–176. rusznyak, l. & bertram, c., 2013, an analysis of teaching practice assessment instruments: a cross-institutional case study of five universities in south africa, jet education services, johannesburg. ‘sans souci girls’ high school pupils protest against a “discriminatory” code of conduct’, mail & guardian, september 01, 2016, viewed 11 march 2021, from https://mg.co.za/article/2016-09-01-sans-souci-girls-high-school-pupils-protest-against-discriminatory-code-of-conduct. shapiro, h., 2005, a larger sense of purpose: higher education and society, princeton university press, princeton, nj. shenk, t., 2015, what exactly is neoliberalism? interview with political scientist wendy brown.) dissent, viewed 03 october 2016, from https://www.dissentmagazine.org/blog/booked-3-whatexactly-is-neoliberalims-wendy-brown-undoing-the-demos htteaching practices://www.dissentmagazine.org/blog/booked-3-whatexactly-is-neoliberalims-wendy-brown-undoing-the-demos shore, c. & wright, s., 2016, ‘neoliberalisation and the “death of the public university”’, associazione nazionale universitaria antropologi culturali (anuac). https://doi.org/10.7340/anuac2239-625x-2451 sini, r., 2018, ‘us school faces backlash after black student’s “unnatural hair” criticised’, viewed 11 march 2021, from https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-45269540. slatter, l., 2021, ‘die dae van kibbel oor hare is verby’, rapportsa/videos, viewed 23 february 2021, from https://www.facebook.com/rapportsa/videos/444549680087556. slaughter, s. & leslie, l., 1997, academic capitalism: politics, policies, and the entrepreneurial university, baltimore, md., johns hopkins university press, london. slote, m., 2007, the ethics of care and empathy, routledge, new york, ny. sparkes, a., 2007, ‘embodiment, academics, and the audit culture: a story seeking consideration’, qualitative research 7(4), 521–550. swartz, r., ivancheva, m., czerniewicz, i. & morris, n, 2019, ‘between a rock and a hard place: dilemmas regarding the purpose of public universities in south africa’, higher education 77, 567–583. terre-blanche, m., kelly, k. & durrheim, k., 2006, ‘why qualitative research’, in m. terre-blanche, k. durrheim & d. painter (eds.), research in practice: applied methods for the social sciences, 2nd rev. ed., pp. 271–284, university of cape town press, cape town. the citizen, 2020, ‘fake news: anger over “racist” hair rules for hoërskool delmas pupils’, the ci tizen, january 16, 2020, viewed 13 july 2021, https://www.citizen.co.za/news/south-africa/education/2229659/fake-news-anger-over-racist-hair-rules-for-hoerskool-delmas-pupils/ the republic of south africa, 2000, south african council of educators (act 31 of 2000), government printers, pretoria. tronto, j.c., 1993, moral boundaries: a political argument for an ethic of care, routledge, new york, ny. tronto, j.c., 2010, ‘creating caring institutions: politics, plurality, and purpose’, ethics & social welfare 4(2), 158–171. https://doi.org/10.1080/17496535.2010.484259 tronto, j.c., 2014a, ‘moral boundaries after 20 years: from limits to possibilities’, in g. olthuis, h. kohlen & j. heier (eds.), the significance of joan tronto’s argument for political theory, professional ethics and care as practice, vol. 9, pp. 9–26, peeters: ethics of care, leuven. tronto, j.c., 2015, ‘theories of care as a challenge to weberian paradigms in social science’, in d. engster & m. hamington (eds.), care ethics and political theory, oxford scholarship online. pp. 252–271, oxford university press, oxford. van der walt, j., 2017, ‘neoliberalism and education: a reformational-pedagogical perspective’, koers-bulleting for christian scholarship 82(1), 1–11. https://doi.org/10.19108/koers.82.1.2275 van hooft, s., 1999, ‘acting from the virtues of caring in nursing’, nurse ethics 6(3), 189–201. https://doi.org/10.1177/096973309900600302 wadesango, n. & machingambi, s., 2015, ‘instructional strategies for motivating students: reflections from teaching in higher education’, journal of education studies 13(1), 166–185. waghid, y., 2018, towards a philosophy of caring in higher education: pedagogy and nuances of care, palgrave macmillan, cape town. welch, a., 1998, ‘the cult of efficiency in education: comparative reflections on the reality and the rhetoric’, comparative education 34(2), 157–175. wenger, e., 1999, communities of practice: learning, meaning and identity, cambridge university press, cambridge. western cape education department, 2020, ‘cape teaching and leadership minute: 0004/2020’, (online), viewed 03 june 2011, https://wcedonline.westerncape.gov.za/circulars/minutes20/cmminutes/ctli/ectli0001-2020.pdf wong, h.k. & wong, r.t., 2004, how to be an effective teacher in the first days of school, harry k. wong publications, inc., mountain view, ca. footnotes 1. https://fb.watch/v/1b539n484/ 2. https://www.netwerk24.com/nuus/onderwys/hoof-beboet-gewaarsku-na-hy-studente-onnie-wegjaag-20210407 3. https://www.iol.co.za/capeargus/news/schaefer-apologises-to-student-for-bleached-hair-incident-principal-charged-026477d6-fc35-4277-87d1-78878662200d 4. https://briefly.co.za/95418-eff-demands-vredenburg-primary-school-principal-be-suspended-racist-comment.html. 5. pretoria high school for girls is a former white peoples’ only school where black learners were constantly targeted (pulled out of class, singled out or endured snide remarks from teachers) for their natural hair not being fit for the school. white schoolgirls shaved off all their hair in solidarity with their black fellow students. this incident sparked a national outcry against racism in the country during 2016. black learners at sans souci girls’ high school in cape town in 2016 were locked out of the school after they began demonstrating against school rules and teachers who penalised learners for speaking black south african languages and for wearing natural hair on school grounds. the provincial education department in which the school is situated concurred that this school allowed discriminating practices but also indicated that no one would be dismissed. this story also sparked a national debate on continued racist practices against black learners in former white peoples’ only school. strict hair policies for african hair drew the ire of the media at delmas high school (another former white peoples’ only school) in mpumalanga in 2020. the school denied the claims and the provincial education department refused to comment on the issue. abstract introduction methodological (dis)position educational technology and the neoliberal university educational technology and braidotti’s critical posthumanist perspective affirmative propositions for educational technology in higher education acknowledgements references footnotes about the author(s) lesley le grange faculty of education, stellenbosch university, cape town, south africa suriamurthee maistry faculty of education, university of kwazulu-natal, durban, south africa shan simmonds education and human rights in diversity research unit, north-west university, potchefstroom, south africa anja visser education and human rights in diversity research unit, north-west university, potchefstroom, south africa labby ramrathan faculty of education, university of kwazulu-natal, durban, south africa citation le grange, l., maistry, s., simmonds, s., visser, a. & ramrathan, l., 2022, ‘education in a “neoliberalised” online teaching and learning space: towards an affirmative ethics’, transformation in higher education 7(0), a205. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v7i0.205 original research education in a ‘neoliberalised’ online teaching and learning space: towards an affirmative ethics lesley le grange, suriamurthee maistry, shan simmonds, anja visser, labby ramrathan received: 18 apr. 2022; accepted: 03 june 2022; published: 03 nov. 2022 copyright: © 2022. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract the sudden mass migration of teaching, learning and assessment to the digital terrain because of the covid-19 pandemic resulted in the global proliferation of scholarship. this scholarship ranges from romantic notions of the opportunity to revivify curriculum and pedagogy in what was deemed an underutilised educational technology (online) resource space to scholarship contemptuous of this newfound romance. this has exposed the potential affordances of online teaching and its adjunctive exclusionary effects. whilst the authors recognise the short-term benefits of adapting advanced technology for educational purposes, they provoke the question as to the obliterative potential of technology for the human (university academics in this instance) and the non-human/more-than-human. it is, however, without contention that the neoliberal university, driven by the economic viability and sustainability imperative, gives precedence to curriculum delivery and student support to secure degree completion targets even within academic timeframe (year) constraints. as such, it is likely to neglect the cogent matter of the affective as it relates to both academics, students and the non-human. in this conceptual article, rosi braidotti’s critical posthumanist perspective is drawn upon, offering both critical and affirmative propositions for moving forward in engagement with technologies in emerging educational online spaces. firstly, critical perspectives are offered on some challenges of the neoliberal contouring and new regimes of accountability and surveillance that appear to have become more efficacious in the digital space. secondly, it is acknowledged that humans live in a technologically mediated world and need to navigate this world in productive ways. braidotti’s philosophy of affirmative ethics helps us to invigorate affordances of educational technology that are hopeful. this article’s contribution lies in alternative imaginings of educational technology, so that technology can be used in ways that advance pedagogical lives and social relations. keywords: affirmative ethics; covid-19 pandemic; critical posthumanism; educational technology; neoliberal university; online education. introduction with the onset of the covid-19 pandemic and the resultant closure of higher education institutions for extended periods of time, educational technology associated with online education was seen as the primary mechanism to continue with teaching, learning and assessment remotely. the use of educational technology in times of crises is not new in the education landscape. for example, the #feesmustfall campaign that saw residential university campuses closed for extended periods of time necessitated the pivot to online education and the development of associated infrastructure for students to complete their modules without having to attend classes in person (walwyn 2020). before the #feesmustfall period and the pandemic, many universities had already experimented with hybrid models known as a blended mode of provision (bernard et al. 2014; le grange 2020a). these hybrid models of teaching and learning were in response to a move towards a student-centred approach to higher education, with its evolution located in the advancement of technology that was adapted for education in attempts to find solutions to student throughput, dropout and success challenges. hence, educational technology was seen as an innovation to both distance and contact teaching, learning and assessment processes in a supportive rather than a dominant mode of delivery. the concept of educational technology is not limited to hardware and software, digital or otherwise, but does include resource accessibility, process issues such as pedagogy and ideological issues related to socio-economic concerns around the nature, form, use and diversity of users, including diversity of access to technology. khoza (2016) (citing bansilal 2015) suggested that educational technology be considered as a framework that positions all new technologies on contextual educational goals rather than a definition based on hardware and software. in this article, educational technology is understood to be any form of technology that is used in educational processes. many advanced technologies and internet-based platforms (including microsoft teams, whatsapp and zoom) that were not primarily or uniquely designed for educational purposes have morphed to become actants in pedagogical processes. burns (2020) emphasised that the transition to online education happened rapidly, and some lecturers were given as little as 48 hours to convert study material to online content. this rapid transition from face-to-face to online education exposed major problems in higher education (obi & ticha 2021). some of these problems are inappropriate educational technology, the possibility of lowering the quality of education and ‘further entrenching of inequality in an educational system that was already faced with the problem of gross inequalities’ (obi & ticha 2021:17263). at the start of the pandemic, it was assumed that technology would bring relief to face-to-face interactions and reduce covid-19 transmission rates (alkhalil et al. 2021; burns 2020). burns (2020) argues that: [t]his perspective relies on a ‘techno-utopian imaginary that veils the deeply rooted social and political foundations of the pandemic’. it is not merely ‘biological’ or ‘natural’, requiring technical knowledge to solve, but emerges from and indeed contributes to socio-political processes. (p. 246) burns (2020:247) argued that ‘the dominant framing is that technology will “save us”’. many south african universities wanted to ‘save’ the academic year (dlamini & ndzinisa 2020:54; le grange 2020a:2) and ‘save lives’ (obi & ticha 2021:17263). it was believed that ‘to ensure the continuation of the smooth running’ of online education, lecturers resorted to emergency remote learning (moluayonge 2020:480). demuyakor (2021:27) argued that most countries were trying to cope with closures of schools by ‘trying out online learning as a way of ensuring that there is continuity of knowledge acquisition amongst learners’. in ghana, for example, the covid-19 pandemic revolutionised the use of educational technology in the higher education system (demuyakor 2021). in countries such as singapore, it is likely that the covid-19 pandemic has brought a permanent transition to online education (watermeyer, crick & knight 2021). this transition is in line with the digitalisation of the global economy (schwab 2017; unger 2019; watermeyer et al. 2021). however, there is resistance to this transition or digital transformation of higher education amongst academics (watermeyer et al. 2021). the sudden mass migration of teaching, learning and assessment to the digital terrain because of the covid-19 pandemic globally resulted in the proliferation of scholarship, ranging from romantic notions of opportunity (verhoef, du toit & du preez 2020) to revivifying the curriculum and pedagogy in what was deemed an underutilised educational technology (online) resource space (passey 2019), to scholarship contemptuous of this newfound romance (teräs et al. 2020). having access to educational technology does not guarantee a revolutionised online classroom. a systematic approach that is informed by curriculum principles is needed to have an impact on the quality of online education (dlamini & ndzinisa 2020; khoza & biyela 2020). in their editorial notes, fataar and badroodien (2020) described the use of educational technology during covid-19 as a rapid vision of default authority in educational life under the pandemic, irrespective of the unequal terrain that dominates its scope of vision. institutions across the globe made educational technology, uncritically, a dominant pandemic pedagogy, irrespective of the infrastructure and capacities of institutions to transition into emergency remote teaching, learning and assessment modes of continuing with education (cicha et al. 2021; fataar & badroodien 2020). drawing from the given limited exposition, two key issues emerge. firstly, pandemic pedagogy (fataar & badroodien 2020) dominated by educational technology is very far from providing equitable access to technology and infrastructure to support the use of technology within a starkly unequal society such as south africa. secondly, educational technology became the uncritical vision for education, fuelling a neoliberal agenda of performativity, accountability and demand (peters et al. 2020). the authors’ concern is with the unquestioning belief that ‘technology will save us’, not only the ‘saving of the academic year’ during the pandemic but the idea that technology is a panacea for societal and planetary ills, including the solution to many educational ills. therefore, in this conceptual article, a critical perspective is offered of educational technology as it is unfolding in present times and the purported central role it is taking in facilitating teaching, learning, assessment and research within higher education. although separated in social constructions (particularly constructions produced in western thought) humans, non-human nature and technology are materially connected. elements extracted from the earth in assemblage with human labour are used to develop the hardware of advanced technologies (reading 2014). furthermore, the effects produced by technologies are determined by the assemblages that they form part of, and broadly speaking, there are assemblages that thwart life and assemblages that advance life. the authors’ critical (dis)position in this article is in relation to assemblages of control, neoliberal assemblages in which technologies in interaction with humans give rise to forms of surveillance and accountability and the domestication of the self and destruction of non-human nature. assemblages of control give rise to the negative form of power, potestas, which is hierarchical, colonising, imposed from the outside and results in unfreedom. the first section of the article, following the introduction and brief comment on methodology, captures the authors’ critical (dis)position in relation to assemblages of control. however, it is argued that alternative assemblages could be constructed where the effects of such assemblages of humans, non-human nature and technology (later referred to as zoe/geo/techno relations) could be productive in the sense that they advance life, decolonise and open up pathways for the becoming of lives (including pedagogical lives). in this respect, this article offers a mediated perspective in which the distinctions between humans and technology collapse and that humans can imagine new ways of how technology can transcend its usage in assemblages of control. in the second major section of the article, educational technology is discussed as well as braidotti’s critical posthumanist perspective, which is followed by parting thoughts on affirmative propositions for educational technology that are generated for higher education. methodological (dis)position this article’s conceptual exploration is framed within the realm of speculative philosophy, more specifically, braidotti’s (2013) critical posthumanism. braidotti’s (2013) critical posthumanism is informed by her anti-humanist roots and aims to develop affirmative perspectives on the posthuman subject, that is, to affirm the productive potential of the posthuman predicament, as humans are caught between the fourth industrial revolution and sixth extinction. genealogically, braidotti’s critical posthumanism can be traced back to post-structuralists, the anti-universalism of feminism and the anti-colonial phenomenology of frantz fanon and his teacher aimé césaire. braidotti (2013) argued that what all these intellectual endeavours have in common is a sustained commitment to work out the implications of posthumanism for mutual understandings of the human subject and humanity as a whole. importantly, she points out that the situated cosmopolitan posthumanism produced by these intellectual endeavours are supported by both the european tradition and by ‘non-western’ sources of moral and intellectual inspiration. braidotti (2013) pointed out that another powerful source of inspiration for present-day reconfigurations of critical posthumanism is ecological and environmentalist. this relates to the larger sense of the interconnections between self and others, including the more-than-human-world (le grange 2018). when one does critical posthuman work, the aim is to understand the actual and to hypothesise the virtual (what could be) (koole 2020). in the article, two methodological moves are made: (1) conceptual critique of the actual, (2) generating affirmative propositions of the virtual (what could be). educational technology and the neoliberal university technological advancements in all spheres of human existence have been a phenomenon since time immemorial. there is little contention that technology has significantly improved the quality of life of people over time and that it continues to have enormous potential to change the conditions in which people live. this brought about scholarship exploring not only the close relationship between technology (e.g. robotics) and people – relationships that move beyond mere physical interaction but also embrace cognitive relations (hinks 2021). technology and its advancement in the ‘infinite’ realms of human existence, however, is not innocuous or untainted, as the track record of human atrocity-related technological abuse has shown (mahan 2021). whilst the need to dissuade unhealthy and unproductive technophobia is recognised (nimrod 2018), one must remain cognisant of technology’s obliterative potential. of concern in this article is the extent to which the selection and application of technology has rendered territorialising effects (deleuze & guattari 1987) – effects that purport to enrich the world of academia (teaching, learning, research and scholarship), but at the cost of a reconfiguring that has steadily eroded what william von humboldt (1767–1835) envisaged for the university. the humboltian conception was one of academic freedom, where academics had freedom of choice as to curriculum and pedagogy and students also enjoyed autonomy of choice of teacher and curriculum (karseth & solbrekke 2016). importantly, humbolt emphasised ‘the need for universities to keep a distance from the market in order to encourage and maintain a critical academic awareness’ (karseth & solbrekke 2016:220). the humboltian vison has, however, waned in recent years with the boundaries between universities and the corporate world becoming much more porous (duruflé, hellmann & wilson 2018). this article is concerned with how technology has been used to subvert the humboltian vision for universities and the traditional work of university academics, in particular, and how technology might be used to (re)imagine what could be. the authors remain acutely aware of the critique of adopting an exclusively anthropocentric gaze – that is, an embedded focus on the (human) academic as the bearer of the brunt of technology’s obliterative potential. it is, however, recognised that educational technology and the assemblages within which it is conceived, fabricated, marketed, consumed and eventually disposed of have adverse and undesirable consequences for the more-than-human. its spillover effect or externality is felt in the value chain (from fabrication to disposal). the manufacture of computers, mobile phones and other educational technological devices comes at some cost to the environment – the obliterative effect of the mining industry (waste and effluent) is evident in the long and notorious history of ecological devastation (marimuthu et al. 2021). similarly, little attention is paid to the enormous energy consumption that is associated with educational technology usage – energy that largely relies on the use of fossil fuels. in an insightful play on the word ‘technology’, ong (2007) described how an intangible ideology (neoliberalism) might work as a mechanism of control and manipulation. he asserted that: [n]eoliberalism … is a technology of governing ‘free subjects’ that co-exists with other political rationalities. the problem of neoliberalism – that is how to administer people for self-mastery … for optimal gains in profit. (p. 3) a layered complexity that this article attempts to expose is the entanglement of neoliberalism as technology (of control) with advances in technology that sustains such control. in a fascinating piece titled postscript on the societies of control, deleuze (1992) cautioned more than three decades ago that: [s]ocieties of control operate with machines of a third type, computers, whose passive danger is jamming and whose active one is piracy and the introduction of viruses. this technological evolution must be, even more profoundly, a mutation of capitalism … (p. 5) capitalism here is an economic system in which societal control gets increasingly administered through markets. in the last two decades, the relation between educational technology and the objective of south african universities have altered. this alteration has largely been driven by a strong market-like (ball 2012) disposition – an ideological adjustment that in its early days of infiltration (the period following the advent of democracy) had moved with a fair degree of stealth, but now exhibits itself, in plain unapologetic sight, in almost every sphere of higher education institution in south africa. educational technology was deemed a key enabler in the social project of emancipation by enabling access to and success in higher education for those (students) who were socially and economically excluded. that educational technology has delivered on this ‘promise’ is a moot point. the covid-19 pandemic made face-to-face programme delivery unworkable and has enabled the flourishing of markets for educational technology (teräs et al. 2020). the neoliberal university machinery adapted existing technology with relative ease to enable syllabus completion and student throughput and output with only relatively minor adjustments to the academic calendar. this move to a completely online mode of programme delivery was deemed necessary and effective in accomplishing the market goal of graduate throughput. the impact, however, on students, curriculum and pedagogy has been disparate, with poor students in remote rural areas having severely restricted access to basic technology and data. for academics unfamiliar with the digital space for programme delivery, the expedited transition continues to present as a challenge – what receives little critique, however, is the subtext of this move. the issue, then, is the extent to which educational technology is understood as an enabler of and for learning versus its expedient use to keep the neoliberal university machinery functioning (teräs et al. 2020). the longstanding critique of educational technology’s reductionist effect on pedagogy also remains a cause for concern (teräs et al. 2020). at another level, it might be argued that online teaching platforms such as moodle and blackboard, whilst affording a physically and socially distanced space from which to offer university programmes, have also had the effect of rendering both student, teacher, curriculum, pedagogy and assessment more visible – akin to a foucauldian post-panopticon of sorts (veroz 2013). accountability and surveillance regimes are now regularised in the online space – digital records of all programme delivery and student participation activity are automatically generated for public scrutiny (judgement) of performance. educational technology, in essence, then, has simply enabled a more sophisticated regime of perpetual surveillance and control – a case of performance in a virtual, yet very visible space. neoliberalism’s preoccupation with performance assessment, however, has become somewhat unstuck in the online space. despite the sophistication of different learning platforms and constantly evolving methods of attempting to verify test-taker authenticity, currently educational technology has not been able to develop a fool-proof system to prevent cheating on performative tests in contexts where the test-taker is far removed from the point of test administration (garcía-peñalvo et al. 2021). it does raise the issue as to the usefulness and effectiveness of high-stakes once-off performance assessment and the need for the use of educational technology for more qualitatively disposed modes of assessment and learning. at a macro level, however, the rapid swing towards the commodification of university education (as marketable knowledge packages) with economic utility value has altered the character of university education. graduate attributes, for example, a neoliberal conception (wald & harland 2019) that speaks to the extent of the articulation of the competence set of the university product (student) with the expectations of the market (commerce and industry) has become part of common-speak unchallenged performative discourse. the application of neoliberal principles as they relate to university governance is increasingly evident (bleiklie 2018). the need to survive in a competitive neoliberal market for university education has seen university financial managers and human resource managers now securing powerful seats at the proverbial academic table – at university senates, a space that was once the preserve of academe. these non-academic entities have, over the years, systematically infused industry-inspired models for the management of academic personnel, for example, developing and implementing ‘sophisticated’ performance management systems designed to quantify and measure the rich qualitative work of academe. accountability, surveillance and performance regimes for university academics are commonplace in south african universities (maistry 2015). of concern for this article is the extent to which educational technology is implicated in performance pedagogy, where entrepreneurial subjects engage a pedagogy and academic culture enabled through technology (hall 2016) that is driven by a performance discourse – time-to-completion, throughput and output. the authors attempt in this article to debunk the notion of (education) technology’s neutrality in the neoliberal pedagogic transaction. in recognising educational technology as a key more-than-human actant in the deleuze and guattari (1987) higher education assemblage, alongside (less visible) actants such as neoliberal ideology and human actants, the incorporation of other desires that open other pathways (trajectories of flight) are envisioned: [n]ew assemblages … (as) fit(ting) together all the ways in which the world is characterised by flows, connections and becomings, whose functioning logic is about folds than structures, more complex than linear, more recursive than dialectical, more emergent than totalising… are more multiple and ephemeral … unstable and heterogeneous … enabling us to unpick the structures, dynamics and ruptures … mediating seriously, and with due agency, the non-human … an alternative ontological unit for thinking the social. (p. 149) educational technology and braidotti’s critical posthumanist perspective braidotti (2013) depicted the current times as a posthuman condition. the posthuman condition concerns a qualitative shift in thinking about what the unit of reference for human now is, given how human lives are imbricated with other inhabitants of the planet and with advanced technologies. human lives have, of course, always been imbricated with other inhabitants of the planet. haraway (2003) argued that the distinction between biophysical and social is flawed, and she depicted the synthesis between the two by her concept of natureculture. appreciating this synthesis has become important in contemporary times, because human arrogance has produced false dualisms between nature and culture that have resulted in human destruction of the earth and the possibility of the sixth extinction. as technologies produced by humans have advanced, human lives have become entangled with such technologies. haraway (2003) went as far as to aver that humans have become cyborg, because the distinction between humans and technology has already collapsed and there is no turning back. braidotti (2013) therefore proposed that the posthuman condition is characterised by a posthuman predicament. le grange (2020b) summarised braidotti’s posthuman predicament as follows: the (post)human predicament relates on the one hand to a historical moment in which global society finds itself, where the human has become a geological force capable of affecting all life on planet earth, giving rise to the anthropocene. and it is in the anthropocene that we now contemplate what it might mean to live in the post-anthropocene. on the other hand, the predicament relates to the fact that advanced technologies produced by humans might have capabilities of destroying all life on the planet. in other words, the predicament relates to how one adopts the positive dimension of the (post)human condition by embracing all of life and its interconnectedness, and, at the same time, how one resists the potential negative effects of advanced technologies (robotics, drones, artificial intelligence, biological warfare, commodification of the human body, and ecophages) without being technophobic. (p. 142) although the focus of this article is on technology, it is argued that human, biophysical and technology cannot be separated and so acknowledge the important synthesis of the three in what braidotti (2019:158) termed ‘zoe–geo–tech relations’. the latter concept will be returned to later in the article. in a world dominated by the anthropocene (human impact on the planet), humans and technology have advanced life through using technology for biotechnology, robotics, artificial intelligence, nanotechnology and the internet of things as some of the ways to make life comfortable, compatible and convenient for humans. these technological advancements have also accelerated what haraway (2015) termed capitalocene. coined by jason moore in 2009, this term rests well with haraway (2018) because she deems the humanist universalism of anthropocene as false and arrogant. capitalocene signifies neoliberal capitalism as the core of immense and irreversible destruction for humans and non-humans because it is driven by processes: [f]or making wealth through radical simplification, rooted in global transportations of peoples, plants, animals and microbes and in slavery, colonialism, hetero-normative familialism, racism and other forced systems of production and reproduction. (haraway 2018:80) such assemblages of human and biophysical technology are destructive because these ensembles are driven by human arrogance and greed through the negative form of power, potestas.1 these assemblages invite justified critical responses, such as what is captured in the critique of technology in the earlier section of this article that focuses on neoliberalism. staying with haraway for a moment, in order to overcome capitalocene, haraway (2018:79) argued that people should become chthonic, ‘of and for the earth, of and for its unfinished times’. she avers that life on earth should not have a capitalocene gaze but rather a chthulucene one that recognises ‘a kind of time–place for learning to stay with the trouble of living and dying in responsibility on a damaged earth’ (haraway 2018:81). when life on earth is not dominated by a neoliberal capitalist agenda, it could demonstrate and perform ‘the material meaningfulness of earth processes and critters’ as entangled ‘myriad temporalities and spatialities and myriad intra-active entities-in-assemblages – including the more-than-human, other-than-human, inhuman and human-as-humus’ (haraway 2018:81–82). what this could mean is that as cyborg, humans become entangled with the tensions created by a world that stands in the cracks of power forces (such as advanced technologies) of a more destructive captitalocene and that recognises the chthulucene as one pathway to navigate this space in a manner that is productive. in thinking about this, one might ask: how does one accept that ‘we are cyborg’, namely that human lives are entangled in advanced technology and will continue to be entangled? how can advanced technologies be engaged with in ways that are not destructive to humankind and planet, so as to advance all of life productively? haraway opens the door to the affirmative ethics that braidotti (2019) argued for. as mentioned, for braidotti (2013), the posthuman predicament contemplates how people might engage productively with technologies when these technologies have the potential to destroy all of life. the posthuman predicament is ‘an opportunity to empower the pursuit of alternative schemes of thought, knowledge and self-representation’ so that generative experimentation may be undertaken to ‘think critically and creatively about who and what we are actually in the process of becoming’ (braidotti 2013:12). the natureculture continuum creates one possible avenue to think about who and what people are becoming in the posthuman condition. as a continuum, nature and culture are not seen as binaries but rather multiple assemblages, ‘the self-organising (or auto-poietic) force of living matter’ that blurs any boundaries between the given (nature) and constructed (culture) so that they are in intra-action with each other (braidotti 2013:3). boundaries between nature and culture have been blurred or displaced by the complex configurations entangled in scientific and technological advances and in ways that have shifted the anthropocentric gaze that has long sustained life on earth (braidotti 2013:145). this continuum invokes a new image of the subject and of knowledge as ‘a complex assemblage of human and non-human, planetary and cosmic, given and manufactured’ (braidotti 2013:159). a matter-realist image which accounts for the workings of power in advanced and cognitive capitalism, grounded in specific locations and immanent relations, is proffered as it foregrounds transversal connections amongst and within the material and symbolic (braidotti 2013:159). matter-realism, according to braidotti (2013:158), is central to understanding the natureculture continuum because it recognises all life (human and all other) ‘as a non-essentialist brand of contemporary vitalism and as a complex system’. viewed in this way, it makes it possible to invigorate lines of flight that creatively embrace the challenges of advanced technology, without giving into melancholy or panic at its potential to destroy all life, as the planet remains on the brink of ecological disaster and the sixth extinction of both human and non-human inhabitants is looming. braidotti (2019) positioned herself within critical posthumanism as framed by feminist theory and neo-materialist philosophy. in other words, she affirms and advances feminist theory, not only within the social constructivist approach but also through emphasising the non-human, acknowledging the vital force present in all life, which she encrypts as zoe (life of all living beings). braidotti’s (2022) posthuman feminism renders woman, man, technology imperceptible or molecular – all modes of life are placed on an immanent plane so that there is no molar entity that enjoys ontological privilege. critical posthumanism necessitates the importance of learning to think differently about what people are in the process of becoming in an ever-changing world engendered by advanced technologies, climate change and capitalism. the unprecedented degree of technological intervention and intimacy humans have developed with technology, ‘cannot be reduced simply to an acute case of technological mediation’ because it is planetary and multi-scalar and ‘it affects social and environmental ecologies and individual physic and shared emotional landscapes’ (braidotti 2019:3). humans live in a technologically mediated world that cannot only be understood, challenged or even embraced as intellectual or discursive, because it also evokes tensions, paradoxes, anxiety and excitement on an affective level. the 21st century presents a ‘multi-dimensional complexity’ that recognises an affective relationality between humans, technology and all other forms of life that yearns for ‘a sustainable present and an affirmative and hopeful future’ (braidotti 2019:3). braidotti’s (2019:156) critical posthumanism presents a highly generative moment underpinned by affirmative ethics ‘as a collective practice of constructing social horizons of hope, in response to the flagrant injustices, the perpetuation of old hierarchies and new forms of domination’. one aspect hereof is about becoming posthuman. when humans become posthuman they invigorate affordances of advanced technologies that are hopeful through decentring anthropos [human as distinct and superior species] and bios [life of humans organised in society] in favour of zoe–geo–techno relations as a transversal entity that is ‘fully immersed in and immanent to a network of human and non-human relations’ (braidotti 2019:158). when anthropos and bios are decentred, then the human is removed from its ontological pedestal and placed on an immanent plane with animals and non-humans, bios becomes zoe and anthropos becomes zoe-centred egalitarianism. assemblages in which zoe–geo–techno relations are invigorated are the ones where the human (as anthropos and bios) becomes imperceptible. the affirmative ethics that braidotti (2019) argued for are a zoe-driven ethics of affirmation. such an affirmative ethics requires people to think differently about themselves, that ethics cannot be restricted to relations with other humans, but open to intra-actions with non-human, posthuman and inhuman forces. it is an ethics that overcomes moralistic notions such as the normative distinction between good and evil. good and evil are replaced by that between affirmative and negation, which could also be expressed as negative and positive affects and that an affirmative ethics does not deny negativity but instead reworks it outside dialectical oppositions (braidotti 2019). the posthuman subject therefore invigorates lines of connection with other humans and non-humans, recognising the vital force of life present in all entities, which makes such entities (modes of life) endure and continue so as to become other-than-itself. the posthuman subject does not deny that human lives are entangled with technology and that advanced technologies produce negative affects in neoliberal capitalist assemblages. instead, the posthuman subject reworks such negative affects and invigorates lines of connection and desire that empowers so that life (in all its forms) is advanced. as braidotti (2019) wrote: [a]ffirmative ethics is a clinical practice about detoxing from the poison of un-freedom, servitude and betrayal of our inner nature as dynamic entities of desire. the ethical good is accordingly equated with radical relationality aiming at affirmative empowerment. (p. 167) in the context of higher education, the ethical project is to rework assemblages where education has become the handmaiden to technology and where anthropos thrives. such reworking creates new assemblages in which both the human (as bios) and technology become imperceptible. in other words, assemblages of zoe–geo–techno relations can be generated that ensure the enduring and becoming of all life (including pedagogical lives). affirmative propositions for educational technology in higher education it was observed earlier in the article that the usage of educational technology is generous, so that it includes all technologies that are used in advancing education in universities. although the initial impetus for writing this article related to the increased use of technology in teaching, learning and assessment with the pivot to online education during the covid-19 pandemic, affirmative propositions shall be generated for educational technology use that transcends the pedagogical domain. an assemblage in which neither humankind nor technology dominate could open new possibilities to rethink and reimagine educational technology in the university. hopeful propositions are provided and not a rejection of technology or a technophobic standing. the intent is not to provide answers or solutions, but to hypothesise what could be. the authors’ propositions are generative and productive (positive force of power, potentia) so as to rethink and reimagine how people might ‘escape’ the neoliberalist university and the uncritical acceleration of online learning. ‘escape’ is placed in scare quotation marks because the neoliberal university cannot simply be wished away. posthuman desires might have to be invigorated within the neoliberal university. ‘escape’ from neoliberalism might only be possible by working through it. it is believed that invigorating hopeful affordances of educational technology is one way to create new assemblages in which both the human (as bios) and technology become imperceptible and in so doing ensure the enduring and becoming of all life (including pedagogical lives). the first proposition relates to the reality that the neoliberal university cannot be wished away. working through the neoliberal means that as lecturers (and as students), all the competencies (technical and pedagogical) needed to navigate the neoliberal university should be developed. the neoliberal university, as has been the case with all other incarnations of the university, is not homogeneous, and there always exists within the university multiple desires, whether potentially (virtually) or in actualised forms. being able to competently navigate the neoliberal university enables one to see its cracks, and in bottrell and manathunga’s (2018) terms, to seek out the cracks to prise it open. the first proposition is that posthuman desires can (and should) be invigorated in the neoliberal university through standing in its cracks and prising it open. in teaching, learning and assessment in higher education, the focus in on the human subject, the competencies the human subject acquires, its achievements and so forth. the human and social sciences are concerned with social constructions of the human subject, and in natural sciences disciplines such as anatomy and physiology, the human subject is viewed as biological. however, braidotti (2022) argues that the posthuman subject cannot be reduced to biology or a social construction and is a site of becoming where its relations and affects take primacy. the second proposition is that greater ecological consciousness and the reality of a technologically mediated world serve as entry points for understanding posthuman subjectivity, so that higher education pedagogy could become the unfolding of desires that generate positive relations with technology and the non-human, so that life is enhanced and sustained. the posthuman subject is ecological, embodied, embedded, enacted and extended (le grange 2018). reimagining the subject as ecological (in a technologically mediated world) also opens up new opportunities for research in the humanities and education, whereby the unit of analysis shifts from human subjects to posthuman assemblages that humans form part of. posthuman inquiry is by definition transdisciplinary and calls for disciplinary boundaries and the binary of natural sciences and the human and social sciences to be transcended. le grange (2017) pointed out that in the contemporary university assemblages of disciplinary knowledge are seen to be fragmenting and losing coherence, giving rise to transdisciplinary knowledge networks. many universities across the world now have transdisciplinary programmes, units or schools, as professors are witnessed leaving their disciplinary homes full-time or for part of their working weeks. in such units or schools, research is conducted and courses are taught on transdisciplinarity and themes such as sustainability. the third proposition is that these developments provide further opportunities to invigorate posthuman desires and to resist potential harmful constructions of transdisciplinary assemblages such as transhumanist ones. scientists such as the ceo of spacex, elon musk, place faith in science and technology to transcend humans beyond their natural abilities through technological advancements of brain-machine inferences, such as the development of robot surgeons (willmott 2022). posthuman inquiry involves ethics that is relational. the fourth proposition is that posthuman theory, which invites a (re)turn to zoe–geo–techno relations, opens up possibilities for reimagining ethics in higher education, both in actual research studies and how ethics is managed in the university. in most university ethical risk mitigating processes, ethics research committees operate in silos, where separate committees exist for research on or with animals, human research and biomedical research. opportunities now exist for rethinking such arrangements. when educational technology is an embodied screen in support of critical posthuman scholarship, it must accept that ‘thinking and knowing are not the prerogative of humans alone’ and how universities imagine knowledge creation should aptly embrace ‘the coexistence of multiple organic species and technological artefacts alongside each other’ (braidotti 2019:101). zoe, the non-human vital force of life, is the ‘transversal entity that allows us to think across previously segregated species, categories and domains’ (braidotti 2019:101). lykke (2018) foregrounds postdisciplinarity for posthuman knowledge and education practice in universities. one reason for this is because of its aspirations for ‘radical transformations of current knowledge production’ through transgressive ways of producing academic knowledge and engaging in educational activities that ‘destabilise, deconstruct and disrupt the hegemony of disciplines and [other] classic academic divides’ that compartmentalise knowledge into distinct disciplines or other canonised categories (lykke 2018:332–333). the fifth proposition is that zoe–geo–techno egalitarianism, which is central posthuman feminist theory makes possible much-needed rethinking and reimagining of different institutional modes of organising, new curricula and methodological tools. the possibilities vested in transversal conversations are invoked as hopeful and affirmative to create new assemblages in which both the human (as bios) and technology become imperceptible. the authors do not wish to conclude by dumping what was said in a nutshell for the reader. critical questions have been raised regarding the myth that educational technology might be the panacea, and an attempt has been made to break the frame of neoliberal capitalist higher education assemblages; affirmative propositions of zoe–geo–techno relations are offered. much more could be said on this topic and more affirmative propositions could be proliferated. the reader is invited to join the authors in doing so as new ways of becoming in higher education are mapped in the (post) anthropocene. acknowledgements competing interests the authors declare that they have no financial or personal relationships that may have inappropriately influenced them in writing this article. authors’ contributions all authors contributed to the development of the article. ethical considerations this article followed all ethical standards of research without direct contact with human or animal subjects. funding information this research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors. data availability data sharing is not applicable to this article as no new data were created or analysed in this study. disclaimer the views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any affiliated agency of the authors. references alkhalil, s.m., manasrah, a.a., dabbour, l.m., bashayreh, e.a., abdelhafez, e.m. & rababa, e.g., 2021, ‘covid-19 pandemic and the e-learning in higher institutions of education: faculty of engineering and technology at al-zaytoonah university of jordan as a case study’, journal of human behavior in the social environment 31(1–4), 464–745. https://doi.org/10.1080/10911359.2020.1829243 ball, s.j., 2012, ‘performativity, commodification and commitment: an i-spy guide to the neoliberal university’, british journal of educational studies 60(1), 17–28. https://doi.org/10.1080/00071005.2011.650940 bansilal, s., 2015, ‘exploring student teachers’ perceptions of the influence of technology in learning and teaching mathematics’, south african journal of education 35(4), 1–8. https://doi.org/10.15700/saje.v35n4a1217 bernard, r.m., borokhovski, e., schmid, r.f., tamim, r.m. & abrami, p.c., 2014. ‘a meta-analysis of blended learning and technology use in higher education: from the general to the applied’, journal of computing in higher education 26(1), 87–122. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12528-013-9077-3 bleiklie, i., 2018, ‘new public management or neoliberalism, higher education’, in j.c. shin & p. teixeira (eds.), encyclopedia of international higher education systems and institutions, pp. 1–6, springer, dordrecht. bottrell, d. & manathunga, c., 2018, resisting neoliberalism in higher education volume i: seeing through the cracks, springer, basingstoke, hampshire. braidotti, r., 2013, the posthuman, polity press, cambridge. braidotti, r., 2019, posthuman knowledge, polity press, cambridge. braidotti, r., 2022, posthuman feminism, polity press, cambridge. burns, r., 2020, ‘a covid-19 panacea in digital technologies? challenges for democracy and higher education’, dialogues in human geography 10(2), 246–249. cicha, k., rizun, m., rutecka, p. & strzelecki, a., 2021, ‘covid-19 and higher education: first-year students’ expectations toward distance learning’, sustainability 13(4), 1889. https://doi.org/10.3390/su13041889 deleuze, g., 1992, ‘postcript to societies of control’, october 59, 3–7. deleuze, g. & guattari, f., 1987, a thousand plateaus, university of minnesota press, minneapolis, mn. demuyakor, j., 2021, ‘covid-19 pandemic and higher education: leveraging on digital technologies and mobile applications for online learning in ghana’, shanlax international journal of education 9(3), 26–38. https://doi.org/10.34293/education.v9i3.3904 dewsbury, j.d., 2011, ‘the deleuze-guattarian assemblage: plastic habits’, area 43(2), 148–153. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-4762.2011.01006.x dlamini, r. & ndzinisa, n., 2020, ‘universities trailing behind: unquestioned epistemological foundations constraining the transition to online instructional delivery and learning’, south african journal of higher education 34(6), 52–64. https://doi.org/10.20853/34-6-4073 duruflé, g., hellmann, t. & wilson, k., 2018, ‘catalysing entrepreneurship in and around universities’, oxford review of economic policy 34(4), 615–636. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxrep/gry015 fataar, a. & badroodien, a., 2020, ‘special issue: emergent educational imaginaries during the covid-19 pandemic’, southern african review of education 26(1), 1–5. garcía-peñalvo, f.j., corell, a., abella-garcía, v. & grande-de-prado, m., 2021, ‘recommendations for mandatory online assessment in higher education during the covid-19 pandemic’, in d. burgos, a. tlili & a. tabacco (eds.), radical solutions for education in a crisis context: covid-19 as an opportunity for global learning, pp. 85–98, springer, singapore. hall, r., 2016, ‘technology-enhanced learning and co-operative practice against the neoliberal university’, interactive learning environments 24(5), 1004–1015. https://doi.org/10.1080/10494820.2015.1128214 haraway, d., 2003, the companion species manifesto: dogs, people, and significant otherness, prickly paradigm press, chicago, il. haraway, d., 2015, ‘anthropocene, capitalocene, plantationocene, chthulucene: making kin’, environmental humanities 6(1), 159–165. https://doi.org/10.1215/22011919-3615934 haraway, d., 2018, ‘capitalocene and chthulucene’, in r. braidotti & m. hlavajova (eds.), posthuman glossary, pp. 79–83, bloomsbury, london. hinks, t., 2021, ‘fear of robots and life satisfaction’, international journal of social robotics 13(2), 327–340. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12369-020-00640-1 karseth, b. & solbrekke, t.d., 2016, ‘curriculum trends in european higher education: the pursuit of the humboldtian university ideas’, in s. slaughter & b.j. taylor (eds.), higher education, stratification, and workforce development: competitive advantage in europe, the us, and canada, pp. 215–233, springer, switzerland. khoza, s.b., 2016, ‘can educational technology be defined from south african university facilitators’ understanding?’, in u.i. ogbonnaya & s. simelane-mnisi (eds.), empowering the 21st century learner: south africa international conference on educational technologies 2016 proceedings, april 24–26, manhattan hotel, pretoria, pp. 22–33. khoza, s.b. & biyela, a.t., 2020, ‘decolonising technological pedagogical content knowledge of first year mathematics students’, education and information technologies 25(1), 2665–2679. koole, m., 2020, ‘review of rosi braidotti (2019). posthuman knowledge’, postdigital science and education 2(3), 1052–1056. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42438-020-00139-y le grange, l., 2017, ‘(trans)disciplinary research (re)considered’, south african journal of higher education 31(6), 167–176. https://doi.org/10.20853/31-6-1656 le grange, l., 2018, ‘the notion of ubuntu and the (post)humanist condition’, in j. petrovic & r. mitchell (eds.), indigenous philosophies of education around the world, pp. 40–60, routledge, new york, ny. le grange, l., 2020a, ‘could the covid-19 pandemic accelerate the uberfication of the university?’, south african journal of higher education 34(4), 1–10. https://doi.org/10.20853/34-4-4071 le grange, l., 2020b, ‘the (post)human condition and decoloniality: rethinking and doing curriculum’, alternation 31, 119–142. https://doi.org/10.29086/2519-5476/2020/sp31a7 lykke, n., 2018, ‘postdisciplinarity’, in r. braidotti & m. hlavajova (eds.), posthuman glossary, pp. 332–335, bloomsbury, london. mahan, j., 2021, ‘lost in translation: innovating to failure. review of “the use and abuse of technology: in insurgent warfare”’, air & space power journal 35(4), 75–80. maistry, s., 2015, ‘accountability and surveillance: new mechanisms of control in higher education’, transformation: critical perspectives on southern africa 88(1), 25–35. https://doi.org/10.1353/trn.2015.0018 marimuthu, r., sankaranarayanan, b., ali, s.m., de sousa jabbour, a.b.l. & karuppiah, k., 2021, ‘assessment of key socio-economic and environmental challenges in the mining industry: implications for resource policies in emerging economies’, sustainable production and consumption 27(5), 814–830. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.spc.2021.02.005 moluayonge, g.e., 2020, ‘the use of modern educational technologies in remote learning in higher education during a pandemic: the case of covid-19 in cameroon’, journal of learning for development 7(3), 479–484. nimrod, g., 2018, ‘technophobia among older internet users’, educational gerontology 44(2–3), 148–162. https://doi.org/10.1080/03601277.2018.1428145 obi, u.n. & ticha, i.k., 2021, ‘student experiences and perceptions of remote teaching and learning at a university of technology’, gender and behaviour 19(1), 17262–17274. ong, a., 2007, ‘neoliberalism as a mobile technology’, transactions of the institute of british geographers 32(1), 3–8. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-5661.2007.00234.x passey, d., 2019, ‘technology-enhanced learning: rethinking the term, the concept and its theoretical background’, british journal of educational technology 50(3), 972–986. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjet.12783 peters, m.a., rizvi, f., mcculloch, g., gibbs, p., gorur, r., hong, m. et al., 2020, ‘reimagining the new pedagogical possibilities for universities post-covid-19: an epat collective project’, educational philosophy and theory 54(6), 1–44. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131857.2020.1777655 reading, a., 2014, ‘seeing red: a political economy of digital memory’, media, culture & society 36(6), 748–760. https://doi.org/10.1177/0163443714532980 schwab, k., 2017, the fourth industrial revolution, portfolio penguin, london. spinoza, b., 2001, ethics, wordsworth editions limited, hertfordshire. teräs, m., suoranta, j., teräs, h. & curcher, m., 2020, ‘post-covid-19 education and education technology “solutionism”: a seller’s market’, postdigital science and education 2(3), 863–878. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42438-020-00164-x unger, r.m., 2019, the knowledge economy, verso, london. verhoef, a.h., du toit, j. & du preez, p., 2020, ‘being-in-the-covid-19-world: existence, technology and embodiment’, acta theologica 40(2), 150–164. https://doi.org/10.18820/23099089/actat.v40i2.19 veroz, v., 2013, ‘the status of the gaze in surveillance societies’, in b. golder (ed.), re-reading foucault: on law, power and rights, pp. 127–150, routledge, new york, ny. wald, n. & harland, t., 2019, ‘graduate attributes frameworks or powerful knowledge?’, journal of higher education policy and management 41(4), 361–374. https://doi.org/10.1080/1360080x.2019.1613310 walwyn, d.r., 2020, ‘teaching on the edge of chaos: report on “the future of universities in a post-covid-19 world”’, south african journal of science 116(7/8), 1–2. https://doi.org/10.17159/sajs.2020/8404 watermeyer, r., crick, t. & knight, c., 2021, ‘digital disruption in the time of covid-19: learning technologists’ accounts of institutional barriers to online learning, teaching and assessment in uk universities’, international journal for academic development 10, 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1080/1360144x.2021.1990064 willmott, c., 2022, ‘the science of transhumanism: are we nearly there?’, mètode science studies journal 12, 161–167. https://doi.org/10.7203/metode.12.20710 footnotes 1. potestas is often contrasted with potentia, which is an immanent power: a productive power that connects and advances life. these latin words are now commonly used in academic literature to distinguish between the two forms of power. the french words for potestas and potentia are pouvoir and puissance, respectively. the distinction between the two forms of power has its origins in the fifth part of spinoza’s (2001, first published in 1677) seminal work entitled ethics. abstract introduction terrorism and counter-terrorism: education, security and intelligence securitisation theory and university securitisation the counter-terrorist campus: three models conclusion acknowledgements references about the author(s) liam gearon department of education, harris manchester college, university of oxford, united kingdom citation gearon, l., 2017, ‘the counter-terrorist campus: securitisation theory and university securitisation – three models’, transformation in higher education 2(0), a13. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v2i0.13 original research the counter-terrorist campus: securitisation theory and university securitisation – three models liam gearon received: 17 aug. 2016; accepted: 24 oct. 2016; published: 28 feb. 2017 copyright: © 2017. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract with intensified threats to global security from international terrorism, universities have become a focus for security concerns and marked as locus of special interest for the monitoring of extremism and counter-terrorism efforts by intelligence agencies worldwide. drawing on initiatives in the united kingdom and united states, i re-frame three – covert, overt and covert–overt – intersections of education, security and intelligence studies as a theoretical milieu by which to understand such counter-terrorism efforts. against the backdrop of new legislative guidance for universities in an era of global terrorism and counter-terrorism efforts by security and intelligence agencies and their governments, and through a review of open-source security/intelligence concerning universities in the united kingdom and the united states, i show how this interstitial (covert, overt and covert–overt) complexity can be further understood by the overarching relationship between securitisation theory and university securitisation. an emergent securitised concept of university life is important because de facto it will potentially effect radical change upon the nature and purposes of the university itself. a current-day situation replete with anxiety and uncertainty, the article frames not only a sharply contested and still unfolding political agenda for universities but a challenge to the very nature and purposes of the university in the face of a potentially existential threat. terrorism and counter-terrorism, as manifest today, may well thus be altering the aims and purposes of the university in ways we as yet do not fully know or understand. this article advances that knowledge and understanding through a theoretical conceptualisation: the counter-terrorist campus. introduction in 2013 i published an article for the long-established us journal religious education entitled ‘the counter terrorist classroom’ (gearon 2013b) following a foundational theoretical paper, ‘the securitization of religious education’ (gearon 2012b). the article addressed some pertinent issues around the intensified political and security themes in religious education classrooms. from this article and other publications (gearon 2012a, 2013a, 2015a, 2015b), i have contributed two conceptual frames to the broad field at the intersection of religion in education, ‘the politicisation of religion in education’ and ‘the securitisation of religion in education’. my basic argument, drawing on historical and contemporary analyses of the relationship between religion, politics, and pedagogy (gearon 2008; also gearon 2002a, 2002b, 2003; cf. de forest 2004) was that a determinable trend to use religion in education for political purposes had become subject to security agendas. one particular focus here had been the organisation for security and cooperation in europe (the osce) and its widely promulgated policy document the toledo guiding principles on teaching about religions and beliefs in public schools (osce 2007). i sought to ask a simple question, why was a body such as the osce, of cold war origins, interested in the teaching of religion in schools? this was part of an evidential base of international policy initiatives – including statements to the human rights council of the united nations by the special rapporteur for freedom of religion or belief advocating the toledo model – that led me to conceptualise how a politicisation of religion in education had increasingly become marked by a securitisation (for a trenchant critique of my analysis, see jackson 2015; my response will be published as part of the forthcoming proceedings of the triennial – 2016 – 12th international nuremberg forum, for an abstract see gearon 2016). in a special issue of the british journal of educational studies on education, security and intelligence studies (gearon 2015a) i provided some wider and deeper frames of reference to the historical as well as sharply emergent new relationship between education, security and intelligence studies. i identified three main aspects to the interface: the covert, the overt and the covert–overt. in this article, i show how this analysis has particular relevance to universities in the light of intensified threats to global security from international terrorism argue that universities have become a focus for security concerns and marked as locus of special interest for the monitoring of extremism and counter-terrorism efforts by intelligence agencies worldwide. drawing on initiatives in the united kingdom and united states, i reframe three – covert, overt and covert–overt – intersections of education, security and intelligence studies as a theoretical milieu by which to understand such counter-terrorism efforts. against the backdrop of new legislative guidance for universities in an era of global terrorism and counter-terrorism efforts by security and intelligence agencies and their governments, and through a review of open-source security/intelligence concerning universities in the united kingdom and the united states, i show how this interstitial (covert, overt and covert–overt) complexity can be further understood by the overarching relationship between securitisation theory and university securitisation. an emergent securitised concept of university life is important because de facto it will potentially effect radical change upon the nature and purposes of the university itself. a current-day situation replete with complexity, as well as anxiety and uncertainty, the article frames not only a sharply contested and still unfolding political agenda for universities but a challenge to the very nature and purposes of the university in the face of a potentially existential threat. terrorism and counter-terrorism, as manifest today, may well thus be altering the aims and purposes of the university in ways we as yet do not fully know or understand. this article is an attempt to further that knowledge and understanding through a theoretical conceptualisation, the counter-terrorist campus. terrorism and counter-terrorism: education, security and intelligence in 1955, sherman kent, former yale professor, himself now with a role within the newly formed us central intelligence agency (cia), provided a defining call for the professionalisation of the (us) security and intelligence agencies (allen 1985; dulles 2006; felix 1992; shulsky 2001) but their rootedness in their own disciplinary identity and academic literature: intelligence today is not merely a profession, but like most professions it has taken on the aspects of a discipline. it has developed a recognised methodology; it has developed a vocabulary; it has developed a body of theory and doctrine; it has elaborate and refined techniques. it now has a large professional following. what it lacks is a literature. (kent 1955:3; see also kent 1966, 1968) as davies states, ‘virtually all intelligence theory could be considered a footnote to kent’. kent’s conviction was that intelligence should be ‘a broad-based analytical discipline’ established ‘the precedent for most subsequent debate’ and was embodied by the maxim, ‘intelligence is knowledge’ (davies 2002). today, kent’s framing has produced not only a literature but a complex of ‘intelligence collection disciplines’ (lowenthal & clark 2015; walton 2010) which includes human intelligence; signals intelligence, imagery intelligence, measurement and signatures intelligence, and, critically, open-source intelligence (osint). the latter demonstrates the real breadth of intelligence gathering. defined by one us agency as the ‘broad array of information and sources that are generally available, including information obtained from the media (newspapers, radio, television, etc.), professional and academic records (papers, conferences, professional associations, etc.), and public data (government reports, demographics, hearings, speeches, etc.)’ (fbi 2016). it is in and through osint, which sweeps up any knowledge source not covered by the more operational, technical, technological and generally more directly open military and covertly espionage-related activity. there is thus a correlation between the new and now established diversity of intelligence disciplines and a proliferation of security-intelligence interest in a variety of forms and sources of knowledge (buzan & hansen 2009; buzan, waever & wilde 1998). this is a breadth of interest inconceivable at the origins of britain’s security and intelligence organisations, mi5 (the security service) (andrew 2010), mi6 (the secret intelligence service, sis) (jeffrey 2011) or the government communications headquarters (gchq) surveillance centre (aldrich 2011); the founding focus of two of these being given by their codenames, the m which prefaces the famous bodies of mi5 and mi6 imputes ‘military’. if the m-preface has remained, a narrow military focus has changed irrevocably. the present-day process of extension of security and intelligence interest emerged, most scholars agree, in the cold war when intelligence came to be seen as essential to peacetime as to war (dulles 2006; felix 1992; herman 1996; shulsky 2001). here the cold war witnessed the opening of an ideological front, which meant that ideas as much as arms were critical in a battle fought as much over ideology and propaganda as on the battlefield. risso’s (2014) subtle and revelatory examination of the nato information service, for example, shows just how extensive had become the cultural breadth of intelligence gathering beyond cold war preoccupations with the arms race and nuclear proliferation. in the academic disciplines of security and intelligence studies, this expansion of intelligence and security interests is defined by a porous delineation of two factions, ‘realists’ or ‘traditionalists’ arguing that war and military defence are the proper concern of security; and on the other hand, identified by the ‘critical security project’ those ‘wideners’ who extend security to incorporate an almost all-inclusive range of concerns for human security (culture, education, food, health, water and so forth) (dunn cavelty & mauer 2010). by any assessment, especially the random events of terror (as witnessed in 2016 alone), there is consensus which posits that if security is about protection against threat, such threat does not have its origins or its amelioration in military means. in these broad terms, as cavelty and mauer’s (2010) analysis concludes, although security ‘realists’ still maintain their military stance the ‘wideners’ of the ‘critical security project’ have won the day, for we can see, post-snowden, that no security analysis is preoccupied with military matters alone (greenwald 2013, 2015; harding 2014; pham 2013; svendsen 2013). today, intelligence gathering is now potentially about everything and everyone and not merely defined enemies and adversaries (aldrich 2014; iriss 2015; wright & kreissl 2013). it is by such moves that universities – as loci for knowledge generation – have become a critically important element in the unfolding, widening and deepening of security/intelligence knowledge gathering. intelligence and security agencies have far wider interests than terrorism and counter-terrorism. but today for self-evident reasons, these matters are of high priority. in the united kingdom, counter-terrorism measures include channel and prevent, underpinned by the security and counter-terrorism act 2015 (uk gov 2015). pan-european counter-terrorism initiatives, which are presented with their own challenges now the united kingdom have opted for ‘brexit’, are also widespread (argomanis 2009; argomanis, bures & kaunert 2014; bakker 2014; bellaby 2012). the u.s. department for homeland security is one of many agencies directed towards counter-terrorism and related threats (dhs 2015). academic terrorism studies and research are themselves now an established sub-discipline within security and intelligence studies, and though this is a relatively recent history it is, has been – preand post-9/11 – an extraordinarily intense one (breen-smyth et al. 2008). definitions of terrorism – and by logic therefore counter-terrorism – are themselves as diverse as the field itself is contested (gunning 2007). in the encyclopaedic handbook of terrorism research, schmid (2011:39–98, 99–157) identifies over 250 ‘academic, governmental and intergovernmental’ definitions. the relationship between terrorism and religion has of course come into contemporary focus but is of considerable typological range (schmid 2011:23–27; bibliographical sources, 532–539). i understand this notional counter-terrorism in broad terms as one of threat, it being existential in the sense it poses a threat to life. operationally and academically, this education, security and intelligence interface has long been concerned with an expanding notion of threat, beyond, that is, military associations of defence and warfare. operational frameworks to counter threat meet here academically at an interface of education, security and intelligence studies. education is defined here by its institutional contexts and formal settings where universities are concerned with the specific perceived benefits and opportunities provided by their privileged access to knowledge. this nexus of education, security and intelligence is not new, but it has intensified. both operationally and academically, the interface of education, security and intelligence has become more entangled. as the intensification of threat has widened so too have interests in the security and intelligences services, as directed by the governments they serve, widened and deepened their interest in universities. thus, amidst ever-increasing threats to global security from international terrorism universities have become intensified foci for security concerns and marked as loci of special interest for the monitoring of extremism as well as the mobilisation of counter-terrorism efforts by intelligence agencies worldwide. in the united kingdom, for instance, the security and counter-terrorism act 2015 (uk gov 2015) places new and direct responsibilities upon public bodies systematically to monitor and report on extremism and suspected terrorist activities, a move which on campuses has provoked some trenchant responses from universities (uuk 2012). in the united states, the relationship between universities and security and intelligence agencies has, at least over the last decade, become more engrained, with initiatives such as the intelligence community centers for academic excellence (ic cae) programme (odni 2005) and the subsequent formation of the international association for intelligence education (iafie). both the latter initiatives have been modelled on a close interrelationship between universities and the intelligence agencies such as the us’s cia and the federal bureau of intelligence (fbi). such types of securitisation – for this is inevitably how they must be defined – has encountered impassioned oppositions from many academic quarters, from university institutions and academic community alike (durodie 2016; glees 2015). these concerns, tensions and resistances to securitisation are also integral to security and intelligence studies as a discipline. it is this same tension in the field of security and intelligence studies, which finds itself articulated in more sporadic, less systematic ways in university responses to the securitisation of their campuses and academic life. securitisation theory and university securitisation an accessible and valuable synthesis of securitisation theory and securitisation studies is thus provided by rita taureck (2006). she frames securitisation theory as follows: a securitising move is in theory an option open to any unit because only once an actor has convinced an audience (inter-unit relations) of its legitimate need to go beyond otherwise binding rules and regulations (emergency mode) can we identify a case of securitisation. in practice, securitisation is thus far from being open to all units and their respective subjective threats. rather, it is largely based on power and capability and therewith the means to socially and politically construct a threat. in this way the study of security remains wide, but with restrictions pertaining to ‘who’ can securitise, it is neither unmanageable nor incoherent. the main argument of securitisation theory, she states, is that, ‘security is a (illocutionary) speech act, that solely by uttering “security” something is being done’. ‘it is by labelling something a security issue that it becomes one’ (taureck 2006; wæver 2004:13). by stating that a particular referent object is threatened in its existence, a securitising actor claims a right to extraordinary measures to ensure the referent object’s survival. the issue is then moved out of the sphere of normal politics into the realm of emergency politics, where it can be dealt with swiftly and without the normal (democratic) rules and regulations of policy-making. for security, this means that it no longer has any given (pre-existing) meaning but that it can be anything a securitising actor says it is. security is a social and intersubjective construction. that is the meaning of security (taureck 2006). this process of securitisation can be applied to a wide range of factors, situations, as the critical security project asserts, almost anything. for taureck (2006): to prevent ‘everything’ from becoming a security issue, a successful securitisation consists of three steps. these are (1) identification of existential threats, (2) emergency action and (3) effects on inter-unit relations by breaking free of rules. following buzan et al. (1998:6), for a situation to be securitised, then an existential threat must be posed; or as buzan et al. state, ‘if we do not tackle this problem, everything else will be irrelevant (because we will not be here or will not be free to deal with it in our own way)’ (buzan et al. 1998:24). such a ‘securitising move’ is the first step in the process of securitisation. in these terms, while comparative international data are sorely lacking, uk and us campuses at least can be said to have been (at least in part) securitised, have undergone some ‘securitising move’ as taureck puts it: in light, that is, of being utilised for either the furthering of security and intelligence aims and purposes through teaching and research or by becoming subject to legislation which compels them to comply with a government set security and intelligence agenda, here the countering of violent extremism and or terrorism. it is arguably this very sense of securitisation that universities, by being subject to such initiatives, are moving ‘out of the sphere of normal politics’, certainly out of what are perceived to be normal university politics, that may be the unstated, perhaps unrecognised concern of universities. more fundamental, then, than any of the explicitly made concerns expressed by universities and academics, i contend, as a hypothesis, that: it is not the specifics of challenge to academic integrity nor academic freedom or ethics or even intrusion that is resented and (within the legal limits of which this is possible) resisted but the very process of securitisation itself. we find this very same resistance mirrored in more explicit terms within the field of securitisation theory. for taureck, securitisation theory is ‘a tool for practical security analysis’ (and here we must bear in mind the limited sense in which an issue can become a security issue). she defends proponents of this view, notably wæver (as cited), against the ‘moral and ethical’ criticism levelled against it by scholars such as aradau (2004) and huysmans (1995). the moral and ethical concern is evident in challenges to the processes of securitisation into human (cultural, economic, health, social and political) life which – so such critics argue – provide not security and flourishing of the human subject but its endangerment. if we return to the issue of university securitisation, a simple example of this can be provided through the almost universally negative response initially by schools and (now that it explicitly applies to them) universities to the uk government’s prevent in all its manifestations, under successive labour, liberal-conservative and conservative administrations. in other words, the negative reaction is not so much political, still less party political, than negative as to the very processes of security intrusion itself. thus, because the prevent agenda aims to prevent radicalisation and counter extremism, its critics will say – again universally – that far from providing security for british life, it undermines it by alienating muslim majorities, the emphasis on ‘fundamental british values’, which the prevent programme also espouses simply further distancing people from them, often to the point of scorn and derision as to the notion of british values themselves (see richardson 2015). among the few senior uk academics who challenge this scepticism is glees (2015) for which exercise of academic free expression he has been subject to criticism (durodie 2016). we may, therefore, albeit provisionally, assert two things: (1) in the terms just outlined, both theoretical and legislative, that universities have to some degree become subject to a securitising move, a securitisation, university securitisation; and (2) securitisation theory provides some ready-made insights into this securitisation process within and across universities; it is concerned with threat, existential threat and terrorism as life-endangering is and remains an existential threat. however, if this marks only a modest level of theoretical possibility, the state of empirical investigation is markedly even less developed. what follows now is a hypothetical excursus, a prospective three-fold model of the notional ‘counter-terrorist campus’ to allow for further theoretical refinement and empirical testing. the three campus model is presented in ways which are intended to focus the broad terms of the theoretical framing securitisation theory and university securitisation, to make more precise the future locus/loci for any said empirical investigation. the counter-terrorist campus: three models although a typological analysis of more nuanced disciplinary or institutional complexity would be most welcome here, suffice to say that an historically rooted (see, for example, sinclair 1986; winks 1987), that is longstanding or chronic, and contemporaneously acute disciplinary and institutional relationship has and continues to exist between universities and security/intelligence agencies, between academic endeavour and security/intelligence operations. here we need be satisfied with an outline structural, that is relational–institutional model, with some hint of disciplinary correspondence, which reflects ways in which counter-terrorist and related security and intelligence activity is currently framed in relation to (uk and us) universities as part of the processes of securitisation: the covert model, the overt model and the covert–overt model (see also gearon 2015a). the covert model the covert model reflects the increased, essentially post-second world war and cold war, professionalisation of security and intelligence as an integral aspect of defence and wider civil preparedness for terrorist and other forms of threat to national and international instability. what i have termed as ‘the spy schools’ (gearon 2015a) are essentially university-level centres for education and training of espionage agents and all related activities concerned with security and intelligence gathering. the cia defines a spy as ‘someone who provides classified information about his country to another country’ where ‘cia operations officers recruit foreign agents (you could also call them spies) who pass information to cia’ (cia 2015). but the scope of what might be determined as ‘the spy school’ (gearon 2015a), extensive and ever-expansive, is (because secret) only in part encapsulated by the established intelligence-gathering disciplines detailed by lowenthal and clark (2015) – by their very nature secret (their activities protected by high levels of security clearance) and thus, at all operational levels (planning to execution) covert. although, historically, the cia (2015) notes that the ‘united states has carried out intelligence activities since the days of george washington’ distinctive features of the covert model today are its professionalisation (officers and agents are initiated into a particular career pathways), its systematisation (officers and agents are initiated into organisational networks as part of a political structure) and its educational and training institutionalisation. thus, today the us intelligence community consists of numerous bodies working under the overall remit of security and intelligence – the paramount cia for foreign intelligence, the fbi with a remit for national security with the department of homeland security, the national security association (nsa), the national geo-spatial agency, along with military intelligence departments of army, air force, navy and special forces, including the marines (johnson 2012). with oversight and coordination through the nsa, each has largely secret and high-security educational and training establishments, a covert model which corresponds in military departments closely with the traditionalist model of security as being concerned with the explicit demands of defence and war. the wider remit of the critical security project is demonstrated by the umbrella training and education facilitated by the institutions such as the defence intelligence agency (dia). although the dia make explicit their primary role as providing ‘military intelligence’ to ‘warfighters’, they also make plain the parallel university-level institutional model of operation but also a drawing upon all-source intelligence gathering which presumes an implicit and close relationship between developments in knowledge in the intelligence community and knowledge generation in academia as well as developments (scientific, technological in particular) in non-university settings (dia 2016). the most explicit parallel or covert model of high education-level training, education and research is in the us context self-evident from the relatively recent creation of the cia university (cia 2016). in the united kingdom, parallel professionalisation, systematisation and institutionalisation are evident across mi5, concerned with national security, mi6, or the sis, concerned with foreign intelligence and the gchq (aldrich 2011; andrew 2010; jeffrey 2011). as with the united states, army, air force and navy have their own sections concerns with defence intelligence (agrell 2012; johnson 2012; see also aldrich 2001; aldrich, andrew & wark 2008; aldrich, cormac & goodman 2014; dylan & alexander 2012). the functions, remit and limitations, including channels of accountability, were demarcated by the security service act 1989 and the intelligence services act 1994 (isa) (mi6 2015), recently subject to a major review by david anderson (2015). the iraq inquiry (chilcot 2016), the uk government–commissioned report into the iraq war, shows the extent to which the security and intelligences agencies are not only subject to critique but also how fundamental they are to the mechanisms of government itself, yet perhaps above all how critical the information gathered is integral to policy decisions around military engagement. the uk parliament’s joint intelligence committee (jic) thus provides ministers and senior officials with ‘co-ordinated interdepartmental intelligence assessments on a range of issues of immediate and long-term importance to national interests, primarily in the fields of security, defence and foreign affairs’. jic membership consists of the heads of mi5, mi6 and gchq, including those departments of state for which intelligence information gathered is critical, including home office, the foreign and commonwealth office and the ministry of defence, as well as the treasury. as aldrich et al. (2014) has shown, intelligence gathering has vast scope and multi-departmental impact. in the united kingdom as in the united states, its professionalisation, systematisation and institutionalisation demands, in terms of training, education and research a parallel, necessarily secret and operationally covert modus operandi where responsibility for education and training is maintained by uk ministry of defence, and within the intelligence-gathering agencies of mi5, mi6 and gchq, which, as within the united states, will remain, operationally, secret and covert. in the covert model, traditionalist military and defence preoccupations – in say defence academies – do not nowadays imply, nor perhaps did they ever, a disciplinary narrowness. the breadth of intelligence disciplines (lowenthal & clark 2015) is testimony to this. and if the practical military/defence applications of scientific knowledge and technology remain paramount (singer & friedman 2014), the wider societal implications of such are part of long-established programmes of civil preparedness and public education in the wake of security threats posed by chemical, biological, nuclear and radiological weaponry threats pre-dating the cold war (preston 2015; trenear-harvey 2011). the overt model if the covert model makes plain the continuance of operational secrecy in higher education, training and research, the pressures of increased public accountability, to some degree forced by prominent leaks (particularly post-snowden) reveal staggering scales of intelligence gathering, but has also as a result seen pressures for greater openness in terms of security and intelligence, and this includes relationships with universities. thus, for example, the intelligence studies section (iss) at the international studies association (isa) was created in the mid-1980s as an academic focal point for the presentation of intelligence studies scholarship, and the iss/isa remains a primary focal point for intelligence studies scholars worldwide. this us academic initiative had transatlantic links to the united kingdom and was part of a developing move to study the history of intelligence in britain, the leading historian of mi5 (andrew 2010). recent initiatives have shown, however, from recruitment to research, a marked multi-disciplinary engagement with universities and an attempt to cohere the objectives of higher education with the operational ends of the intelligence community (ic). the united states has led the way here with its ic cae programme (odni 2005). ostensibly fulfilling an equal opportunities mandate – ‘to create an increased pool of culturally and ethnically diverse, multi-disciplinary job applicants for the intelligence community’ – its overt strategy has been to build ‘long-term partnerships with selected universities across the nation to support the development of sustainable national security and intelligence education programmes which produce a cadre of qualified job applicants’. in other words, this initiative provides an opportunity for the ic to filter applicants as part of a recruitment process, which also serves both educational needs and security requirements, ‘… to design, develop and reshape intelligence and national security-related curricula in disciplines that align with ic mission-critical skills and competencies’ and ‘… to conduct intelligence & national security-related research in support of building intellectual capital within interdisciplinary fields of study …’ (dia 2015). this environment has enabled the flourishing of academic-intelligence community networks such as the iafie. iafie’s 11th (2015) conference was on ‘standards for intelligence education’. iafie has also defined benchmark standards for undergraduate and postgraduate courses, including on themes of intelligence history, intelligence organisations, intelligence planning, intelligence collection, intelligence analysis as well as counterintelligence and security. just as ‘[a]t least half’ of iafie graduates chose ‘cia careers’ (iafie 2016), in the united kingdom, recruitment to mi5, mi6 and the gchq manifests this new overt orientation, specifically targeting graduates across academic disciplines (mi5 2016; mi6 2016; gchq 2016). the iafie’s 12th anniversary and 1st international conference, at breda in the netherlands in june 2016 has formally expanded the international remit of the association, as its conference title indicates: ‘connecting intelligence education communities: europe, north america and beyond’ (iafie 2016). an increased openness has been marked also in the united kingdom, though less systematised, with the relationships between universities and the intelligence community; thus, the emergence of centres specifically for security and intelligence studies at aberystwyth, birmingham, brunel, buckingham, nottingham, st andrews, and warwick, among others. in this context, the oxford intelligence group, based at nuffield college, university of oxford, and the cambridge intelligence seminar, at cambridge university have a particularly close relationship between academic research and intelligence agencies, acting as conduits for the sharing of new knowledge in the field, in the disciplinary and operational sense. in broader security research terms, the uk government through research councils united kingdom have provided substantial – though compared to the united states, trifling – resources into ‘new security challenges’ (for a critical assessment of recent research on terrorism, radicalisation and violence, see tilley, bouhana & braithwaite 2014). the covert–overt model the idea that university academics might be covertly engaged in espionage while overtly engaged in perfectly open scholarly duties has long been the stuff of fiction. from the classic 1930s and 1940s spy-thrillers of eric ambler and graham greene to john le carré, len deighton and ian fleming; and no little part of the fascination of these shadowy figures’ covert passage through the world of international espionage has been in their educational formation, at school and university, which all the spy novelists listed use to varying degrees to fill in a backstory to their intrigues. contemporary novels of the genre also have an uncanny tendency to have art (covertly of course) mirror life. against the backdrop of international terrorism, war in iraq and uk–us complicity in the extraordinary rendition and torture of terrorist suspects, the bestselling author robert harris’s book the ghost tells the story of an author ghost-writing the story of a former british prime minister, and that the pm’s wife, unknown to the pm himself, had been secretly recruited as a student by a distinguished harvard professor into the cia, part of an american plot to influence british foreign policy. and the number of spies who turn themselves to fiction is notable, including some from the highest ranks of intelligence such as stella rimington, former head of mi5. indeed, the spy novel itself has itself flourished; interestingly, perhaps in our era of ever greater openness, there is a seemingly insatiable appetite for the ultimate in privacy. however, the undercover or covert operation of academics within universities is not simply a fictional construction. indeed, because of the very secretive nature of intelligence operations, we are not likely to know the extent of such covert operations, except on occasions of scandalised exposure. in june 2006, for example, the times higher education reported that ‘cia outrages uk academics by planting spies in classroom’. with overtures of graham greene’s the quiet american, it proclaimed that ‘the revelation that the quiet american studying at a university near you might be a trainee spy brought cries of consternation from british anthropologists …’ in 2012, bloomberg technology (2012) reported on the claim that us universities were ‘infected by foreign spies’. yet, there should be no surprise here. we are reminded again by sinclair (1986) and winks (1987) of the significant historical role higher education has had in and on the world of security and intelligence. if the cold war was important for the realisation (notably with the klaus fuchs atomic spy scandal) that universities could be decisive centres for scientific and technological knowledge, it was (again risso 2014) also a time when the arts, humanities and social sciences also came to be regarded as of security and intelligence use (piette 2009; saunders 2013). as geopolitical threats alter, so do security and intelligence responses, and in an age of global terrorism, counter-terrorism efforts have sought new relationships with universities, where multi-disciplinary solutions can be sought for new problems (crosston 2013). however, suspicions remain that the apparent openness of academic endeavour activity is but a ruse for the covert securitisation of universities (zwerling 2011). such anxieties often have well-founded evidence to support their claims (see price 2004). high-profile exposes of intelligence agents’ undercover activity while ostensibly undertaking a university education was provided by the case of valerie plame and seemed to involve issues at a high level of state, the exact nature of which remain classified (nyt 2005). conclusion multiple levels of concern arise here, from integrity to intrusion, to academic freedom, freedom of speech, thought and expression, to anxieties over surveillance and professional trust between colleagues and between staff and students (uuk 2012; russell group 2015). however, at the most foundational level, the most basic concerns from the academic community are, i sense, more visceral. they arise over the academic uses or application of knowledge, complicity of academics in security and especially direct military engagement. as suggested, more fundamental than any commonly and explicitly stated concerns expressed by universities and academics, it is likely not simply the specifics of challenge to academic integrity nor academic freedom or ethics or even intrusion that is resented and (within the legal limits of which this is possible) resisted but the very process of securitisation itself. yet, from a security and intelligence perspective, the very purposes of the university are increasingly seen as potentially serving the objectives of the security and intelligence agencies. given the secretive nature of the latter, it can be assumed this relationship has not always, indeed we know it has not always, been open. it has become more contested today because of the greater openness and become intensified with current terrorist threats. this current terrorist threat is not likely in the near future to disappear. nor are new forms of an old relationship between security/intelligence agencies and universities likely therefore to lessen. an emergent securitised concept of university life is important because de facto it will potentially effect radical change upon the nature and purposes of the university itself. it seems, then, that as in so much else sherman kent was prescient in his assessments. he had, as we have noted, long ago suggested the need for security and intelligence to have its own determinant literature. it now has this. sherman kent also provided literature with the aphorism that ‘intelligence is knowledge’. in this article, i have intimated in some brief, concisely elaborated ways, the manner in which the intelligence-gathering impulse of security agencies have gravitated to those types of institution we call universities, where knowledge provides their very raison d’etre. how far the foundational aims and purposes of the university itself as an institution will be (further) transformed is a matter of concern for those working in and across all academic disciplines. but we should not shield ourselves from self-evident open-source facts that the aims of terrorism as manifest today may well be altering the aims and purposes of the university in ways we as yet do not fully know or understand. acknowledgements competing interests the author declares that he has no financial or personal relationships which may have inappropriately influenced him in writing this article. references agrell, w., 2012, ‘the next 100 years? reflections on the future of intelligence’, intelligence and national security 27(1), 118–132. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02684527.2012.621601 aldrich, r.j., 2001, the hidden hand: britain, america and cold war secret intelligence, john murray, london. aldrich, r.j., 2011, gchq, the uncensored story of britain’s most secret intelligence agency, harper, london. aldrich, r.j., andrew, c. & wark, w.k. (eds.), 2008, secret intelligence: a reader, routledge, london. aldrich, r.j., cormac, r. & goodman, m.s., 2014, spying on the world: the declassified documents of the joint intelligence committee, 1936–2013, edinburgh university press, edinburgh. allen, g.w., 1985, ‘the professionalisation of intelligence’, studies in intelligence 26(1), 23–31. anderson, d., 2015, the terrorism acts in 2014, report of the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, viewed 1 december 2016, from https://terrorismlegislationreviewer.independent.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/terrorism-acts-report-2015-print-version.pdf andrew, c.m., 2010, the defence of the realm: the authorised history of mi5, london, penguin. aradau, c., 2004, ‘security and the democratic scene, desecuritisation and emancipation’, journal of international relations and development 7(4), 388–413. http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.jird.1800030 argomanis, j., 2009, ‘post-9/11 institutionalisation of european union counterterrorism, emergence, acceleration and inertia’, european security 18(2), 151–172. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09662830903460103 argomanis, j., bures, o. & kaunert, c., 2014, ‘a decade of eu counter-terrorism and intelligence: a critical assessment’, intelligence and national security 30(2–3), 191–206. bakker, e., 2014, ‘eu counter-radicalisation policies: a comprehensive and consistent approach?’, intelligence and national security 30(2–3), 281–305. bellaby, r., 2012, ‘eu counter-radicalisation policies: a comprehensive and consistent approach’, intelligence and national security, 30(2–3), 93–117. breen-smyth, m., gunning, j., jackson, r., kassimeris, g. & robinson, p., 2008, ‘critical terrorism studies – an introduction’, critical studies on terrorism 1(1), 1–4. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17539150701868538 buzan, b. & hansen, l., 2009, the evolution of international security studies, cambridge university press, cambridge. buzan, b., waever, o. & de wilde, j., 1998, security: a new framework for analysis, lynne rienner publishers inc., boulder, co. cavelty, m.d. & mauer, v., 2010, routledge handbook of security studies, routledge, london. chilcot, j., 2016, the iraq inquiry, viewed 1 december 2016, from http://www.iraqinquiry.org.uk/the-report/ cia, 2015, about cia, viewed 1 december 2016, from https://www.cia.gov/about-cia/faqs cia, 2016, central intelligence agency, viewed 1 december 2016, from https://www.cia.gov/index.html crosston, m., 2013, ‘occam’s follies, real and imagined biases facing intelligence studies’, journal of strategic security 6(3), 40–53, viewed 1 december 2016, from http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/jss/vol6/iss3/4 davies, p., 2002, ‘ideas of intelligence, divergent concepts and national institutions’, harvard international review 24(3), 62–66. davis, j., 2002, ‘sherman kent and the profession of intelligence analysis’, the sherman kent center for intelligence analysis, occasional papers, vol. 1, no. 5, viewed 1 december 2016, from https://www.cia.gov/library/kent-center-occasional-papers/vol1no5.htm dhs, 2015, department for homeland security, viewed 1 december 2016, from http://www.dhs.gov/ dia, 2015, intelligence community centers for academic excellence (ic cae), viewed 1 december 2016, from http://www.dia.mil/training/iccentersforacademicexcellence.aspx dia, 2016, defence intelligence agency, viewed 1 december 2016, from http://www.dia.mil/ dulles, a., 2006, the craft of intelligence, the lyons press, guilford, ct. durodie, b., 2016, ‘securitising education to prevent terrorism or losing direction?’, british journal of educational studies 64(1), 21–35. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00071005.2015.1107023 dylan, h. & alexander, m.s. (eds.), 2012, ‘a century of british intelligence’, intelligence and national security 27(1), 1–4. fbi, 2016, intelligence branch, federal bureau of intelligence, viewed 1 december 2016, from https://www.fbi.gov/about/leadership-and-structure/intelligence-branch felix, c., 1992, a short course in the secret war, madison books, lanham, md. de forest, j., 2004, ‘liam gearon the human rights handbook: a global perspective for education, editor’s review article’, harvard educational review, fall, 340–345, viewed 1 december 2016, from http://www.hepg.org/her/abstract/47 gearon, l., 2002a, citizenship through religious education, routledge, london. gearon, l., 2002b, human rights and religion: a reader, sussex academic press, brighton. gearon, l., 2003, the human rights handbook: a global perspective for education, trentham, stoke-on-trent and sterling, va. gearon, l., 2008, ‘religion, politics and pedagogy: historical contexts’, british journal of religious education 30(2), 93–102. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01416200701843833 gearon, l., 2012a, ‘european religious education and european civil religion’, british journal of educational studies 60(2), 151–169. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00071005.2012.671929 gearon, l., 2012b, ‘the securitization of religion in education’, in t. van der zee & t. lovat (eds.), new perspectives in religious and spiritual education, pp. 215–233, waxmann, münster. gearon, l., 2013a, religious education masterclass, bloomsbury academic, london. gearon, l., 2013b, ‘the counter terrorist classroom: religion, education, and security’, religious education 108(2), 129–147. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00344087.2013.767660 gearon, l., 2015a, ‘education, security and intelligence studies’, british journal of educational studies 60(3), 263–279, viewed 1 december 2016, from http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rbje20/63/3 gearon, l., 2015b, on holy ground: the theory and practice of religious education, routledge, london. gearon, l., 2016, ‘the politicization and securitization of religion in education a response to a rejoinder’, in 12th triennial international nuremberg forum, viewed 1 december 2016, from http://www.nuernberger-forum.uni-erlangen.org/forum2016/abstracts/abstract_gearon.pdf glees, a., 2015, ‘intelligence studies, universities and security’, british journal of educational studies 63(3), 281–310. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00071005.2015.1076567 golden, d., 2012, american universities infected by foreign spies detected by fbi, bloomberg technology, viewed 1 december 2016, from http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2012-04-08/american-universities-infected-by-foreign-spies-detected-by-fbi greenwald, g., 2013, ‘xkeyscore, nsa tool collects nearly everything a user does on the internet’, the guardian, viewed 1 december 2016, from http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/31/nsa-top-secret-program-online-data greenwald, g., 2015, no place to hide, edward snowden, the nsa and the surveillance state, picador, london. gunning, j., 2007, ‘babies and bathwaters: reflecting on the pitfalls of critical studies on terrorism’, in isa 2007 annual convention, chicago, il, february 28, 2007, viewed 1 december 2016, from https://www.aber.ac.uk/en/media/departmental/interpol/csrv/babies-and-bathwaters---isa2007.pdf harding, l., 2014, the snowden files: the inside story of the world’s most wanted man, guardian faber books, london. herman, m., 1996, intelligence power in peace and war, cambridge university press, cambridge. huysmans, j., 1995, ‘migrants as a security problem, dangers of “securitising” societal issues’, in r. miles & d. thraenhart (eds.), migration and european integration: the dynamics of inclusion and exclusion, pp. 53–72, pinter, london. iafie, 2016, international association for intelligence education, viewed 1 december 2016, from http://www.iafie.org/ iriss, 2015, increasing resilience in surveillance societies, viewed 1 december 2016, from http://irissproject.eu/ jackson, r., 2015, ‘the politicisation and securitisation of religious education: a rejoinder’, british journal of educational studies 63(3), 345–366. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00071005.2015.1069257 jeffrey, k., 2011, the history of the secret intelligence service, bloomsbury, london. johnson, l.k., 2012, the oxford handbook of national security intelligence, oxford university press, oxford. kent, s., 1955, ‘the need for an intelligence literature’, studies in intelligence 1, 1–11. kent, s., 1966, strategic intelligence for american world policy, princeton university press, princeton, nj. (originally published 1949) kent, s., 1968, ‘valediction’, studies in intelligence 12(1), 1–11. lowenthal, m.m. & clark, r.m., 2015, the five disciplines of intelligence collection, cq press, thousand oaks, ca. nyt, 2005, ‘the miller case: a notebook, a cause, a jail cell and a deal’, viewed 1 december 2016, from http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/16/us/the-miller-case-a-notebook-a-cause-a-jail-cell-and-a-deal.html?_r=0 odni, 2005, guidance and procedures of the intelligence community centers of academic excellence program, office of the director of national intelligence, viewed 1 december 2016, from https://www.nsu.edu/assets/websites/iccae/pdf/guidance-and-procedures.pdf osce, 2007, the toledo guiding principles on teaching about religions and beliefs in public schools, organisation for security and cooperation in europe, vienna, viewed 1 december 2016, from http://www.osce.org/odihr/29154?download=true pham, c., 2013, ‘effectiveness of metadata information and tools applied to national security’, library philosophy and practice, paper 1077, viewed 1 december 2016, from http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2608&context=libphilprac piette, a., 2009, the literary cold war, 1945 to vietnam, edinburgh university press, edinburgh. preston, j., 2015, ‘a golden age of security and education? adult education for civil defence in the united states 1950–1970’, british journal of educational studies 63(3). http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00071005.2015.1076565 price, d.h., 2004, threatening anthropology: mccarthyism and the f.b.i.’s surveillance of activist anthropologists, duke university press, durham, nc. richardson, r., 2015, ‘british values and british identity: muddles, mixtures, and ways ahead’, review of education 13(2), viewed 1 december 2016, from http://www.insted.co.uk/london-review-education.pdf risso, l., 2014, propaganda and intelligence in the cold war: the nato information service, routledge, london. russell group, 2015, russell group response to the consultation on the counter-terrorism bill draft statutory guidance, viewed 1 december 2016, from http://www.russellgroup.ac.uk/uploads/57-russell-group-response-to-consultation-on-the-prevent-duty-guidance-as-described-by-the-counter-terrorism-and-secrurity-bill-2015.pdf saunders, f.s., 2013, the cultural cold war: the cia and the world of arts and letters, new press, new york schmid, a.p., (ed.), 2011, the routledge handbook of terrorism research, routledge, london. scott, l. & hughes, r.g., (eds.), 2008, intelligence, crises and security, prospects and retrospects, routledge, london. shulsky, a.n., 2001, silent warfare, understanding the world of intelligence, 3rd edn., brassey’s, new york. sinclair, a., 1986, the red and the blue: intelligence, treason and the universities, widenfeld & nicolson, london. singer, p.w. & friedman, a., 2014, cybersecurity and cyberwar, what everyone needs to know, oxford university press, oxford. svendsen, a.d.m., 2013, intelligence cooperation and the war on terror: anglo-american security relations after 9/11, routledge, new york, ny. taureck, r., 2006, ‘securitisation theory and securitisation studies’, journal of international relations and development 9, 53–61, viewed 1 december 2016, from http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/1082/1/wrap_floyd_securitisation_theory_and_securitisation_studies_wrap.pdf tilley, n., bouhana, n. & braithwaite, a., 2014, evaluation of the esrc/fco/ahrc new security challenges: radicalisation and violence – a critical assessment initiative, esrc, london, viewed 1 december 2016, from http://www.esrc.ac.uk/files/research/evaluation-and-impact/new-security-challenges-radicalisation-and-violence-initiative/ trenear-harvey, g.s., 2011, historical dictionary of atomic espionage, scarecrow press, lanham, md. uk gov, 2015, counter terrorism and security act 2015, viewed 1 december 2016, from http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2015/6/contents/enacted uuk, 2012, oversight of security-sensitive research material in uk universities, guidance, viewed 1 december 2016, from http://www.universitiesuk.ac.uk/highereducation/pages/oversightofsecuritysensitiveresearchmaterial.aspx#.vssqee3bloy wæver, o., 1998, ‘security, insecurity and asecurity in the west-european non-war community’, in e. adler & m. barnett (eds.), security communities, pp. 69–118, cambridge university press, cambridge. wæver, o., 2004, ‘aberystwyth, paris, copenhagen: new schools in security theory and the origins between core and periphery’, isa conference, montreal, march 17–20, 2004. walton, t., 2010, challenges in intelligence analysis, lessons from 1300 bce to the present, cambridge university press, cambridge. winks, r.w., 1987, cloak & gown, scholars in the secret war, 1939–1961, william morrow and company, inc., new york. wright, d. & kreissl, r., 2013, european responses to the snowden revelations, iriss, viewed from http://irissproject.eu/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/iriss_european-responses-to-the-snowden-revelations_18-dec-2013_final.pdf zwerling, p., 2011, the cia on campus: essays on academic freedom and the national security state, mcfarland & co jefferson, nc. abstract introduction: student leadership and transformation in south african universities student leadership context in south africa design and methods findings discussion: propositions for the student leadership transformation role conclusion acknowledgements references about the author(s) neo t. pule department of psychology, faculty of humanities, university of the free state, bloemfontein, south africa michelle may department of industrial and organisational psychology, faculty of economic and management sciences, university of south africa, pretoria, south africa citation pule, n.t. & may, m., 2021, ‘insights on student leadership using social dream drawing: six propositions for the transformation role of south african student leaders’, transformation in higher education 6(0), a138. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v6i0.138 original research insights on student leadership using social dream drawing: six propositions for the transformation role of south african student leaders neo t. pule, michelle may received: 13 july 2021; accepted: 13 oct. 2021; published: 14 dec. 2021 copyright: © 2021. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract background: student leadership is central to the south african transformation agenda in higher education. even so the understanding of student leadership, especially regarding its purpose and its implementation varies across contexts. aim: this article aims to present propositions for student leadership practice considering the current diverse and often fragmented understanding of student leadership. such propositions should aid the formation of a streamlined multi-levelled and systemic co-curriculum for student leadership that equips student leaders for their significant transformation task. setting: the study was conducted in a south african higher education institution within the associated student affairs department. the university where data was collected is referred to as a historically white university. methods: social dream drawing was utilised to elicit data that enabled insights into student leadership. the data was analysed by pluralistically fusing discourse analysis with a psychodynamic interpretation. results: the findings reveal a preoccupation in student leadership with south african historical narratives and the implications thereof for the present, and future, of the country. additionally, student leaders indicated that there are complex psychological implications that result from their leadership experiences. six propositions for student leadership are presented. conclusion: the insights gained from the research study have the potential to contribute positively to higher education legislation and student development practice, particularly regarding the psychological conflicts that student leaders experience, and to the possible ways to resolve these. because student leaders are key to the transformation agenda in south africa, these insights can contribute directly towards their suitability in fulfilling this role. keywords: identity; diversity; higher education; social dream drawing; student leadership support. introduction: student leadership and transformation in south african universities transformation in south africa and its universities followed the inception of a democratic south africa in 1994 (jansen 2004; le grange 2011). universities, therefore, are key contributors to this transformation, including cultivating an inclusive society (maassen & cloete 2006). responding to the democratic shifts, the green paper on higher education transformation of 1996 in south africa (bengu 1996) evolved its description of student leadership. the working understanding of student leadership continues to evolve (jansen 2004; luescher, webbstock & bhengu 2020), resulting in varied and uneven understanding and praxis of this leadership, including its formal and informal roles and settings (getz & roy 2013; luescher-mamashela & mugume 2014). nevertheless, student leadership remains central to the transformation agenda in south african universities because of its legislated participation (luescher-mamashela & mugume 2014) and its influence on institutional culture evidenced by various student movements (griffiths 2019). students also perceive their leadership to be politically charged (luescher-mamashela & mugume 2014; luescher et al. 2020). the landscape of student leadership in the post-apartheid era has seen radical change and shifting priorities (jansen 2004; swartz et al. 2019) including the significant role of student leaders in social transformation (speckman 2015), curriculum transformation (du preez, verhoef & simmonds 2016; griffiths 2019), and in issues of access, diversity and diversification (cross & carpentier 2009). considering the transformational and deconstructed space of higher education in south africa (bazana & mogotsi 2017), it is essential to explore student leadership operating in this space towards achieving alignment, consolidation of leadership practices, to ensure effectiveness and provide proactive student support. we explored the insights that could be derived about the south african transformation role of student leaders, by studying group–as–a–whole, through social dream drawing where group and societal dynamics could emerge with the intention that these insights could potentially inform transformation. freud and jung are known for dream-work with a clinical, individualistic, and diagnostic focus (long 2013, 2017). freud conceptualised dreams as linked to pathology; thus, a physiological mechanism protecting or guarding us against sleep interruption (schneider 2010). accordingly, dreams cannot tell us about our awakened reality. jung saw dreams as psychic mechanisms communicating essential messages important for individuation (jung 1936). although differently conceptualised, both freud and jung referred to dream analysis as a means to acquire knowledge about the unconscious (long 2017). aligned to bion, however, our view asserts that dreams are psychological work in progress for the emotional processing of lived experiences (schneider 2010). therefore, in the dreaming process, lived experiences are made available for meaning-making rather than analysed or interpreted (mersky 2008). dreams are consequently conceptualised as the bridge between conscious and unconscious thinking in a two-way communication during sleep and awaken life (mersky 2008; schneider 2010). we will therefore use narrated dream and dream drawings to explore and explain experiences of student leaders from a group, organisational and societal perspective without focusing on the individual participants respectively (long 2013). mersky (2008) formulated social dream drawing, grounded in social dreaming that was proposed by lawrence (1998) by integrating lawrence’s and bion’s work. social dream drawing is based on the idea that dreams represent the group’s thinking (or even unconscious thoughts), which can be revealed using a stimulus, namely a drawing. dream drawings are therefore symbols, signs, and signifiers that reveal the associative unconscious, which is the unconscious interconnection within a group (long 2013), which jung (1936) calls the collective unconscious. jung’s (1936) collective unconscious is composed of multiple individual (and independent) psyche of those in the collective rather than a mental network of the collective, which is interconnected. social dream drawing, however, elicits a social and interconnected collective process. this process is embedded in each group member’s dream, stimulating the group to co-construct social meaning without focusing on the individual dreamer. because of differences, such as, age, race, gender and ideology, and its concomitant anxieties, consequent unconscious dynamics amongst group members evolve into a tacit, interdependent, unconscious and collusive lattice or set of connection which gives rise to the group’s mentality, that is, the group-as-a-whole (may 2010; wells 1985). insights derived from the group-as-a-whole therefore can contribute fresh perspectives and new dimensions to student leadership literature, understanding and practice. considering the international and continental landscape of student leadership, this leadership in south africa contributes a unique transformation role given its historical, political, socio-economic and psychological milieu (sebola 2019). additionally, the apparent dearth of scholarship on transformation (du preez et al. 2016), especially on student leadership capacity, necessitates academic exploration of the topic. the expectations are higher on these leaders because of this role, contributing anxiety and a leadership burden to them (pule, in press). although two decades into democracy, south african student leaders continue to live in a ground-breaking era where they are faced with the historic systemic dynamics of the country’s transformation process (luescher et al. 2020). student leadership context in south africa south african student leadership takes on a different form in south africa as compared to other contexts (luescher-mamashela 2013; sebola 2019). predominantly, south african student leadership relates to student governance or student representation as indicated by the green paper on higher education transformation of 1996 (bengu 1996), and the higher education act, no. 101 of 1997 (sebola 2019). these acts mandate south african universities to recognise student representatives in the highest level of decision making within university governance. this amendment to the higher education act resulted from the transformation efforts of the south african higher education sector, post-apartheid (luescher-mamashela & mugume 2014). hence, student representative councils (srcs) are the formally institutionally recognised student organisation of leadership in universities (speckman 2015). additionally, speckman (2015), explained that whilst srcs enjoy the recognition by university management as guided by the higher education act, this leadership occurs beyond srcs by including its sub-councils and residence committees. alongside elected leaders, students involved in leadership programmes concentrate mainly on the professional aspects of leadership which are linked to the needs of corporate industry (getz & roy 2013; mukoza & goodman 2013). such programmes include the south african washington international programme (sawip), the university of the free state leadership for change programme, the programme of the thabo mbeki african leadership institute at the university of south africa (unisa), and the participation of the university of the witwatersrand (wits) in the common purpose and the future health leaders programme of the university of cape town. the goal of these programmes is to equip students with leadership competencies including high-level decision-making capacity (mukoza & goodman 2013). however, the programmes lack the mandate for its students to implement this competence in the context of a university (luescher-mamashela 2013; luescher-mamashela & mugume 2014). as with transformation in higher education (du preez et al. 2016), global pressures and activism continue to exert a systemic outcome on south african students (griffiths 2019). within student leadership, this can be mainly evident through student activists. the role of these activists was recently highlighted through the #fallist movements (griffiths 2019; swartz et al. 2019). #fallist movements were student protests, particularly those which occurred during 2015/2016, which foregrounded demands for free education, and demonstrated a general dissatisfaction of young south africans regarding unfulfilled promises of freedom (swartz et al. 2019). student leaders involved in activism succeeded in attracting the attention of university management and the wider university community despite these leaders not belonging to a particular formal structure. their influence led to changes in the financial and funding models of universities, including other policies relating to access to education and student success (becker 2017). njiokiktjien (2019) explained that the so-called ‘born frees’ who are south african youth born after 1994, are looking for tangible transformation. observationally, student activists have the potential to tap into this need even as non-positional leaders. insights to aid student leadership support for the south africa transformation role insights into the student leadership transformation role can highlight the collective impact strategy paradigm. this strategy offers a perspective that can span the matrix of role players and the development of students, in a culture of evidence that informs co-curricular efforts (culp & dungy 2012). it is undeniable that student leaders are the future leaders of the country (luescher et al. 2020); thus, understanding student leadership involves obtaining insight into the future leadership of a country. currently an obstacle for student leadership in the researchers’ observation, is that students elected to governance structures are unlikely to have been intentionally and specifically equipped with the necessary graduate attributes to perform their mandated role. this limits their prospects even though they are presented with high-level leadership opportunities within university structures (luescher-mamashela & mugume 2014; mukoza & goodman 2013). contrarily, students in development programmes may develop and progress in leadership competencies, but the university seldom benefits because these students get involved in activities outside the framework of higher education legislation. student activists, despite being influential, receive no development attention either. furthermore, the collective impact strategy should focus on developing student engagement and leadership within the co-governance framework of universities (bengu 1996; republic of south africa 1997) towards their collective transformation role. this would enable universities to provide these (future) leaders with appropriate leadership nurturance (sebola 2019). this article acknowledges the status quo with its challenges, potential resistance to change and varying investment in student leaders – matters embedded in institutional cultures (bazana & mogotsi 2017, booysen 2016, higham 2012; thaver 2009). it aims to understand student leadership in a way that higher education and the student leadership community may productively revisit the implementation of student leadership to enhance the organisational effectiveness of student leadership with reference to student leaders’ transformation task. theoretical framework and the social dream drawing a socio-analytic theoretical framework, which focuses on integrating and developing methodologies and theories that are based on psychoanalysis, group relations, social systems thinking, organisational behaviour, and social dreaming (long 2017) was employed. divergent from freudian individual psychology of the repressed unconscious, socio-analysis as initially formulated by bion and coined by bain in 1999, explores the dynamics of the group–as–a–whole (the group/system) rather than the individual (long 2013). according to socio-analysis, analysis occur on the individual and collective levels exploring conscious and unconscious dynamics (long 2017), as is in social dream drawing (mersky 2008). design and methods a qualitative design in a historically white university as a research setting was used. the socio-analytic method employed is social dream drawing by mersky (2008). six dream drawings provided the data that was grouped to identify the main themes (boydell 2009; mersky 2012) about student leadership. data emerged through a combination of talk and visual representation of consciously expressed, and unconscious dynamics, of the social system, as they play out (long 2017; mersky 2012). the drawing is the visual data, a ‘third eye’ through which the associative unconscious emerges (mersky 2012). verbal data refers to the description of the dream and it’s drawing. additionally, the free associations and meaning-making of the free associations of dream and the drawing about student leadership in south africa add to verbal data (mersky 2008). the participants received an information sheet when registering their participation, wherein they were encouraged to keep a record of their sleep dreams. from this record, the participants were asked, through the information sheet, to make a drawing of a dream which they related to student leadership, and to bring this to the data collection session. both researchers conducted the data collection and analysis for theoretical and methodological value, and rigour (eds. leedy & ormrod 2014; mersky & sievers 2019). member-checking to ascertain the credibility of the researchers’ understanding of the groups’ contributions and reflexivity, that is, the researchers’ awareness and questioning of how their own and each other’s ideas shaped the findings formed part of rigour (eds. leedy & ormrod 2014). consistent with a qualitative design that is hypothesis generating (thirsk & clark 2017), the data collection session was used to generate a working hypothesis about the co-construction of student leadership in a south african university. the findings were applied to elicit insights about the student leadership transformation role, a role which became a main theme during the data collection. participants a purposive and volunteered sample (eds. leedy & ormrod 2014) of six student leaders was included in data collection. table 1 shows the description of the group of volunteered participants. table 1: description of the group participants. instruments and procedures during the session, six dream drawings, which were allocated 1 h each, were explored in a three-step process. firstly, each participant related their dream to the group and explained their accompanying drawing. afterwards other participants could ask clarifying questions regarding the dream or its drawing. secondly, the group members contributed free associations. through these contributions, the dream becomes the dream of the group, to make further meaning about student leadership through the associative unconscious (mersky & sievers 2019). thirdly, reflections about the social construction of student leadership at a south african university occurred. these reflections contributed to a meaning–making conversation about student leadership based on the dreams, dream drawings and the shared free associations (mersky 2012). the researchers’ role included helping participants make links between the different drawings, identify themes that emerged from the dream drawings and link the emerging discourse to issues within the student leadership environment (mersky 2012). resultant preliminary hypotheses about student leadership in south africa were tested with the participants in – session (mersky 2008). data was collected in the form of transcribed text derived from in-session voice recorded data (description of the dreams, free associations and meaning making of the descriptions of dreams and drawings), photographs of the dream drawings, and the reflection notes that researchers took during each session. data analysis the data analysis was initiated during the data collection session when researchers offered reflections to test the preliminary hypotheses, as described in the instrument and procedure section. post-session, the transcribed text was studied by the researchers. for this, clarke and hoggert (2009) and parker (1997, 2014, 2015), helped us bridge psychodynamics and discourse analysis. bion’s (1961) foundational assumptions that groups experience anxiety to establish, organise and maintain themselves, was adopted along with long’s (2013, 2016, 2017) work on organisational and social dynamics. these theoretical positions provided a framework from which to identify themes about the dynamics of student leadership. hollway and jefferson (2013) provided a framework from which to conceptualise the anxiety of the group which produces defences/defence mechanisms (long 2017) leading to the ‘defended participant’. consequently, discourses in the transcribed text were studied with the intention to link them with a ‘defended participant’ (boydell 2009), who is group–as–a–whole (long 2017). literature on defences/defence mechanisms (klein 1960; kohut 2004; lemma 2003) supported this understanding. connections between descriptions of the dreams and drawings, free associations as well as the reflections or meaning making conversation were made. these were then integrated into categories of data to create themes regarding student leadership at a south african university (boydell 2009). from this an integrated working hypothesis (figure 3), that suggests the underlying issues regarding student leadership in south africa was constructed. this is a view on how the integrated themes, and the in–session tested preliminary working hypotheses, collectively makes sense (mersky 2008). finally, data analysis occurred during member checks when the integrated working hypothesis was tested. six propositions regarding student leadership transformation role were extrapolated from the integrated working hypothesis (figure 4). ethical considerations ethics clearance was obtained from the college of economic and management sciences research ethics review committee, unisa ethics committee (number: 2013/cems/iop/00115). the appropriate director of student affairs granted permission to recruit student leaders for data collection purposes. the participants completed and signed an information sheet and consent form indicating their willingness to participate. to address possible emotional distress consequent to the research, a debriefing session was held after the data collection. through the research gate keeper, arrangements were made with the student counselling centre to provide for emotional containment when needed. each dream drawing was allocated a number, that is, 1, 2, 3 without linking the dream or the allocated number to the participant, for confidentiality purposes. consistent with the philosophy of the method (mersky 2008), no personal identifiable information was contained in the social dream drawings nor in the report thereof. findings themes were identity and relational dynamics; defended student leadership identity; conversation about the anxiety of working with diversity dynamics; student leaders’ need for support. each of these themes will be discussed as part of the propositions about the transformation role of student leaders. quotations or extracts from the transcription recorded of student leaders, were pertinent. identity and relational dynamics the discourse about a sense of belonging (pule 2017) in the transforming university highlight identity and relational dynamics. particularly, splitting (kohut 2004) over race and gender generated discomfort within the group. this discomfort inspired the desire for a common vision, as evident in the quotation shown below. this common vision included contributing to the transformation agenda: ‘but i think that we don’t stand with each other for the major issues, you know, and i think when that happens, like she says, there’s obviously a whole lot of shots fired, and i think that’s the image i get is that the student leaders who need some form of common vision.’ (dream 6, p6) the experiences of a common vision are complicated by the leaders’ identity crisis pertaining to identity as leaders vs. identity as students. as students, identity (including on the basis of race and gender) often referred to loyalty to their constituency, their affiliation, and consensus with the student body in general. the elements of identity as students may clash with the common vision regarding identity as a student leader, compelling student leaders to wrestle with the splitting dynamics of the student identity. the following quotation illustrates this: ‘another thing i think of is as student leaders, most of the time we forget that we are students.’ (dream 6, p3) this identity crisis threatened their sense of belonging as students. depending on their obligation to the higher education act and related regulations or procedures, the participants could also feel torn regarding their obligation to management. because srcs and their related committees play a role within management structures, they may endure this crisis more than other student leaders. trying to negotiate these issues seemingly could lead to a feeling of being alone. for example, in this quotation: ‘like now i’m like that radical girl in the src. i will pursue something even if everyone else doesn’t agree – it’s not my problem – because you know, sometimes i just feel like my teammates don’t get it and that’s the parts where i’m alone in the waves.’ (dream 5, p5) the quotation shows the black female student leader perceiving herself to be alone, without support or camaraderie towards her transformation-related portfolio. she also perceived that in being black and female, others did not understand her unique challenges as a student leader regarding her role. bazana and mogotsi (2017), noted the challenges and potential resistance to change as being embedded in institutional cultures. the quotation shown above suggests congruence with le grange (2011) and thaver (2009) in that women and black student leaders uniquely experience historically white universities in their introduction of a culture of transformation in the country, integration of inter-cultural communities and resolving social tensions. defended student leadership identity drawing on hollway and jefferson’s (2013) concept of the defended participant, as researchers we made sense of the student leaders’ identity presentation by calling this phenomenon ‘defended student leadership identity’. the participants talked about the need to employ defence as in this quotation: ‘that would be my strong-suit like getting us over the hole, but the snake handler, like the cane thing, you handle the snake with that. the strong suit and the snake handler signify strategies for defence against the snakes which point to their perceived threat within the student leadership environment.’ (dream 1, p1) as a result of navigating the transforming university, dynamics in student leadership elicit anxiety; this is ultimately responded to through defence mechanisms. examples are demonstrating omnipotence (lemma 2003), splitting (kohut 2004), narcissistic injury and denial (bion 1961; kohut 2004), self-preservation and the depressive position (bion 1961; klein 1960). to illustrate taking up defence, the participants referred to the term ‘facelessness’ as demonstrated by the quotation and dream drawing (figure 1): ‘so, in the end you are faceless, but you are part of something and you can contribute.’ (dream 1, p2) figure 1: drawing of dream 6, the half-face dream. appearing faceless implies withdrawing from the spotlight. potentially, this is an unconscious denial (bion 1961) about facing the demands of the transformation. furthermore, facelessness could be the unconscious denial (kohut 2004) of the extent of reconciliation already achieved in south africa. conversation about the anxiety of working with diversity dynamics student leaders want to ‘leave a mark’ (dream 4, chorus). their compulsion to act as leaders who can deliver was indicated by their anxiety to have conversations about working with diversity dynamics. diversity dynamics are interactional complexities based on an assumption of subjective identities which emerge from similarities and differences amongst people (may 2012). talking about this was their action of contributing to the transformation mandate. trust was highlighted as a key component towards having the emerging conversation. defence mechanisms are used more when student leaders struggle to experience trust: ‘so, you must trust that whoever throws the ladder will throw it right, you know what i mean. so, i think it also alludes to exactly what she’s saying, trusting people which is also important in student leadership.’ (dream 1, p6) student leaders’ need for support student leaders may need support because of the blurry context of student leadership as illuminated through the following quotation: ‘yeah, it’s very abstract. it’s very dark at certain times, it’s very … broad daylight. (extract from dream 4).’ (dream 1, p1) ‘i understand what you mean … it’s not like racist?.’ (p4) ‘that’s just blurry.’ (p3) the blurry context refers to student leaders not always having clarity and being uncertain whilst working with diversity dynamics. this makes the conversation about their anxiety even more daunting and motivates the use of defences. consequently, it shows that student leaders need support. it seemed that they found the task of student leadership overwhelming and developmentally overbearing, such that instances of emotional labour were reported by some participants, as follows: ‘sometimes they don’t know what this strength façade of yours, what it’s doing to you as a person when you’re sitting alone in your room and you’re dealing with all of this that’s happening. in public you have to be strong for the people that elected you.’ (debriefing: p4) during member checks, one participant reported having been treated for major depressive disorder resulting from the combined pressures of her academics and student leadership role. this becomes a further indicator of student leaders’ need for support. the stillborn dream drawing in figure 2, highlighted the emotional labour experienced by student leaders. this circumstance is associated with their fear that they might not be able to deliver, as in the stillborn dream. they associated the stillborn metaphor with those leadership efforts that they or their constituencies, perceive to be unfruitful. figure 2: drawing of dream 4, the stillborn dream. the themes contributing to the integrated working hypothesis are shown in figure 3. the hypothesis indicates that the social construction of student leadership at a south african university comprises identity, mainly in student leadership; relational dynamics in higher education and within student leadership; and lastly, a conversation about the anxiety of working with diversity dynamics within which student leaders showed a need for support because of the defended student leadership identity that is presented. figure 3: integrated working hypothesis: the social construction of student leadership at a south african university. the integrated working hypothesis was used to extrapolate six propositions relevant to the student leadership transformation role. discussion: propositions for the student leadership transformation role the propositions made by the student leadership after the social dream drawing discussion about the social construction of student leadership at a south african university, are now discussed. these propositions are a response to their expressed need for support and thus should aid their transformation role. figure 4, diagrammatically shows the themes from the findings section, linked to propositions for the student leadership transformation role. figure 4: integrated themes and propositions for the student leadership transformation role. identity dilemma: a defended student leadership identity in student leadership the findings show that the student leadership identity dilemma is marred by the identity crisis regarding identity as leaders versus identity as students. consequently, the identity dilemma underlies how student leaders perform in their role, given that they engage through defences or a defended student leadership identity. additionally, these defences are realised in the context of diversity dynamics. thus, congruent with speckman (2015), the leadership of students motivates them to explore their various identities in a dynamic and diverse environment. this is useful for their transformation role even though they may employ self-preservation (or omnipotence) as strategies (bion 1961; klein 1960) to cope. to aid their transformation, the psychological implication that is specific to the identity dilemma should be conceptualised in light of the tension that exists when engaging with difficult issues such as diversity dynamics, in higher education. relational muddying: paradox of difference versus sameness the participants expressed a wish to keep a consistent identity across various diversity aspects because of the belief that sameness encourages less conflict. agazarian (2012) suggested that homogeneity within groups facilitates the integration of differences between members. student leaders, therefore, attempt to achieve cohesion by striving toward a common goal or purpose through using relational dynamics to defend themselves from the discomfort proposed by difference. leibowitz et al. (2007) found that a desperate need for commonality may predispose members to prioritise agreement at the cost of confronting problematic issues to the desired degree. the resultant tension can build up into a later expression of aggression. possibly the #fallist movement (griffiths 2019; swartz et al. 2019) was an example of this. expressing contention creates relational muddying amongst student leaders. it could be within this relational muddying that the transformation agenda gets derailed or complicated. this outcome can become overwhelming; hence the student leaders fantasise about sameness to reduce the anxiety that they experience regarding the diversity dynamics encountered. complex diversity pathways: student leadership is important in the conversation about diversity and diversity dynamics in higher education the data reveals the possibility that student leadership may be a space for making sense of diversity (dynamics) in south africa because of the participants’ need (or anxiety) to have conversation about working with diversity dynamics. the identity dilemma and relational muddying within working with diversity and related dynamics results in complex diversity pathways. this is because of the findings that showed that the dynamics associated with sense of belonging in the transforming university generates the leadership identity crisis. this phenomenon has implications for both the themes of identity and relational dynamics. the complexity regarding the dynamics of working with diversity within student leadership positions these leaders to connect inconsistently with others, based on sameness or difference. for example, black female leaders can identify with white female leaders on the basis of gender whilst the two groups may have a different operationalisation, or ideas on operationalising transformation, based on their differing racial backgrounds. simultaneously, the various identities of student leaders, including the aspects of the dilemmas this generates, are all key contributors to the conversation regarding working with diversity dynamics. to be hopeful about a bright south african future, to resolve their leadership identity, and to stay focussed on working with diversity dynamics, student leaders engage with changes in higher education by pursuing trust. cilliers and may (2010) explained that trust is necessary for an organisation to function. accordingly, student leaders referred to the need for safe spaces consisting of an environment of trust as a valuable component of the conversation about the anxiety of working with diversity dynamics. in the absence of experiencing safe spaces and trust, student leaders employ facelessness to navigate the overwhelming student leadership task of the transformation role. however, if facelessness is the unconscious denial of working with transformation, then acknowledging the gains made in south african transformation (bazana & mogotsi 2017) may detract from their importance as student leaders responsible for transformation. during the social dream drawing, students stated: we are leaders without a cause. this suggests that their leadership task is something that they cannot always define. simultaneously, their denial of the already attained gains of transformation can represent a denial of their newly acquired identity as a collective higher education entity (albertus 2019). this implies there have been gains toward transformation in higher education, and that student leaders appear to be going through a process of finding, or settling, their identity in the context of these transformation advancements already made. therefore, it becomes important to actively engage with them as significant mediators between university management and fellow students – their newly acquired identity within the context of transformation – to foster this integration. emotional labour in student leadership: the leadership role induces depression-like episodes indications about emotional labour in student leadership emerged during data collection debriefing. additionally, during member checks, we noted that one of the participants had been admitted to hospital resulting from pressures experienced, exacerbated by the student leadership role. furthermore, the stillborn metaphor which represents an expectation or pregnancy that did not realise, highlights the emotional labour in student leadership. this labour heightens student leadership identity issues in the face of loss (i.e. in loss of return on their effort) (lichtenthal & breitbart 2016). in turn, this could then explain the centrality of identity in the conversation about anxiety in working with diversity dynamics in higher education where loss is represented by a sense of an unmet expectation (campos, besser & blatt 2011). according to seminal psychodynamic descriptions (ribeiro, ribeiro & von doellinger 2018), depressive states can represent disappointment or loss of an ideal, to which one responds with either a mourning effect, or melancholy. such effects are indicated by reactions to the loss of a desired outcome, or to an unconscious process that is characterised by a significant decline in self-esteem (klein 1960), visible through narcissistic introjections, guilt and helplessness (campos et al. 2011). therefore, the stillborn image becomes linked to narcissistic injury (pule 2017); damage to the ego (kohut 2004) in the sense of leadership identity and the unfruitful outcomes of the role. as with ribeiro et al. (2018), campos et al. (2011) and kohut (2004), the emotional labour of student leadership is experienced as depression-like episodes (klein 1960). to aid the transformation role, we therefore conceptualise the emotional labour of their leadership within the appropriate diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (dsm) v boundaries, but also take a psychodynamic view thereof (pule, in press). this may help to attend to their emotional labour in a manner which supportively highlights the unique experience of their transformation role. additionally, these depression states could suggest that student leaders are required to take on a task that is bigger than they are reasonably capable of doing. the combination of their current stage of life, the magnitude of their responsibility as per the higher education act, and the ensuing identity dilemma including the expectation to rise above obstacles and challenges facing student leadership, may be too vast. accordingly, these experiences may contribute to the depression-like episodes (klein 1960) associated with such leadership. therefore, the task of student leadership may blur the reasonable task of completing a degree and growing as an aspiring leader. support for organisational effectiveness: student leaders require unique support from the university, particularly psychological support given the student leaders’ emotional labour, psychotherapeutic/psychological support should be used more than it currently is to enhance organisational effectiveness (lowman 2002, 2016). this psychological support should focus on the depression-like episodes that these leaders may experience during their term of office (bowman & payne 2011) and proactively equip student leaders with tools to engage with the emotional labour experienced (avery 2004). options of support could help student leaders to hold matters in perspective especially to remain aware that their studies are a priority alongside their role as student leader. subsequently, this enhances their confidence in setting appropriate boundaries and delegation of responsibilities instead of unnecessarily assuming an overwhelming burden (mortensen & haas 2016; trefalt 2013). a systemic and multi-levelled co-curriculum for student leadership development as a way forward a multi-levelled (culp & dungy 2012; evans et al. 2010; keeling 2004, 2006) and systemic co-curriculum for student leadership development is proposed. this proposal serves to intervene socio-analytically (long 2013) on individual, group and organisational levels (lowman 2016). the proposal addressed the apparent fragmented student leadership (getz & roy 2013; luescher-mamashela & mugume 2014; mukoza & goodman 2013), the blurry context and student leaders desiring a common vision. this therefore integrates and streamlines the effort of student leaders in their transformation role. the intervention would be based on viewing student leadership as comprising the student leader as an individual system (agazarian 2012), the group system (agazarian 2012) (i.e. srcs and their subcommittees, including student leaders within leadership development programs and activists), and the organisation level which indicates student leadership comprehensively (long 2013). the intervention is proposed as follows: on individual level, provide opportunity for training (herbst & maree 2008; eds. kouzez & posner 2014), coaching (keeling 2004; page, loots & du toit 2005) and counselling interventions (bowman & payne 2011) linked to proposition 5. on group level, interventions could contribute to interpersonal relations development by including in the programme role analysis and renegotiation, the clarification of identity within group/s, and intergroup relations (lowman 2016). furthermore, regarding working with diversity, the intervention could attend to unconscious dynamics and processes within individuals, in relation to others, within groups and between groups (lowman 2016). as representatives of the various groups to which the student leaders are affiliated, the intervention could focus on the manner in which individuals apply the aforementioned processes (in order to facilitate working with diversity) (lowman 2002). organisationally, interventions could foster leadership behaviour development, that is, interpersonal relations and psychosocial challenges in student leadership, including working with diversity dynamics (lowman 2002). it denotes exploring the emotional management involved in student leadership and the adjustment and change required in (south african) universities. furthermore, student leaders could be enabled to work effectively with diversity within the diverse organisations and systems where their leadership is being exercised. conclusion various current understandings and definitions of student leadership have been noted. through a social dream drawing research with student leaders, it has been found that student leadership is constructed through the interaction of student leadership identity with relational dynamics. student leadership identity constitutes an identity crisis, between an identity as leaders versus identity as student. both positions are held in tension by a defended identity, from which a conversation about the anxiety of working with diversity dynamics was inspired. student leaders raised their need for support, particularly regarding their transformation role. this research led to the expression of six propositions from which positive benefits for the transformation role that student leaders can play in higher education in south africa were envisioned. the propositions have implications for student leadership practice and legislation. additionally, the propositions hold implications for enhanced student affairs practice that is anchored by a multi-levelled, systemic student leadership intervention within the transformation agenda. this intervention focuses on student leadership development, psychological impact, mental health, and student leadership competency. simultaneously, these implications could also extend to those whom the universities mandate to work with leaders. acknowledgements the authors extend appreciation to the student leaders who shared so freely and honestly. competing interests the authors declare that they have no financial or personal relationships that may have inappropriately influenced them in writing this article. authors’ contributions n.t.p. conceptualised and wrote the original draft of the manuscript. she conducted the formal analysis as well as the project administration. n.t.p. is responsible for conceptualising and implementing the methodology in terms of the research conducted as well as the approach to writing the manuscript. she has also been involved in the reviewing and editing of the document. m.m. acted as a supervisor for the project on which the manuscript is based. pertaining the manuscript in particular, she has given advice on the methodology used to approach the writing of the manuscripts and has also been involved in the reviewing and editing of the document. funding information this research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors. data availability the data that support the findings of this study are available on request from the corresponding author, n.t.p. the data are not publicly available because of the personal nature of the drawings and their containing information that could compromise the privacy of the research participants. disclaimer the views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official statement policy or position of any affiliated agency of the authors. references agazarian, y.m., 2012, ‘systems-centered group psychotherapy: a theory of living human systems and its systems-centered practice’, group 36(1), 19–36. albertus, r.w., 2019, ‘decolonisation of institutional structures in south african universities: a critical perspective’, cogent social sciences 5(1), 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1080/23311886.2019.1620403 avery, g.c., 2004, ‘emotion in leadership’, in g.c. avery, a. bell, m. hilb & a.e. witte (eds.), understanding leadership: paradigms and cases, pp. 91–113, sage, thousand oaks, ca. bazana, s. & mogotsi, o.p., 2017, ‘social identities and racial integration in historically white universities: a literature review of the experiences of black students’, transformation in higher education 2, a25. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v2i0.25 becker, a., 2017, ‘rage, loss and other footpaths: subjectification, decolonisation and transformation in higher education’, transformation in higher education 2, a23. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v2i0.23 bengu, m.e., 1996, green paper on higher education transformation, department of education, government printers, pretoria. bion, w.r., 1961, experiences in groups, tavistock, london. booysen, s. (ed.), 2016, fees must fall: student revolt, decolonisation and governance in south africa, wits university press, johannesburg. bowman, b. & payne, j., 2011, ‘a profile of students receiving counselling services at a university in post-apartheid south africa’, journal of child and adolescent mental health 23(2), 143–153. https://doi.org/10.2989/17280583.2011.634544 boydell, l., 2009, ‘analysing discourse psycho-socially’, in s. clarke & p. hoggert (eds.), researching beneath the surface: psycho-social research methods in practice, pp. 241–267, karnac, london. campos, r.c., besser, a. & blatt, s.j., 2011, ‘the relationships between defenses and experiences of depression: an exploratory study’, psychoanalytic psychology 28(2), 196–208. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0022420 cilliers, f. & may, m., 2010, ‘the popularisation of positive psychology as a defence against behavioural complexity in research and organisations’, sa journal of industrial psychology 36(2), 1–10. https://doi.org/10.4102/sajip.v36i2.917 clarke, s. & hoggert, p., 2009, ‘researching beneath the surface: a psychosocial approach to research practice and method’, in s. clarke & p. hoggert (eds.), researching beneath the surface: psycho-social research methods in practice, pp. 1–24, karnac, london. cross, m. & carpentier, c., 2009, ‘“new students” in south african higher education: institutional culture, student performance and the challenge of democratisation’, perspectives in education 2(1), 6–18. culp, m.m. & dungy, g.j., 2012, building a culture of evidence in student affairs. a guide for leaders and practitioners, naspa, washington, dc. du preez, p., verhoef, a.h. & simmonds, s., 2016, ‘rethinking and researching transformation in higher education: a meta-study of south african trends’, transformation in higher education 1(1), 1–7. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v1i1.2 evans, n.j., forney, d.s., guido, f.m., patton, l.d. & renn, k.a., 2010, student development in college, 2nd edn., jossey-bass, san francisco, ca. getz, l.m. & roy, m., 2013, ‘student leadership perceptions in south africa and the united states’, international journal of psychological studies 5(2), 1–10. https://doi.org/10.5539/ijps.v5n2pl lawrence, w.g. (ed.), 1998, social dreaming @ work., karnac, london. griffiths, d., 2019, ‘#feesmustfall and the decolonised university in south africa: tensions and opportunities in a globalising world’, international journal of educational research 94, 143–149. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijer.2019.01.004 herbst, t.h. & maree, k.g., 2008, ‘thinking style preference, emotional intelligence and leadership effectiveness’, south african journal of industrial psychology 34(1), 32–41. https://doi.org/10.4102/sajip.v34i1.422 higham, r., 2012, ‘place, race and exclusion: university student voices in post-apartheid south africa’, international journal of inclusive education 16(5/6), 485–501. https://doi.org/10.1080.13603116.2012.655498 hollway, w. & jefferson, t., 2013, ‘doing qualitative research differently: free association, narrative and the interview method, 2nd edn., sage, london. jansen, j.d., 2004, ‘changes and continuities in south africa’s higher education system, 1994–2004’, in l. chisholm (ed.), changing class: education and social change in post-apartheid south africa, pp. 293–314, hsrc press, cape town. jung, c.g., 1936, ‘the concept of the collective unconscious’, collected works 9(1), 99–104. keeling, r.p., (ed.), 2004, learning reconsidered: a campus-wide focus on the student experience, national association of student personnel administrators (naspa) and american college personnel association (acpa), washington, dc. keeling, r.p., (ed.), 2006, learning reconsidered 2: a practical guide to implementing a campus-wide focus on the student experience, american college personnel association (acpa), association of college and university housing officers-international (acuho-i), association of college unions international (acui), national academic advising association (nacada), national association for campus activities (naca), national association of student personnel administrators (naspa) and national intramural-recreational sports association (nirsa), washington, dc. klein, m., 1960, ‘a note on depression in the schizophrenic’, the international journal of psycho-analysis 41, 509. kohut, h., 2004, ‘self-psychology and narcissism’, in m. st clair & j. wigren (eds.) object relations and self-psychology: an introduction, pp. 145–168, cole, brooks. kouzez, j. & posner, b. (eds.), 2014, the student leadership challenge: five practices for becoming an exemplary leader, jossey-bass, san francisco, ca. lawrence, w.g. (ed.), 1998, social dreaming @ work. london: karnac. leedy, p.d. & ormrod, j.e. (eds.), 2014, ‘qualitative research’, in practical research: planning and design, pp. 141–172, pearson education, harlow. le grange, l., 2011, ‘(re) thinking (trans) formation in south african (higher) education’, perspectives in education 29(2), 1–9. leibowitz, b., rohleder, p., bozalek, v., carolissen, r. & swartz, l., 2007, ‘it doesn’t matter who or what we are, we are still just people.’ strategies used by university students to negotiate difference’, south african journal of psychology 37(4), 702–719. https://doi.org/10.1177/008124630703700403 lemma, a., 2003, ‘defences and resistance’, in a. lemma (ed.), introduction to the practice of psychoanalytic psychotherapy, pp. 200–229, wiley, west sussex. lichtenthal, w.g. & breitbart, w., 2016, ‘who am i’, in r.a. neimeyer (ed.), techniques of grief therapy: assessment and intervention, pp. 182–185, routledge/taylor & francis group, new york. long, s., 2013, socioanalytic methods: discovering the hidden in organisations and social systems, karnac, london. long, s. (ed.), 2016, the transforming experience in organisations: a framework for organisational research and consultancy, karnac, london. long, s., 2017, ‘the socioanalytic approach to organisations’, socio-analysis 19, 1–7. lowman, r.l. (ed.), 2002, handbook of organizational consulting psychology: a comprehensive guide to theories, skills, and techniques, jossey-bass, san francisco, ca. lowman, r.l., 2016, an introduction to consulting psychology: working with individuals, groups, and organizations, american psychological association, washington, dc. luescher, t.m., webbstock, d. & bhengu, n., 2020, reflections of south africa student leaders 1994–2017, african minds, cape town. luescher-mamashela, t.m., 2013, ‘student representation in university decision making: good reasons, a new lens?’, studies in higher education 38(10), 1442–1456. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2011.625496 luescher-mamashela, t.m. & mugume, t., 2014, ‘student representation and multiparty politics in african higher education’, studies in higher education 39(3), 500–515. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2014.896183 maassen, p. & cloete, n., 2006, ‘introduction’, in n. cloete, p. maassen, r. fehnel, t. moja, t. gibbon & h. perold (eds.), transformation in higher education. higher education dynamics, vol. 10, pp. 1–4, springer, dordrecht. may, m.s., 2010, ‘the unconscious at work in a historically black university: the (k)not of relationship between students, lecturers and management’, unpublished doctoral thesis, university of south africa, pretoria. may, m.s., 2012, ‘diversity dynamics operating between students, lecturers and management in a historically black university: the lecturers’ perspective’, sa journal of industrial psychology 38(2), 138–146. https://doi.org/10.4102/sajip mersky, r. & sievers, b., 2019, ‘social photo-matrix and social dream-drawing’, in k. stamenova & r.d. hinshelwood (eds.), methods of research into the unconscious: applying psychoanalytic ideas to social science, pp. 145–168, routledge, london. mersky, r.r., 2008, ‘social dream-drawing: a methodology in the making’, socio analysis 10, 35–50. mersky, r.r., 2012, ‘contemporary methodologies to surface and act on unconscious dynamics in organisations: an exploration of design, facilitation capacities, consultant paradigm and ultimate value’, organisational and social dynamics 12(1), 19–43. mortensen, m. & haas, m.r., 2016, ‘rethinking team boundaries’, insead working paper no. 2016/64/obh/acgre. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2841150 mukoza, s.k. & goodman, s., 2013, ‘building leadership capacity: an evaluation of the university of cape town’s emerging studenº∆t leaders programme’, industry and higher education 27(2), 129–137. https://doi.org/10.5367/ihe.2013.0147 njiokiktjien, i., 2019, ‘south africa’s born-frees’, new internationalist 519, 48–51. page, b.j., loots, a. & du toit, d.f., 2005, ‘perspectives on a south african tutor/mentor program: the stellenbosch university experience’, mentoring & tutoring: partnership in learning 13(1), 5–21. https://doi.org/10.1080/13611260500039940 parker, i., 1997, ‘discourse analysis and psychoanalysis’, british journal of social psychology 36(4), 479–495. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.2044-8309.1997.tb01145.x parker, i., 2014, psychology after psychoanalysis: psychosocial studies and beyond, routledge, hove. parker, i., 2015, psychology after discourse analysis: concepts, methods and critiques, routledge, new york, ny. pule, n., 2017, ‘the social construction of student leadership in a south african university’, unpublished doctoral dissertation, university of south africa, pretoria. pule, n., (in press), ‘south african student leaders’ psychological experiences: social dream drawing metaphors of helplessness and shame’, south african journal of higher education. republic of south africa, 1997, higher education act (act no. 101 of 1997), government gazette, vol. 390, no. 18515, cape town. ribeiro, â., ribeiro, j.p. & von doellinger, o., 2018, ‘depression and psychodynamic psychotherapy’, brazilian journal of psychiatry, 40(1), 105–109. https://doi.org/10.1590/1516-4446-2016-2107 sebola, m.p., 2019, ‘governance and student leadership in south african universities: co-governing with those to be governed’, african journal of gender, society & development 8(2), 7. https://doi.org/10.31920/2050-4284/2019/8n2a1 schneider, j.a., 2010, ‘from freud’s dream-work to bion’s work of dreaming: the changing conception of dreaming in psychoanalytic theory’, the international journal of psychoanalysis 91(3), 521–540. speckman, m., 2015, ‘student leadership and advocacy for social cohesion: a south african perspective’, african journal on conflict resolution 15(3), 61–84. swartz, r., ivancheva, m., czerniewicz, l. & morris, n.p., 2019, ‘between a rock and a hard place: dilemmas regarding the purpose of public universities in south africa’, higher education 77(4), 567–583. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-018-0291-9 thaver, b., 2009, ‘transforming the culture of higher education in south africa’, academe 95(1), 28–30. thirsk, l.m. & clark, a.m., 2017, ‘using qualitative research for complex interventions: the contributions of hermeneutics’, international journal of qualitative methods 16(1), 1609406917721068. https://doi.org/10.1177/1609406917721068 trefalt, s., 2013, ‘between you and me: setting work-non work boundaries in the context of workplace relationships’, academy of management journal 56(6), 1802–1829. https://doi.org/10.5465/amj.2011.0298 wells, l., 1985, ‘the group-as-a-whole perspective and its theoretical roots’, in a.d. colman & m.h. geller (eds.), group relations reader 2, pp. 109–126, a.k. rice institute, washington, dc. abstract introduction homophobia in south african schools sexuality education in south africa teacher education and the availability of resources literary studies and close reading methodology student responses: ‘in a heartbeat’ (2017) conclusion acknowledgements references about the author(s) andy carolin faculty of education, university of johannesburg, johannesburg, south africa citation carolin, a., 2022, ‘what literary studies can offer sexuality education: pre-service teachers’ responses to an animated film’, transformation in higher education 7(0), a162. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v7i0.162 original research what literary studies can offer sexuality education: pre-service teachers’ responses to an animated film andy carolin received: 31 oct. 2021; accepted: 30 jan. 2022; published: 17 mar. 2022 copyright: © 2022. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract background: given the high levels of homophobia that exist in south africa, including in its schools and universities, it is imperative that university lecturers develop integrated and transdisciplinary curriculums to educate pre-service teachers about sexuality and to empower them to incorporate lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (lgbti)-inclusive resources into their own classrooms. aim: this study aimed to contribute to the scholarship of teaching and learning by reflecting on how english literary studies can contribute to sexuality education. setting: the context for this study is a specific undergraduate english module that forms part of the foundation phase and intermediate phase teacher education curriculums at the university of johannesburg. methods: this study is a self-reflective analysis of how the methodology of close reading, which is central to english literary studies, can be used to support sexuality education. results: despite the prevalence of homophobia in south african society, when undergraduate students in this english module (n = 356) were asked to write an essay about the representation of same-sex sexuality in a short animated film, none of them made homophobic comments. conclusion: paying particular attention to the analytical methodology of close reading, the author argues that a narrow focus on the storytelling techniques used within a narrative text – in a way that deliberately excludes students’ personal opinions about same-sex sexualities – offers a powerful way of facilitating a deeper understanding of the mechanisms of homophobia and heteronormativity. keywords: foundation phase; intermediate phase; teacher education; middle school; elementary school; ‘in a heartbeat’; literary studies; close reading; sex education; south africa; lgbt; film studies; human rights education. introduction while discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation has been constitutionally proscribed in south africa since 1996, the country still remains deeply homophobic (other foundation 2015). in this article, i reflect on how a short animated gay-themed film can be a powerful resource in sexuality education. i argue that a narrow focus on a literary or visual text – in a way that deliberately forecloses on students’ moral perspectives on same-sex sexuality – can facilitate inclusive perspectives on sexuality issues. i focus especially on students’ essays about a short animated film, ‘in a heartbeat’ (2017), written and produced by bravo and david (2017). this 4-minute film, which has been viewed more than 23 million times on youtube, depicts a shy schoolboy, sherwin, who is attracted to another boy, jonathan. his attraction is made visible through the personification of a heart, which playfully gets jonathan’s attention and literally pulls them together. the boys then move inside the school building, where the visible chemistry between the two attracts the disapprobation of their school peers, which results in the heart itself being torn asunder. what is striking about the students’ responses to this particular visual text is that, despite the very high levels of homophobia in south african society (other foundation 2015), none of the students enrolled in the module in 2020 and 2021 (n = 356) articulated explicitly homophobic views in their essays about this film. this is fascinating, given the prevalence of homophobia in society, including among university students (brown 2018; brown, maseko & sedibe 2020; tshilongo & rothmann 2019). in this article, i discuss how the analytical methodology of close reading offered by literary studies, which emphasises a narrow focus on the text itself, coupled with a carefully crafted assignment question, can result in essays that reflect meaningfully on the mechanisms and effects of homophobia. the focus, therefore, is on how heteronormativity and homophobia operate on a textual level as the students’ assignment question itself forecloses on personal and moralistic reflections about same-sex sexuality. the module that i reflect on in this article forms part of an undergraduate bachelor of education degree at the university of johannesburg. students studying to become foundation phase and intermediate phase teachers are required to complete six modules grouped together as english for the primary school. the official institutional curriculum states that the purpose of these six modules is ‘to guide students in developing their own english language competence and the requisite subject knowledge in english to enable them to support english language learning in the classroom’ (uj 2021:42). this dual focus of the module is grounded in the fact that many students who enter university lack the requisite english proficiency and academic literacy skills to engage meaningfully as students in an institution in which english is the language of teaching and learning (ramsaroop & petersen 2020; van der merwe 2018). this means that teaching and learning in the module focus on the development of advanced comprehension and composition skills, as students engage with academic articles and write academic essays, all the while as they revisit disciplinary content knowledge necessary for the primary school classroom. the thematic focus of this particular module is ‘[p]icturebooks and animated storytelling.’ the goal is to introduce students to the scholarly literature about these two narrative genres, to inculcate a sincere enjoyment of literary texts (fulani, hendricks & mccarthy 2019) and to revisit the critical vocabulary needed to teach different genres of storytelling. i argue that a literary or visual text that is incorporated into an english literature module can function as a supplementary resource to support sexuality education. the importance of this is twofold: firstly, it is important for university students to engage critically with texts that depict lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (lgbti) issues, and secondly, it is important for student teachers to be empowered to identify and incorporate appropriate texts into their classroom practice. the student essays that i analysed suggest that the analytical methodology of close reading can produce in students both an empathetic response to individuals’ experiences and an awareness of the mechanisms of heteronormativity. however, such a strategy, which deliberately does not consider students’ existing worldviews, cannot exist in isolation and needs to be grafted onto a more comprehensive approach to teaching sexuality education. in other words, the integration of lgbti-inclusive representations in literature modules does not negate the centrality of other powerful strategies for teaching students about same-sex sexualities. this needs to include, firstly on an epistemological level, the teaching of conceptual frameworks and terminology to facilitate an understanding of non-heteronormative sexualities and non-binary gender identities (francis 2017a). this also needs to happen on a personal level, in which reflective exercises and dialogues can provide students with opportunities to interrogate ‘unexamined areas of the self’ (francis & hemson 2007:107). unlike the approach that i describe in this article, the use of dialogues and self-reflection activities guide students towards understanding and unpacking their own prejudices and views (francis 2021b). this approach, which centres on the participants’ existing perspectives, has been very successfully used to inculcate an lgbti-inclusive teaching philosophy through various activities, including through participatory discussions about media depictions (brown 2020b; clarke 2013; helmer 2016), providing a platform for in-service teachers to share their perspectives and views (bouley 2011; depalma & atkinson 2009; taylor 2018) and through dialogues with lgbti student peers (brown 2020a; dare 2019). while all these strategies centre a form of dialogic learning grounded in the students’ individual perspectives, the approach described in this article – which draws on literary studies’ use of a close reading methodology – deliberately forecloses on personal opinion, except insofar as it is relevant for the inevitably subjective interpretation of any narrative text. in their broader discussion of human rights education, du preez, simmonds and roux (2012) distinguish between the implicit infusion of human rights, which is akin to a moral education orientated towards shifting the values of participants, on the one hand, and the explicit teaching of human rights, which focuses on the epistemological foundations of rights-based discourses, on the other hand. furthermore, du preez et al. (2012) note that there are some educationalists who want human rights and values education to only be taught in the life orientation subject – a view that some people have about sexuality education specifically (chaka, beyers & swanepoel 2019). however, as explained by francis and hemson (2007), social justice education needs multiple strategies to engage students and assist them in moving from knowing about rights to feeling inculcated into a community of practice grounded in a rights-based teaching philosophy. given that life orientation textbooks have been found to be woefully inadequate in providing an inclusive sexuality education (potgieter & reygan 2012; wilmot & naidoo 2014), it is imperative that both teachers and teacher educators find ways to infuse lgbti-inclusive resources across learning areas. homophobia in south african schools a study conducted by the human sciences research council and the other foundation concluded that south africa remains a deeply homophobic society. for instance, the study found that 72% of participants ‘feel that same-sex sexual activity is morally wrong’, only 55% said that they would ‘accept’ a gay family member and only 51% said that gay people should have the same rights as other citizens (other foundation 2015:iii). research has consistently identified pervasive cultures of heteronormativity and homophobia in south african schools. in south africa, many school teachers have been found to be homophobic (bhana 2012, 2014; brown & buthelezi 2020), and school management teams have been found to be inadequately prepared to provide support to learners with non-heteronormative sexualities or even recognise those learners and staff who may be in need of support (brown & buthelezi 2020; francis & msibi 2011). moreover, heteronormativity and homophobia are also deeply rooted in the classroom and playground discourses of the learners themselves, at both primary school (bhana & mayeza 2016) and high school (langa 2015; msibi 2012) levels. this homophobia can be overt or take the form of microaggressions (francis & reygan 2016). while francis (2017b) has positively observed that many teachers are willing to learn about non-heteronormative sexualities, and that straight allies and teachers are increasingly playing an important role in countering the dominant heteronormativity in south african schools (francis 2021a), university lecturers need to infuse inclusive pedagogies and representations throughout our curriculums if we want to create truly inclusive spaces and empower teachers to provide lgbti-affirming sexuality education. sexuality education in south africa comprehensive sexuality education has a tenuous place in the south african school curriculum, with inadequate coverage in the formal curriculum and some topics entirely missing from policy documents (francis 2017b). while the national curriculum and assessment policy statement (caps) document stipulates that sex education should be taught from grade 7 onwards (department of basic education 2011a), many teachers report simply not covering the content at all (bhana 2012; depalma & francis 2014a). the release of the department of basic education’s scripted lesson plans for comprehensive sexuality education in 2019 generated a moral panic among teacher unions, parents and some political parties (matshili 2019; rall 2019). additionally, when sex education is taught in south african schools, it is almost unfailingly heteronormative (depalma & francis 2014b; francis & kuhl 2020). a survey conducted by the other foundation (2015:50) found that only 34% of south african respondents believe that ‘learners should be taught about gay and lesbian rights at school.’ it is significant that this reflects the proportion of people who want the constitutional rights of gay and lesbian people taught in schools. presumably, the number of participants who would support same-sex relationships and sex itself being included in the curriculum would be even lower. teachers themselves have expressed misgivings about policy uncertainty, insufficient resources and their own prejudices in this regard (bhana 2012; depalma & francis 2014a). in fact, many teachers simply do not teach lgbti-related content, even at high school level (bhana 2012; depalma & francis 2014a). this problem is even more acute in primary schools, where teachers draw on the trope of ‘childhood innocence’ (bhana 2008; francis 2010) to justify their erasure of certain topics in sex education. francis (2019b:406) elaborates on this trope and notes its paradoxical basis, in which ‘teachers’ discourses construct queer youth not only as innocent and childlike but also as hypersexual and rebellious.’ however, it is not only in the life orientation curriculum that same-sex sexualities are not addressed. there is a broader problem of ‘same-sex sexualities [being] invisibilized’ across the curriculums and institutional cultures of many schools (francis & kuhl 2020:5). as francis (2017a) argues: [t]here is a long way to go if we want schools that affirm sexual diversity and that preclude discrimination on the basis of sexuality. if we do not continue to trouble the rampant heterosexism and heteronormativity in schools the status quo of teaching and learning about sexuality diversity and heterosexism will merely remain the same. (p. 146) the invisibilisation (francis & kuhl 2020) of non-heteronormative sexualities in schools – in what francis and kuhl (2020:11) conclude is ‘pedagogically oppressive’ – contributes to an implicitly heteronormative worldview. the importance of visibility in challenging this heteronormativity cannot be overstated (francis 2019a; tshilongo & rothmann 2019). as clarke (2013) explains in relation to a school-based infusion of lgbti literature: [c]onsidering pedagogical moments can assist to develop sexual literacies and encouraging empathy may allow those students who do not conform to the current heteronormative classroom to be understood and feel included. (p. 273) teacher education and the availability of resources two of the recurring challenges that have been identified in effecting a meaningful and inclusive sex education is inadequate teacher training and the absence of sufficient age-appropriate resources (bouic 2019; depalma & francis 2014a; johnson 2014; venketsamy & kinnear 2020). this problem is compounded by the fact that teachers in the intermediate phase are increasingly being expected to become generalists outside of specialised training (woest 2018), often resulting in under-qualified teachers teaching life orientation (francis 2017a). venketsamy and kinnear (2020) and francis (2017a) also emphasise the need for more training and resources that are suitable for foundation phase sexuality education especially. ‘in a heartbeat’, the short animated film that i am focusing on in this article, is an example of such a resource. while the caps curriculum for life orientation in the foundation phase does not stipulate the teaching of sexual orientation (department of basic education 2011b), it does specify the teaching of ‘relationships’. thus, making pre-service teachers aware of free resources such as this short film could be powerfully leveraged into more inclusive lgbti curriculums in primary school classrooms. given the centrality of teacher training curriculums in shaping the attitudes and competencies of teachers, brown and diale (2017) emphasise the need for making educational spaces inclusive for lgbti teachers and learners, noting that an ‘urgency exists for teacher training programmes to incorporate knowledge on inclusive collegial atmospheres that are accommodative of same-sex sexualities’ (brown & diale 2017:2). thus, the inclusion of ‘in a heartbeat’ in one specific module is not only about empowering pre-service teachers with the skills to identify and assess age-appropriate resources for their own future practice, but also about shifting the attitudes of student teachers themselves about same-sex sexualities. francis and kuhl (2020) point to the difficulties of such an undertaking, arguing that: [t]he challenge is whether pre-service and in-service teacher education programs are able to develop teachers with these critical consciousness capabilities and engaged pedagogies, and to sustain them in social contexts that may be hostile to any discussion about sex, sexuality and relationships. (p. 16) literary studies and close reading while there is no single approach to the teaching of literary and visual texts, the particular module that i focus on in this article emphasises close reading as an analytical methodology. in his seminal how to read literature, eagleton (2013:ix) argues for an approach to narrative texts that pays ‘close attention to literary form and technique’. grounded in the approach to literary texts advocated by the new critics school (abrams 2005:189), close reading refers to ‘the detailed analysis of the complex interrelationship and ambiguities (multiple meanings) of the verbal and figurative components within a work’ (abrams 2005:189). while this analytical approach was initially used for written narrative texts broadly considered to have literary and artistic merit, it has since been used to study a range of narrative genres, including films. this approach to a narrative text – in which a reader pays close attention to the interpretive possibilities of specific words and phrases (in the case of written narratives) and visible symbols, facial expressions, and so on (in the case of visual texts) – is also a powerful resource in teaching comprehension skills (duck 2018). the students’ essays that i am focusing on in this article were written in response to a very specific question, one which deliberately foreclosed on students’ personal attitudes towards sexuality. by doing so, students were compelled to focus their attention on how a specific narrative text explores same-sex sexualities, rather than offer their own views on the topic. students were given the following assignment question: write an essay … in which you discuss how the different elements of storytelling are used both to depict and challenge the theme of homophobia in the short film ‘in a heartbeat’ (2017). your essay could, for example, focus on specific examples of some of the following aspects of the short animated film: plot, setting, personification, characterisation, and symbolism. you could also reflect on the music in the film. remember that you should not simply describe what happens in the film, but should include a discussion of how specific aspects of the film work to explore the theme of homophobia. to further circumscribe the range of analytical responses to the film, and to recentre the academic literacy skills that are prioritised in the module, students were instructed to include quotations and paraphrased ideas from the given extracts to support their responses: while the central problem in books with gay and lesbian characters historically has been homosexuality, in many contemporary lesbian-gay-bisexual-transgender-queer (lgbtq) novels homophobia is the overarching ‘problem’ […]. as such, authors have sought to promote inclusion of nonnormative sexual and gender identities and to present such characters as positive, ordinary, cool, even normal. in order to problematise homophobia, however, authors frequently create antagonists with homophobic attitudes and behaviours. […] heteronormative assumptions, including homophobic attitudes, beliefs, and behaviours, provide the root of the internal and external conflict for the characters in the majority of lgbtq-themed books. (wickens 2011:153) [m]ost contemporary texts that incorporate lgbtq characters and conflicts […] work to challenge and undermine normalised assumptions around gender and sexuality, especially the homophobic attitudes and behaviour they engender […]. most contemporary novels attempt to do this by creating empathetic characters, villainizing homophobic behaviours and characters, and even using the narrative in part as a ‘how-to’ manual to familiarise the reader on different aspects of lgbtq identities and conflicts […]. they situate these issues in contemporary realistic settings with which readers are likely to identify. (wickens 2011:160) while the primary purpose of including these extracts was to facilitate academic literacy skills, it is also important in light of uys, romylos and nel’s (2021) assertion that the impact of including lgbti-themed narrative texts can be compounded when they are juxtaposed with other readings that shape the reception of the text. the inclusion of these extracts also speaks to helmer’s (2016:37) assertion that we need to ‘mov[e] beyond reading practices that continue to teach about or for the “other” towards readings that trouble privileging/othering practices as well as commonsense hegemonic constructions of normative sexualities’. given that the importance of students writing essays about ‘in a heartbeat’ is not so much about mastery of this specific narrative text but rather about their ability to reflect on a range of visual repertoires through which same-sex sexualities are depicted (govender & andrews 2021; helmer 2016), the inclusion of these extracts in the question also emphasises the transferability of their newly developed critical perspective on lgbti representations. methodology given that the focus of this article is not on the students’ argumentative skills or english proficiency, and that none of the essays evidenced homophobia, all 356 essays were eligible for inclusion in this article. this is not to say that the results are universally generalisable or that a different group of students might not have included homophobic perspectives in their responses. the extracts that are discussed here were taken from essays selected through purposive and convenience sampling. in total, 30 students’ essays were identified, ensuring only that the selected essays reflected a range of marks, ranging from essays that failed to essays that were awarded distinctions. of these 30 students, only 22 responded to my request for permission to quote from their essays, and it is from these essays that the extracts below have been taken. of course, my consideration of the essays was not informed by the students’ personal views about same-sex sexualities. it is not my claim, therefore, that the specific essays that were analysed in this article reflect a direct causal shift in the attitudes of the specific students from whose essays i quote. rather, i discuss a range of extracts to illustrate how the student cohort broadly engaged with the textual and contextual mechanics of homophobia in a school setting. it is also not my claim that the writing of an essay grounded in close reading of a film has irreversibly shifted all students’ perspectives surrounding same-sex sexualities. i am arguing instead that the use of close reading as an analytical methodology explicitly prevented students from offering individualised moralist perspectives on the topic, and guided them instead towards assessing the effects and machinations of homophobia in a school setting. student responses: ‘in a heartbeat’ (2017) the module focuses, in part, on revising students’ understanding of the elements of storytelling, such as characterisation, setting, symbolism, personification and plot, which will be necessary for their teaching of literature to primary school learners. not unexpectedly then, these constituent parts of storytelling were used by most of the students to structure their argumentative essays. characterisation describing the opening scene in which sherwin is shown watching jonathan from afar, one student reflects that: ‘[the] scene challenges homophobia as it forces us to address presumptuous misconceptions of the lgbtq community for example, the myth that members of the lgbtq community can be identified by their physical features or the way in which they act.’ (student 1, 14 may 2020) again drawing on the absence of stereotypical depictions in this particular film, another student offers a fascinating insight that: ‘[sherwin’s] red hair is the only thing that reflects an aspect of being gay, and that is how rare it may actually be. being a red-head is not as common as being a blonde or brunette, and this is a cute way of reflecting another way [how] homophobia can be perceived. red-heads can be teased and called derogatory names, simply for the virtue that the shade of their hair is uncommon. this does not mean that there is anything wrong with them. it just shows how those unfamiliar with it may be more intolerant. this is a direct reflection of the attitude of homophobia.’ (student 2, 14 may 2020) after describing how sherwin is ‘a shy and anxious inexperienced boy in middle school who tries frantically to hide and stay unnoticed by the other boy for whom he harbours secret romantic feelings’, one of the students writes: ‘this is significant as it allows the viewer to relate to the character sherwin as every person has experienced having secret feelings for someone else and trying to have those feelings remain unknown to the other person. it also helps to emphasise to the viewer on the childlike innocence behind having feelings for a classmate and not knowing how to respond.’ (student 3, 14 may 2020) this response – in which the film’s depiction of the everydayness of adolescent attraction is universalised beyond the confines of heteronormativity – was not an uncommon observation across many of the essays. in this particular instance, the trope of childhood innocence that is so often used to legitimise the erasure of sexuality education in the primary school (bhana 2008; francis 2010) is reinterpreted, noting that awkwardness about physical or romantic attraction is constitutive of childhood, irrespective of sexuality, rather than incompatible with it. extending this point further – and with particular implications given that the students are studying to become primary school teachers – one of the students explains that: ‘the film makers use the redhead as an “empathetic character”, “to challenge and undermine normalised assumptions around gender and sexuality […]” (wickens 2011:160). children are usually exposed to animation and literature that only have room for heterosexuality, watching this film introduces them to a new fact that being in love with someone of the same sex is as “normal” as it is for two people of the opposite sex.’ (student 4, 14 may 2020) in this instance, the prescribed extract has further guided the students towards a particular analysis of the film. this is similarly affected when one of the students writes: ‘heteronormative assumptions, including homophobic attitudes, beliefs, and behaviours, provide the root of the internal and external conflict for the characters in the majority of lgbtq-themed books” (wickens 2011:153). this is also the case for sherwin. not only was he having an internal conflict regarding coming out but he now also has to face society which will probably judge him.’ (student 5, 14 may 2020) setting as part of this module, students are taught how to distinguish between spatial setting, temporal setting and social setting, the latter referring to the cultural values of a particular environment or circumstance (abrams 2005:294). in this respect, students’ analyses of the short film emphasised the interdependence of spatial setting and social setting. the focus on how setting depicts homophobia was often approached rather literally, with many students noting the homophobia of the learners in the school. significantly – although not unsurprisingly given the focus of the question and the analytical methodology of close reading – the students’ essays are all very negative about the homophobic learners depicted in the film: ‘according to wickens (2011:153) authors create a problem around homophobia by making the antagonists to portray homophobic attitudes and behaviours. this can be witnessed in the film with how the children’s facial expressions and their body language displays disgust and disapproval proving that the children are being homophobic towards the two boys.’ (student 6, 14 may 2020) ‘the students are explored as villains as they are not sympathetic and are visibly unaccepting of homosexual attraction.’ (student 3, 14 may 2020) significantly, given that the students are future primary school teachers, many of them pay particular attention to those features of the school that make it an especially powerful component of the machinations of homophobia: ‘schools are supposed to be the place where everyone is treated the same but some learners at school are homophobic because they were exposed to homophobic mindset and behaviour. at school learners must be taught about not being homophobic because they don’t understand the pain the others feel when they are judged and discriminated by them.’ (student 7, 14 may 2020) ‘[t]he setting of the film is entirely within the school environment, this calls attention to the lack of awareness young people in schools have towards homosexuality and as a results manifests into homophobia.’ (student 8, 14 may 2020) ‘the way that the individuals in his school look at him when they found out shows that indeed that they really do have homophobic attitudes. it also tells us that homophobic attitudes start from a young age since it all happens in the school premises.’ (student 9, 14 may 2020) whereas the vast majority of the students focused simply on how the school was a setting for depicting homophobia, some of the students demonstrated more advanced skills of textual analysis and offered particularly original insights about how the film also challenges homophobia. in one striking response, which points to the way in which specific spaces can create conditions for visibility (rothmann 2018), a student comments on the fact that the setting is divided between the school building and the gardens outside: ‘the 2 settings are nature versus the establishment. the first time we see the boys interact, curiously and very shyly, is outside. not only were there no other people around, but there is also the convention of ‘letting nature take its course.’ their attractions and interactions were not forced, nor were they bad: they simply were. outside in nature they had the freedom to explore what felt right for them, and they could be honest about the fact that they were drawn to each other. not only were they alone together, but nature was bright. their interactions were beautiful in the light. inside on the other hand, the scene got darker and duller. the school building is a construct made by society where, rather ironically, children are thought to think in a particular way. the intolerance of homosexuality is established as a learned understanding. here their natural course could not be followed anymore as cold eyes and whispers turn what they are just finding into something shameful. something disgraceful. something ugly. within these rigid walls is also the only place where other people were in the film. this is an interesting way to convey that socialisation is relational: people are the establishment.’ (student 2, 14 may 2020) similarly, a student remarks on how the school bell is constitutive of the setting, in both a literal and figurative way: ‘children are raised according to the expectations of society. the school bell represents the expectations of society; also serves as a warning. the school bell is used to alert school pupils that their current lesson has ended and that it is time for a new lesson to begin; the children automatically move on to their next class rather than ask what the time is. in this way, the two boys are supposed to follow society’s expectations as demonstrated by the dark-hair boy. the bell serves as a warning as it can be heard in the surrounding areas. this fact contributes to the subject homophobia as loving a person of the same sex is defying those expectations, resulting in children growing up to be unaccepting towards lgbtq community.’ (student 10, 14 may 2020) reflecting on temporal setting and making an insightful point that hints at an authorial hopefulness about the relationship between and affirmation of the two boys, a student wrote: ‘in a heartbeat is set at the beginning of a school day a rather ordinary setting but from the words of wickens this is typical as “they situate these issues in contemporary realistic settings with which readers are likely to identify” (wickens 2011:160) and the significance is that firstly a new day is seen as something that hold countless, hopeful opportunities.’ (student 11, 14 may 2020) symbolism the most prominent symbol in the film is the personification of the heart. given that sexuality education needs to extend beyond just safety and sexual health, and instead also focus explicitly on desire (francis 2010, 2019b), it is significant that most students were willing to articulate the potency of the underlying desire of which the heart was a symbol: ‘the heart has prominent eyes and an innocent smile and embodies a childlike essence about it in the way it enthusiastically pursues the other boy. it points eagerly to the other boy and drags the protagonist to allow him to confront and confess his feelings. this allows the boys to hold hands and almost share a kiss. this is significant because the love or attraction between the boys is not biased, limited or something that can be controlled. the filmmakers’ approach to making the heart very childlike allows the viewer to observe the innocence behind having a middle school crush and to normalise the fact that it is a same-sex attraction between two young boys who are just as significant and should be treated equally when compared to a heterosexual attraction.’ (student 3, 14 may 2020) ‘although he was hiding, his heart was still out there going for what it wants. here we can see that homosexual people ten[d] to go through the hardships of being who they are, most of the time they do not experiment an environment that involves their identities and celebrating and valuing the diversity of their experiences and lives.’ (student 12, 14 may 2020) ‘this is where viewers get to understand that it is wrong to judge people. we also see that homophobia is challenged because they decided to end up together regardless of what the other children thought when they discovered that the two boys have feelings for each other.’ (student 13, 14 may 2020) ‘seeing how relatable, funny or silly and impossibly dangerous the child protagonist’s feelings are, creates a sense of acceptance that also leads the viewer to seeing that what the romantic interests of [homosexuals] are the essentially the same.’ (student 14, 14 may 2020) the framing of this particular observation, in which heteronormativity is collapsed in favour of a universalised notion of attraction, is important, given dinkins and englert’s (2015) warning that the use of lgbti-inclusive resources in the classroom does not on its own counter the othering of gay characters. how resources are used is perhaps as important as the resources themselves. in addition to the personification of the heart, which comes to symbolise sherwin’s desire for jonathan, the other poignant and oft-discussed symbol in the film is the dustbin (where sherwin hides when he thinks his same-sex attraction has been noticed). given the power of literature and film to generate empathy and compassion in audiences (barton et al. 2019; clarke 2013; helmer 2016; skouge & rao 2009), the dustbin is a particularly powerful symbol in this film. evidencing this deeply empathetic investment in the experiences of sherwin, students wrote, for instance: ‘he didn’t hide next or behind the dustbin, but he went inside it as if he belonged there. when people feel judged, they usually feel worthless because they failed to reach the society’s standards of “normal.” when the boy went to hide inside the dustbin, he felt like he didn’t belong in the society since he was attracted to a male. he had failed to be part of the “normal,” the heterosexual people. him going inside the dustbin was because he felt like trash/rubbish. he felt like that’s where he belongs, with the rubbish in the dustbin. if the school wasn’t homophobic, neither of the boys would’ve been afraid to be themselves.’ (student 15, 14 may 2020) ‘it seems like the closed rubbish can represents feelings of people that have been closed up just because of fear of rejection/embarrassment, being looked at as weird and not normal just because they love “differently” than the others deemed normal (boy & girl/girl & boy, nothing else). still the heart here manages to open the lid of the rubbish can from where they were hiding (shows how strong this boys feelings are) the hearts opens, breaks all barriers to get what it wants despite the beliefs of the society.’ (student 16, 14 may 2020) ‘[a]nother possibility is he could feel in this case is hiding in a dustbin because he feels the fear of being unwanted and usually people throw dirt in the dustbin.’ (student 17, 14 may 2020) again revealing a hopefulness in the outcome of the boys’ relationship, a student reflects on the symbolism of the doors that separate the physical school building from the gardens: ‘the directors further use the symbol of a door to symbolise opportunities. open doors in literature are used as symbols of new opportunities. in the last scene, we see the other boy closing a door behind the heart that’s following him. to the other boy, this might mean that he is closing or shutting off what has just happened in the school pathways, but to the heart the opening of the door means one more opportunity to convince the boy that he has feelings for him.’ (student 18, 14 may 2020) conclusion in order to develop a truly inclusive sexuality curriculum, our interventions as university lecturers need to happen at the level of opinion (what teachers think about same-sex sexualities), the level of resources (what teachers can use to teach about sexuality, and the skills necessary to identify age-appropriate texts) and at the level of epistemology (the terminology and concepts related to gender and sexuality). the specific assignment that i focus on in this article addresses only the first two of these, pointing to the importance of an integrated approach to lgbti-inclusive teaching across teacher education curriculums. while francis (2017a:145) clearly argues for the importance of developing a terminology-rich conceptual understanding of sexuality and gender, he also cites kumashiro’s point that ‘[t]o create change requires disruptive knowledge, not simply more knowledge.’ through the use of a close reading analytical methodology that is foundational to literary studies, it is shown how students are guided towards a reading of the film that disrupts – however briefly – their personal knowledge about sexuality. as helmer (2016) explains, while it is imperative to create spaces for personal views and discomfort to be explored, it is equally important that we ‘recognis[e] as legitimate bodies of knowledge and mak[e] the focus of inquiry the stories, experiences, cultures, histories and politics of lgbtqi people’ and that we ‘develop[…] an understanding of the dynamics of oppressions related to normative systems of regulation of sexuality.’ literary studies, then, needs to become a constituent part of a broader transdisciplinary sexuality curriculum. while it is not possible to infer, from the vantage point of this study, the extent to which long-term shifts took place from students’ perspectives, it is important to note that the pedagogical potential of what i propose does not lie in a singular textual intervention. rather, this article focuses on a strategy that not only exposed pre-service teachers to lgbti-affirming narrative texts but also modelled how these can be incorporated into a broader sexuality curriculum. that being said, whether the use of close reading in a module for pre-service teachers can be transposed onto the primary school classrooms in which these students will one day teach, depends on the specific grade, context and narrative text. mccarthy (2020) explains the ‘split consciousness’ that is necessary to both teach literary texts to university students and equip those students with the skills necessary to translate that knowledge when in their primary school classrooms. in other words, the students need to be able to adjust their own experience of being taught to match the context-specific demands of actually teaching. with this in mind, one cannot argue that a narrow focus on a narrative text will always be an effective pedagogical strategy in all primary school classrooms. rather, the intervention described in this article is specifically relevant for teacher education programmes, even as it may also model a pedagogical strategy through which controversial topics can be explored by teachers themselves. acknowledgements competing interests the author declares that he has no financial or personal relationships that may have inappropriately influenced him in writing this article. author’s contributions the author declares that he is the sole author of this research article. ethical considerations ethical clearance to conduct this study was obtained from the research ethics committee of the faculty of education at the university of johannesburg (no. sem 1-2021-011). funding information this research work received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors. data availability the students’ essays are subject to the conditions set in the ethical clearance application and in the participants’ informed consent forms. thus, the full essays are not available for distribution. disclaimer the views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any affiliated agency of the author. references abrams, m.h., 2005, a glossary of literary terms, thomson wadsworth, boston, ma. barton, g., baguley, m., kerby, m. & macdonald, a., 2019, ‘exploring how quality children’s literature can enhance compassion and empathy in the classroom context’, in g barton & s garvis (eds.), compassion and empathy in educational contexts, pp. 165–188, palgrave, london. bhana, d., 2008, ‘discourses of childhood innocence in primary school hiv/aids education in south africa’, african journal of aids research 7(1), 149–158. https://doi.org/10.2989/ajar.2008.7.1.15.443 bhana, d., 2012, ‘understanding and addressing homophobia in school: a view from teachers’, south african journal of education 32(3), 307–318. https://doi.org/10.15700/saje.v32n3a659 bhana, d., 2014, ‘ruled by hetero-norms? raising some moral questions for teachers in south africa’, journal of moral education 43(3), 362–376. https://doi.org/10.1080/03057240.2014.922943 bhana, d. & mayeza, e., 2016, ‘we don’t play with gays, they’re not real boys…they can’t fight: hegemonic masculinity and (homophobic) violence in the primary years of schooling’, international journal of educational development 51, 36–42. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijedudev.2016.08.002 bouic, i., 2019, ‘rights versus risks: the tension in sexual education for learners with intellectual disability’, masters dissertation, dept of psychology, university of cape town. bouley, t.m., 2011, ‘speaking up: opening dialogue with pre-service and in-service teachers about reading children’s books inclusive of lesbian and gay families’, journal of praxis in multicultural education 6(1), 3–18. https://doi.org/10.9741/2161-2978.1050 bravo, e. & david, b., 2017, ‘in a heartbeat’ [short film], ringling college of art and design, sarasota. brown, a., 2018, ‘the geographies of heteronormativity: the sources of symbolic homophobic violence at a south african university’, african safety promotion, 16(2), 9–20. brown, a., 2020a, ‘queering teacher education through intergroup dialogue’, educational research for social change 9(2), 16–31. https://doi.org/10.17159/2221-4070/2020/v9i2a2 brown, a., 2020b, ‘queering family dialogue through entertainment education: narratives from minority sexual identify youth’, journal of glbt family studies 16(5), 475–487. https://doi.org/10.1080/1550428x.2019.1686720 brown, a. & buthelezi, j., 2020, ‘school-based support team responses to sexual diversity and homophobic bullying in a south african school’, interchange 51(4), 471–482. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10780-020-09404-2 brown, a. & diale, b.m., 2017, ‘you should wear to show what you are: queer student teachers troubling the heteronormative professional identity’, gender questions 51(1), 1–19. https://doi.org/10.25159/2412-8457/2986 brown, a., maseko, n. & sedibe, m. 2020, ‘i only relieve myself when i get home in the afternoons: microagressions in (queered) bathroom spaces at a south african university’, agenda 34(2), 32–40. https://doi.org/10.1080/10130950.2019.1706983 chaka, j., beyers, c. & swanepoel, e., 2019, ‘sexuality education beyond the life orientation class: teacher perceptions across the curriculum’, southern african review of education 25(2), 105–199. clarke, k., 2013, ‘pedagogical moments: affective sexual literacies in film’, sex education 13(3), 263–275. https://doi.org/10.1080/14681811.2012.718992 dare, s.a., 2019, ‘a transformative approach to embracing lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (lgbti) communities at a university campus’, phd thesis, dept. of educational psychology, university of kwazulu-natal. depalma, r. & atkinson, e., 2009, ‘no outsiders: moving beyond a discourse of tolerance to challenge heteronormativity in primary school’, british educational research journal 35(6), 837–855. https://doi.org/10.1080/01411920802688705 depalma, r. & francis, d. 2014a, ‘south african life orientation teachers: (not) teaching about sexuality diversity’, journal of homosexuality 61(12), 1687–1711. https://doi.org/10.1080/00918369.2014.951256 depalma, r. & francis, d., 2014b, ‘the gendered nature of south african teachers’ discourse on sex education’, health education research 29(4), 624–632. https://doi.org/10.1093/her/cyt117 department of basic education, 2011a, curriculum and assessment policy statement, grades 7-9: life orientation, department of basic education, pretoria. department of basic education, 2011b, curriculum and assessment policy statement, grades r-3: life skills, department of basic education, pretoria. dinkins, e.g. & englert, p., 2015, ‘lgbtq literature in middle school classrooms: possibilities for challenging heteronormative environments’, sex education 15(4), 392–405. https://doi.org/10.1080/14681811.2015.1030012 duck, p., 2018, ‘making sense of close reading’, changing english 25(1), 14–28. https://doi.org/10.1080/1358684x.2017.1400375 du preez, p., simmonds, s. & roux, c., 2012, ‘teaching-learning and curriculum development for human rights education: two sides of the same coin’, journal of education 55, 83–104. eagleton, t., 2013, how to read literature, yale university press, new haven, ct. francis, d., 2010, ‘sexuality education in south africa: three essential questions’, international journal of educational development 30(3), 314–319. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijedudev.2009.12.003 francis, d. & msibi, t., 2011, ‘teaching about heterosexism: challenging homophobia in south africa’, journal of lgbt youth 8, 157–173. francis, d., 2017a, troubling the teaching and learning of gender and sexuality diversity in south african education, palgrave, london. francis, d., 2017b, ‘homophobia and sexual diversity in south african schools: a review’, journal of lgbt youth 14(4), 359–379. https://doi.org/10.1080/19361653.2017.1326868 francis, d., 2019a, ‘keeping it straight: what do south african queer youth say they need from sexuality education?’, journal of youth studies 22(6), 772–790. https://doi.org/10.1080/13676261.2018.1539223 francis, d., 2019b, ‘what does the teaching and learning of sexuality education in south africa reveal about counter-normative sexualities?’, sex education 19(4), 406–421. https://doi.org/10.1080/14681811.2018.1563535 francis, d., 2021a, ‘queering the (ab)normalization of gender, (hetero)sexuality and schooling in south africa’, journal of homosexuality 68(10), 1571–1590. https://doi.org/10.1080/00918369.2019.1701337 francis, d., 2021b, ‘a gay agenda: troubling compulsory heterosexuality in a south african university classroom’, teaching sociology 49(3), 278–290. https://doi.org/10.1177/0092055x211022472 francis, d. & hemson, c., 2007, ‘rainbow’s end: consciousness and enactment in social justice education’, perspectives in education 25(1), 99–109. francis, d. & kuhl, k., 2020, ‘imagining a curriculum beyond compulsory heterosexuality in south african education’, journal of lgbt youth, forthcoming. https://doi.org/10.1080/19361653.2020.1844606 francis, d. & reygan, f., 2016, ‘let’s see if its won’t go away by itself: lgbt microaggressions among teachers in south africa’, education as change 20(3), 180–201. https://doi.org/10.17159/1947-9417/2016/1124 fulani, n., hendricks, m. & mccarthy, k.a., 2019, ‘making poetry accessible and enjoyable: towards excellent teaching’, in m. hendricks & g. harrison (eds.), lessons from the kalahari: tracking teachers’ professional development, cambridge scholars publishing, newcastle. govender, n. & andrews, g., 2021, ‘queer critical literacies’, in j. pandya, r. mora, j. alford, n. golden & r. de roock (eds.), the handbook of critical literacies, p. 82–93, routledge, london. helmer, k., 2016, ‘gay and lesbian literature disrupting the heteronormative space of the high school english classroom’, sex education 16(1), 35–48. https://doi.org/10.1080/14681811.2015.1042574 johnson, b., 2014, ‘the need to prepare future teachers to understand and combat homophobia in schools’, south african journal of higher education 28(4), 1249–1268. https://doi.org/10.20853/28-5-417 langa, m., 2015, ‘a boy cannot marry another boy: adolescent boys’ talk about ‘gay’ boys at school’, journal of psychology in africa 25(4), 313–319. https://doi.org/10.1080/14330237.2015.1078088 matshili, r., 2019, ‘uproar over comprehensive sexuality education’, pretoria news, viewed 31 october 2021, from https://www.iol.co.za/pretoria-news/uproar-over-comprehensive-sexuality-education-36192973. mccarthy, k.a., 2020, ‘the split consciousness required to teach poetry to student teachers in a south african metropolitan university’, in v. nomlomo, z. desai, m. mbelani, n. dlamini & j. september (eds.), masixhase abantwana bakwazi ukufunda nokubhala: let us enable our children to read and write, pp. 205–218, university of the western cape, cape town. msibi, t., 2012, ‘i’m used to it now: experiences of homophobia among queer youth in south african township schools’, gender and education 24(5), 515–533. https://doi.org/10.1080/09540253.2011.645021 other foundation, 2015, progressive prudes, other foundation, johannesburg. potgieter, c. & reygan, f., 2012, ‘lesbian, gay and bisexual citizenship: a case study as represented in a sample of south african life orientation textbooks’, perspectives in education 30(4), 39–51. rall, s., 2019, ‘hot debate sparked over sex education for 10-year-olds’, mercury, viewed 31 october 2021, from https://www.iol.co.za/mercury/news/hot-debate-sparked-over-sex-education-for-10-year-olds-36291183. ramsaroop, s. & petersen, n., 2020, ‘portraits of primary school pre-service teachers at a south african university: implications for nuanced student support’, journal of education 81, 82–98. https://doi.org/10.17159/2520-9868/i81a05 rothmann, j., 2018, ‘to gay or not to gay, that’s the question: permeable boundaries between public and private spaces of south african gay male academics and students in south africa’, gender questions 6(1), 1–23. https://doi.org/10.25159/2412-8457/2999 skouge, j.r. & rao, k., 2009, ‘digital storytelling in teacher education: creating transformations through narrative’, educational perspectives 42(1–2), 54–60. taylor, d.m., 2018, ‘lgbtq music educators: external mentoring between student teachers and in-service teachers’, bulletin for the council for research in music education 2018(216), 65–86. https://doi.org/10.5406/bulcouresmusedu.216.0065 tshilongo, t. & rothmann, j., 2019, ‘a sociological exploration of the need for safe spaces for lesbian and gay students on a south african university campus’, transformation in higher education 4, 1–9. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v4i0.77 uj, 2020, faculty of education rules and regulations, university of johannesburg, johannesburg. uys, m.j., romylos, s. & nel, c., 2021, ‘exposure to queer characters in konigsberg’s openly straight through social messaging’, literator 42(1), 1–9. https://doi.org/10.4102/lit.v42i1.1801 van der merwe, d., 2018, ‘aspects of academic language proficiency of intermediate phase teacher education students’, south african journal of childhood education 8(1), 1–9. https://doi.org/10.4102/sajce.v8i1.555 venketsamy, r. & kinnear, j., 2020, ‘accommodating comprehensive sexuality education within the grades r-3 curriculum in south africa’, in k.s. adeyemo (ed.), the education systems of africa, springer, new york. wickens, c., 2011, ‘codes, silences and homophobia: challenging normative assumptions about gender and sexuality in contemporary lgbtq young adult literature’, children’s literature in education 42, 148–164. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10583-011-9129-0 wilmot, m. & naidoo, d., 2014, ‘keeping things straight: the representation of sexualities in life orientation textbooks’, sex education 14(3), 323–337. https://doi.org/10.1080/14681811.2014.896252 woest, y., 2018, ‘beginner teachers’ experiences of transdisciplinary demands of a school curriculum’, the journal of transdisciplinary research in southern africa 14(2), 1–7. https://doi.org/10.4102/td.v14i2.488 abstract introduction an overview of transformational education the role of creativity in transformational education a brief overview of the hungarian educational context: transformation, diversity and creativity a case study of budapest metropolitan university research methods and design results internationalisation creativity transformational learning discussion conclusion acknowledgements references appendix 1 appendix 2 about the author(s) melanie k. smith school of tourism, leisure and hospitality, budapest metropolitan university, hungary vilmos vass institute of social sciences and international relations, budapest metropolitan university, hungary citation smith, m.k. & vass, v., 2017, ‘the relationship between internationalisation, creativity and transformation: a case study of higher education in hungary’, transformation in higher education 2(0), a22. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v2i0.22 original research the relationship between internationalisation, creativity and transformation: a case study of higher education in hungary melanie k. smith, vilmos vass received: 09 may 2017; accepted: 07 aug. 2017; published: 18 sept. 2017 copyright: © 2017. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract the main objective of this article is to explore the relationship between internationalisation, creativity and transformation in the context of higher education. it is argued in academic theory that the process of internationalisation in higher education has two pillars: transformational learning and creative development, and that creativity is an integral part of transformational learning. to explore this relationship further, the authors draw on primary research undertaken in the context of a higher education institution in budapest, hungary. a delphi study with senior academic staff and a focus group with hungarian and international students were included in the research. questions were asked which aimed to determine whether creativity is indeed an integral part of transformational learning, and whether creativity and transformation are the most important elements of internationalisation. staff and students recognise the creative and transformative potential of internationalisation, but they also identified several challenges. these include encouraging students to go beyond instrumental approaches to learning, providing staff with the relevant training and support, changing the culture of institutions and overcoming the lack of flexibility in existing national education structures. overall, the research findings reinforced theoretical perspectives, which propose creative thinking, cooperative and communicative learning, project-based and problem-solving activities as some of the main tools in the process of transformational learning and prerequisites for internationalisation. introduction universities are knowledge-producing entities and have social, cultural, ideological, political and economic responsibilities to society. (maringe & foskett 2010:1) this article focuses on the relationship between internationalisation, creativity and transformation in the context of higher education. du preez, simmonds and verhoef (2016:2) argue that internationalisation is ‘one of the directions that transformation of higher education must take’. it has been argued in academic theory that the process of internationalisation in higher education has two main pillars: transformational learning and creative development, and that creativity is an integral part of transformational learning. to verify whether transformational learning and creative development are indeed essential elements in the process of internationalisation, the authors draw on primary research undertaken in the context of a higher education institution in budapest, hungary. a delphi study with senior academic staff and a focus group with hungarian and international students were included in the research. questions were asked which aimed to determine whether creativity is indeed an integral part of transformational learning, and whether creativity and transformation are the most important elements of internationalisation. an overview of transformational education transformation has been defined in different ways according to context and discipline or field. within a business context, pine (2015 ) and pine and gilmore (2014) suggest that one of five value-creating opportunities that are likely to drive further progress in the dynamic experience economy are ‘transformative experiences’. this means that customers are looking for even longer-lasting benefit or value and may wish to be changed by their experiences, realising dreams or achieving aspirations. such a notion might fit very well into an educational context, especially as students are increasingly perceiving themselves as ‘customers’ who are buying into an educational experience. mermiri (2009) describes how the transformation economy is characterised by ‘meaning’ and ‘interaction’. products and services are chosen based on how they will transform people’s lives or ways of thinking. in the transformation economy, goods and services are co-created or co-produced through the interaction of consumers and producers. the consumer helps to shape the product or service which can transform the individual. again, a similar or parallel process might take place in educational contexts where education is becoming (1) transformational and (2) (co)creative. specifically within an educational context, du preez et al. (2016) suggest that transformation is an inherently complex, fluid, open-ended construct, which can refer to changes in institutional structures and culture, as well as to specific elements such as curriculum and academic and student experiences. mezirow (1978) was one of the first theorists to apply the concept of transformation to learning. he states that development of a new worldview is at the heart of transformational learning. anderson and anderson (2001) concurs with this idea that transformational change means a broadening of people’s worldview. tolliver and tisdell (2006) suggest that a more expansive understanding of the world can be grounded in our own beings, and transformational learning focuses on a change or shift in one’s way of being in the world, understandings of oneself and relationships with others (morell & o’connor 2002). several other authors have supported this view that transformational learning fosters a broader conception of the self (cranton 1994; king 1996; quinn 1996). clark (1991) identifies three major outcomes of transformation: psychological (a person changes an understanding of the self), convictional (a person revises their own belief systems) and behavioural (a person makes changes to their lifestyle). transformational learning clearly involves an existential component (holland-wade 1998). sohn et al. (2016) state that: we contend that teaching for transformation is more than good teaching because it focuses on helping students to transcend mastery of course content and find deep, personal meaning in their learning experiences and lives through realization. (p. 183) another major part of transformation is connecting and communicating with others, that is, socialisation (mezirow 2000). social relationships help individuals to develop openness and self-understanding and to build confidence and self-esteem (holland-wade 1998). mezirow (1991) also emphasised the importance of critical reflection, which can transform beliefs, attitudes, opinions and reactions. merriam (2004) states the importance of cognitive development in transformational learning, but pierce (1986:273) suggests that transformational learning places as much value on emotional and experiential components of learning as on cognitive and intellectual elements. clark and wilson (1991) and dirkx (2008) also mention irrational and emotional aspects of learning. sohn et al. (2016:186) describe how transformational learning ‘explores a whole-learner perspective rather than viewing learning as knowledge and skill acquisition focused solely on cognitive reflection and perspective building’. mezirow (1994) states that most (adult) education is about instrumental learning that has clearly defined learning objectives, tasks and outcomes, as well as competencies and skills. learners tend to follow teachers’ ways of thinking. instead, however, ‘communicative learning’ can help address change in oneself and the way one learns. dirkx (2008) states that transformational learning challenges common assumptions, notions and meanings of what learning is all about. stone and duffy (2015) suggest that: the opportunity to engage in this kind of learning process is vital for students who hope to thrive in a global marketplace and diverse industry where core beliefs and worldviews, which act as either barriers or bridges to successful problem solving and a flourishing career, will constantly be challenged. (p. 107) the role of creativity in transformational education one of the most relevant and pragmatic answers to the challenging question of globalisation in higher education is internationalisation (blessinger 2015). there are several papers, publications, strategies and theoretical models on this topic (cheng, wang & liu 2014; de witt et al. 2017; maringe & foskett 2010). from a practical point of view, it is proposed that these approaches can be integrated into a new conceptual framework. this framework has two pillars: transformational learning and creative development in higher education. it is clear from the previous section that transformational learning and education should focus on existential, experiential, social and communicative dimensions. it should challenge learners’ basic assumptions and even their worldview. it should create meaning and even changes lives. however, what then is the link to creativity? it was already stated in business literature that the transformation economy requires some degree of ‘co-creation’ between suppliers and customers (pine 2015; pine & gilmore 2014). mermiri (2009:21) even suggests that creativity is a key constituent in the transformation economy. creativity has played an important role in research, education, economy and society since 1950, reflected in numerous publications containing quantitative and qualitative research data and analysis (csikszentmihalyi 1996; sternberg 1999). it should be noted that there is a considerable body of literature on creativity and education, which was too extensive to be included there. however, many of the studies focus on primary or secondary education rather than higher education. several systematic reviews or meta-analyses summarise this literature (e.g. davies et al. 2013; mullet et al. 2016). jackson et al. (2006) suggest that the importance of creativity had not yet been properly recognised within higher education, but recent publications focus on a higher education perspective. the authors of this article concur with watts and blessingers’s (2017) thoughts on creative learning in the context of higher education, namely that it is process and outcome oriented, it is domain and field specific and it is connected to the sociocultural environment. these ideas follow on from those of csikszentmihalyi and sawyer (1995). csikszentmihalyi (1996:23) states that ‘creativity does not happen inside people’s head, but in the interaction between a person’s thoughts and a social cultural context’. sternberg (1999) subsequently defines a ‘social-personality approach’ to creativity. beghetto and kaufman (2013) outline some fundamentals of creativity, namely: (1) creativity takes more than originality, (2) there are different levels of creativity, (3) context matters, (4) creativity comes at a cost and (5) there is a time and a place for creativity. in addition, creativity has some general characteristics: (1) transversal competence through all subject areas concerned and (2) transdisciplinarity, which orients curriculum planning and creativity development. one of the challenges is defining creativity in the context of education (bereczki 2016). bronson and merryman (2010) suggest that although creativity has always been prized in the american society, it has never really been understood. jones (2009) asks how creativity can be adequately and fairly assessed if each discipline values and frames it differently. it is important to define what creativity can mean in the context of education, but also how it is interpreted in different languages and contexts. philip (2015) suggests that creativity can be hidden in the higher education curriculum, often under the guise of problem-solving, critical thinking or communication. although creative education seems to have become a priority within many countries, the approach may differ considerably. radclyffe-thomas (2015:159) notes that this can have implications for internationalisation in higher education with the recruitment of students from different countries and cultures. he states that ‘the notion of creativity as understood and interpreted in different cultural settings, and in cross-cultural settings is worthy of further exploration’. research has shown that the stimulation and development of creative abilities and intercultural skills help prepare children for life in a globalised and multicultural world (dziedziewicz, gajda & karwowski 2014). urban (2014) emphasises the importance of divergent thinking (generating unique ideas) for creativity, and bronson and merryman (2010) add convergent thinking, which combines these ideas into the best results. flint (2014) suggests that creative approaches to education should include thinking interdependently, gathering data through all the senses, adopting a multidisciplinary perspective, and mixing movement, drama and music with academic content. this raises the question of how far an arts-based or arts-led education is necessary to engender creativity. mermiri (2009:9) suggests that ‘culture and the arts can [also] be deeply moving and transformational, often shaping individual and collective identity by appealing both to the aesthetic and the emotional’. munday (2016), on the other hand, questions whether the arts and artists can truly facilitate and foster the emergence of innovative executives and entrepreneurs. he notes that artists actually rarely label themselves as ‘creative’. it is arguably possible for creativity to reside in other subject areas and approaches. for example, bronson and merryman (2010) quote researchers who say that creativity should be taken out of the art room and put into homeroom. as a summary, therefore, it seems that understandings of creativity vary according to culture and context, creative abilities are important in the context of internationalisation and multiculturalism and although the arts can be important for creativity, it is not only through the arts that creativity may be fostered. these ideas will form part of the questions posed to both academic staff and students later in the case study research. the case study provides a context for the main research questions, which aimed to determine whether creativity and transformation are the most important elements of internationalisation, and whether creativity is an integral part of transformational learning. compared to the plethora of research on western european and north american education systems and the growing number of case studies from asia, there have been relatively few from central and eastern europe (watts & blessinger 2017). the authors therefore aimed to bridge this gap with a case study of hungary. a brief overview of the hungarian educational context: transformation, diversity and creativity zsolnai and lesznyák (2015) explore the link between political changes, education and values in hungary from 1990 to 2012. after the transition (the post-1989 period following the fall of communism), they describe a ‘crisis of values’ followed by an increase in decentralisation, democracy and autonomy. they discuss how szabó, bauer and laki (2001) revealed that the most important trait in young people’s value profile was an instrumental approach towards education (i.e. a belief that qualifications and professions are important but that institutions and teachers cannot shape lives). they also quote bauer and szabó (2009) who interestingly state that one of the most important values for young people after the change of regime was ‘creativity’. bereczki’s (2016) analysis of creativity in the hungarian national curriculum (hncc) in 2012 suggests that creativity is not clearly defined, there is greater emphasis on creativity at primary level, and that there was a significant imbalance across subject groups. she concludes that: though explicit references to several elements of the creative learning environment appear across the hncc, the analysis highlighted the lack of attention to important conditions of creative learning suggested by the literature. (bereczki 2016:350) however, messing (2008) comments on how the most successful pedagogical methods in bridging the educational gap between roma and non-roma in hungary (a common and controversial theme in educational literature because roma or gypsy children are often less educated or are educated in segregated schools) was through ‘transformational’ or ‘creative’ activities such as cooperative and project-based learning, drama and cultural trips. post 2012, hungarian education has become more centralised again, and zsolnai and lesznyák (2015) pose the question whether post-communist humanistic and democratic values will remain. in the south african context, du preez et al. (2016) suggest that the transformation of higher education should help create greater access to disadvantaged groups, internationalisation should be a key factor of transformation and that transformation is not simply a goal in itself, but a way of improving and creating a more equitable society. although the south african context is very different from the hungarian one, it could be argued that these values have a global resonance everywhere, especially in a country whose democratic status is currently being questioned (szikra 2014). a case study of budapest metropolitan university budapest metropolitan university is the largest private university in hungary with a student community of almost 8000. it offers a wide selection of bachelor and master degree programmes in the fields of communication, business, tourism and arts. although the internationalisation of the university is relatively recent (the past four years), international students already come from 75 countries. budapest metropolitan university cites creative education as a ‘core value’ which is embodied in the teaching methods, the approach to teaching and learning and in students’ attitude. the fostering of creative thinking is described as a key to their future success (budapest metropolitan university 2017). research methods and design the main research questions aimed to explore whether creativity and transformation are the most important pillars of internationalisation, and whether creativity is integral to transformational learning. the research methods were designed to consider these relationships from the perspectives of both academic staff members and students. a delphi study was undertaken with senior members of staff from budapest metropolitan university. a delphi study can be described as ‘a research approach to gain consensus using a series of questionnaires and the provision of feedback to participants who have expertise in key areas’ (habibi, sarafrazi & izadyar 2014:12). researchers send a set of questions or a questionnaire to a number of carefully selected expert respondents who are asked to complete the questions and send back their responses to the researchers. the researchers analyse the responses and send them back to the respondents for further comments and reflections, often with structured questions attached which aim to encourage agreement or consensus on key themes. this can happen two times or more until consensus is reached. although there are debates about the optimum number of participants, okoli and pawlowski (2004) suggest that most delphi studies have only 10–18 participants. this delphi panel had 10 members who were considered to be educational experts and consisted of heads of departments or programmes (e.g. bas, mas, languages, international student support), as well as rectors, vice rectors and deans. a minimum of two rounds of questions is suggested (gordon 1994), and this delphi study accorded with this criterion. open questions were distributed in the first-round questionnaire as advocated by brady (2015), and questions inviting agreement or consensus were designed in the second round, as reaching consensus on issues is the main aim of a delphi study (hsu & sandford 2007). the researchers designed and distributed the questions electronically over a period of several weeks with a one-month gap in between rounds. the open questions asked respondents to reflect on the nature of and relationships between transformational education, creativity and internationalisation. in the second round, respondents were asked to reflect on the summary of findings and to agree on key definitions and relationships. the responses were all given in written form. a focus group was also undertaken with eight students from metropolitan university. they were carefully selected from courses that had been taught by the researchers which had contained some elements of creative content and delivery. the researchers were also the moderators, so this selection could technically have biased the results. however, it was important that the focus group participants could understand these sophisticated concepts and that they were articulate with good enough english language skills to participate. after this selection, the open questions focused on the students’ opinions about their educational experiences and how creative, international and transformational they were. there were four hungarian students and four international students, five female and three male, from both ba and ma programmes. in accordance with research methods theory, the focus group size was optimum. macdonald and headlam (2011) suggest that 6–12 participants is normal and krueger (2002) states that 6–8 is ideal. an hour-long focus group is typical and a range of 45 to 90 min is acceptable (eliot & associates 2012). the focus group took 80 min. it took place in a familiar location (a classroom in the university). chairs were arranged in a circle, drinks and snacks were provided and the session was recorded and notes were taken as recommended by several authors (e.g. krueger 2002; macdonald and headlam 2011). all students contributed to the discussion, although there were one or two ‘dominators’ and one or two ‘shy participants’ (cf. eliot & associates 2012) as could be expected. the responses were all given in oral form, recorded and then transcribed by the researchers. results the delphi study and the focus group yielded some interesting results which are presented in the following sections. both groups were asked to comment on the three main themes of internationalisation, creativity and transformation as well as on several sub-themes (e.g. transition, co-creativity, and interaction) within the context of hungary and, more especially, in budapest metropolitan university. the statements given in the sections below refer to the comments made by the staff delphi panel in written form and the student focus group in oral form (later transcribed) using the terminology that was employed by the respondents. internationalisation staff delphi panel the delphi panel described the process of internationalisation as involving information sharing, cross-cultural exchange, language learning and building valuable networks and contacts. it stimulates creativity and innovation by disrupting old patterns leading to positive change, for example in service-orientation, communication and flexible working. they agreed that creativity is an essential part of internationalisation. this confirmed one of the main research questions, which was whether creativity is one of the most important pillars of internationalisation. the greatest challenges were cited as being globalising or going beyond the local, institutional rigidity, changing ways of thinking and resolving conflicts. student focus group students seemed generally happy with their experiences of internationalisation and stated that there are many students from other countries and more than enough examples and case studies used in teaching from other countries and cultures. they also thought that there are enough opportunities through erasmus (european union-funded exchange programmes), but they are not promoted well enough, for example, where students could go. they had had chances to help out at international conferences and events, experience visits from foreign students, go to talks with speakers from abroad, and to shadow industry practitioners. however again, not all of the students had known about these opportunities. they also stated that some teachers’ english skills could be improved, that help with internships was not sufficient, and that the social side of their experiences could be significantly improved with some clubs, societies and excursions. in the case of students, pillars of internationalisation were not clearly identified, creativity was not specifically mentioned, but it was evident that some form of self-development or transformation took place as a result of opportunities created by internationalisation. creativity staff delphi panel the delphi panel agreed that creativity in education is important but some members felt that it is not essential and not always possible. creativity was defined by the panel as thinking in new ways and providing (multiple) solutions for new questions and problems. creativity helps to develop and apply new skills, attitudes and perspectives. not all delphi members agreed that arts-related subjects are indispensable in the context of creative education, but it was felt by many that the arts help to develop worldviews that are not attainable in any other way. however, most delphi participants agreed that all subjects can be creative if they are taught in the right way, for example through problem-solving or finding solutions, resolving conflicts, making connections and highlighting diversity. student focus group students described how some teachers tried to develop students’ creative skills more than others. they felt that the personality and technique of the teachers are important, and that interactive, informal, friendly teachers who created a good atmosphere and involved students were the most creative. they also felt that the most creative lessons took place in small groups with flexible classroom arrangements. in terms of content and delivery, they stated that lectures need more examples and case studies to be creative, that working on ‘tangible’ projects or in real situations are creative, for example learning to solve problems in a business. students agreed with the delphi panel respondents that one does not have to talk about the arts to be creative, and cited an example of one course where arts and museums were the focus, but it was not as creative as some of the business courses. however, they had experienced creative marketing and human resources courses where real-life examples and contexts were given for tasks which involved problem-solving. overall, they agreed that the teaching tools should be varied and interesting, and that creativity is more of an approach than subject-specific content. co-creativity in accordance with theories about the experience economy and the value of co-creativity, staff and students were also asked about this subtheme. staff delphi panel the delphi panel agreed that co-creative education should be inspiring and engaging. creative methodologies should be interactive, cooperative, problem-solving and group project-based. most delphi members agreed that all education should be co-creative; however, they doubted whether all students were equally capable of co-creation. one or two members also pointed out that the requirement to convey facts and to cover a body of knowledge may inhibit creativity to some extent. student focus group students did not fully understand the term ‘co-creativity’, but understood the concepts of ‘interactivity’, ‘involvement’ and ‘influence’. they agreed that there was some freedom in subject choices (but not much), and that they had some influence over course content and assessment (e.g. asking or voting for what they wanted with certain teachers). they could choose when and where to study because of the availability of online materials. students felt that interactive teaching is very important, otherwise they feel bored, sleepy and uninvolved, and they enjoyed interactive or collaborative projects. their interaction with teachers was positive, they had experienced very good interaction with other students including online forums to help students who had missed classes, share information, etc. there was also some useful interactions with companies, businesses and industries for project work, research and internships. the second part of the main research question suggested that creativity is integral to transformational learning. transformational learning staff delphi panel delphi study participants defined transformational education as a process that prepares students for working life especially in terms of skills development. they stated that students need to develop the maturity to think independently and critically, open their minds to diversity, navigating between different worldviews while retaining a sense of self. this includes developing a sense of self in both real and virtual environments. they stated that students need to be able to adapt their thinking and attitudes to cope with international workplaces and a multicultural workforce. they argued that this requires creative skills, thus partly confirming the second part of the research question. transformational education can help develop strong community values and norms in the institution, but many participants said that staff should be trained in order to develop the right attitudes and values. in summary, the greatest challenges for transformational education according to the delphi panel are (1) changing the culture of the institution, (2) training staff in the necessary skills and (3) changing the attitudes of students to both learning and life. the delphi panel was also asked (see appendix 1) about their experiences of the hungarian education system, as all of the respondents in the delphi panel were hungarian. they believed that there is more freedom and flexibility at higher education level than at other levels of education, and that although hungarian curriculum development is often preset, which limits creative curriculum development, there is room for creativity in course content, delivery, approaches and tools. they also suggested that although hungarian education is quite focused on facts and rote-learning, facts can be taught in a creative way. however, the panel agreed that the greatest challenges to hungarian educational reform at higher education level are (in order of importance) the following: (1) the political, legal and regulatory system, (2) lack of institutional support or funding and (3) lack of motivation of teachers because of high workloads and low salaries. connected to the idea of transformational education was the idea of a ‘transition university’, as it had been suggested by the management that budapest metropolitan could be described using this term. the university may not attract those students with the highest number of points or credits on entry, but it will aim for the greatest transformation in those students, especially in skills development and vocational or career potential. the delphi panel understood this concept and stated that it involves student self-development from school to the workplace. this includes equipping them for the dynamic, fast-changing, competitive global environment, opening their minds to new worldviews, shaping their values and ethics (at least, in theory or ideally). the panel stated that the greatest challenges for transition universities are (1) lack of student motivation and engagement and ability to pay attention and (2) requirement of a shift from an approach where students are here just to get a degree to a transformation in attitudes to learning and knowledge acquisition. student focus group the students were asked about their self-development in the context of transformational education (see appendix 2). they stated that the international environment broadens horizons and that they became more open to different cultures and can understand them better. in terms of language development, they described how thinking in a foreign language makes you creative, because you cannot always say exactly what you want to say, so you have to paraphrase and adapt. this was especially true in small groups because everyone has to participate and speak and therefore form and give opinions. they believed that they had developed their oral, listening and written skills and had learnt how to use new tools (e.g. in technology). many students appreciated experiencing a different education system with less ‘power-distance’, where students could interact with or even argue with teachers. although the students were less direct and explicit about creativity being essential to transformational education, their discussions once again confirmed the first part of the research question that internationalisation engenders creativity. discussion this article aimed to explore the relationship between internationalisation, creativity and transformation. the main research questions focused on whether creativity is an integral part of transformational learning, and whether creativity and transformation are the most important elements of internationalisation. the delphi respondents (academic staff) clearly considered creativity to be one of the most important pillars of internationalisation. students (focus group) did not mention creativity explicitly, but it emerged in the discussions that the process of internationalisation required a certain degree of creativity from the students (e.g. in terms of language and communication, adaptation to new and different situations). furthermore, students also believed that internationalisation afforded them plenty of opportunities for self-development or transformation. academic staff also confirmed this view, especially in terms of students being able to function well in international workplaces and multicultural workforces. it should be noted that there are clear limitations to the research. the sample sizes are small although they are methodologically acceptable, and they represent the opinions of staff and students from only one institution. the delphi panel and focus group respondents were also carefully selected by the researchers, which created bias. however, it was essential that the respondents were already knowledgeable about the issues in question and that their english was good enough to respond in depth. further issues emerged from the research which supported some of the academic literature. staff believed that internationalisation necessarily requires creativity, as stated by dziedziewicz et al. (2014). both staff and students believed that all subjects can be creative if they are taught in the right way. as stated by bronson and merryman (2010), creativity can take place outside the ‘art room’. they quoted examples of non-arts-based courses which had been creative because of the teachers’ attitudes, approaches, use of examples, or putting the theory into context (e.g. experiential learning as advocated by pierce 1986). although philip (2015) has suggested that creativity is often hidden in higher education curriculum, here creativity lay rather in the delivery because the curriculum is somewhat fixed in hungary, as stated earlier. a form of ‘communicative learning’ is deemed important (dirkx 2006). even though staff agreed that all education should be ‘co-creative’ and that students want to co-create, the students found it difficult to grasp the concept of ‘co-creativity’. however, they understood interaction and emphasised its importance. interaction includes their relationships with teachers, each other, support services such as administrators, and industry (e.g. internships, projects, research and conferences). in the literature, the value of co-operative and project-based learning was emphasised by messing (2008) among others, as well as problem-solving capabilities (stone & duffy 2015). there was a consensus between staff and students that facts should be learnt in a creative way, that theory should be placed in real life or that project-based context that requires problem-solving skills, international examples and case studies lead to greater understanding, and that the cultural diversity of an international group of students enhanced creativity. the students suggested that smaller group sizes facilitated this process, and staff also expressed concern that large group sizes were likely to inhibit the development of creative and transformational education for teachers. conclusion the degree of transformation for the consumer can vary, according to its depth, duration and intensity. the transformation therefore exists within a spectrum, where the impact can be high or low, transient or longlasting, thought-provoking or life-altering. (mermiri 2009:24) the theoretical and research dimensions in this article suggest that creativity is an integral part of transformational higher education, even if students do not recognise it explicitly. the process of internationalisation has an enormous impact on developing creative learning via cognitive and non-cognitive processes at a personal as well as an organisational level. it seems that the process of internationalisation is a challenging but positive experience for staff and students alike, and that creativity is a necessary part of transformation. beghetto and kaufman (2013) and jackson et al. (2006) suggest that creativity comes at a cost, and significant investments of time and energy may be required. this will involve creativity as a transversal and transdisciplinary competence, not only one that takes place within arts-related subjects. indeed, creativity is more of an approach than a content-specific phenomenon. creativity requires the generation of unique ideas in the form of divergent thinking (urban 2014) and their application to produce the best results in the form of convergent thinking (bronson and merryman 2010). creativity and transformational learning are connected to disciplinary, sociocultural, global and local contextual levels, with clear connections to the work sector. students in the focus group stated that they ‘need to be able to adapt their thinking and attitudes to cope with international workplaces and a multicultural workforce’. this point was also emphasised by stone and duffy (2015). from the research data in this article, it is clear that the balance between higher education and the work sector is an important task requiring appropriate curriculum development and teaching methodologies, especially focusing on project methods and cooperative and problem-based learning techniques. parallel research on best practice and discourse analysis of internationalisation in the middle east and north africa stressed cooperative learning, critical thinking, problem-solving, applying knowledge and discussion in the transformational process (abouchedid & bouzeid 2017). this study confirms their recommendations and points to a need for even more creative approaches to education and learning in higher education in the future. acknowledgements thank you to our colleagues and students for taking time out of their busy schedules to take part in the primary data collection for this research. competing interests the authors declare that they have no financial or personal relationships which may have inappropriately influenced them in writing this article. authors’ contributions both authors were involved in the conception and design of the research and theoretical framework. references abouchedid, k. & bouzeid, m., 2017, ‘lebanon: legacy of the past and present challenges’, in s. kirdar (ed.), education in the arab world, chapter 3, pp. 59–85, bloomsbury, london. anderson, d. & anderson, l., 2001, beyond change management, jossey-bass, san francisco, ca. bauer, b. & szabó, a. (eds.), 2009, ifjúság 2008: gyorsjelentés [youth 2008 study], szociálpolitikaiésmunkaügyiintézet, budapest. beghetto, r.a. & kaufman, j.c., 2013, ‘fundamentals of creativity’, educational leadership 70(5), 11–15. bereczki, e.o., 2016, ‘mapping creativity in the hungarian national core curriculum: a content analysis of the overall statements of intent, curricular areas and education levels’, the curriculum journal 27(3), 330–367. https://doi.org/10.1080/09585176.2015.1100546 blessinger, p., 2015, ‘the world needs more international higher education’, university world news, 24 april, issue no: 364, viewed 20 june 2017, from http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=20150422110029960 brady, s.r., 2015, ‘utilizing and adapting the delphi method for use in qualitative research’, international journal of qualitative methods 1–6. https://doi.org//10.1177/1609406915621381 bronson, p. & merryman, a., 2010, ‘the creativity crisis’, newsweek, viewed 20 april 2017, from http://www.newsweek.com/creativity-crisis-74665 budapest metropolitan university, 2017, about us, viewed 29 april 2017, from http://www.metropolitan.hu/en/about-us cheng, y., wang, q. & liu, c.n. (eds.), 2014, how world-class universities affect global higher education, sense publishers, taipei. clark, c., 1991, ‘the restructuring of meaning: an analysis of the impact of context on transformational learning’, unpublished doctoral dissertation, athens, ga. clark, m. & wilson, a., 1991, ‘context and rationality in mezirow’s theory of transformational learning’, adult education quarterly 41, 75–91. https://doi.org/10.1177/0001848191041002002 cranton, p., 1994, understanding and promotion transformative learning: a guide for educators of adults, jossey-bass, san francisco, ca. csikszentmihalyi, m., 1996, creativity, harper collins publishers, new york. csikszentmihalyi, m. & sawyer, k., 1995, ‘creative insight: the social dimension of a solitary moment’, in r. steinberg & j. davidson (eds.), the nature of insight, pp. 329–361, mit press, cambridge, ma. davies, d., jindal-snape, d., collier, c., digby, r., hay, p. & howe, a., 2013, ‘creative learning environments in education – a systematic literature review’, thinking skills and creativity 8, 80–91. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tsc.2012.07.004 de witt, h., gacel-ávila, j., jones, e. & jooste, n. (eds.), 2017, the globalization of internationalisation, routledge, london. dirkx, j., 2008, ‘the meaning and role of emotions in adult learning’, new directions for adult and continuing education 120, 7–18. https://doi.org/10.1002/ace.311 du preez, p., simmonds, s. & verhoef, a.h., 2016, ‘rethinking and researching transformation in higher education: a meta-study of south african trends’, transformation in higher education 1(1), 1–7. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v1i1.2 dziedziewicz, d., gajda, a. & karwowski, m., 2014, ‘developing children’s intercultural competence and creativity’, thinking skills and creativity 13, 32–42. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tsc.2014.02.006 eliot & associates, 2012, the experience business: ten top tips for great focus groups, viewed 15 march 2017, from http://www.theexperiencebusiness.co.uk/downloads/content-docs/top_ten_tips.pdf flint, l.j., 2014, ‘how creativity came to reside in the land of the gifted (and how to move it into a new neighborhood)’, knowledge quest 42(5), 65–69. gordon, t.j., 1994, the delphi method. futures research methodology, viewed 20 march 2017, from http://www.gerenciamento.ufba.br/downloads/delphi%20(1).pdf habibi, a., sarafrazi, a. & izadyar, s., 2014, ‘delphi technique theoretical framework in qualitative research’, the international journal of engineering and science 3(4), 8–13. holland-wade, g., 1998, ‘a concept analysis of personal transformation’, journal of advanced nursing 28(4), 713–719. https://doi.org/10.1046/j.1365-2648.1998.00729.x hsu, c. & sandford, b.a., 2007, ‘the delphi technique: making sense of consensus. practical assessment’, research & evaluation 12(10), 1–8. jackson, n., oliver, m., shaw, m. & wisdom, j., 2006, creativity in higher education. an imaginative curriculum, routledge, new york. jones, a., 2009, ‘generic attributes as espoused theory: the importance of context’, higher education 58(2), 175–191. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-008-9189-2 king, k., 1996, ‘identifying factors that promote perspective in higher education: a model’, paper presented at the eastern adult, continuing and distance education research conference, university park, pa, 24–26 october. krueger, r.a., 2002, designing and conducting focus group interviews, viewed 28 march 2017, from http://www.eiu.edu/ihec/krueger-focusgroupinterviews.pdf macdonald, s. & headlam, n., 2011, research methods handbook, cles, manchester. maringe, f. & foskett, n. (eds.), 2010, globalization and internationalisation in higher education, continuum international publishing group, london. mermiri, t., 2009, beyond experience: culture, consumer & brand, the transformation economy, arts & business, london. merriam, s., 2004, ‘the role of cognitive development in mezirow’s transformational learning theory’, adult education quarterly 55(1), 60–68. https://doi.org/10.1177/0741713604268891 messing, v., 2008, ‘good practices addressing school integration of roma/gypsy children in hungary’, intercultural education 19(5), 461–473. https://doi.org/10.1080/14675980802531721 mezirow, j., 1978, education for perspective transformation: women’s re-entry programs in community colleges, teacher’s college, columbia university, new york. mezirow, j., 1991, transformative dimensions of adult learning, jossey-bass, san francisco, ca. mezirow, j., 1994, ‘understanding transformation theory’, adult education quarterly 44(4), 222–232. https://doi.org/10.1177/074171369404400403 mezirow, j., 2000, ‘learning to think like an adult: core concepts in transformation theory’, in j. mezirow (ed.), learning in transformation: critical perspectives on a theory in progress, jossey-bass, san francisco, ca. morell, a. & o’connor, m., 2002, ‘the transtheoretical model of the stages of change and the phases of transformative learning: comparing two theories of transformational change’, journal of transformative education 3(49), 392–415. mullet, d.r., willerson, a.n., lamb, k.n. & kettler, t., 2016, ‘examining teacher perceptions of creativity: a systematic review of the literature’, thinking skills & creativity 21, 9–30. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tsc.2016.05.001 munday, i., 2016, ‘a creative education for the day after tomorrow’, journal of philosophy of education 50(1), 49–61. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9752.12172 okoli, c. & pawlowski, s.d., 2004, ‘the delphi method as a research tool: an example, design considerations and applications’, information & management 42, 15–29. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.im.2003.11.002 philip, r., 2015, ‘the invisibility cloak of creativity’, higher education research & development 34(2), 436–438. https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2014.980880 pierce, g., 1986, ‘management education for an emergent paradigm’, unpublished doctoral dissertation, teacher’s college, columbia university, new york. pine, j.b., 2015, ‘how b2b companies create economic value by designing experiences and transformations for their customers’, strategy & leadership 43(3), 2–6. https://doi.org/10.1108/sl-03-2015-0018 pine, j.b. & gilmore, j.h., 2014, ‘a leader’s guide to innovation in the experience economy’, strategy & leadership 42(1), 24–29. https://doi.org/10.1108/sl-09-2013-0073 quinn, r., 1996, deep change, jossey-bass, san francisco, ca. radclyffe-thomas, n., 2015, ‘fashioning cross-cultural creativity: investigating the situated pedagogy of creativity’, psychology of aesthetics, creativity, and the arts 9(2), 152–160. https://doi.org/10.1037/aca0000014 sohn, b.k., plaas, k., franklin, k., dellard, t., murphy, b., greenberg, k.h. et al., 2016, ‘freedom to connect: insight into the existential dimension of transformative learning in a graduate seminar’, journal of transformative education 14(3), 178–199. sternberg, r.j. (ed.), 1999, handbook of creativity, cambridge university press, cambridge. stone, g.a. & duffy, l.n., 2015, ‘transformative learning theory: a systematic review of travel and tourism scholarship’, journal of teaching in travel and tourism 15(3), 204–224. szabó, a., bauer, b. & laki, l. (eds.), 2001, ifjúság 2000. tanulmányok i, nemzetiifjúságkutatóintézet, budapest, pp. 61–115. szikra, d., 2014, ‘democracy and welfare in hard times: the social policy of the orbán government in hungary between 2010 and 2014’, journal of european social policy 24(5), 486–500. tolliver, d. & tisdell, e., 2006, ‘engaging spirituality in the transformative higher education classroom’, in e. taylor (ed.), new directions for adult and continuing education. teaching for change: fostering transformative learning in the classroom, vol. 19, jossey-bass, san francisco, ca. urban, k.k., 2014, ‘from creativity to responsible createlligence’, gifted education international 30(3), 237–247. watts, l.s. & blessinger, p. (eds.), 2017, creative learning in higher education, routledge, london. zsolnai, a. & lesznyák, m., 2015, ‘pluralism and values in education in hungary – changes between 1990 and 2012’, journal of beliefs & values 36(2), 142–155. https://doi.org/10.1080/13617672.2015.1053721 appendix 1 delphi panel questions mezirow (1978) stated that development of a new worldview is at the heart of transformational learning. do you agree that the main focus of transformational education should be on the self-development of students including their (world)views and attitudes? (please give reasons for your answer.) it has been said that creativity is a key constituent of the transformation economy (mermiri 2009). do you agree that creativity is an essential part of transformational education? please explain why or why not. is it possible to develop creative education without including arts-related subjects? (please explain your answer.) do you agree that education should be ‘co-creative’ (i.e. students help to create and shape their own learning experiences)? in what ways can this be facilitated? internationalisation seems to be an important part of the transformation of education today. in what ways could internationalisation positively transform an institution, its staff and students? to what extent do you think that creativity is essential to the process of internationalisation? in what ways might creativity be used? hungarian curriculum development is often preset which limits creative curriculum development. is it still possible to be creative in curriculum development, course development and delivery? if so, how? the hungarian education system has sometimes been criticised for focusing too much on testing and ‘rote learning’ (learning facts by heart and repeating them). this can create more ‘instrumental’ approaches to education based mainly on gaining a degree and a career (szabó, bauer & laki 2001) rather than more creative aspects of learning and personal self-development. can you see any possibilities to change this and if so, how? please add any further comments about transformational education and creativity here if it has not been covered in your answers so far. appendix 2 student focus group (handout given to students) internationalisation, creativity and transformational education student focus group aims and definitions the aim of this focus group is to discuss the themes of ‘creativity’, ‘internationalisation’, and ‘transformational education’. creativity has many definitions and can relate specifically to the arts and related courses, or can mean new and innovative approaches to teaching, learning, research, etc. in subjects that are not related to the arts. internationalisation means the move towards attracting more international students, introducing more international materials into the curriculum and courses, and offering international experiences to students (e.g. exchanges, internships). transformational education can refer to transformation of the national education system (e.g. in hungary), transformation within an institution (e.g. an internationalisation process), transformation of teaching and learning methods (e.g. curriculum development, approaches to course delivery, new teaching tools) and transformation of staff and students (e.g. training, self-development). questions for discussion would you say that your education at metropolitan university so far has been in some way ‘transformational’ – e.g. did it change your attitude, way of thinking, gave you new perspectives on life? overall, has there been some self-development? would you say that your education at metropolitan university has been ‘creative’ in some way? for example, in terms of content or subjects studied, approaches to teaching, creative project work? which of the subjects that you studied did you find the most creative and why? do you think that your education has been ‘co-creative’ in some ways – e.g. did you feel that you could make some decisions about what to study and how to study or did the teachers decide everything? which of the subjects that you studied did you find the most co-creative and why? do you think that your education has been interactive enough? did you have opportunities to contribute ideas, make suggestions and do independent or group tasks? budapest metropolitan university is ‘internationalising’. do you feel that your experience of the education has been international enough in its content, approach, case studies, internship opportunities, etc.? can you give any good examples? which of the subjects that you studied did you find the most international and why? outside the classroom, have you had many opportunities to get involved in international or creative activities or events at metropolitan? can you give any positive examples? do you think that creativity needs to include arts-related subjects or activities or is it possible to be creative without focusing on the arts? for example, can economics or statistics be creative? if you could make any recommendations for metropolitan as a university, what would you improve in terms of: (a) creativity (b) internationalisation (c) personal transformation or development opportunities abstract introduction access to higher education conceptualised the capabilities approach and access to higher education conceptualising space spatial justice in higher education methodology research findings discussion of findings conclusion acknowledgements references about the author(s) nomanesi madikizela-madiya department of educational foundations, college of education, university of south africa, pretoria, south africa citation madikizela-madiya, n., 2021, ‘the question of access and spatial justice in universities in sub-saharan africa: a capabilities approach’, transformation in higher education 6(0), a124. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v6i0.124 original research the question of access and spatial justice in universities in sub-saharan africa: a capabilities approach nomanesi madikizela-madiya received: 11 apr. 2021; accepted: 12 july 2021; published: 26 aug. 2021 copyright: © 2021. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract background: the discussions related to access in higher education collate enrolment with the provision of education. yet, when considering what the university education should provide, some enrolments still restrict capabilities, freedom and rights to quality education. the article argues that the debates regarding access to higher education are incomplete without addressing this divide. aim: the article aims to expose the injustices that exist in some university spaces in sub-saharan africa. space is politically and ideologically produced, a situation that legitimises a need for the exposure of injustices in terms of access to quality and dignified physical and technological resources for education. the article posits that if the spatial injustices that are embedded in the universities are not exposed, the universities will fight endless battles towards providing adequate access for students and academics. setting: the article reports on research conducted in three of the seven universities in sub-saharan africa that participated in a research project. method: a multiple qualitative case study design was followed. data were generated through semi-structured interviews with academics and focus group interviews with students in the universities. results: quantity and quality of the physical and technological structures in these universities are dehumanising, unjust and unfair to students and staff who must compete economically with their counterparts in other spheres of society. conclusion: the physical and technological structures in the universities demand a reconceptualisation of access. presently, transformation, as it pertains to access and spatial justice, is minimal. a focussed developmental strategy is proposed for the universities in order to improve and provide relevant access to knowledge and skills for relevance and quality. keywords: higher education access; spatial justice; capabilities approach; spatial conditions; higher education inequalities; rights and freedoms; sub-sahan africa; technological development. introduction access to higher education is a more complex topic than is often portrayed. this is because it is one thing to have access to the university from outside and it is another to access quality education in a spatially just context when already in the university. there has been copious research on issues related to the former, but not much on the latter. for example, researchers, such as martinez-vargas, walker and mkwananzi (2020), mathebula (2019) and alger (2018), map the various contextual factors that limit access to higher education of students from disadvantaged backgrounds and their success in this area. some such researches critique the under-preparedness of students at school level to transition smoothly to university (mendaglio 2013; nel, troskie-de bruin & bitzer 2009; walker 2019; wilson-strydom 2015, 2016). there are also some researches on the issues related to epistemological access in terms of legitimated knowledge at university level (ellery 2017; ruszynyak et al. 2017) or to diversity and statistics of access (alger 2018). however, not much attention is paid to access in, rather than to, higher education in terms of capabilities, justice, democracy and inclusivity. yet, in the contemporary higher education context, where students have preferences regarding the spaces of learning and teaching (beckers, van der voordt & dewulf 2016; zeivots & schuck 2018), institutional spaces may be both intentionally and unintentionally inadequate for access to quality education. it is also interesting to note that there is only limited research on university staff’s experiences of institutional spaces (madikizela-madiya 2016) whilst they should be facilitating and supporting the enrolled students in adequate spaces to access quality education. therefore, in this article, i argue that if research conceptualises access as meaning only enrolment, the injustices that constrain other aspects of access will not be exposed. this is a problem because students in all universities aspire to be competitive in their areas of socio-economic practice once they complete their studies. however, some spatial conditions may exclude them from accessing the required quality education. such exclusion may, in turn, disadvantage them when socio-economically competing with those who received quality education for employment. as sen (2000) argued: [b]eing excluded from the opportunity to be employed or to receive credit may lead to economic impoverishment that may, in turn, lead to other deprivations (such as undernourishment or homelessness). (p. 5) thus, the exclusion from access to quality education may reproduce the very reasons that might have landed them in the less empowering universities – constrained freedom to choose universities. i use the capabilities approach (ca) to analyse how spatial conditions in some universities in sub-saharan africa constrain access to quality teaching and learning. spatial conditions in this case refer to the university resources in terms of buildings and teaching and learning materials, as well as to safety and wellness in the universities. the ca is a framework that helps in the analysis of ‘what people are effectively able to do and to be, that is, [what] their capabilities [are]’ (robeyns 2003:5; see also nussbaum 1997, 2011; sen 2000, 2005; zheng & walsham 2008). amongst its key concepts are freedom, functionings and capabilities (hatakka & de’ 2011; robeyns 2003; sen 2005; zheng & walsham 2008). i use this framework together with the concept of spatial (in)justice (moroni 2020; soja 1989). the concept of spatial justice resonates with the ca as it denotes ‘desirable spatial situations and arrangements occurring within a certain just institutional framework’ (moroni 2020:255; van wyk 2015). an opposite of this situation is injustice: it limits the capabilities to do what students enrol in a university for, what they wish to be in society and what academics can do to facilitate learning. the article begins with a review of literature on access to higher education in order to elaborate on the issues that are predominant in such literature and to highlight the reasons why access is more than just admission and enrolment. the second section presents the conceptual framework, starting with the ca and continuing to spatial justice. these concepts assist in the analysis and interpretation of data. the third section focusses on the methodology that was followed to develop data. the research findings are presented in the fourth section, followed by the discussion of findings in the fifth section and conclusions in the sixth section. access to higher education conceptualised as indicated, the dominant literature on access to higher education collates two concepts: enrolment and provision of education. this situation is identifiable from the factors that are mentioned as constraining access to higher education. for example, lusigi (2019:9) found that disparities of access in sub-saharan africa were based mainly on gender: ‘in at least [eight] countries included in the sample of 25 countries, the share of women enrolled in tertiary education is higher than for males’. this resonates with mccowan’s (2012:113) argument that ‘no one should be barred from [access to] higher education for any reason other than “merit,” i.e. not through financial disadvantage etc.’. both these statements do not include the internal institutional conditions, but refer to enrolment as access. in south africa, besides enrolment, access to higher education is conceptualised as a requirement for transformation following the history of apartheid that restricted enrolment in universities based on race, after which affordability became an issue for those from disadvantaged backgrounds (martinez-vargas et al. 2020:428). in this case, access is about inclusion in consideration of identity and advantage. similarly, dlamini (2018:61) extended the political implications of access to the wider southern africa in terms of curricula and knowledge that are delivered and accessed in universities. dlamini (2018:61) argued, ‘it is high time we unchain ourselves from the western-euro-controlled education and create education systems that are responsive to the needs of the continent’. dlamini made this comment in response to kallaway’s (1984) argument that the southern african cultures and ideologies were transformed through the colonial education system. because of this history, african higher education has been hampered by the need to transform curricula and equity. whilst all the issues about access that are discussed in the above-mentioned literature are equally important for the transformation of higher education in terms of enrolment as access, scant attention has been given to the question of what that access should be for and whether the spaces enable the attainment of that reason. the identification of what the university should provide is a key to demarcating enrolment and provision of quality as two aspects of access to higher education. there are expectations regarding the spatial conditions and practices that define university education. duderstadt (2000), for example, observed the value of university education in the knowledge age, where knowledge has become the wealth of the nations: [t]he educational opportunities offered by the university, the knowledge it creates and the services it provides are key to almost every priority of contemporary society, from personal prosperity and well-being to economic competitiveness to national security to protecting the environment to enriching our culture. (p. 4) on a similar note, barnett (1988) identified the following as some of the key notions of the university: [t]he advancement of knowledge and the initiation of others into it; the development of knowledge that can be applied to the practical needs of the community; and the provision of opportunities for liberal education, in the sense of all-round understanding. (p. 243) therefore, enrolment to university is purposefully sought for advanced knowledge. restrained access to such knowledge, whether in terms of entrance to the university or full capability to participate and learn when inside, is injustice. in this regard, lusigi (2019:2) argued that ‘[h]igher education is expected to advance economic growth through its contribution to human capital development, fostering innovation and technology transfer’. speaking of sub-sahara africa, fonn et al. (2018) noted, ‘universities [are] expected to train the professionals needed in the expanding public service, to extend the frontiers of knowledge, and to serve the national economy’. on the same note, lusigi (2019:3) argued, ‘for higher education to play a role in africa’s transformation it must be transformational […], fit for purpose [and enable] people to live meaningful lives […]’. all this requires adequate and just learning spaces so that individuals and communities attain development. as mukwambo (2016:51) asserted, human development is ‘inextricably’ linked to quality higher education: it is ‘related to human development through its process of expanding the choices people have’ (mukwambo 2016:56). this author further noted the instrumental and intrinsic value of education as it provides: [i]mproved access to better career opportunities, earnings and life prospects and […] increases the possibility of appreciating and engaging in a wide range of activities that are fulfilling for their own sake; for example, the enjoyment of art, critical thinking and civic participation. (mukwambo 2016:57) all this, according to mukwambo (2016), is made possible by the existence of favourable conditions. therefore, it should be understood that access to higher education includes capabilities to attain relevant education for self and community development, as suggested in this literature. this matter is highlighted by walker and mkwananzi (2015) who argued that: [w]hile higher education budget figures and statistics are helpful in painting the broad picture of higher education access numbers, these cannot tell us much about actual lives or alert us to who is left out and why, and what individual advantage is possible for each person. (p. 41) this is a problem because higher education should be about capabilities, as explained in the next section. the capabilities approach and access to higher education the ca, (also known as the human development approach) (nussbaum 2007), is a framework mainly associated with amartya sen who proposed it in regard of ‘development as the expansion of people’s freedoms’ (hatakka & de’ 2011:1). this framework was initially developed for discussions on economics but has since been used across disciplines, focussing on capabilities such as ‘access to healthcare, education, participating in economic life and the autonomy in decision making’ (zheng & walsham 2008:224). sen (2004) also noted that this approach can be used for a wide range of assessments and evaluations in pursuit of just societies. according to zheng and walsham (2008:224) as well as wilson-strydom (2011), the concern of the ca is whether people have opportunities to lead lives that they can value. this approach has key concepts that guide the analysis or evaluation, such as ‘opportunities, functionings, capabilities, choices, values, quality of life, alternatives and freedom of individuals in understanding social justice’ (ndofirepi 2020:396). in the context of education, the ca is concerned with achieving the ‘beings and doings’ that individuals ‘have reason to value, that is their well-being, offering a justice-based lens for education in which real lives and social structures are taken into account’ (proctor & anand 2017; walker & mkhwananzi 2015:41). to clarify the concept of functionings, basu and lόpez-calva (2011) added ‘goods’ as another component of capabilities and provided an example: [a] functioning is what a person manages to do or to be. a good can enable a functioning but is distinct from it. a bicycle is an item, whereas being able to transport oneself rapidly to work (or, more importantly to most people, away from work) is a functioning. (p. 154) basu and lόpez-calva further indicate that there should be a consideration as to whether the person had ‘an opportunity, freedom and advantage’ to function. for example, did the person have the means to do something and chose not to, or was the person denied doing it in anyway? ndofirepi (2020:398) used this approach to explore ‘how students negotiate social spaces on campus, and what their experiences are that enhance or constrain their functionings and capabilities’. capability in ndofirepi (2020)’s study referred to ‘what the students gain – what they are able to do considering their personal and social situations or their actual opportunities to do and be what they have reason to value on campus spaces’ (p. 398). tumuheki, zeelen and openjuru (2016) also used the ca to frame their research in uganda regarding the participation of ‘non-traditional students’ in makerere university and they found internal and external hinderances constraining such participation. thus, the framework is relevant for higher education research and for this article because it guides the identification of functionings, goods, choices and other concepts in relation to spatial justice in the institutions concerned. conceptualising space there is growing interest in research on space and higher education practices (kuntz, petrovic & ginocchio 2012; ndofirepi 2020; temple 2009). however, as middleton (2018:6) argued, ‘[s]pace is a problematic term, hard to nail down and having many meanings […]’. this article is about institutional space which, according to ellis and goodyear (2016:149), is conceptualised in two ways: an abstract space that requires quantitative measurements, and a qualitative space of people’s experiences. according to the first view, it is ‘space that can be managed at a high level, using financial and other quantitative measures, and using categories that necessarily strip away many of the detailed features of individual places’. therefore, the required research in this case would quantitatively count ‘observable behaviours and [calculate] variations in space usage’ (see also chattaraj & vijayaraghavan 2021). in the second view, researchers identify qualities of learning spaces according to how they produce success, fulfilment and relevance in terms of outcomes. in this article, i adopt the latter view with an understanding that institutional spaces, whether physical or virtual, have an important bearing in enabling or constraining teaching and learning and student support. as luz (2008:1) posited, space has ‘the ability to define how one learns, teaches, acts or responds’. as such, space is ‘a complex interweaving of physical, virtual, social, cognitive, and emotional’ dimensions (chattaraj & vijayaraghavan 2020:4) which should all work together for quality teaching and learning. therefore, research that connects pedagogy and space is necessary. in this regard, ellis and goodyear (2016) argued that connections between space and learning: [… can] be subtle and powerful. to understand them, one needs to understand complex, shifting assemblages involving human beings and things: material, digital and hybrid. research aligning with this view tends to the qualitative: exploring students’ and teachers’ experiences and foregrounding subjective meanings and sense-making. (p. 150) thus, space is not just a container in which academic practices take place. spatial justice in higher education students and staff can function better if the spaces in which they work are just; if the spaces subscribe to social justice in terms of dignity and fairness (dikeç 2009). just spaces in higher education enable freedom, capabilities and a wide range of choices for social justice (nussbaum 1997, 2011; sen 2000, 2005; zheng & walsham 2008). such spaces provide education that enables: [p]eople to grow, to be informed, to be articulate, to care about others, and through this process, to lead pluralistic flourishing lives and contribute to the flourishing lives of others […]. (walker & wilson-strydom 2017:9) advocating for the adequacy of both the digital and the physical learning space, middleton (2018) argued: [… i]t is evidently not enough to organise learning around simple dominant notions of space when the aim of higher education is to develop knowledgeable, critical, creative, resilient and agile people […]. students need to develop capabilities that will make them confident and agile in the world that is unpredictable and that demands critical and creative engagement. (pp. 8, 9) to this end, ndofirepi (2020) indicated that a question should be whether students (and staff) have freedom to choose and whether they have affordances to utilise the spaces – therefore, whether the spaces are just. thus, spatial justice is a judgement subjectively given, based on experiences of situations concerned. as pirie (1983:467) posited, ‘[t]he justness of a situation may be decided by the person whom it directly affects’. regarding this issue, wilson-strydom (2014) argued: [w]hen we consider issues of justice or injustice, we cannot merely ask whether different people have achieved the same outcome, but rather, whether different people have had the same opportunity to achieve this outcome. (p. 151) this statement relates to capabilities, choices and functionings. to understand the concept of spatial justice better, one would have to look at its opposite: spatial injustice. dikeç (2009:1793) described spatial injustice as ‘a critique of systematic exclusion, domination, and oppression; a critique aimed at cultivating new sensibilities that would animate actions towards injustice embedded in space and spatial dynamics’. these issues could be overlooked if space is taken for granted. one of the obvious injustices in higher education in south africa is the inequality regarding technological, physical, human or intellectual resources. like other spaces, institutions are organised into ‘dominant centres and subordinate peripheries’ (soja 1980:209). some institutions are metaphorically at the centre whilst others are at the periphery regarding the required resources for practice and learning. these inequalities are not coincidental but are a product of the past and the present ideologies and practices (at a macro-level). how the resources in the institutions (at a micro-level) serve the institutional actors (e.g. students, managers, administrators) depends on ideologies, relations and interactions; these constitute the institutional space. in other words, injustice in universities is the limiting actions or non-actions of the powerful structures and individuals who can make changes. such individuals and structures can be at either government or institutional level. moroni (2020) used an example of ‘the just city’ to speak about institutional justice: [i]f we speak, for example, of the injustice of certain urban situations – for example, the state of certain peripheral neighbourhoods or the inaccessibility of certain basic urban services – we are actually assuming implicitly that what is unjust in reality are the urban institutions that have allowed such situations to arise and do not intervene in order to correct them. (p. 254) but apart from the issue of inequality in terms of resources, injustice can also be viewed in terms of security, health safety and protection against violence and hazards in the institutions. these are aspects of social justice, according to drysdale, modzeleski and simons (2010) and sulkowski and lazarus (2017). in terms of health, ruger (2004:1076) argued that it affects human functionings, ‘including agency, the ability to lead a life one has reason to value’. therefore, spaces that suppress health, deny freedom and capability to be and to do. johnson et al. (2011:149) were of the same view, arguing that health provides the capability to ‘participate fully in the workforce [whilst] ill health means potential suffering, disability and/or loss of life, [and] threatens one’s ability to earn a living […]’. therefore, there is more to spatial justice than just the resources, but the first step is to identify the injustice, as the research on which this article is based aimed to do. methodology the article draws from a collaborative research project in which seven institutions in sub-saharan africa participated: five south african, one ugandan and one zambian. for reasons of confidentiality, the names and types of the institutions are not disclosed (surmiak 2018, 2019). the main question of the project was how university spaces enabled or constrained spatial practices such as teaching and learning, research, administration and management. the article deliberately focusses on the constraints without implying that the participating institutions do not have any positive aspects. the intention is to share knowledge for possible alterations to the constraints. a qualitative multiple case study design was followed (gustafsson 2017) in order to identify contextual spatial conditions and to compare data. in total, there were 19 collaborators (seven at the host institution and two at each of the other six). collaborators used the ethical clearance from the host institution to request permission to conduct research from their institutions (morris 2015). data were collected through policy analyses, participant observations and face-to-face semi-structured interviews with academics, administrators and managers at varying levels in the education faculties. one focus group interview per institution was conducted with students who also participated in a survey in each institution. the number of participants in the surveys varied because of different enrolment and response rates in the various institutions. however, the invitation was sent to all students in the education faculties who were in their third year of study. the researchers chose this cohort with the assumption that the students would have been in the institutions long enough to provide in-depth information about the spatial conditions. each focus group was comprised of eight students who served in the student representative council. the survey data are not included in this article as it did not form part of the information that is being shared. the survey provided mainly the demographics and quantitative data that were not especially informative for this particular article. following purposive sampling (sharma 2017), 10 academics per institution in the faculties of education were interviewed. the criteria were that these academics should be teaching the students’ group in the survey, that is, the third-year students, and they should also have been in the institutions for at least 3 years so that they would have a fair understanding of changes or lack of changes in the institutional spatial conditions. to maintain anonymity and confidentiality in this article, the universities are referred to as 1, 2 and 3. academics are coded (e.g. a1-1 for academic 1, university 1; a3-1 for academic 3, university 1). students are coded (e.g. s1-1 for student 1, university 1; s1-3 for student 1, university 3). data were analysed thematically (vaismoradi et al. 2016). project members held seminars to discuss the data and each sub-team drew themes from the data subsets. the limitations were that the project had more data from the host institution where there were more researchers than in the other institutions. however, all data were made available to all the researchers. this article reports on data drawn from three of the universities. these were the universities that had similar spatial conditions in terms of constraints. most students in these universities were from less advantaged backgrounds. the article reports on only the interviews with academics and students, from which data the themes related to spatial injustice emanated. research findings in an effort to understand how spatial conditions in some universities in sub-saharan africa constrain access to education, i analysed the interviews conducted with students and academics, guided by the ca and the concept of spatial justice. although 10 academics and eight students per institution were interviewed, the findings presented in this article are selective towards addressing the question for this article. thus, not all the voices of the participants are identifiable but only those that spoke to the question. the first question i asked myself as i engaged with the data was: how do the spatial conditions affect the functionings related to teaching and learning for quality education? how do such conditions relate to justice? the theme that related to this question was each university’s carrying capacity. for the sake of dignity and adequate access to quality education, both students and staff at universities deserve sufficient and well-resourced spaces. this is hardly the case in the three universities because their populations have been growing over the years, but the resource provision has not been exponential. as a result, ‘[t]eaching venues are much smaller than the required for the registered number of students’ (a1-2). to attend to this situation of increased student and staff populations, the universities have had to find alternative spaces for teaching. a1-3 commented: ‘due to the increase in student numbers, other venues like the auditorium and a dining hall are used for lecturing purposes. these venues were not [designed] for teaching – lecturers have difficulty in projecting their voices and as a result, students make noise and some of them do not concentrate.’ (academic participant 3 in university 3) a similar situation was also found in universities 1 and 2. in university 1, they, sometimes, use the chapel with similar conditions as the dining hall. with reference to university 2, a2-2 stated that she would teach more than 500 students in a former dining hall where there was no support material at all (such as projectors, microphones or other voice-projecting tools). she needed to project her voice higher than the usual pitch in an attempt to be audible to the students at all sides of the hall. she commented, ‘my left ear is affected. it is often painful, and i think it is because of this situation’. therefore, the inadequacy of lecture theatres in university 2 – which is an injustice in terms of resources – builds up to a life-threatening injustice to this participant. the possibility in this case is that the lecturer could fall seriously ill and the students would miss out from being taught because the technological resources that could be utilised in the teacher’s absence are either insufficient or not available. therefore, the lecturer’s incapability to function in a just manner because of the spatial conditions would translate to an incapability for students to learn. the next question was: what can students not do because of spatial conditions? the overpopulated lecture theatres are uncomfortable to students in more ways than one. students in university 3 commented: ‘they allocate one hundred students in a lecture hall that can accommodate only fifty […]. it becomes the survival of the fittest when it comes to class attendance. if you were held up in another class, you must stand for the whole hour and you cannot learn successfully.’ (student participant 4 in university 3) quality is challenged in two ways here. firstly, the student’s focus in the first classroom could be impeded by the thought of having to run and compete for comfort in the next room. secondly, in the next room, the student is unable to learn best whilst standing. another student concurred: ‘yeah, even if it’s hot – because it will be hot in class – you will be sweating and standing, which becomes a very big problem.’ (student participant 1 in university 3) this situation suggests that the unjust conditions are detrimental not only to the lecturers and students’ health, but also to their learning and possibilities for success. thus, access to quality is challenged. apart from capacity, there were also issues regarding the designs of teaching and learning spaces. i asked myself, how do the structural designs affect functionings, freedom and capabilities in the universities? the findings indicated that in two of the three universities, the designs of lecture theatres were described as unsupportive and therefore not inclusive in terms of different (dis)abilities of the university population: ‘most of the classrooms were built in an old fashion theatre configuration, with a lot of steps and fixed furniture’ (a2-2). such designs also ‘restrict active interaction and engagement and prevent students from doing group work and collaborating with each other’ (a2-2). similarly, a1-3 commented that: ‘[t]here is no interaction, there is no movement, you can’t move the chairs – it’s like you are preaching to your students. i think that is a very traditional [positivistic] setup.’ (academic participant 3 in university 3) in which the lecturer knows all and should instruct the students. this is a clear restriction on capabilities in these institutions because the academics know what they want to do in the lecture theatres and how to do it, but the conditions inhibit their freedom. the students in the same universities also raised the concern of not being able to do group work freely when in class. thus, if learning can occur through knowledge sharing amongst students during lectures, then in these particular universities, such learning is restricted. how does spatial planning infringe on freedom to teach and to learn? apart from the unfriendly theatres, challenged planning of the timetables because of insufficient spaces seemed to pose possibilities for conflict in the universities. in university 1, a1-1 noted: ‘[t]here are clashes in the timetable, whereby you will go to a class and you get other people there and then you must move up and down. there is no control of who is supposed to be here and who is not supposed to be there.’ (academic participant 1 in university 1) situations like these would be regarded as ridiculous in the institutions where spaces are sufficient and well planned in terms of time tabling, but they are a reality in these universities. even in terms of the teaching support tools, a3-2 commented that ‘not everyone has access to the available projectors as they are available on a first come first serve game’. thus, it was evident that it was not enough to analyse the conditions of the teaching and learning theatres without also looking at the tools for the facilitation of access to quality education. how does limited access to technology infringe on the rights and freedom to access quality education? access to technology for quality teaching and learning is a spatial justice issue because whilst the global higher education sector is discussing how to enhance the tools that have always been in use, these sub-saharan universities are still deliberating how to source them. there is a dire shortage of technological resources in the universities. referring to the available computer laboratories, s1-3 commented: ‘[t]hese computer labs are lecture theatres for computer science students. there are hundred computers but at any time, fifty or fewer of them are working.’ (student participant 1 in university 3) a similar experience in university 1 was shared by (s1-1): ‘[i]t becomes very difficult for computer students in our faculty because there are about more than a thousand of them doing the module but when they go there, only a limited number of computers are working.’ (student participant 1 in university 1) this situation suggests that the university in question is trying to provide the teaching tools, but maintenance appears to be the challenge; thus it affects quality teaching and learning and therefore access to quality education in particular courses. apart from specific courses, how is the freedom to access knowledge restricted by the shortage of computers? in university 1, there were no computer laboratories that were not used as lecture theatres. s6-3 added that the laboratories were occupied by different groups of computer science students the whole day and they closed at designated times. therefore, they were not fully accessible to the entire student population. even when the students happened to access the computers, they were restricted in terms of what they could do: ‘we are not allowed to access youtube videos to watch online lectures. i think that one needs to be addressed’ (s2-2). how do the spatial conditions suggest inequalities in higher education? participants were aware that their counterparts in other universities did not have similar experiences. for example, a2-3 commented: ‘[i] would like to see a situation where, like in some universities, every student will have a digital device that can have internet access via wi-fi and that can have a system where if you ask them questions that they can type immediately, the answer appears on the board and we can have a discussion from that.’ (academic participant 2 in university 3) in the same institution, s7-3 commented that she felt ashamed when she did not know much about computer functions because she had limited access, so she was not able to learn from them: ‘i am in the third year of study, but my friend who goes to [university z] came back telling me so much about information in the computers. i am in year three and he is in year one. what is that? i felt so ashamed!’ (student participant 7 in university 3) this response suggests that the student was comparing himself to the friend and was, therefore, aware that there are better functionings and capabilities that the friend received from the other institution. the statement that he was ashamed suggests that he might struggle to compete in the socio-economic environment with the other students. how do the spatial conditions steal the freedom of staff to utilise their personal resources? the shortage of resources in university 1 led to a point where academics sacrificed their research funds, which they could decide to use as they wished, to purchase teaching resources. for example, a2-1 stated: ‘[i]t is hard to establish the exact number of computers in this university because over 60% personally belong to staff. they are project ict facilities secured by staff in their respective projects.’ (academic participant 2 in university 1) a clear spatiality of this problem concerning accessibility of technology could be drawn from this comment by a3-1: ‘[w]hilst we try as academic staff to source funds to purchase the technological tools and the university assists by servicing them, we are let down by the systematic erratic nature of internet connectivity, especially in the course of the day when most needed for teaching and learning.’ (academic participant 3 in university 1) it appears that the above-mentioned problem was because of the geography of this university because in the contexts where teaching and learning are wholly based on technologies, the same problems about connectivity cannot be the order of the day. how do the libraries contribute to the spatial injustices? university education is primarily about reading and writing. therefore, limited access to the library resources is an injustice of the highest order. such injustice was also identified in the participating institutions. there was limited space for students in the library because of the expanding student population. in addition, s4-1 raised another issue, namely that ‘most library books are outdated. you will think there is information there, but it is not there because the library is full of old books’. s2-1 added: ‘you can also find that a book has [only] one copy’. besides limited capacity and outdated or insufficient books, university 2 students mentioned that the library had no computers for use by students. for example, (s1-2) commented: ‘[y]ou can only search for books in the library. if you want to search e-books you have to go online during your own time. but you can’t access that in the library.’ (student participant 1 in university 2) therefore, in these universities, the main sources of information for students – the library and technology – were insufficient. a situation where a student cannot afford to buy his or her own computer, and the library has either outdated books or only one copy per book is untenable. discussion of findings the concern that this article intended to address is the tendency of higher education literature to collate enrolment and the provision of education when discussing access (lusigi 2019; mccowan 2012), thereby paying less attention to the role of institutional spaces in enabling or constraining capabilities, freedom and rights to access quality education. the article showed that in the institutions concerned, it is not only a matter of students and staff preferences of learning and teaching spaces (beckers et al. 2016; zeivots & schuck 2018), but also there are injustices ranging from inadequacy of physical and technological resources to even health-threatening ones (johnson et al. 2011; ruger 2004). the situation where a lecturer suffers from ear pain indicates how the space in the university creates incapability to function safely for the benefit of self (through teaching as an academic identity development trajectory) and students in a just space. students in these universities are excluded from the freedom to source knowledge from computers, the library, free and comfortable interaction with the lecturers as well as with each other. this situation can possibly exclude them from economic freedom in a competition-prone society (sen 2000). thus, both the teachers and staff are unable to teach and learn as they would wish to (nussbaum 1997, 2011; robeyns 2003; sen 2000, 2005; zheng & walsham 2008). the academics’ freedom to use their research funds as they wish is curtailed by the sacrifice they make in buying computers to limit the injustices that impede the quality of learning for students. it is clear from the research reported in this article that whilst enrolment intended to provide access for transformation in higher education (dlamini 2018; martinez-vargas et al. 2020), students and staff at the universities in this study are aware that there are better conditions in other universities. this makes them feel uncomfortable in the places where they are, making these places undesirable and therefore unjust (moroni 2020:255; van wyk 2015). justice in higher education is equivalent to the ability to access education that prepares one for ‘personal prosperity and well-being [for] economic competitiveness’ (duderstadt 2000:4). yet, students in the universities in this study do not have full access to the basic spatial requirements, as they very often have to stand throughout a lecture, and in many instances, they are unable to interact with each other because of the design of the spaces. mukwambo (2016:51) asserted that human development is ‘inextricably’ linked to quality higher education. it can, therefore, be said that development for students in these institutions is distorted because their education is not of quality. their functionings, capabilities and ‘quality of life’ (ndofirepi 2020) are unjustly constrained. conclusion this article used the ca and the spatial justice concept to address the question of how spatial conditions in some universities in sub-saharan africa restrict access to quality education when students are enrolled. the findings revealed spatial injustices pertaining to various forms of resources and how such injustices affect access to knowledge and dignified practices. there are injustices in these universities because of limited freedom, capabilities, choices and goods (nussbaum 1997, 2011; sen 2000, 2005; zheng & walsham 2008). students and staff in these universities have limited opportunities to grow academically because of the unjust spatial conditions. the findings also illustrate how sub-standard education for the disadvantaged communities has been naturalised in these universities through spatial designs and plans as well as spatial practices – some of which sound unbelievable but are real to those who experience them, those who are directly affected by their unjust nature (pirie 1983). whilst the world speaks of digitisation and automation of knowledge and practice in higher education, there are still disquieting socio-spatial injustices that haunt some universities in sub-saharan africa and which, if justice matters, should not be overlooked. two main conclusions can be drawn from the above-mentioned findings. firstly, the universities concerned are still struggling in terms of technological development and the development of their physical infrastructure. consequently, they are unable to provide and maintain decent spaces for access to quality knowledge and skills. students are exposed to outdated information and limited access to technology. because these universities are in a world where technology is taking over, they may be advised to focus on one of the problematic spaces – technology. if technology is sufficient and adequate, the institutions would need to focus on maintaining their quality without also worrying about the buildings. secondly, students in the universities concerned do not receive adequate knowledge and skills to be able to compete in society. this situation reproduces inequality and may perpetuate low self-confidence in both students and lecturers. this state of affairs can also be addressed through the provision of up-to-date technological resources so that students will not be unfairly restricted to source knowledge. considering that the world has rapidly become technology vested, it might be advantageous if the universities concerned were to put more effort into developing technology to limit or do away with the need for physical theatres. if that were to happen, students would have access to current information rather than the outdated books in their physical libraries. it is not enough to be in the university. it is unjust to have sub-standard resources whilst one is expected to go out and compete economically with one’s counterparts that have received quality education, in quality spaces and with quality resources. the research has shown that exploring higher spaces qualitatively (ellis & goodyear 2016) can provide information that can possibly be used if governments in the countries concerned can access it. therefore, further research on how such findings can be transformed into practical knowledge for higher education development in sub-saharan africa can be of value. also, empirical research to compare the data presented here with institutions that are regarded as advantaged and well-resourced can provide an important knowledge for attending to inequalities in higher education and to reduce the systematic exclusions to access and justice. acknowledgements a word of appreciation is sent to all the institutions that participated in the project ‘the dynamics of higher education space and place in sub-saharan africa’. competing interests the author declares that no financial or personal relationship(s) have inappropriately influenced the writing of this article. author’s contributions this article is solely authored by dr nomanesi madikizela-madiya. ethical considerations the cedu research ethics committee of the college of education, university of south africa approved the study. 2016/10/19/90174267/26/mc. funding information the project from which the article draws was funded by the national research foundation (nrf). data availability the data that support the findings of this study are available on request from the author, nm. the data are not publicly available because they contain information that could compromise the privacy of research participants. disclaimer the views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the author’s institution or the funders. references alger, j.r., 2018, ‘access to success – making campuses both diverse and inclusive’, in s. bergan & i. harkavy (eds.), higher education for diversity, social inclusion and community: a democratic imperative, pp. 63–73, council of europe publishing, paris. barnett, r., 1988, ‘does higher education have aims?’, journal of philosophy of education 22(2), 239–250. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9752.1988.tb00197.x basu, k. & lόpez-calva, l.f., 2011, ‘functionings and capabilities’, in k.j. arrow, a. sen & k. suzumura (eds.), handbook of social choice and welfare, pp. 154–183, elsevier. beckers, r., van der voordt, t. & dewulf, g., 2016, ‘learning space preferences of higher education students’, building and environment 104, 243–252. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.buildenv.2016.05.013 chattaraj, d. & vijayaraghavan, a.p., 2021, ‘why learning space matters: a script approach to the phenomena of learning in the emergency remote learning scenario’, journal of computers in education. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40692-021-00182-z dikeç, m., 2009, ‘space, politics and (in)justice’, spatial justice 1, viewed 19 january 2021, from http://www.jssj.org/article/lespace-le-politique-et-linjustice/. dlamini, r., 2018, ‘corporatisation of universities deepens inequalities by ignoring social injustices and restricting access to higher education’, south african journal of higher education 32(5), 54–65. https://doi.org/10.20853/32-5-2162 drysdale, d., modzeleski, w. & simons, a., 2010, campus attacks: targeted violence affecting institutions of higher education, viewed from https://books.google.co.za/books? duderstadt, j.j., 2000, a university for the 21st century, michigan, the university of michigan press, ann arbor, mi. ellery, k., 2017, ‘a code theory perspective on science access: clashes and conflicts’, south african journal of higher education 31(3), 82–98. https://doi.org/10.20853/31-3-1306 ellis, r.a. & goodyear, p., 2016, ‘models of learning space: integrating research on space, place and learning in higher education’, review of education 4(2), 149–191. https://doi.org/10.1002/rev3.3056 fonn, s., ayiro, l.p., cotton, p., habbib, a., mbithi, p.m.f., mtenje, a. et al., 2018, ‘repositioning africa in global knowledge production’, the lancet 392(10153), 1163–1166. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0140-6736(18)31068-7 gustafsson, j., 2017, single case studies vs. multiple case studies: a comparative study, academy of business, engineering and science, halmstad university, halmstad. hatakka, m. & de’, r., 2011, ‘development, capabilities and technology – an evaluative framework’, paper presented at the 11th international conference on social implications of computers in developing countries, kathmandu, 22–25 may, 2011. kallaway, p., 1984, apartheid and education, johannesburg, ravan. kuntz, m.a., petrovic, j.e. & ginocchio l., 2012, ‘a changing sense of place: a case study of academic culture and the built environment’, higher education policy, 25, 433–451. https://doi.org/10.1057/hep.2011.29 lusigi, a., 2019, ‘higher education, technology, and equity in africa’, new review of information networking 24(1), 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1080/13614576.2019.1608576 luz, a., 2008, ‘the [design of] educational space: a process-centred built pedagogy’, in a. clarke, m. evatt, p. hogarth, j. lloveras & l. pons (eds.), international conference on engineering and product design education proceedings, universitat politecnica de catalunya, barcelona, spain, 4–5 september 2008, pp. 339–344. madikizela-madiya, n., 2016, space and academic identity construction in a higher education context: a self-ethnographic study, unpublished thesis, university of south africa, pretoria. martinez-vargas, c., walker, m. & mkwananzi, f., 2020, ‘access to higher education in south africa: expanding capabilities in and through an undergraduate photovoice project’, educational action research 28(3), 427–442. https://doi.org/10.1080/09650792.2019.1612767 mathebula, m., 2019, ‘recognising poor black youth from rural communities in south africa as epistemic contributors’, cristal critical studies in teaching and learning 7(1), 64–85. https://doi.org/10.14426/cristal.v7i1.181 mccowan, t., 2012, ‘is there a universal right to higher education?’ british journal of educational studies 60(2), 111–128. https://doi.org/10.1080/00071005.2011.648605 mendaglio, s., 2013, ‘gifted students’ transition to university’, gifted education international 29(1), 3–12. https://doi.org/10.1177/0261429412440646 middleton, a., 2018, reimagining spaces for learning in higher education, palgrave macmillan, basingstoke. moroni, s., 2020, ‘the just city. three background issues: institutional justice and spatial justice, social justice and distributive justice, concept of justice and conceptions of justice’, planning theory 19(3), 251–267. https://doi.org/10.1177/1473095219877670 morris, n., 2015, ‘providing ethical guidance for collaborative research in developing countries’, research ethics 11(4), 211–235. https://doi.org/10.1177/1747016115586759 mukwambo, p., 2016, quality as human development: a case study of teaching and learning in zimbabwean universities, unpublished thesis, university of the free state, bloemfontein. ndofirepi, e.s., 2020, ‘campus social space in higher education’, in a.p. ndofirepi & m. musengi, inclusion as social justice: theory and practice in african higher education, pp. 392–408, brill, boston, ma. nel, c., troskie-de bruin, c. & bitzer, e., 2009, ‘student transition from school to university: possibility for a pre-university intervention’, south african journal of higher education 23(5), 974–991. https://doi.org/10.4314/sajhe.v23i5.48811 nussbaum, n., 1997, ‘capabilities and human rights’, fordham law review 66, 273–300. nussbaum, m.c., 2007, capabilities as fundamental entitlements: sen and social justice, routledge, london. nussbaum, m.c., 2011, creating capabilities: the human development approach, belknap press, cambridge. johnson, p.a., bookman, a., bailyn, l., harrington, m. & orton, p., 2011, ‘innovation in ambulatory care: a collaborative approach to redesigning the healthcare workplace’, academic medicine 25, s581–s585. pirie, g.h., 1983, ‘on spatial justice’, environment and planning a 15(4), 465–473. https://doi.org/10.1068/a150465 proctor, j. & anand, p., 2017, ‘is credit associated with a high quality of life? a capabilities approach’, progress in development studies 17(4), 1–25. https://doi.org/10.1177/1464993417716359 robeyns, i., 2003, ‘sen’s capability approach and gender inequality: selecting relevant capabilities’, feminist economics 9(2/3), 61–92. https://doi.org/10.1080/1354570022000078024 ruger, j.p., 2004, ‘health and social justice’, lancet 364(9439), 1075–1080. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0140-6736(04)17064-5 ruszynyak, l., dison, l., moosa, m. & poo, m., 2017, ‘supporting the academic success of first-year students: a study of the epistemological access they acquired through a lecture and text’, south african journal of higher education 31(1), 217–226. https://doi.org/10.20853/31-1-1026 sen, a., 2000, social exclusion: concept, application, and scrutiny, social development, paper no.1, office of environment and social development, asian development bank, manila. sen, a., 2004, ‘capabilities, lists, and public reason: continuing the conversation’, feminist economics 10(3), 77–80. https://doi.org/10.1080/1354570042000315163 sen, a., 2005, ‘human rights and capabilities’, journal of human development and capabilities 6(2), 151–166. https://doi.org/10.1080/14649880500120491 sharma, g., 2017, ‘pros and cons of different sampling techniques’, international journal of applied research 3, 749–752. soja, e.w., 1980, ‘the socio-spatial dialectic’, annals of the association of american geographers 70(2), 207–225. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8306.1980.tb01308.x soja, e.w., 1989, postmodern geographies: the reassertion of space in critical social theory, verso, london. sulkowski, m.l. & lazarus, p.j., 2017, creating safe schools and fostering students’ mental health, routledge, new york, ny. surmiak, a., 2018, ‘confidentiality in qualitative research involving vulnerable participants: researchers’ perspectives’, forum qualitative sozialforschung/forum: qualitative social research 19(3). https://doi.org/10.17169/fqs-19.3.3099 surmiak, a., 2019, ‘should we maintain or break confidentiality? the choices made by social researchers in the context of law violation and harm’, journal of academic ethics 18, 229–247. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10805-019-09336-2 temple, p., 2009, ‘from space to place: university performance and its built environment’, higher education policy 22(2), 209–223. https://doi.org/10.1057/hep.2008.30 tumuheki, p.b., zeelen, j. & openjuru, g.l., 2016, ‘towards a conceptual framework for developing capabilities of “new” types of students participating in higher education in sub-saharan africa’, international journal of educational development 47, 54–62. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijedudev.2015.12.005 vaismoradi, m., jones, j., turunen, h. & snelgrove, s., 2016, ‘theme development in qualitative content analysis and thematic analysis’, journal of nursing education and practice 6(5), 100–110. https://doi.org/10.5430/jnep.v6n5p100 van wyk, j., 2015, ‘can spluma play a role in transforming spatial injustice to spatial justice in housing in south africa?’, southern african public law 30(1), 26–41. https://doi.org/10.25159/2522-6800/3526 walker, m., 2019, ‘the achievement of university access: conversion factors, capabilities and choices’, social inclusion 7(1). https://doi.org/10.17645/si.v7i1.1615 walker, m. & mkwananzi, f., 2015, ‘challenges in accessing higher education: a case study of marginalised young people in one south african informal settlement’, international journal of educational development 40, 40–49. walker, m. & wilson-strydom, m., 2017, ‘thinking about the university context and socially just pedagogies, in m. walker & m. wilson-strydom (eds.), socially just pedagogies, capabilities and quality in higher education: global perspectives, pp. 3–20, palgrave macmillan, london. wilson-strydom, m., 2011, ‘university access for social justice: a capabilities perspective’, south african journal of education 31(3), 407–418. https://doi.org/10.15700/saje.v31n3a544 wilson-strydom, m., 2014, ‘taking up the challenge of implementing higher education for the public good’, south african journal of science 10(110), 3–4. https://doi.org/10.1590/sajs.2014/a0055 wilson-strydom, m., 2015, ‘university access and theories of social justice: contributions of the capabilities approach’, higher education 69(1), 143–155. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-014-9766-5 wilson-strydom, m., 2016, ‘a capabilities list for equitable transitions to university: a top-down and bottom-up approach’, journal of human development and capabilities 17(2), 145–160. https://doi.org/10.1080/19452829.2014.991280 zeivots, s. & schuck, s., 2018, ‘needs and expectations of a new learning space: research students’ perspectives’, australasian journal of educational technology 34(6), 27–40. https://doi.org/10.14742/ajet.4516 zheng, y. & walsham, g., 2008, ‘inequality of what? social exclusion in the e-society as capability deprivation’, information technology and people 21(3), 222–243. https://doi.org/10.1108/09593840810896000 abstract indigenisation and internationalisation transformation as convergence: the bologna declaration and europeanisation transformation as resistance: africanisation and afrocentrism problems with internationalisation and indigenisation multiculturality and interculturality transculturality philosophy of education and the role of the university acknowledgement references footnotes about the author(s) kai horsthemke faculty of philosophy and systematics pedagogics, katholische universitaet eichstaett, germany wits school of education, university of the witwatersrand, south africa citation horsthemke, k., 2017, ‘transmission and transformation in higher education: indigenisation, internationalisation and transculturality’, transformation in higher education 2(0), a12. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v2i0.12 note: this article written by author kai horsthemke is based on previously published work (2014; with larry yore) ‘challenges of multiculturalism in science education: indigenisation, internationalisation and transkulturalität’. in michael r. matthews (ed.), international handbook of research in history, philosophy and science teaching dordrecht: springer: 1759–1792 original research transmission and transformation in higher education: indigenisation, internationalisation and transculturality kai horsthemke received: 08 aug. 2016; accepted: 21 nov. 2016; published: 24 apr. 2017 copyright: © 2017. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract there have been various approaches to the transmission and transformation of systems, practices, knowledge and concepts in higher education in recent decades, chief among which are drives towards indigenisation, on the one hand, and towards internationalisation, on the other. after briefly discussing and dispensing with radical versions of these, theories that reject any claim to validity or legitimacy by the rival approach, this article examines more nuanced accounts that deserve appropriately serious consideration. thus, in the former instance, there is an emphasis on the local that nonetheless acknowledges a debt to the global, whereas conversely the emphasis on the global is seen as compatible with an acknowledgement of diversity, difference and particularity. what is gained and what is lost in these various approaches to educational transmission and transformation? after reflecting, in this regard, on lessons from both africa and europe – in particular, on the debates in south africa around africanisation and decolonisation, and in germany around global interdependence – i cautiously endorse the idea of ‘transculturality’ (as contrasted with ‘multiculturality’ and ‘interculturality’) as a promising philosophical perspective on transmission of knowledge and practices, and as conceptualising transformation of higher education. the role of philosophy, in particular, consists in part in counteracting the hegemony of both traditional and homogenising (‘colonising’) authority. the institution of universities is based on the ideal of universality in its widest sense, universality of the domain of enquiry, striving for truth, unaffected by extraneous aims, intentions or prejudices. striving for universality of the spirit, unrestrained by national or other political motivations. in short, what matters is the striving for universality of mind and spirit. it is no secret that we have been far more successful in developing the mind than in developing the personality. it seems that even the quest for knowledge is threatened by lack of persons of a truly universal spirit. if the universities remain true to their fundamental task, they may contribute significantly to the solution of the crises which threaten us today. (albert einstein, speaking about the fundamental role of the university, in a tape recording made in princeton in 1951; einstein 2003, cd 2, track 7) indigenisation and internationalisation with rapid changes in recent decades, in terms of technological advances, communication and travel, economic connectivity and dependencies, and – even more recently – in terms of increasing democratisation of societies, it comes as no surprise that corresponding changes have occurred and continue to occur in higher education. these changes concern not only how education is (to be) conceptualised, in terms of its nature and aims, but also the very transfer and transmission of systems, practices, knowledge and concepts in higher education. there have been a variety of responses to the transformational implications of globalisation for education and, in particular, for higher education. chief among these are drives towards indigenisation, on the one hand, and towards internationalisation, on the other. the radical versions of these approaches reject any claim to validity or legitimacy by the rival approach. thus, radical indigenisation involves a ‘back to the roots’-type of traditionalism and nationalism that are more often than not inspired by the colonial experience and the need for political consolidation, respectively. examples of this response include radical endorsements of africanisation1 and afrocentrism,2 which tend to reject any ‘outside’ (‘colonial’, ‘western’, ‘northern’, ‘european’, ‘eurocentric’, etc.) influence, and also segregationist forms of nationalism (such as some trends manifest in the former soviet union, yugoslavia, etc.). what they arguably share, apart from an intense belief about internal homogeneity or an equally strong rejection of heterogeneity, is an instrumental usage of the concept of indigeneity. indigenisation is seen not only as an effective instrument for political persuasion, mobilisation and justification, but also as a tool in transformation, be it educational, socio-economic or cultural. as such, it becomes symbolic and may actually produce a virulent form of the ‘ethnicisation’ of education, politics and the economy (see andreasson 2008; for a thinly veiled endorsement of this kind of reverse racist, indeed ethnocentric, orientation, see makgoba and mubangizi 2010, especially the chapter on ‘leadership challenges’).3 by contrast, radical internationalisation envisages the spread of a more or less monolithic educational and socio economic culture and tends to ride roughshod over local or indigenous histories, values and cultural traditions (see auf der heyde 2005:41), on the basis of these societies’ and cultures’ purported lack of epistemic, moral and political education, if not backwardness and ignorance – in short, their proneness to superstition, blatant lack of democratic structure and institutions, and the like.4 i take it as fairly evident that neither of these positions holds much promise. although the former errs in favour of increasing insularity and (self-)marginalisation, the latter errs in favour of dogmatic homogenisation and lack of regard for difference and diversity. more seriously still, apart from manifesting an essentialist conception of culture and identity (i return to this point later), both perpetuate a cycle of disregard, disrespect and intolerance, with ever-increasing stiffening of the opposing fronts. these are obviously little more than caricature characterisations. there are obviously more nuanced versions that deserve correspondingly serious consideration. thus, in the instance of indigenisation, there is an emphasis on the local that nonetheless acknowledges the significance, if not the inescapability, of the global.5 conversely, in the instance of internationalisation, the emphasis on the global is seen as compatible with (as perhaps even requiring) an acknowledgement of diversity, difference and locality, or indigeneity.6 the latter position broadly characterises the motivation that gave birth to the bologna declaration – just insofar as this pledge can be characterised as a commitment to globally shared values etc.7 – as well as post-bologna initiatives by the council of the european union. more recently, the 3013th education, youth and culture council meeting in brussels, which employed ‘the term “internationalisation” … to refer to the development of international cooperation activities between eu higher education institutions and those in third countries’ (council of the european union 2010:1, n. 1), articulated a commitment ‘to returning knowledge to society at … the local, national and global level, thereby helping to meet society’s needs and important social challenges’ (p. 5). transformation as convergence: the bologna declaration and europeanisation8 perhaps i should commence with a discussion of pertinent aspects of the protocol and its implications, as well as some of the criticisms that have been levelled against it during the past two decades. among the central concerns of the bologna declaration are the transformation of higher educational systems and the transfer of educational knowledge and skills, as well as the possibility of active and meaningful engagement across historical, cultural, ethnic, linguistic and social borders. the bologna declaration was a pledge by each of the 29 signatory countries: … a commitment freely taken to reform its own higher education system or systems in order to create overall convergence at european level. … the bologna process … is not a path towards ‘standardisation’ or ‘uniformisation’ of european higher education. the fundamental principles of autonomy and diversity are respected. the declaration reflects a search for a common european answer to common european problems. the process originates from the recognition that in spite of their valuable differences, european higher education systems are facing common internal and external challenges related to the growth and diversification of higher education, the employability of graduates, the shortage of skills in key areas, the expansion of private and transnational education, etc. (the bologna declaration 1999:3). the stated goal was to establish, by 2010, ‘a european space for higher education in order to enhance the employability and mobility of citizens and to increase the international competitiveness of european higher education’ (p. 4). the set of specified objectives included the following: – ‘the adoption of a common framework of readable and comparable degrees; … – the introduction of undergraduate and postgraduate levels in all countries; … – a european dimension in quality assurance, with comparable criteria and methods – the elimination of remaining obstacles to the free mobility of students (as well as trainees and graduates) and teachers (as well as researchers and higher education administrators)’ (p. 4). in addition, the declaration specifically recognises the fundamental values and the diversity of european higher education: – ‘it clearly acknowledges the necessary independence and autonomy of universities; … – it stresses the need to achieve a common space for higher education within the framework of the diversity of cultures, languages and educational systems’. (p. 6). according to the joint declaration of the european ministers of education in june 1999: a europe of knowledge is now widely recognised as an irreplaceable factor for social and human growth and as an indispensable component to consolidate and enrich the european citizenship, capable of giving its citizens the necessary competencies to face the challenges of the new millennium, together with an awareness of shared values and belonging to a common social and cultural space. (p. 7) preceding the bologna declaration, the sorbonne declaration of 25 may 1998 stressed: the universities’ central role in developing european cultural dimensions. it emphasised the creation of the european area of higher education as a key way to promote citizens’ mobility and employability and the continent’s overall development. (p. 7) the main criticisms of the ‘bologna process’, 10 years after it was initiated, point to the ‘educational injustice’ and the verschulung9 it has come to embody. in germany, in particular, the introduction of the bachelor’s and master’s degrees has been widely criticised on the grounds of being too verschult – packed with exams and content material that require rote learning and cramming, thus allowing little reflection on what has been learnt. as jan martin wiarda and martin spiewak have pointed out, this discussion has not been without contradictions. after all, the humboldtian ideal of bildung that used to underpin german academic life was exclusivist, elitist and prevented a vast majority from studying and further education. it was indeed the old system (with the diplom, magister and staatsexamen) that favoured children of civil servants over those of unskilled and semi-skilled labourers at a ratio of 4:1, in terms of affording them the opportunity to study. this system was also characterised by high dropout rates and excessively long duration of studies (meyer 2009:710; wiarda & spiewak 2009:31). the new system has led to a drastic reduction of both duration of study and dropout rate (at least in the human and social sciences), and to a rise in the number of first-semester students. in addition, the exams at the end of each semester have replaced the all-important, all-encompassing final exam. this, however, has meant not only an increase in bureaucracy and administrative work (see schily 2009:46) but also more contact time lecturers and professors are required to devote to greater numbers of students. many universities in germany have somehow missed the boat and, frequently, the old content is squeezed into new courses and curricula (wiarda & spiewak 2009:31). the net result is that both students and lecturers complain about performance and achievement stress (this was one of the main issues of contention during the bildungsstreik several years ago11) – even though studies have indicated that the actual workloads have not increased (wiarda & spiewak 2009). what has happened, however, is that the more rigid structures have robbed many of a sense of autonomy or self-determination, and consequently of a sense of joy or excitement about studying. the response has been to make the customary three-year bachelor a four-year degree and to facilitate semester-long studies abroad. a further related trend, which concerns not students but rather academics, has been towards establishing an equivalence between excellence in teaching and excellence in research, the idea being to reward those who increasingly spend time teaching, supervising and otherwise helping students, rather than exclusively or primarily those who excel in research (p. 32). finger (2009) laments the gradual disappearance of ‘knowledge for its own sake’ and of the ‘fostering or nurturing of genius’, in favour of competitiveness, mobility and economic marketability – in short, quicker turnaround, turnover and efficiency (finger 2009; see also schily 2009:46). social and scientific progress, she says, do not occur on the basis of rules and regulations – historically, their protagonists have been outsiders. this is a further reason why we need to encourage the reintroduction of a broad education, a spirit that is free from prejudice, a solid foundation for critical inquiry and interrogation. ‘we need intellectual openness and education for thinking much more than we need verschulung’, according to finger (2009): a basic ideal of our culture is under threat from the increasing homogenisation of the university: namely the esteem for learnedness, the high regard for knowledge in and for itself – irrespective of whether it ‘pays’ in the foreseeable future. whether internationalisation is inherently interwoven with a process of devaluing knowledge to an instrumental role and with verschulung is, of course, subject to debate. transformation as resistance: africanisation and afrocentrism if finger is right about the disregard in the new system for the inherent value of knowledge (as contrasted with its purely instrumental value), then this is a trait that the drive towards a ‘europe of knowledge’ shares with advocacy of africanisation. this pertains not only to political leaders opening tertiary institutions in liberated african countries in the 1950s and 1960s, but also and especially to theorists and academics emphasising the need for higher education to develop an african identity (see, e.g., adams 2005; dowling & seepe 2004; makgoba 1998; mthembu 2004; nabudere 2006; nyerere 1964; soudien 2009; touré 1963; yesufu 1973).12 there are further, remarkable parallels between the bologna declaration and the call for the africanisation of higher education: emphasis on the ‘africanisation’ of knowledge and on finding ‘african answers to african problems’, the endeavour to make ‘the african university’ internationally attractive and competitive, to establish international respect for africa’s rich and extraordinary cultural and scientific traditions, and so on. the major difference is that ‘africanisation’ and ‘afrocentrism’ emanate less from the political or economic precedent of the ‘african union’, and the common objectives of convergence and transnational mobility, than from a (shared) rejection of ‘the european education system’ and ‘eurocentrism’. although the bologna declaration may be interpreted as a call to unity by harnessing europe’s many strengths, the emphasis in africanisation (and afrocentrism) is more on unity as a means of resistance. this characterises, for example, the ongoing ‘#rhodesmustfall’ and ‘#feesmustfall’ protest movements at south african higher learning institutions against ‘white colonial structures’ and the calls for a ‘free, quality, decolonised education for black students’.13 closely associated with educational and institutional transformation, ‘africanisation’ embodies traits of both internationalisation and indigenisation. the former link may be more controversial – for is africanisation not meant to counteract the dictates of internationalism in education, knowledge and the economy? however, ‘africanisation of education’ has a clearly international element (‘between nations and nation states’), just like ‘europeanisation of education’ has. moreover, the idea of ‘africanisation of knowledge’ bears more than a fleeting resemblance to the bologna declaration’s internationalist reference to a ‘europe of knowledge’. ‘africanisation’ binds together a plethora of not only sub-saharan nations and states. the deceased, former libyan head of state muammar gaddafi’s vision of a ‘united states of africa’, with himself as emperor of africa, may have been a delusional, autocratic fantasy – but at least the first part of it is (still) shared by many. coupled with this desire for pan-african unity are the frequent appeals to communalism as a ‘typically african value’ and reference to the ‘essence’, ‘identity and culture of africa’ (note the singular). on the contrary, there is a strong emphasis in ‘africanisation’ and ‘afrocentrism’ on indigenous, local – as contrasted with, say, ‘global’, ‘international’, ‘european’ or ‘eurocentric’ – educational knowledge, practices and values. for example, there is a frequent endorsement of african mathematics as ‘ethnomathematics’ or african knowledge systems as ‘indigenous knowledge systems’ – as augmenting academic or ‘mainstream’ mathematics and ‘world knowledge’, respectively. the african is the indigene: colonised, exploited, marginalised and historically excluded from the international mainstream. soudien (2009) writes that: at the centre of epistemological transformation is curriculum reform – a reorientation away from the apartheid knowledge system, in which curriculum was used as a tool of exclusion, to a democratic curriculum that is inclusive of all human thought. (p. 89) something he later refers to as ‘the africanisation of the curriculum’ (p. 91). resistance to africanisation, he contends, ‘is often advanced under the guise of a spurious argument suggesting that the debate is not about privileging western scholarship, but rather emphasising the universality of knowledge’ (soudien 2009:91; for a critical examination of the africanisation of the curriculum and of knowledge, see horsthemke 2004). it is ‘the local context’ that ‘must become the point of departure for knowledge-building in universities’ across africa and, indeed, ‘the world’ (soudien 2009:92). problems with internationalisation and indigenisation the notion of internationalisation involves the assumption that the worldwide trend of cultures and societies is towards increasing synchronisation of local environments – presumably following the western model. this is clearly not a wholly accurate assumption, as evidenced by the complementary development or resurgence of indigenisation, and particular phenomena like africanisation. despite its lip service to ‘diversity’, ‘differentiation’ and ‘particularities’, and however benevolent its motivation and intentions, internationalisation is by its very nature ultimately unable to accommodate these differences and counter-currents, especially if and where these are at odds with its central tenets (e.g. where they are manifestations of religious fundamentalism and involve non-democratic practices), like openness, public accountability, tolerance and portability. a less favourable view considers this rival trend to be a bothersome, regressive phenomenon that, however, is facing imminent extinction. indigenisation, in contrast, involves what german cultural theorist wolfgang welsch has referred to as the ‘return of tribes’ (welsch 2000:349) and may be interpreted as a reaction against globalisation. given the historical, political and socio economic background (more often than not colonial or other expansionist exploitation and oppression) that has given rise to and that motivates and explains indigenisation, the eagerness of people to return to what they perceive to be the sources of their cultural identity, their ‘roots’, is perfectly understandable. although this desire to (re)turn to and (re)embrace local values and indigenous traditions (educational and other) is not implausible,14 the move towards indigenisation has produced some collateral damage. compounded by problems emanating from unhelpful immigration legislation and occasional bouts of xenophobia (or more accurately, violent actions against foreigners), there has been no transfer, exchange and mobility on the african continent comparable to that within, or produced by, european higher education. instead, the net result has been a marginalisation not only of the continent as a whole but also in terms of increasing isolation of sub-saharan african countries from each other. indeed, these policies of indigenisation may exacerbate existing societal divisions and lead to new forms of intolerance and discrimination (see andreasson 200815; chetty 2010, on reverse ‘racist rhetoric’ and ‘growing zulu nationalism’). an additional problem with both internationalisation and indigenisation is that these approaches commit what might be called the fallacy of the collective singular. this is an essentialist fallacy that pervades reference to, say, ‘german culture’, ‘european identity’, ‘the african university’, ‘the essence of africa’ and the like. the bologna declaration also seems to contain what welsch has defined as ‘the traditional concept of culture’, where cultures are seen as separate and distinct ‘islands’ or closed ‘spheres’ (welsch 2000:330): the vitality and efficiency of any civilisation can be measured by the appeal that its culture has for other countries. we need to ensure that the european higher education system acquires a world-wide degree of attraction equal to our extraordinary cultural and scientific traditions. (the bologna declaration 1999:7; for a similar conception, see botha 2010: n. 8) in fact, neither internationalisation nor indigenisation appears to be able to do full justice to the ways in which culture and identity are transferred, developed and transformed. it also remains unclear how these approaches could satisfactorily account for the worldwide attractiveness of ‘the european’ or ‘the african’ higher education system, respectively. what is almost certainly true, moreover, is that the profit motive that dominates our world, and education in particular, has pushed other, democratically crucial competences to the periphery – like the capacity for critical scrutiny and interrogation, to transcend traditions and local loyalties and to approach global problems as a weltbürger (to see oneself as a member of a pluralistic or heterogeneous nation, and world), and to imaginatively put oneself in the shoes of those who are perhaps less fortunate, at any rate different from oneself. multiculturality and interculturality in welsch’s analysis, the traditional notion of culture is characterised by three pillars: social homogenisation, an ethnic foundation and cultural delimitation (welsch 2000:329). the problem, in a nutshell, is that the depiction of cultures as separate, distinct islands or self-contained spheres is both unrealistic and normatively dangerous. it is unrealistic, because it is descriptively and empirically weak, if not altogether mistaken. throughout human history, there has been extensive transsemination, or cross-fertilisation, among cultures and civilisations. even during the times of 18th century german philosopher johann gottfried herder (to whom welsch attributes this notion16), there would have been few, if any, cultures completely untouched, uninfluenced or not otherwise inspired by coexisting cultures. the idea of single cultures is also normatively dangerous because of its proximity to ethnocentrism and to what might be called ‘culturism’ (cultural racism, elitism or exclusivism). as a result of acknowledging the significance of these problems, both empirical and normative, two trends have developed (not least in educational theory) in the latter half of the 20th century to account for the ever-increasing transsemination, cross-fertilisation and, importantly, the promotion of recognition, tolerance and respect among human beings. both trends, multiculturality and interculturality, seek to transcend the narrow confines of the traditional concept and to foster mutual understanding among cultures. the question, for the purposes of my inquiry, is whether either of these ideas provide a resolution to the apparent impasse in the internationalisation–indigenisation debate. welsch argues, correctly i believe, that both concepts are problematic in that their very structure (one might say, more accurately, their grammar) still presupposes the very notion of single cultures they purportedly repudiate. the idea of multiculturality emphasises the coexistence of different cultures within one and the same society. although this constitutes an improvement on the demand for social homogenisation, multiculturality is unable to address the resultant problems of this cultural plurality. it is not able to do so because of its conception of this multitude of cultures as individually homogeneous. in fact, all it implies is the mere fact of coexistence – it says, or can say, very little about transsemination, whether descriptively or prescriptively. it comes as no surprise, says welsch, that circumstances in the united states should have entailed some kind of justification of and increasing appeals to intercultural delimitation by theorists of multiculturality (welsch cites amy gutmann and will kymlicka, among others; welsch 2000:333, n. 20). the idea of interculturality17 does not appear to fare much better, for very similar reasons. it does go beyond emphasising mere coexistence of different cultures, by concerning itself with the issue of difficulty in cooperation and collaboration (see council of the european union 2010:2) – but it, too, conceptually presupposes the traditional conception of single, distinct cultures. therefore, the problems it hopes to address must remain elusive – since they arise because of the very presupposition that cultures are separate islands or self-contained spheres. the diagnosis of intercultural conflict is followed by advocacy of intercultural dialogue – yet, the basic problem remains, encapsulated in the thesis of essential separateness or distinctness of the conflicting and dialoguing cultures (see welsch 2000:334–335). thus, any of the envisaged ‘changes’ would ultimately be little more than cosmetic. but is this thesis, which not only constitutes the traditional conception of culture but also underlies the ideas of multiculturality and interculturality, correct? if it is, then the problems of the coexistence and cooperation or collaboration of different cultures would remain with us – and would arguably remain unsolvable. transculturality in this section, i wish to gesture towards the notion of transkulturalität, ‘transculturality’, as a realistic and defensible response to the apparent impasse created in the indigenisation versus internationalisation debate about educational transfer and transformation. although he has perhaps not authored it (hansen 2000:296, 297; welsch 1992:5, 2000:336, n. 27), welsch has certainly popularised this concept. the central thesis is that the conception espoused in the traditional view of culture, and more or less unintentionally adopted or presupposed by the views that have succeeded it, is simply false. in other words, the depiction of cultures as islands or spheres is factually incorrect and normatively deceptive. our cultures, welsch suggests (welsch 2000:335), no longer have the purported form of homogeneity and separateness but are, instead, characterised by mixtures and permeations. welsch describes this new structure of cultures as ‘transcultural’ – insofar as the determinants of culture now traverse (i.e. go through) cultures, and cross their traditional boundaries, and insofar as the new form transcends (i.e. goes beyond) the traditional conception. the understanding of transculturality so explained applies both on a macro level, pertaining to the changed (and changing) configuration of present-day cultures, and on a micro level, referring to the cultural make-up and shape of individuals. the mixtures and permeations that characterise our cultures are the result of technological advances, communication and travel, economic connectivity and dependencies, and – even more recently, and importantly – of the increasing democratisation of societies. examples of these permeations include moral and social issues and states of awareness that characterise many, if not all, allegedly different cultures: the debates about human and non-human (animal) rights, feminist thinking, and ecological consciousness, to mention only a few. examples from commercial interaction (transactions), sport and popular culture abound. as welsch puts it, contemporary cultures are generally marked by ‘hybridisation’ (p. 337). nonetheless, i do not quite agree with him when he claims that the grounds for selectivity between own culture and foreign (or other) culture have all but disappeared and (in a reinvention of rimbaud’s ‘je est un autre’) that: there is little, if anything, that is strictly ‘foreign’ or ‘other’; everything is within reach. by the same token, there is little, if anything, that can be called ‘own’: authenticity has become folklore. it is ownness simulated for others, to whom the indigene himself has long come to belong. (p. 337) the truth and reconciliation process, underpinned as it was by a commitment to restorative justice, was historically and recognisably south african – even though it has been successfully applied, and has transformed judicial thinking and practice, globally. similarly, knowledge of the thirstand appetite-suppressing qualities of the !khoba cactus (or hoodia gordonii) originated with the san community, although the product has since been commercialised and is now available at pharmacies all over the world. i do not mean to suggest here that this points to the manifestation and plausibility of ideas like ‘local justice’ or ‘indigenous knowledge’ – not at all, in fact! – but rather that welsch’s assertion, ‘the regional-specific is increasingly nothing but décor, surface, aesthetic production’ (p. 337, n. 28), is neither compelling nor necessary to make the case for transculturality on a macro (i.e. societal) level. transculturality also operates on a micro (i.e. individual) level. the vast majority of human beings are constituted in their cultural formations by a multitude of cultural origins, affiliations and connections. ‘we are cultural hybrids’, as welsch puts it (p. 339): we may have a particular national identity, but we have a multitude of cultural identities. for example, i am a german who has lived and worked in south africa for most of his life, a heterosexual vegan atheist, former professional rock and jazz musician, with a love of italian, mexican and indian food, native american, celtic and japanese music, czech and finnish cinema, a preference for anglo-american analytical philosophy, and married to a qigong instructor who prepares our minestrone according to the five elements, and with whom i have two sons with traditional sotho and zulu names. the list could be continued with numerous other examples, and i suspect something very similar may be true for a surprisingly large number of people. but does this prove welsch’s point about transcultural identities? does my love of indian food translate into a desire to live in mumbai or into an endorsement of the existing caste system? does one’s fondness of travelling in russia signal support for the state’s incarceration of the band members of pussy riot? hardly. furthermore, i admit that for every example that might be cited to suggest that globalisation is stirring up the ‘cultural pot’, one could think of many poor, uneducated and generally disadvantaged members from various cultures who (despite external influences) have not changed much over the years in terms of interests, expectations, goals, rules, customs, and so on. so, does transculturality yield a promising philosophical perspective on transmission of knowledge and practices, and on the transformation of educational systems? i would suggest, cautiously, that it does. (consider, for example, the manifest cross-pollination between tchokwe sona sand drawings, zulu pottery and bead work, and ndebele murals, and mainstream mathematical thinking. consider also the mission of south african astrophysicist thebe medupe to connect occidental science and astronomy to the cosmological models of some of the oldest civilisations on earth, namely as practised by the jul’hoansi in north-eastern namibia, the dogon in mali, and finally the nabtans in the southern egyptian sahara, nomadic pastoralists, now long dead.18) but this verdict does not only signal a fairly modest movement in the direction of the ‘melding’ of cultures; it may also require some additional conceptual clarification. welsch asserts that transculturality is itself a temporary diagnosis, which refers to a transition or rather a phase within a transition (p. 341, n. 37). it takes as its starting point the traditional idea of single cultures and maintains that this idea – whatever the appeal it may still hold for many – no longer applies, at least not to the vast majority of contemporary cultures. the concept of transculturality seeks to capture an understanding of a contemporary and future constitution of cultures that is no longer monocultural but transcultural. this does not mean that the concept of culture has become empty: according to welsch, it makes good sense to speak of a coexistence of ‘reference cultures’ (bezugskulturen) and of new, transcultural nets (or webs) that emanate from these. an objection that might be raised at this point may take the form of the ‘argument from entropy’ – that the ever-increasing transsemination will itself logically lead to a kind of homogenisation, that the erstwhile ‘individual’ (trans)cultural systems will become indistinguishable from one another, and that transculturality will level out in a kind of bland pan-cultural sameness, a global closed system. the argument is that not only will the idea of ‘cultures’ have been rendered redundant but the very notion of transculturality will also have ceased to apply. it would appear that welsch himself has brought on this objection, by claiming that ‘the diagnosis of transculturality is itself a temporary diagnosis’. however, further elucidation shows that the new ‘reference cultures’ will themselves have transcultural configurations that are the reference point for the weaving of new transcultural webs. in addition, the different individual, social, geographical-environmental, historical-political contexts will more than ensure that an entropic end state is highly unlikely to be bought about. this brings me to my last point: conceptual clarification and the role of philosophy. philosophy of education and the role of the university one of the most important functions of philosophy is arguably that of tireless critical interrogation – not only of concepts but also of premises, beliefs, values, assumptions and commitments – and, by inquiring into their meaning and justification, not to mention their truth, to attempt to resolve some of the most fundamental ontological, epistemological, ethical and indeed educational questions (wimmer 2000:413, 414). how does educational transmission of, say, mathematical and scientific concepts and principles take place, especially in the context of indigenisation, internationalisation and transculturality? what are the influences on curriculum and syllabus selection; what are the relevant differences within the educational systems in the countries on the african continent? what are the implications for teacher training, for the choice of textbooks; how do indigenisation and internationalisation impact on the classroom experience; and what exactly is the promise of transculturality in this regard? these are just some of the questions a longer, more in-depth and, crucially, empirical study would need to address. as thomas auf der heyde (former dean of research, university of johannesburg) has pointed out, universities clearly stand to benefit from globalisation (auf der heyde 2005:41, 43, 44, 48) – so, from an economic point of view, the question whether they are justified in embracing globalisation (e.g. the so-called ‘knowledge economy’) receives a quick and simple answer. the more interesting and difficult question is in what way, if any, their role as social observer and commentator, and their responsibility to critically reflect on the phenomenon of globalisation (auf der heyde 2005), can be made to complement the interest of the state, the universities’ key stakeholders and so on. if auf der heyde is correct in saying that ‘universities … should also be critically appraising the issues raised by [globalisation]’ (p. 41), then this is where philosophy of education arguably has its natural home.19 the role of philosophy consists in part if counteracting the hegemony and despotism of both homogenising (‘colonising’) and traditional (‘indigenising’) authority. the einstein quotation at the beginning of the article might, i believe, be read as a precursor of the idea of transculturality. ‘striving for universality of mind and spirit’, which according to einstein constitutes ‘the fundamental role of the university’, should not be understood as ‘striving for homogeneity’ or uniformity (contra cesana20) but, rather, for transversality. striving for universality in the sense of transversality should be, in einstein’s (2003) words: unrestrained by national or other political motivations. … if the universities remain true to their fundamental task, they may contribute significantly to the solution of the crises which threaten us today. ‘universality of mind and spirit’, i suggest, refers to an awareness that ‘we are all in it together’. the crises and challenges, both economic and environmental, we face today may be different from those to which einstein was referring in 1951, but the gist of his princeton address about the fundamental task of the university is still pertinent. acknowledgement the editors have confirmed that much of the manuscript was published in a non-academic journal, and therefore the decision to publish the manuscript in an academic journal has been accepted. competing interests the author declares that he has no financial or personal relationships which may have inappropriately influenced him in writing this article. references adams, n.d., 2005, ‘reshaping some of the conceptual orientations of lifelong learning in south africa through an african philosophy of education’, in y. waghid, b. van wyk, f. adams & i. november (eds.), african(a) philosophy of education: reconstructions and deconstructions, pp. 140–163, department of education policy studies, stellenbosch university, stellenbosch. adhar mall, r., 1996, philosophie im vergleich der kulturen, primus verlag, darmstadt. adhar mall, r., 2000, ‘konzept der interkulturellen philosophie’, in a. cesana & d. eggers (eds.), thematischer teil ii – zur theoriebildung und philosophie des interkulturellen/jahrbuch deutsch als fremdsprache, vol. 26, pp. 307–326, iudicium verlag, munich. andreasson, s., 2008, ‘indigenisation and transformation in southern africa’, paper prepared for the british international studies association annual conference, university of exeter, united kingdom, 15–17 december. andreasson, s., 2010, ‘confronting the settler legacy: indigenisation and transformation in south africa and zimbabwe’, political geography 29(8), 424–433. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2010.10.003 ani, m., 1994, yurugu: an african-centered critique of european cultural thought and behaviour, africa world press, trenton. asante, m.k., 1980, afrocentricity: the theory of social change, amulefi, buffalo, ny. asante, m.k., 1987, the afrocentric idea, temple university press, philadelphia, pa. auf der heyde, t., 2005, ‘globalisation, resistance and the university’, discourse 33(2), 41–48. benedict, r., 1934, patterns of culture, houghton mifflin, new york. botha, m.m., 2010, ‘compatibility between internationalising and africanizing higher education in south africa’, journal of studies in international education 14(2), 200–213. https://doi.org/10.1177/1028315309357943 cesana, a., 2000, ‘philosophie der interkulturalität: problemfelder, aufgaben, einsichten’, in a. cesana & d. eggers (eds.), thematischer teil ii – zur theoriebildung und philosophie des interkulturellen/jahrbuch deutsch als fremdsprache vol. 26 (pp. 435–461), iudicium verlag, munich. chetty, n., 2010, ‘recounting the myths of creation’, getting ahead/mail & guardian, 27 august–2 september, pp. 5–6, viewed 27 july 2016, from http://mg.co.za/article/2010-08-27-recounting-the-myths-of-creation council of the european union, 2010, ‘council conclusions on the internationalisation of higher education/3013th education’, in youth and culture council meeting, brussels, 11 may, viewed 27 july 2016, from http://www.sefi.be/wp-content/uploads/114378%20conclusiones%20consejo%20internacionalización.pdf dowling, d. & seepe, s., 2004, ‘towards a responsive curriculum’, in s. seepe (ed.), towards an african identity of higher education, pp. 185–198, vista university and skotaville media, pretoria. einstein, a., 2003, ‘the fundamental task of the university’, in verehrte anund abwesende! originaltonaufnahmen 1921–1951, supposé audio cds, cologne. finger, e., 2009, ‘hegel, hilf!’, die zeit, 25 june, p. 27, viewed 27 july 2016, from http://www.zeit.de/2009/27/01-studium grill, b., 2003, ach, afrika. berichte aus dem inneren eines kontinents, siedler, berlin. hansen, k.p., 2000, ‘interkulturalität: eine gewinnund verlustrechung’, in a. cesana & d. eggers (eds.), thematischer teil ii – zur theoriebildung und philosophie des interkulturellen/jahrbuch deutsch als fremdsprache, vol. 26, pp. 289–306, iudicium verlag, munich. horsthemke, k., 2004, ‘knowledge, education and the limits of africanisation’, journal of philosophy of education 38(4), 571–587. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0309-8249.2004.00405.x horsthemke, k., 2006, ‘the idea of the african university in the twenty first century: some reflections on afrocentrism and afroscepticism’, south african journal of higher education 20(4), 449–465. kabou, a., 1991, et si l’afrique refusait le développement?, l’harmattan, paris. makgoba, m.w., 1997, mokoko: the makgoba affair. a reflection on transformation, vivlia, florida. makgoba, m.w., 1998, ‘south african universities in transformation: an opportunity to africanise education’, in s. seepe (ed.), black perspectives(s) on tertiary institutional transformation, pp. 42–62, vivlia & university of venda, florida. makgoba, m.w., 2003, ‘an african vision for mergers’, beyond matric/mail and guardian supplement, 02–08 may, pp. 1–2. makgoba, m.w. & mubangizi, j.c. (eds.), 2010, the creation of the university of kwazulu-natal: reflections on a merger and transformation experience, excel, new delhi. masehela, k., 2004, ‘escaping europe’s clutches’, this day/opinion, 30 september, p. 11. meyer, h.j., 2009, ‘nur mut zu einer reform der reform’, frankfurter allgemeine zeitung nr. 153, 06 july, p. 7. mthembu, t., 2004, ‘creating a niche in internationalisation for (south) african higher education institutions’, in s. seepe (ed.), towards an african identity of higher education, pp. 77–92, vista university & skotaville media, pretoria. nabudere, d., 2006, ‘towards an afrokology of knowledge production and african regeneration’, international journal of african renaissance studies 1, 7–32. https://doi.org/10.1080/18186870608529704 ntuli, p.p., 2002, ‘indigenous knowledge systems and the african renaissance: laying a foundation for the creation of counter-hegemonic discourses’, in c. odora hoppers (ed.), indigenous knowledge and the integration of knowledge systems: towards a philosophy of articulation, pp. 53–66, new africa books, claremont, ca. nyerere, j., 1964, ‘an address by the president of the republic of tanganyika at the inauguration of the university of east africa’, in l. gray cowan (ed.), education and nation-building in africa, pp. 309–313, pall mall press, london. schiele, j.h., 1994, ‘afrocentricity: implications for higher education’, journal of black studies 25(2), 150–169. https://doi.org/10.1177/002193479402500202 schily, k., 2009, ‘leitwährung: credit point’, die zeit nr. 27, 25 june, p. 46. seepe, s., 2000, ‘africanisation of knowledge: exploring mathematical and scientific knowledge embedded in african cultural practices’, in p. higgs, n.c.g. vakalisa, t.v. mda & n.t. assie-lumumba (eds.), african voices in education, pp. 118–138, juta, lansdowne. soudien, c., 2009, report of the ministerial committee on transformation and social cohesion and the elimination of discrimination in south africa’s public higher education institutions, department of education, final report, viewed 27 july 2016, from http://www.justice.gov.za/commissions/feeshet/docs/2008-report-ministerialcommittee-transformationphei.pdf. sumner, w.g., 1907, folkways, ginn & co, new york. the bologna declaration, 1999, joint declaration of the european ministers of education convened in bologna on the 19th of june 1999, viewed 27 july 2016, from http://www.msgsu.edu.tr/assets/userfiles/unverst_xyonetim_xulik/ulik_genel/bologna.pdf touré, s., 1963, ‘education and social progress’, in l. gray cowan (ed.), education and nation-building in africa, pp. 1235–1239, pall mall press, london. van binsbergen, w., 2003, intercultural encounters: african and anthropological lessons towards a philosophy of interculturality, lit verlag, münster. van sertima, i., 1999, ‘the lost science of africa: an overview’, in m.w. makgoba (ed.), african renaissance – the new struggle, pp. 305–330, mafube publishing, cape town. waldenfels, b., 2000, ‘zwischen den kulturen’, in a. cesana & d. eggers (eds.), thematischer teil ii – zur theoriebildung und philosophie des interkulturellen/jahrbuch deutsch als fremdsprache, vol. 26, pp. 245–261, iudicium verlag, munich. welsch, w., 1992, ‘transkulturalität – lebensformen nach der auflösung der kulturen’, information philosophie 2, 5–20. welsch, w., 2000, ‘transkulturalität: zwischen globalisierung und partikularisierung’, in a. cesana & d. eggers (eds.), thematischer teil ii – zur theoriebildung und philosophie des interkulturellen/jahrbuch deutsch als fremdsprache, vol. 26, pp. 327–351, iudicium verlag, munich. wiarda, j.-m. & spiewak, m., 2009, ‘klüger werden: die wichtigsten kritikpunkte an der reform von deutschen schulen und hochschulen. ein überblick’, die zeit nr. 27/wissen, 25 june, pp. 31–32. wimmer, f.m., 2000, ‘kulturalität und zentrismen im kontext interkultureller philosophie’, in a. cesana & d. eggers (eds.), thematischer teil ii – zur theoriebildung und philosophie des interkulturellen/jahrbuch deutsch als fremdsprache, vol. 26, pp. 413–434, iudicium verlag, munich. yesufu, t.m., 1973, creating the african university, oxford university press, ibadan. footnotes 1. as i will show in what follows, the idea of ‘africanisation’ of educational systems indicates both interesting congruencies and dissonances with the problem of transformation in european higher education. what is noteworthy is, on the one hand, the parallel with ‘europeanisation’ of the respective (higher) educational terrain, whereas, on the other hand, ‘africanisation’ contains a strong ideological proximity to ‘indigenisation’. my interest here resides with the possible contribution africa can make to the ‘european’ (and, even more to the point, the global) enterprise. 2. the idea of ‘africanising’ universities is frequently couched within a conception and language that are explicitly ‘afrocentric’. afrocentrism does not simply mean teaching students about africa, its history, cultures, philosophy and values, but it means ‘placing africa at the centre’, historically, culturally, philosophically and morally (ani 1994; schiele 1994:152). it encompasses the view that africa is the cradle of humankind and the locus of the first great civilisations from which all others derive (asante 1980:45, 1987:170; seepe 2000; van sertima 1999). it teaches that africa is the birthplace of technology, metallurgy, astronomy, mathematics, agricultural science and medicine (asante 1980:45; seepe 2000; van sertima 1999) and that african values have priority over european values. with regard to the latter, theorists like molefi kete asante claim at times that african values are superior for africans, just as europeans deem european values to be superior (asante 1980:54, 1987:62, 180), and at other times that african values are plainly superior (asante 1980:9, 10, 1987:170). 3. one of the characteristics of this approach, ‘normative entanglements’, is that the rejection of eurocentrism is linked to an explicit sympathy with the ethnocentrism of non-european cultures (cesana 2000:452). as i have argued elsewhere (horsthemke 2006:456), to respond to eurocentrism by embracing afrocentrism is relevantly like responding to school-ground bullying with corporal punishment or to murder with capital punishment. motivational reasons do not amount to justification, in any of these cases. 4. bernhard dernburg, the first german colonial minister, provided an unapologetically frank definition of the enterprise of colonial expansion: colonisation is the harnessing of the soil, its natural resources, flora, fauna and especially of the people, all for the sake of the economy of the colonising nation, which in turn is obliged to make a return gift of its higher culture, its moral concepts and its superior methods (quoted in grill 2003:79). one could also express this more bluntly: subjugation, exploitation, re-education. an interesting variation on this theme is found in cameroonian exile axelle kabou who – in her book ‘et si l’afrique refusait le développement?’ – blames not only autocratic rulers and the power-hungry and corrupt elites for africa’s ongoing misery but also (and especially) ordinary africans, because of their refusal and rejection of development, progress and modernisation (kabou 1991). 5. thus, masehela (2004), a research manager at the (south african) human sciences research council, writes: we [africans] have to construct our own epistemological framework from which to we can explore ideas and build our own knowledge. … africans must create our own paradigm from which we can also dialogue meaningfully with europeans (p. 11). makgoba (1997), vice-chancellor of the university of kwazulu-natal in south africa, maintains, ‘it is the duty of academics and scholars to internationalise, articulate, shape, develop and project the image, the values, the culture, the history and vision of the african people and their innovations through the eyes of africans’: african people should develop, write, communicate and interpret their theories, philosophies, in their own ways rather [than allow these to be] construed from foreign culture and visions’ (p. 205). moreover, global economic competition is high and unless we develop a competitive high technology economy we face economic ruin, stagnation and under-development, with dire consequences for the impoverished rural and urban communities (p. 179). although the latter insight is surely correct, makgoba does not elaborate on the assumption that ‘africanisation’ is compatible with ‘internationalisation’, with developing ‘a competitive high technology economy’. further argument, too, is required to establish how an ‘afrocentric orientation’ is supposed to cater for the demand, ‘as we enter the era of globalisation, … to rethink ourselves anew, and bring in new ideas if we are to be a significant part of the information age and an era of knowledge industries’ (ntuli 2002:66) or with the ‘need to develop people and prepare young south africans for the future and the tough world of global competition’ (makgoba 2003:2). 6. according to botha (2010), director of the school for education research and engagement, nelson mandela metropolitan university in port elizabeth, south africa: it is clear that internationalisation takes strong cognizance of the local culture, that, without the local, there would be nothing to offer the other and a strong local culture would enhance the value of internationalisation. the own and the other culture are, therefore, cornerstones of both internationalisation and africanisation (pp. 208–209). 7. ‘the way of life of an economist, a scientists or a journalist is no longer simply german or french but, on the contrary, european or global’ (welsch 2000:337). 8. the bologna declaration has also been referred to as the bologna protocol. i use these terms interchangeably here. what is noteworthy about it is its commitment to convergence at a continental (european) level and to ‘a europe of knowledge’ – which is why the envisaged transfer and transformation process can arguably be called ‘europeanisation’. 9. verschulung has somewhat pejorative connotations: it means ‘schoolification’ (say, of a given system, educational or other), and in particular the rigidity, rule-governedness, and bureaucratic and administrative workload associated with strongly regulated institutions and processes. 10. in an article otherwise highly critical of the changes the german tertiary educational system has undergone in the wake of the bologna declaration, hans joachim meyer, former minister of science and art in the german federal state of saxony, also points out that under the old system there were many students who considered an unlimited university sojourn, without corresponding demands on their performance or achievement, a basic human right (meyer 2009:7). in essence, however, meyer laments the death of the humboldtian university. he detects in the introduction of english terminology in reports, proposals, symbols and degrees a systematic displacement of the german language from germany’s academic and scientific life. this poses, he argues, the acute dangers of both intellectual self-expropriation and separation of science and society. meyer blames ‘the left’ for promoting the distancing from all things german, because of a ‘national self-distrust and multicultural tendencies’, a ‘near-hysterical fear of a new wilhelminism’ (p. 7). he equally blames ‘the right’ for its long-time uncritical infatuation with america. 11. http://www.bildungsstreik.net/aufruf-zum-bildungsstreik-fur-solidaritat-und-freie-bildung/aufruf/strike-call/ (last accessed 27 july 2016). 12. according to makgoba (1997): ‘the issue of pursuit of knowledge for its own sake and the so-called standards have … become contentious factors around the african university. … the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake has been one of the cornerstones of university education; but, is there such a thing as knowledge for its own sake today? knowledge is a human construction that by definition has a human purpose. knowledge cannot be sterile or neutral in its conception, formulation and development. humans are not generally renowned for their neutrality or sterility. the generation and development of knowledge is thus contextual in nature’ (p. 177). that knowledge ascription and justification have a crucial contextual component is surely not in doubt (see horsthemke 2004), but this does not mean that (the pursuit of) knowledge must be described and explained in consequentialist or constructivist terms. it might be the object of knowledge that is and continues to be the legitimate cornerstone of higher education. ‘the global competition, the involvement of industry in universities, the social, economic and political pressures of modern society, have made the [pursuit of knowledge for its own sake] obsolete’, says makgoba. ‘the pursuit of knowledge and the truth with a purpose and social responsibility is what universities are about’ (makgoba 1997:181, 182). surely setting up a commission like the truth and reconciliation commission also involved a non-instrumental understanding of knowledge and truth (see horsthemke 2004). if they had an exclusively instrumental function, then substituting them would be entirely permissible – say, with an ‘amnesia drug’ – as long as the desired end/effect/outcome was the same. with regard to the traditional roles that universities throughout the world have in society, makgoba (1997) mentions: ‘the preservation, the imparting and the generation of knowledge. … it is important to recognise … that the imparting of inappropriate or irrelevant education, even of the highest calibre, would … lead to a poor and ineffective product. thus university education has to be relevant not only to the people, but also to the culture and environment in which it is being imparted’ (p. 179). without doubt: the trick, of course, is to avoid an education (system) that is impoverished as a result of excessive concerns with ‘people’s culture’ and ‘user-friendliness’. 13. see, for example, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ceo1pxzqr30 14. indigenisation has provided, argues stefan andreasson (2008), a way for governments to anchor their policies in a culturally acceptable context which lends legitimacy to its policies and rule. it does so by providing african citizens with a sense of ‘ownership’ and participation in policymaking, which may in turn enhance social stability in an otherwise volatile context of a post-colonial struggle to improve living conditions, while at the same time addressing the concerns of both (global) economic interests and (local) populist pressures. 15. andreasson mentions robert mugabe’s zimbabwe as an example in this regard, where indigenisation has been more directly focused on redistribution of ownership and control of public institutions, coupled with an overtly intolerant rhetoric directed by government against those minority groups to whom the concept of indigeneity is deemed not to apply (andreasson 2008, 2010). 16. among those who have endorsed this conception are sumner (1907) and benedict (1934). 17. see, for example, the discussions in adhar mall (1996:8, 2000:307, 310); cesana (2000:437/8, 455); hansen (2000:290, 294, 298); waldenfels (2000:246/7, 250, 253, 255/6); and wimmer (2000). ram adhar mall, in particular, defends ‘intercultural philosophy’ against welsch’s objections – which, it ought to be emphasised, do not concern intercultural philosophy but rather the idea of interculturality. although wim van binsbergen endorses both intercultural philosophy and the idea of interculturality, his understanding appears to be much closer to welsch’s notion of transculturality (see van binsbergen 2003, esp. ch. 15). 18. the 2003 film cosmic africa, by south african brothers craig and damon foster and concept originator and key researcher anne rogers, documents this journey. 19. in this regard, we may also recall finger’s plea for ‘intellectual openness and education for thinking’ and what she referred to as the requisite philosophical arsenal: ‘a broad education, an unbiased spirit, a well-founded ability to critique’ (finger 2009). 20. after explaining the concept of cultural pluralism, as referring to a plurality of forms of knowledge and experience (he distinguishes between erfahrung and erlebnis here, between practical or professional and lived experience), the differences between which are determined by the specific historical-cultural situation, cesana claims that the standpoint of universalism is essentially anti-pluralist (cesana 2000:458). i would argue that this is not at all obvious. one might deem implausible the idea of indigenous knowledge (to say nothing of ‘local truth’) but at the same time acknowledge the context dependence of the justification of knowledge claims. similarly, one can be a universalist about the crises and challenges that face us, and our planet, but at the same time a cultural pluralist about the solutions. for reasons given above, however, i believe the notion of transculturality to be preferable to that of cultural plurality, on both empirical and normative grounds. in addition, i suggest an interpretation of universalism as transversalism, in order to sever it from any connotation with uniformity. abstract introduction south africa’s post-apartheid higher education transformation transformation at the university of the free state making sense of transformation through narratives of self-identity: a methodological note the spiritual mediator the hesitant afrikaner the critical outsider the english marginal the reflective politician the born leader the careerist woman conclusion and discussion acknowledgements references footnotes about the author(s) frans kamsteeg faculty of social sciences, vrije universiteit, the netherlands citation kamsteeg, f., 2016, ‘transformation and self-identity: student narratives in post-apartheid south africa’, transformation in higher education 1(1), a10. http://dx.doi.org/10.4102/the.v1i1.10 original research transformation and self-identity: student narratives in post-apartheid south africa frans kamsteeg received: 25 july 2016; accepted: 16 sept. 2016; published: 22 nov. 2016 copyright: © 2016. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract organisational change processes are by nature complex and often highly contested. this is particularly true of the transformation south african institutions of higher education have been going through since the end of the apartheid era. using a narrative approach, this article presents a multi-faceted range of stories by the university of the free state (ufs) students who took part in a particular leadership programme designed to make a contribution to institutional, and even, societal change. the plurivocality of the identity work the ufs students’ stories display is based on their ethnic, gender and class diversity. it is the context-sensitive ‘tales of the field’ they tell that might help to understand why the transformation concept as well the various transformation-driven practices in higher education are so ambiguous and contested. introduction world-wide, higher education is changing and increasingly characterised by diversity (paradeise & thoenig 2013). while this diversity has the potential of enriching the academic community and, in a broader sense, society as a whole, the underlying processes are often far from unproblematic. higher education institutions sometimes stress the benefits of diversity for their organisations, pointing to their potential of safe spaces for reflection (roux 2012). yet, the very concept of diversity can also be a source of contradiction, inequality and exclusion, and challenge the ideal of a cohesive academic community (brink 2010; seen also cross 2004). the ways in which higher education institutes deal with change coming with the challenge of diversity can be understood by studying the experiences of its main protagonists. this article aims to demonstrate that student narratives are well suited to illuminate the complex, multifaceted, ambiguous and contested character of (organised) change processes, which are seldom straightforward and self-evident (brown, gabriel & gherardi 2009:324; humphreys & brown 2002; thomas & hardy 2011; thomas, sargent & hardy 2011). students have always raised their voices on the choices their institutions make, but the reshaping of higher education in south africa since the african national congress (anc) come to power has renewed student attention – most visibly in the multiple manifestations of campus protests in 2015 and 2016 – for the important role education plays in the country’s development. the reasons for protest are manifold, but generally revolve around diversity and transformation, or lack thereof. despite major government instigated restructurings – the most noticeable being the 2004 merger operation – many university cultures have shown a notorious slow degree of change compared with the pre-1994 situation (aina 2010; balintulo 2003; chetty & merrett 2014; cloete 2014; cross 2004; higgins 2013; jansen 2009; jawitz 2010; kamsteeg 2011; keet & nel 2016; seabi et al. 2012; soudien 2008; tabensky & matthews 2015; verwey & quayle 2012; walker 2005a; 2005b; walker & loots 2016). this article presents narratives of self-identity of students from the university of the free state (ufs), a formerly all-white and afrikaans-medium taught university that is actually going through a critical transition phase (keet & nel 2016). in order to shed light on how this change process is understood by those who are directly concerned, this article presents the narrative reflections of students who participated in a university-wide change project designed to make an explicit contribution to rebuild and transform the fabric of south african society. south africa’s post-apartheid higher education transformation except for a relatively quiet period in the early 20th century, south africa’s higher education history has been a turbulent one, particularly so in the period of official apartheid from 1948 onwards. during this period, higher education developed into a system of inequality, with disproportionately dispersed institutions varying a great deal in size, student enrolment, research capacity, funding, quality of management, etc. the major divide was between historically advantaged institutions and historically disadvantaged institutions as a result of the regime’s interventionist policies to establish racial segregation in tertiary education as elsewhere in society. since 1994, the government and its successive ministers of education have viewed (higher) education as a vehicle for effecting societal transformation and redressing the legacy of apartheid. the national commission on higher education, instituted by the government in 1996, initiated a programme of policy change which in 1997 culminated in a white paper on higher education (department of education 1997; see also che 2007; jansen 2003; jansen et al. 2002). this white paper defined the ‘size and shape’ of the new system, emphasising programme-based planning and the need for institutional collaboration. quality assessment by a proposed council on higher education was meant to provide a sound basis for decisions on structural rearrangements; mergers were not really announced yet (jansen 2003:3). the issue came to the fore only in 1999 when the new minister of education, kader asmal, was appointed. the idea of linking institutional restructuring of the system and social redress gained further purchase and force in 2002 with the department of education’s the restructuring of the higher education system in south africa, which proposed a far-reaching programme of mergers as an appropriate mechanism to bring about transformation, equity, sustainability and productivity (balintulo 2003:457). the same document also provided concrete merger goals and a list of institutions that had to be merged. subsequent policy documents developed the idea of institutional mergers as the principle means to reach the desired goals of reorganisation: social development, equity and quality, including the building of new institutional cultures and identities (higgins 2007; jansen 2003:9). practically, the entire sector protested against the ministry’s top-down approach but, in 2004, the government-mandated merger programme had effectively reduced 36 institutions of higher education to 23:11 traditional universities (offering theory-oriented degrees), 6 universities of technology (offering vocational diplomas and degrees) and 6 comprehensive universities (offering a combination of both qualifications). the merger project introduced a number of major policy measures intended to reduce inequality and foster internationalisation in one single operation. yet, the government underestimated the social and cultural effects of the past, and the extent to which particular groups and institutions had vested interests to defend. it was only to be expected then that after so many years in which the government’s explicit steering role had been the organisation of segregation, a change towards deliberate transformation through merging would produce resistance, particularly at the universities who had been practicing segregated education, including the ufs (for the north-west university, see kamsteeg 2008; 2011). transformation at the university of the free state the ufs, established in 1904 as the grey university college with only six students, is one of the oldest universities in the country, serving as a practically all-white student and staff institution before and during the apartheid era. when in 1993 the university introduced a parallel-medium language policy, the introduction of english caused a significant increase in the enrolment of black students. yet, integration was far from achieved. most afrikaans students still take their classes in afrikaans, whereas black students prefer the english version of the lectures. campus life also remains divided with black and white residences. still in 2005, the then rector acknowledged that the main campus actually consisted of two spaces, with a student population divided along racial lines. by 2007, the student population had grown to 27 000, and today the number has grown to 33 000, divided over three campuses. in 2003, the university merged with the qwaqwa campus – a former ‘homeland’ university situated in the eastern free state – and, in 2004, the south campus was added to the broader institution. with these two campuses added to the main city campus, ufs complied with the sa government’s higher education policy. by now, it is a middle-range university with over 4000 faculty and support staff, divided over seven faculties and more than a 100 departments. key to understanding the symbolic role the bloemfontein university fulfils in the overall university transformation process in south africa is the racist incident that took place at ufs in 2008. the so-called ‘reitz incident’ took place during the initiation period in one of the main campus’ traditional student residences. three black workers were humiliated in what the three white male student perpetrators considered a practical joke. the case was blown up when the students showed their acts on youtube, thus causing a major outrage in the university and in fact the whole country. the incident showed that 14 years after the end of apartheid, racial differences in south africa’s universities were still alive. this only confirmed an earlier observation by jonathan jansen, appointed as ufs’s vice chancellor and rector after the reitz incident in 2009, that universities had perhaps made steps towards racial desegregation but had been far less successful in achieving the ideal of institutional culture integration, including accommodating and affirming racial diversity and differences (jansen 2004:122). in order to tackle the deeper problems he considered reitz to represent, he took a number of decisions, not so much to talk about the reitz four, but rather ‘about the reitz in all of us’. the first was the establishment of an interdisciplinary institute of reconciliation and social justice, to coordinate research and public debate on the very issue of institutional transformation and human rights, now led by prof. andre keet, with the explicit goal of attaining ‘excellence in academic achievement and in human reconciliation’ (ufs 2016) and to contribute to the task of transforming the historically white university into a non-racial environment. eight years after the reitz incident that made ufs headlines, the university’s student population has turned predominantly black, while public debates about the state of transformation are regularly held, culminating in a higher education transformation colloquium hosted by ufs in bloemfontein in 2013. members of the governmental transformation oversight committee, vice chancellors of different south african universities, ufs staff and students discussed the future of the south african higher education system in a 3-day meeting. their preliminary conclusion was that universities face a persistently high dropout rate among first-year students, suffer from a lack of adequate funding as well as poor preparation at the high school level, still share diversity-hostile institutional cultures and, finally, struggle with rigid curricula and lack of academic discipline amongst its students. much like what jansen had already concluded in 2004, the colloquium’s conclusion regarding the transformation of the higher education system particularly held the adverse campus culture responsible for the underperformance of black students. a more silent initiative taken by ufs rector jansen in 2010 was the f1 (first years) leadership for change program, a ‘study abroad program of short duration available to students of all ethnicities, enabling them to personally experience models of integration across lines of culture, colour and language’ (ufs 2016). the programme, originally targeted at 75 first-year students per year, has selected students for an intense internal training programme culminating in a 2-week study abroad experience in one of ufs overseas university partners in the usa, europe and japan. the programme was hoped to produce a visible contribution to equip students with the skills and attitude to become leaders in the new south africa. a huge billboard at one of the campus entrances in bloemfontein explicitly refers to this vision (see photo). during four consecutive years (2012–2016), diverse (gender, race, discipline) groups of between 6 and 12 students actively took part in the amsterdam university college’s global diversity experience course. over the year, several former f1 programme students managed to obtain leadership positions, for example, in the student representative councils. some became also active during the student protests in march 2016, against the very issues that were raised in the conclusions of the 2013 transformation colloquium. after some violent confrontation, ufs campus management decided to fence off the campus with barbed wire (see figure 1), while student leaders organised regular debates on ‘decolonising the curriculum’ and changing ‘campus culture’. figure 1: the leaders we sow will change the world. making sense of transformation through narratives of self-identity: a methodological note narrative modes of interpretation make no absolute claims of truth, but rather suggest verisimilitude, endowing experience with meaning through the careful association of concrete (bottom-up) stories which are historically contextualised (boje 1995; brown et al. 2009; czarniawska 1997; gabriel 2000; tsoukas & hatch 2001:983). in this view, people in organisations lead storied lives, meaning that organisational actors present their narratives as accounts of meaningful events ‘with plots that weave together complex occurrences into unified wholes that reveal significant instances of organizing, or organizational becoming’ (brown et al. 2009:325). organisations are socially constructed spaces where sensemaking actors constantly change organisational reality (bate 1997; van maanen 2010). this sensemaking always takes place in an environment where meaning has to be constantly negotiated (czarniawska 1997). the complexity of transformation processes, particularly in academic institutions, shows itself in the language used by the actors involved. vaara (2002; 2003; risberg, tienari & vaara 2003) stresses the role of narratives as central to the understanding of the social construction of organisational phenomena. like tsoukas and hatch (2001), he shows that narrative analysis allows linking discursiveness to diverse subject positions and identities (vaara 2002:215–217). in his view, both success and failure versions of narratives can be either overly optimistic or deeply pessimistic, as meaning-giving actors are constantly framing and reframing the question of failure and success (2002:239), in what brown and humphreys (2003) call epic and tragic tales. the latter build their analysis on the type of storytelling approach advanced by gabriel (2000) who argued that an analysis of these tales produces powerful insights into the various strategies organisational actors deploy in the battlefield of meaning production (see bate 2004; beech & macintosh 2012; boje 2008). based on a broad research review in organisation studies, mats alvesson (2010) presented a set of metaphorical images of self-identity, constructed in organisational contexts. these self-identity constructions are important devices for individual actors to position themselves – in various degrees of ambiguity and coherence – vis-à-vis the often messy contexts they live in (p. 17). central to this approach of identity is the individual as storyteller (homo narrans) who follows giddens’ view on self-identity conceptualised as ‘a reflexively organized narrative, derived from participation in competing discourses and various experiences, which is productive of a degree of existential continuity and security’ (1991:5). the ‘reflexively organized narrative’ then is built out of what alvesson calls ‘cultural raw material: language, symbols, sets of meanings, values, etc.’ (alvesson 2010:11) through empirical (field)work. the seven images distinguished by alvesson are ‘self-doubters’, ‘strugglers’, ‘surfers’, ‘storytellers’, ‘strategists’, ‘stencils’ and ‘soldiers’ (2010:7). the first three images refer to an individual context with insecurity, ambiguity and fluidity as the main characteristics, whereas the last three are more collectively contextualised and show some more coherent and robust characteristics. the middle image – presenting the actor as primarily a storyteller – is the pivotal position and the root metaphor of all others (p. 20), a view that is supported in yannis gabriel’s storytelling in organizations (2000), where it is argued that through stories deep, often hidden, meanings held by organisational members can be retrieved. in the following sections, the ongoing process of self-identity constructing through storytelling by ufs f1 students is conceived and presented as self-identity work, which ‘refers to people being engaged in forming, repairing, maintaining, strengthening or revising the constructions that are productive of a sense of coherence and distinctiveness’ (sveningsson & alvesson 2003:1165; watson 2008). in the south african context, jansen et al. (2002) similarly collected a series of contrasting educational narratives and counternarratives produced by managers and faculty of a complex institutional merger in an eastern cape higher education institution. their presentation of stories by the various university groups subjected to the consequent institutional change displays a fierce discursive struggle through explicit identity work (2002:421ff.). similarly to walker’s (2005a) account of race narratives among post-apartheid university students at ufs (walker 2005a), the present study locates student self-identity narratives into a layered and contextualised perspective on the wider organisational and societal arena in which the struggle over (the meaning of) change and transformation in south africa’s educational sector is played out (kamsteeg 2011; kamsteeg & wels 2012). the narratives presented below give a multifaceted and diverse picture of how ufs students make sense of the changes the university is going through since the mid-1990s, and more precisely since 2009 under the leadership of its rector and initiator of the leadership programme, jonathan jansen. these narratives essentially concern changes in the campus culture of the university in bloemfontein, and i try to make sense of students’ sensemaking efforts (brown, patrick & nandhakumar 2008). student narratives are particularly important for studying campus culture, because they do in a way ‘predict’ the future of the university, as it is also explicitly mentioned in the rationale of the f1 leadership programme.1 of course, the present staff and faculty are also, and probably even stronger, bearers of campus culture, but they are less explicitly targeted as change agents by the university leadership, which is perhaps one of the reasons for its slow change path (higgins 2007; 2013). the research for this study is based on ethnographic fieldwork among and interviews with ufs f1 students over the years 2012–2016. in the conclusion, i will draw parallels with walker and loots’ (2016) study on ufs’s first f1 student cohort, and on journalist bryson’s recent it’s a black and white thing (2014), which is largely based on stories by the first ufs f1 student cohort. in this study, i predominantly use narratives from f1 students who came to amsterdam as part of the exchange programme. the reason to do so is twofold. first, using data from a number of consecutive years gives the study a diachronic character, which, i believe, is fitting for a study on cultural transformation. second, and perhaps more importantly, as host of the f1 groups in amsterdam, i was able to develop a trust relationship with the students, which allowed me to ‘shadow’ (czarniawska 2007; kamsteeg & wels 2004) them as well as interview them, both in amsterdam and during my field visits to bloemfontein later on. my regular research visits to ufs, where i am hosted by the above-mentioned institute of reconciliation, and my involvement in the f1 programme as a foreign host, gave me a position of what i prefer to call engaged scholarship (kamsteeg & ybema 2009; van de ven 2007). the narratives presented here are mostly based on interviews (recorded) and informal talks with some 25 students, held both in bloemfontein and in amsterdam. the narratives are both unique and representative, as they tell individual stories that contain elements shared by several others, also from students who went to universities in other countries, whom i met during various debriefing meetings i was able to participate in during my visits to bloemfontein, and to the second global leadership summit in 2015. at that meeting, ufs staff and hosts from all participating international universities met for 2 weeks with more than a hundred former participating students in extensive exchange programmes in bloemfontein. at this occasion, it became clear that similarly diverse experiences of transformation are noticeable among students who went to japan, the usa, belgium or the netherlands (amsterdam). therefore, i think i can claim that the narratives retrieved represent a range of diverse and reflect different views on transformation that is not limited to the amsterdam student. the seven individual students’ self-identities presented below, which are built around their involvement on campus and particularly their experiences with the f1 programme, are therefore to a significant extent representative for the programme at large. seven student self-identity narratives alvesson’s emphasis on self-identity as an important concept for studying organisational identity allows for a more playful relationship between data, theory and concepts than organisational identification theories generally allow (2010:3–4). juxtaposing different self-narratives, or images as alvesson tends to call them, also makes it possible to depict the diverse, and even ambiguous identities people construct, particularly in situations that are themselves complex. the present transformation phase in south african higher education institutions can benefit from such a perspective that is conceptually broad and multifaceted. the concrete narratives i present were selected exactly because they reflect the wide number of meanings the concept of ‘transformation’ is given within the (ufs) context. analogously to alvesson, i distinguish seven narratives that broadly represent the self-understanding of f1 students vis-à-vis transformation at the campus they belong to. these self-identity narratives range from critically activist to opportunistically individualist. the selection of the narratives was to show exactly this diversity. i chose to present the most telling narratives (table 1 gives an overview), but also respect the demographic, disciplinary and gender diversity of the total f1 population, which shows an overrepresentation of white students. table 1: seven self-narratives. the spiritual mediator hendrik is a mixed race theology student living in one of the oldest student residences of the ufs campus which is now slowly being transformed into an ethnically mixed residence. he is from a less fortunate family in the eastern cape and told me i was the first with whom he has shared his story: ‘i’m planning to do my thesis on anthropology and theology, because i have discovered that the bible has some great stories of cultural diversity. my ambition is to become a lecturer in academia, as i can convey a message pretty clearly. to realize this i will go again to europe, come back to bloemfontein and give back what i learned.’ hendrik links his mother’s advice to ‘make a lot of people to look up to you and follow your example’ directly to his leadership role in the f1 group that visited amsterdam. he semi-jokingly tells that they deliberately sent him there: ‘why amsterdam? well, i don’t know why, perhaps they thought this guy is a theologian, let’s see how he will handle amsterdam with all the challenges, the red light district, homosexuals, etc. i must say i now think i was blessed to be thrown in the deep, to learn about student life in amsterdam.’ he strongly believes that this whole f1 experience has helped him to grow personally: ‘it has made me think differently, cognitively and emotionally. i now act differently, because i feel that i need to be more informed. you know, knowledge is power, it feels like i need it to get to know people. i have changed and learned to put myself in uncomfortable positions, i take myself more out of my comfort zone. like e.g. going into townships, learn from the blacks, how they do their trade.’ the clearest reference hendrik made to the transformation concept is when he asked me about john coetzee’s novel disgrace. he had read this book in amsterdam and was eager to explain how reading this book changed his ideas about black people and white people in south africa: ‘it was such intense reading, because of the deep hidden message in that book about south africa. i immediately thought of it this way, the father in the book first was close to his daughter but then they grew apart. the father represents the apartheid government and the daughter the black people in south africa. he could have prevented it from going wrong, like we could have prevented apartheid, but we didn’t. he knew that what he did was wrong, apartheid people knew they were wrong.’ he immediately goes on to tell that since he is back his life has changed, his focus is different: ‘south africa has been a disgrace, but what we are experiencing now it is ‘amazing grace’, how mandela acted the way he did, disgrace is now slowly eliminated and i am part of it, by talking to other students, taking part in the f1, going into communities. my pentecostal pastor teaches us that traditions are of value, but not if they refer to something wrong. i now see that e.g. some residence names, with names of old apartheid defenders, have to be changed. the ufs needs to uphold the image, can’t have things on campus that are wrong.’ hendrik stresses that he must make a contribution to the transformation process, take his responsibility for changing the campus culture, by speaking out and mediating between fellow students. hendrik’s stance on transformation clearly stresses both personal and collective responsibility; his religious motivation is a feature that is more often – although generally less explicitly – expressed by f1 students. the hesitant afrikaner as a creative student, driekie felt greatly at ease in amsterdam where students are encouraged to critically discuss any issue they want, on an equal footing. this she had also learned in the f1 programme: ‘they actually made me think differently, accept people as they are – i suppose that is what transformation is about. now when i hear someone talking racism, i stand up and say it. i would not have done that before.’ yet, she continues about race: ‘but race will never not be a problem in south africa. cultural differences, how we see things, people don’t talk about these things, when talking racism people immediately shut the doors. here at the university we started talking about it, but not to a point that we are getting any better. here, because all the problems we have had, the reitz hostel incident, it has opened the doors, and we can’t close them anymore, the keys have been thrown away. i have so many black friends now.’ but then she takes back a little and shows some cracks in her story: ‘now that the top management wants to change the name of student residences bearing the name of former apartheid figures, everything is blown up again. they also decided black and white should go together in the residences, and that they are going to choose your roommate for you. people start to protest.’ asked whether this affects her, she says: ‘well, the two [black and white students, fk] can’t really function together, because as people we are different. it’s ok if we can choose, but when you are forced, actually i could not do it. i have done it, for two or three weeks, but there are differences. and that girl i lived with, she could speak afrikaans, she was more white than black, because she spoke our language. i don’t think i would … [with someone who doesn’t speak afrikaans]. it’s not racist, it’s just my preference …’ this self-narrative shows us an open-minded student, who is nevertheless strongly affected by what jansen calls ‘knowledge in the blood’ (2009) transmitted to her by her background in the afrikaner tradition. she is hesitant about her transformation but rather outspoken in that the radical transformation demands she encounters at university are for her as an afrikaner girl a bridge too far. in this respect, driekie’s story shows an ambivalence that many white afrikaner students feel regarding the consequences of transformation, without wanting to be associated with militant conservative groups defending white people’s rights. the critical outsider bonolo is a third-year sotho speaking off-campus living industrial psychology student. since 2013, there is a place where off-campus people can gather between and after classes. she is one of the leaders in this residence, which in her opinion is one of the most diverse: ‘we are proud to have a fully mixed residence; you will find everything here: black, white, boys, girls, english, afrikaans, zulu, gays, lesbians, etc. much like in amsterdam!’ bonolo went to amsterdam with the f1 group led by hendrik. in her opinion, he was a good leader, but she believes more female leadership should be stimulated in the programme. during the group activities in amsterdam, she often stood up to speak for the group: ‘yes, more girls should stand up. there are sufficient leaders but they don’t dare to run against a boy, particularly not if it is for a src position. but from my f1 group there are now several who go for the residence committees. i myself want to broaden my horizon, like antjie krog [famous white anti-apartheid writer and poet], and perhaps study anthropology. my ambition is to go abroad, do an international master and then return and change the university. there is so much to change, e.g. the language policy … you can apply only if you speak afrikaans. it is a shame.’ bonolo ironically remarks that transformation is the first word that you learn at the university these days, but that it is often used in a purely rhetorical sense: ‘now i’ve heard they gonna pay us to tell transformation stories. i wish i had a proper story, but i just don’t have one. i want true transformation, i miss amsterdam.’ her experience in bloemfontein, and also with the f1 group in amsterdam, provided that she deliberately chose to keep outside of what she considers a suffocating campus culture. at the same time, bonolo refuses to translate her culturally critical views into political militancy, as she believes organised student groups are dominated by party politics. the english marginal transformation is often regarded as bringing black people and white people together, yet since the days of the anglo-boer war differences between english-speaking people and afrikaners are noticeable. this becomes clear in the story of florence, a 22-year-old law student. her school background gave her a position strongly diverging from her afrikaner compatriots: ‘in my english school, my class was very diverse so i am used to racial differences. i now attend classes in english, which means that i have classes with black people as well, whereas my afrikaans friends only go to class with afrikaans people, which are mostly white.’ florence was well aware of the role language played in the residences through the position she took in her residence: ‘at first we asked some black girls that i knew in the residence committee, so that we would be able to attract other black people to the residence. if you walk in the house you cannot only talk afrikaans the whole time. in our house meetings we now only speak english and with our committee meetings we speak english as well. so it has been a whole process of changing our routine actually.’ florence also touches upon another diversity issue, notably the distance between on and off-campus living students. much of the university policies are focused on the students living on-campus, but the large majority live elsewhere in the city. she points out that the strong focus on the residences is regrettable. a considerable group of students live off-campus and she thinks that they will never be part of the transformation process, because they do not even know about the challenges on campus. she gives an example: ‘the other day i had attended a src dialogue session where all off campus students were invited as well, and from the more than 20,000 ufs off-campus students only around 100 students were present. they think student activity is not for them, and they never hear about what we are discussing on campus.’ florence’s narrative shows that whiteness and afrikaans are often joint obstacles to transformation, marginalising students who want to break traditional boundaries by pleading for the binding role of english language. the reflective politician john, an english-speaking law student, held transformation portfolio in the src after his participation in the f1 programme. he also works at the institute of reconciliation. his f1 experience has played a decisive role in his university career, raising his consciousness about university transformation: ‘it has made me think about the sub consciousness of discrimination around us. i’ve learned to think before saying something. you must do things with your f1, if you don’t, it is waste, but many just move back into their comfort zone. during my f1 visit we learned about lgbt and race. it really opened my eyes beyond ufs.’ upon his return to bloemfontein, he started his leadership career: ‘you come back to campus, and you are comfortable again. we started making it a bit more uncomfortable on campus. one example i always take is the house meetings. first years are completely separated, meetings are done in afrikaans, there is no diversity in the mentality, some house meetings start with prayer. that is why i started leading a day residence, which took a lot of time. there are other examples of it, of f1 people moving to leadership positions, though it is difficult to put yourself out for an official position. you may also lose which is why some simply return and concentrate on their studies.’ he has some outspoken ideas about the diversity within the f1 programme. although it is explicitly a programme that targets black and female leadership, it is predominantly white males who emerge during and after the programme: ‘why do black students not apply? it is a cultural issue; for them it is big thing to travel, leaving your parents. something that is perhaps not as much present in black culture as it is in white culture. within the groups it seems also that blacks seeks blacks, and whites seeks whites. perhaps because we meet each other only one or two times before leaving, and don’t get used to meeting each other before.’ this last remark about black people and white people meeting for the first time via a programme like f1 is illustrative of the differences in the cultures of black and white people. bryson’s it’s a black and white thing describes the first steps of the ufs transformation project and is hopeful about the future. she is also very clear about the presence of deeply rooted identities when she quotes a white student telling that ‘i’m more comfortable in my own skin’ (2014:81). yet, this same student thinks the programme has at least broadened his horizon. john is clear about the programme’s contribution to transformation: ‘for me it does, i’m an example myself. it is an amazing program, because it is about learning new ideas. and it is these ideas that helped me take on leadership positions. in the src i had to defend the f1, because the program it costs a lot much money for relatively few students and that money could be used for other purposes. src people don’t always value the long-term investment, because they give political priority to the easy-to-solve short-term issue they encounter. it is my job to politically defend the program, and help refine it.’ like dino, whom we will hear in the next narrative, john has a political take on transformation, but, in contrast to dino, he resists working along what he believes to be short-term party political lines. he is clearly in search of alternative paths, that are – as other f1 students confirm – not easily available. john’s attitude is shared by students who are critical of the f1 programme and have deliberately chosen not to go for a scholarship. the born leader dino is one of a number of highly politicised economy students from one of the black residences, who, after taking part in the f1 programme, became a student leader with strong political ambitions. after having served in the residence committee, he was elected in the student representative council, together with his residence mate. like john, he is combining his studies with volunteer work at the institute of reconciliation, working on a study on transformation and student leadership: ‘for this study we selected people who were leaders before 2010, when rector jansen’s transformation policy became effective; then we have a group of student leaders who became active in the years 2010–2012, the formative years of ‘leadership for transformation’; and finally a group of leaders who are now operating with the consolidated knowledge generated in the previous two years. we consider leaders to be those who take positions in the residence councils, in the student associations, and in the src.’ for dino, like many student leaders an active anc member, the political and academic routes go together in a quest for personal development. moreover, he is actively seeking to improve his knowledge and skills by applying for funded courses and training programmes nationally and internationally: ‘for me transformation takes the political route, next to the academic path through the defense of student rights, and against those sectors in the university that are defending traditional vested [white] interests. i’d say you grow from one position to another.’ he maintains that the path he has taken is destined for him, and that the amsterdam experience as an f1 group leader prepared him for his present tasks: ‘for me it’s another thing coming back and using what you learned. as a leader i have still a long way to go. so much to be tackled. there are so many senior students, staff, lecturers who are here from before jonathan jansen’s time. they are from before the transformation agenda. we as f1’s have learned that this must change, but many others are not yet there. they do resist transformation. senior students, white staff, some do not see the need for transformation.’ his ideas on transformation are rather encompassing: ‘it is not only race, or gender, it is about the whole outlook of the university, e.g. the residences. interaction is limited, teaching is in different languages, which is not good for interaction. one medium of instruction would help.’ he is not fully positive about the f1 programme, however, as it serves only a small part of the first years: ‘it has created an us versus them situation. coming back you must have a significant impact, if you don’t see that so, you should not be in the program. it is an investment. not everybody does that, that is where the critics come in. one part is active, but others spoil the opportunity. the f1’s should do more. i suggested the dean of students to improve the program. we should work more on getting to the white community on campus. some of it is still very afrikaans and conservative.’ amsterdam has helped him to develop some ideas about himself, his identity and his future: ‘we saw a lot of diversity in amsterdam, unlike others who went to japan, or china. we were privileged to conduct research in that diversity field, that was an experience. we were send into the field, the neighbourhoods. you could choose a research theme such as race, class, religion. studying race in the netherlands, that is of significance. i want to bring this experience further.’ after the interview he went off to his next src meeting. in the evening, he was sending out political messages on his cell phone: vote anc in the coming elections. dino represents a minority among the f1 students who see their participation in the programme as politically advantageous cv building. dino is clear about his future work: he pursues a job in (preferably anc) government administration. the careerist woman not all f1 students take what they learned through the programme as the start of a leadership career. anisha, a 21-year-old accounting student, has taken it first and foremost as an encouragement to become successful in society by pursuing a career with her university training. yet, she has also learned from her participation: ‘i have become a more open-minded person as a result of participating the program. in the two weeks that i was in amsterdam i have seen homosexuals are people like myself. after my trip i told my friends that the people in amsterdam are like this and like that. now i think that a lot of my friends have adopted this mentality of open mindedness. that is how i believe i can make a change in the smallest way.’ another eye-opener for her was the way the lectures were given in amsterdam: ‘student cultures are way different, i discovered when i saw students from different studies really interacting with each other. that made me think that our world [in bloemfontein] is a bit closed. this is also clear in my residence which is very afrikaans.’ yet, university leadership is not her cup-of-tea. she is in accounting and very determined to go for a career in banking, or investment management. her studies, in combination with the broader horizon f1 gave her, has stimulated her career ambitions: ‘i just don’t have the time. i am going to johannesburg, i am a bit tired of the free state, i go to private university. leadership in our field of accounting is different, task oriented. this is how i feel. most of the f1’s, coming back from the abroad tend to go for the leadership positions, e.g. in the residence council and they build up a sort of a fan base, which then helps for the src, yet they hardly partake in leadership outside of campus. that is where i will grow and become a successful professional. i am prepared to work hard for it.’ anisha is one of several black students for whom the f1 participation clearly had a personal transformative and emancipatory effect, without striving to make a contribution to any form of collective struggle. she firmly believes that transformation can only be achieved by making a personal effort, and that particularly black students are individually responsible to move beyond the effects of an underlying culture of whiteness by pursuing a (business) career (steyn 2001; see also haffajee 2015). conclusion and discussion the seven ufs student self-identity narratives presented show how diverse the discursive positioning vis-à-vis south africa’s societal and institutional transformation process after more than 25 years still is. the leadership programme the students participated in clearly made them aware of their responsibility to contribute to changing, and they all acknowledge that the programme has changed them at a personal level. some have become more critical and reflective, while others started to explore more active ways of ‘making a contribution’. the transformation concept clearly does not mean the same to all of them; the identity work they display in their narratives on self and others (jenkins 2008) does not lead to one, or even more, central, distinctive and enduring group identities either (albert & whetten 1985). some narratives reveal a more robust and coherent self-identity, particularly the more politically inspired ones, while others show more ambiguous and insecure positions. in that sense, the f1 students here presented reflect the kind of self-identity pattern – from self-doubter to the more soldier-like type, with individual and contextual orientations, respectively – that alvesson (2010) described. all students are storytellers, that is, they discursively make sense of their view on the transformation project, and what transpires from all these stories is that the programme – and especially their abroad trip to amsterdam – has widened their horizon beyond the culture of the provincial academic institution they had just entered. the adoption of a broader vision made them reflect on two related issues in particular that they feel is hampering change/transformation: language and colour (race). in various ways, all students refer to the effects of racialised society, and the still largely racialised university more in particular. it is no coincidence that the student protests that started in 2015 with the rhodes-must-fall movement revolve around these same issues, although there are certainly more reasons for discontent. the unhappy marriage between language and race is particularly played out in the historically afrikaans universities, including bloemfontein, that scholars such as steyn (2001) and higgins (2007; 2013) characterised as places of institutional whiteness. whether this culture of whiteness still as prevalent as it was in pre-1994 south africa can be doubted, but jonathan jansen’s powerful analysis of white students’ nostalgic embarrassment (based on student stories from the former afrikaans university of pretoria in the 1990s) has certainly lost some of its plausibility. the self-identity narratives presented above largely confirm what keet and nel (2016), walker and loots (2016) as well as jansen (2016) argue in their recent studies on the development of ufs democratic student citizenship over the last number of years. walker and loots studied asserts that all but a few students of the first f1 cohort positively responded to the space universities offer for reflecting on and responding to the transformation problem (2016:66). jansen even attributed ‘positive leadership’ qualities to the students resulting from what he calls sensory leadership demonstrated by the (his!) university (2016). keet and nel also perceived progress among ufs student leaders, although they stress that ‘too good to be true’ outcomes perhaps need to be taken with caution, referring to what bourdieu calls ‘collusive objectification’ (2016:137). they also point to the structuring force of habitus in the institutional field that tends to set limits to the likelihood of students taking up new responsibilities, as well as of researchers to be blinded by their own engagement (2016:139). keet and nel’s study was based on interviews with students who served one or more terms in the student representative council of the university, which often proves to be a stepping stone for a political career. it was in the src positions that they experienced the institutional limits of transformation, which also comes to the fore in the present study. keet and nel’s students mostly opted for the political (collective) route to change, the f1 students whose narratives i presented above display a broader array of options, including non-political and individual pathways. the contribution of the self-identity narratives based approach taken in this contribution must, however, primarily be sought in their plurivocality. the narratives show that universities – and particularly those who are changing – are crucial places to capture identity work and subject positioning in different shapes. it is this kind of context-sensitive ‘tales of the field’ (van maanen 2010) that can help understand how the complex notion of transformation is evoked and interpreted in institutions of higher education. if the varying degrees of engagement the f1 students’ self-identity narratives display demonstrate anything, it is that transformation is not only a contested but also a socially, culturally and politically complex and multifaceted process. in february 2016, confrontations during a rugby match on the bloemfontein campus between students, their families and most probably interested factions from outside of the university was followed by a number of further irregularities that other universities in south africa had already suffered before.2 in the subsequent months, there has been much talk on ‘decolonising’ the university, but few concrete steps have been made, as deeply rooted ideas and practices do not permit easy ways out, or forward, as maré’s declassified (2014) compellingly shows with regard to south africa’s persistent racialism. it is likely, however, that the storytelling f1 students’ identity work, and the ensuing practices, will give shape to transformation. acknowledgements competing interests the author declares that he has no financial or personal relationships which may have inappropriately influenced him in writing this article. references aina, t.a., 2010, ‘beyond reforms: the politics of higher education transformation in africa’, african studies review 53(1), 21–40. http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/arw.0.0290 albert, s. & whetten, d., 1985, ‘organizational identity’, research in organizational behavior 7, 263–295. alvesson, m., 2010, ‘self-doubters, strugglers, storytellers, surfers and others: images of self-identities in organization studies’, human relations 63(2), 193–217. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0018726709350372 balintulo, m., 2003, ‘the role of the state in the transformation of south african higher education, 1994–2002: equity and redress revisited’, in p.t. zeleza & a. olukoshi (eds.), african universities in the twenty-first century, vol. ii knowledge and society, pp. 441–458, codesria, dakar. bate, s.p., 1997, ‘whatever happened to organizational anthropology? a review of the field of organizational ethnography and anthropological studies’, human relations 50(9), 1147–1171. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/001872679705000905 bate, s.p., 2004, ‘the role of stories and storytelling in organizational change efforts: the anthropology of an intervention within a uk hospital’, intervention research 1(1), 27–42. beech, n. & macintosh, r., 2012, managing change. enquiry & action, cambridge up, cambridge. boje, d.m., 1995, ‘stories of the storytelling organization: a postmodern analysis of disney as “tamara-land”’, academy of management journal 38(4), 997–1035. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/256618 boje, d.m., 2008, storytelling organizations, sage, thousand oaks, ca. brink, c., 2010, ‘quality and equality in higher education’, in keynote address at the conference, university 2010: making a difference, amsterdam, 22–23rd march (unpublished paper). brown, a.d, gabriel, y. & gherardi, s., 2009, ‘storytelling and change: an unfolding story’, organization 16(3), 323–333. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1350508409102298 brown, a.d. & humphreys, m., 2003, ‘epic and tragic tales: making sense of change’, journal of applied behavioural science 39(2), 121–144. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0021886303255557 brown, a.d., patrick, s. & nandhakumar, j., 2008, ‘making sense of sensemaking narratives’, human relations 61(8), 1035–1062. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0018726708094858 bryson, d., 2014, it’s a black and white thing, tafelberg, cape town. chetty, n. & merrett, c., 2014, the struggle for the soul of a south african university, university of kwazulu-natal, durban. cloete, n., 2014, ‘the south african higher education system: performance and policy’, studies in higher education 39(8), 1355–1368. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2014.949533 council on higher education, 2007, review of higher education in south africa, the council on higher education, pretoria. cross, m., 2004, ‘institutionalising campus diversity in south african higher education: review of diversity scholarship and diversity education’, higher education 47, 387–410. http://dx.doi.org/10.1023/b:high.0000020854.04852.80 czarniawska, b., 1997, narrating the organization, university of chicago press, chicago, il. czarniawska, b., 2007, shadowing: and other techniques for doing fieldwork in modern societies, copenhagen business school, copenhagen. department of education, 1997, a programme for the transformation of higher education, education white paper 3, government gazette, pretoria. gabriel, y., 2000, storytelling in organizations. facts, fictions, and fantasies, oxford up, oxford. haffajee, f., 2015, what if there were no whites in south africa?, picador africa, johannesburg. higgins, j., 2007, ‘institutional culture as keyword’, in council of higher education (eds.), review of higher education in south africa, pp. 97–123, the council on higher education, pretoria. higgins, j., 2013, academic freedom in a democratic south africa. essays and interviews on higher education and the humanities, wits university press, johannesburg. humphreys, m. & brown, a.d., 2002, ‘narratives of organizational identity and identification: a case study of hegemony and resistance’, organization studies 23(3), 421–447. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0170840602233005 jansen, j., 2003, ‘mergers in south african higher education: theorizing change in transitional contexts’, politikon: south african journal of political studies 30(1), 27–50. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02589340308046 jansen, j.d., 2004, ‘race and education after ten years’, perspective in education 22(4), 117–128. jansen, j.d., 2009, knowledge in the blood. confronting race and the apartheid past, uct press, cape town. jansen, j.d., 2016, leading for change: race, intimacy and leadership on divided university campuses, routledge, london. jansen, j.d., bindi, n., chalafu, s., lethoko, m., sehoole, c. & soobrayan, v., 2002, mergers in higher education, lessons learned in transitional contexts, university of south africa, pretoria. jawitz, j., 2010, ‘race and assessment practice in south africa: understanding black academic experience’, race, ethnicity and education 15(4), 545–559. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13613324.2011.645568 jenkins, r., 2008, social identity, routledge, london. kamsteeg, f., 2008, ‘in search of a merged identity; the case of multi-campus north-west university, south africa’, td the journal for transdisciplinary research in southern africa 4(2), 431–451. http://dx.doi.org/10.4102/td.v4i2.162 kamsteeg, f., 2011, ‘transformation as social drama: stories about merging at north west university, south africa’, anthropology southern africa 34(1&2), 51–61. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/23323256.2011.11500008 kamsteeg, f. & wels, h., 2004, ‘anthropological perspectives on power, performance and organisational politics’, intervention. journal of culture, organisation & management 1(1), 7–26. kamsteeg, f. & wels, h., 2012, ‘traveling ideas: equality and power play around “diversity” at north-west university (nwu), south africa’, international journal of business anthropology 3(2), 88–106. kamsteeg, f. & ybema, s., 2009, ‘making the familiar strange: a case for disengaged ethnography’, in s. ybema, d. yanow, h. wels & f. kamsteeg (eds.), organizational ethnography. studying the complexities of everyday life, pp. 101–119, sage, london. keet, a. & nel, w., 2016, ‘rights, regulation and recognition: studying student leaders’ experiences of participation and citizenship within a south african university’, international journal of educational science 13(1), 129–144. macdonald, m., 2006, why race matters in south africa, university of kwazulu-natal press, pietermaritzburg. maré, g., 2014, declassified: moving beyond the dead end of race in south africa, jacana media, auckland. paradeise, c. & thoenig, j.-c., 2013, ‘academic institutions in search of quality: local orders and global standards’, organization studies 34(2), 189–218. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0170840612473550 risberg, a., tienari, j. & vaara, e., 2003, ‘making sense of a transnational merger: media texts and the (re)construction of power relations’, culture and organization 9(2), 121–137. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14759550302806 roux, c. (ed.), 2012, safe spaces. human rights educations in diverse contexts, sense publishers, rotterdam. seabi, j., seedat, j., khoza-shangase, k. & sullivan, l., 2012, ‘experiences of university students regarding transformation in south africa’, international journal of educational management 28(1), 66–81. http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/ijem-01-2012-0017 soudien, c., 2008, report of the ministerial committee on transformation and social cohesion and the elimination of discrimination in public higher education institutions, government printer, pretoria. steyn, m., 2001, whiteness isn’t what it used to be. white identity in a changing south africa, suny press, new york. sveningsson, s. & alvesson, m., 2003, ‘managing managerial identities: organizational fragmentation, discourse and identity struggle’, human relations 56(10), 1163–1193. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/00187267035610001 tabensky, p. & matthews, s., 2015, being at home, university of kwazulu-natal press, durban. thomas, r. & hardy, c., 2011, ‘reframing resistance to organizational change’, scandinavian journal of management 27, 322–331. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.scaman.2011.05.004 thomas, r., sargent, l.d. & hardy, c., 2011, ‘managing organizational change: negotiating meaning and power-resistance relations’, organization science 22(1), 22–41. http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/orsc.1090.0520 tsoukas, h. & jo hatch, m., 2001, ‘complex thinking, complex practice: the case for a narrative approach to organizational complexity’, human relations 54(8), 979–1013. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0018726701548001 university of the free state, 2016, leadership for change programme. website university of the free state, viewed 30 january 2016, from http://www.ufs.ac.za/ university of the free state (2016) vision. website university of the free state, viewed 30 january 2014, from http://www.ufs.ac.za/about-the-ufs/ufs-in-focus/vision-mission-and-values vaara, e., 2002, ‘on the discursive construction of success and failure in narratives of post-merger integration’, organization studies 23(2), 211–248. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0170840602232003 vaara, e., 2003, ‘post-acquisition integration as sensemaking: glimpses of ambiguity, confusion, hypocrisy, and politicization’, journal of management studies 40(4), 859–894. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1467-6486.00363 van maanen, j., 2010, ‘a song for my supper. more tales of the field’, organizational research methods 13(2), 240–255. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1094428109343968 van de ven, a.h., 2007, engaged scholarship: a guide for organizational and social research, oxford university press, oxford. verwey, c. & quayle, m., 2012, ‘whiteness, racism, and afrikaner identity in post-apartheid south africa’, african affairs 111(445), 551–575. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/afraf/ads056 walker, m., 2005a, ‘race is nowhere and race is everywhere: narratives form black and white south african university students in post-apartheid south africa’, british journal of sociology of education 26(1), 41–54. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0142569042000292707 walker, m., 2005b, ‘rainbow nation or new racism? theorizing race and identity formation in south african higher education’, race ethnicity and education 8(2), 129–146. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13613320500110501 walker, m. & loots, s., 2016, ‘social citizenship formation at university: a south african case study’, compare: a journal of comparative and international education 46(1), 48–68. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03057925.2014.884920 watson, t.j., 2008, ‘managing identity: identity work, personal predicaments and structural circumstances’, organization 15(1), 121–143. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1350508407084488 footnotes 1. http://www.ufs.ac.za/leadership-for-change-programme/leadership-for-change-programmes/home-page; visited 11 september 2016 2. the photo in figure 1 shows the besieged character the bloemfontein campus attained from its leadership’s decision to fence the place with barbed (razor) wire. abstract introduction black feminist ‘killjoys’ considering black-african feminist methodologies black feminist killjoy reading group as an example of reading groups as trans-disciplinary, trans-curricular activity conclusion acknowledgements references footnotes about the author(s) sharlene khan department of fine arts, wits school of arts, university of the witwatersrand, johannesburg, south africa fouad asfour department of fine arts, wits school of arts, university of the witwatersrand, johannesburg, south africa zodwa skeyi-tutani department of fine arts, wits school of arts, university of the witwatersrand, johannesburg, south africa citation khan, s., asfour, f. & skeyi-tutani, z., 2022, ‘black feminist killjoy reading group: informal reading groups as spaces for epistemic becoming’, transformation in higher education 7(0), a152. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v7i0.152 note: authors f.a. and z.s-t. are phd candidates in fine art, wits school of arts, university of the witwatersrand, johannesburg, south africa. original research black feminist killjoy reading group: informal reading groups as spaces for epistemic becoming sharlene khan, fouad asfour, zodwa skeyi-tutani received: 08 sept. 2021; accepted: 12 jan. 2022; published: 08 june 2022 copyright: © 2022. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract background: this article explores the dynamics of the black feminist killjoy reading group (bfk) of the rhodes university fine art department and the wits university fine art department, as a space of black-african feminist care for participants. it reflects on the motivation to create the group, examines methodologies employed by the facilitators, and how bfk was experienced by the killjoys that joined. aim: the article aims to exemplify how the bfk provided a space for women-of-colour to connect with theoretical texts and to own them. it argues for the importance of reading / writing and support groups for students-of-colour in academic institutions. setting: the article studies reading groups that were offered in two south african universities – rhodes university and the university of the witwatersrand – between 2016 and 2019. methods: the article uses a range of qualitative methodologies including analysis of solicited anonymous online questionnaires, whatsapp voice-notes sent in response to questions, as well as auto-ethnographic reflective pieces by the authors (all premised on an understanding of continuing to maintain a dialogue with black feminist killjoy participants). results: using both black-african feminist theories in dialogue with responses from the black feminist killjoy reading group, the article outlines aspects that ought to be considered in conceptualising reading and writing support groups in higher education and the relevance of extra-curricular activities in academic contexts for creating holistic communities and academic citizenry. it also exemplifies how black-african feminist theories can be transformative for students who feel it captures their lived experiences. conclusion: the article concludes that reading groups, as supportive identitarian spaces, are crucial in the formation of scholarly identities as these assist students in ‘epistemic becoming’ through processes of familarising themselves with theories and epistemologies, establishing black-african feminist intimacy and building diverse communities, permitting difference, debate and discomfort. keywords: black feminist killjoy reading group; epistemological becoming; extracurricular activities; black feminist safe spaces; africanised academic community building. introduction in october 2016 sharlene khan, a visual artist, started a biweekly reading group called the ‘black1 feminist killjoy reading group’ (bfk), inspired by the work of feminist theorist sara ahmed at rhodes university in makhanda. it was not limited to reading fictional and non-fictional texts but activated embodied modes of participation such as play, dance and dialogue that will be elaborated in further detail below. zodwa skeyi-tutani continued the group in 2019, when khan formed a new group at the university of the witwatersrand (wits). this article considers the value of harnessing black-african2 feminist modes of interaction and socialising in academic spaces as a means to connect to and involve practices from outside of formal higher education learning spaces to activate theory through creative theorisation in the process of the social construction of black african feminist thought. it attempts to demonstrate how the very structure of the bfk emanates from and embodies black-african feminist methodologies that wrangle with the elitism of academic theory and yet might just affirm and strengthen marginalised identities. finally, given these important considerations, we argue for a reconsideration of reading groups not just as extracurricular activities but as central spaces of learning and communities that enable the social construction of knowledge. this article is written by the facilitators of bfk3 and discusses the dynamics of both spaces, with self-reflexive writing by the authors (responding to prompts sent out by khan).4 we were also interested in the experiences of the former bfk group members and sent out via email to the bfk mailing list, a google questionnaire with approximately 12 questions.5 some of those questions were as follows: how often did you participate? what activities stand out in your memory? can you comment on how the meetings were facilitated that made them useful/enjoyable or not? did you have any expectations of the group that were not met? what did you think of the combination of fictional, non-fictional and theoretical literature and artistic material to talk to lived experiences? can you comment on the role of the group in the university environment for you? any other comments/feedback on the black feminist group and what it meant for you as a space? a total of six participants responded to the google survey and two sent in whatsapp voice notes in response to the questions. most of the google survey respondents were from rhodes university, with one from wits. we also include responses by four wits participants who produced reflexive writings. almost all of the participants were from the faculty of humanities, with the majority from fine arts/visual arts/history of art (with one student doing a major in psychology as well), one from the department of literary studies in english, one from law and one from the school of public health. we purposely chose not to present respondents in a tabular manner as ‘research subjects’ that simultaneously distanced us from them. we have become friends with our fellow bfk co-participants over the years and we want to acknowledge the ‘entangled’ relationship we share and our roles as ‘inside-outsider, outside-insider’ (trinh 1991) researchers. this idea is harnessed from vietnamese-us american filmmaker trinh t. minh ha (1991:69–70) who chooses to complicate the insider-outsider relationship, so as not too easily respect territorialised boundaries. this creates a complex ‘inter-state’ or shifting grounds for the researcher and from which she operates: she knows, probably like zora neale hurston the insider-anthropologist knew, that she is not an outsider like the foreign outsider. she knows she is different while at the same time being him. not quite the same, not quite the other, she stands in that undetermined threshold place where she constantly drifts in and out. (trinh 1991:74) as such, we see our work as continuing the dialogues we have with each other in this entangled state. thus, we acknowledge that the task of evaluating the group dynamics as scholars and as co-participants invested in the bfk group itself will not be easy and will be biased. in the article, we will move between the third person, between ‘we’/‘us’/‘our’ and the ‘i’ of individual reflections. the reason for the usage of the third person is that bfk exists in two different geo-chapters, under different facilitators at two different institutions.6 we were wary of the ‘autoethnographic trap’, where attempts to write collaborative autoethnography by staying close to representing and performing group processes can become biased by the desire to write a fixed text where participant’s voices are edited and constructed to give it the appearance of a vibrant, ongoing dynamic interpersonal process (as discussed in chang, ngunjiri & hernandez 2013:128–130). we, therefore, decided to follow norman k. denzin’s (2018:5) call to use all the available modes of (particularly autoethnographic) qualitative research in this article as ‘performative discourse’, which is ‘based on minimalist principles. it shows. it does not tell. less is more. it is not infatuated with theory. it uses a few concepts. it is performative. it stays close to how people perform everyday life.’ thus, the reader is encouraged to experience the mix of moving between our voices of writing this article as facilitators, co-participants, co-authors along with the voices of our generous respondents whose voices we have tried to capture. we do not seek to hide the messiness of this dialogic process. we want to primarily locate the above as a black-african feminist strategy that recognises the speech acts of black-african women and the value of dialogue for self and community. black feminist killjoy reading group, as we will discuss below, is built around such and the transformative power of giving voice to, and naming, one’s struggles, shames, powers, histories, languages, creativities, and so on – and knowing that one will be heard. we harnessed that same power of dialogue and textured narrativisation here as a black-african feminist methodology and wrote reflective pieces in dialogue with the responses solicited via the google questionnaire. in this text, we are trying to interweave these reflections with narrative testimonies. textured narratives, according to audre lorde (1984/2000:118) and bell hooks (1991:8–9), do not aim at truth-telling and faithfulness or are entirely fictional but understand that memory straddles these nuances and, as such, encompass ‘state[s] of a mind, the spirit of a particular moment’ (hooks 1989:158). both the autoethnographic and solicited bfk responses were coded into broad categories that reflected common threads but also speak to black-african feminist theorisations we will discuss below: lived experiences, dialogue, game playing, literature, art, interdisciplinarity, reading group, safe space, self-care, intimacy and value. extended dialogue and narrative-as-testimony are used because these are crucial to black-african feminist epistemological standpoints. feminist carol hanisch (1969/2006) and black feminist sociologist patricia hill collins (2000/2009:vii) have noted that personalised, implicated ways of knowing7 contribute to women’s and black people’s knowledge through experiential modes of assessing knowledge, serving as a counter-point to western academic knowledge, which can be both alienating and elitist in its abstraction. by way of a brief introduction of the authors of this text, and the autoethnographic writings that we produced reflecting on our own experiences of bfk, here are some of our reflections on our previous experiences of reading groups before joining bfk: ‘my experience … had been one of great disillusionment. where in that space i had had to coerce the group into reading while also having the solo job of finding the books and then discussing them myself.’ (zodwa skeyi tutani, rhodes university participant [2017] and facilitator of the 2018 rhodes bfk) ‘throughout my studies, i felt that my life was placed outside of any curriculum on offer. i wanted to converse in my dad’s language, and thought it would be best to enrol in a course of ‘arabic studies’ at the university of vienna. however, it did not offer spaces of critical reflective practice. in this context, reading theory and literature in bfk sessions opened up new perspectives of linking theory and practice.’ (fouad asfour – bfk participant and co-facilitator [2016–2021]) ‘i had attended a few different ones while doing my phd [in london] – some were good, some were bad, others irritating, while one or two were just life-affirming while being in foreign space. i realised that reading groups could be about so much more than just a coming together of minds and intellectual posturing but really this black feminist idea of a ‘safe space’ that could be nurturing while engaging, allowing for differing productive ideas.’ (sharlene khan – bfk facilitator [2016–2021]) the above gives some indication of the mixed responses to reading groups as a learning and social space to academia and learning paradigms. for instance, part of the rationale for people to attend reading groups is to increase their knowledge capacity around a particular topic through an informal small learning space, but theory itself can often prove frightening for many. in his analysis of the history of ‘positivism’ in western hegemonial knowledge and pedagogy, educational scholar joe kincheloe (2008:22–23) summarises the elements of epistemic violence8 in education using the acronym fidurod (formal, intractable, decontextualised, universalistic, reductionistic, one-dimensional) as ‘the basic features of a contemporary mechanistic epistemology that is used sometimes unconsciously to shape the knowledge that permeates western and western-influenced cultures’. collins’s (2000/2009:vii) perception of how theory can be seen as alienating – even within the academic space – persists as participant sihle motsa articulates, ‘i had only attended a reading group once before joining the feminist kill joy. i found that initial reading group to be somewhat elitist. the language used was verbose and the intellectual praxis practised therein disingenuous’. for various participants, joining a reading group was perhaps an attraction or a deterrent in terms of prior knowledge expectations of feminist or critical race theory but also the possibility presented for dialogues around shared interests. initial meetings are usually some indication for members whether they would continue attending or not. part of discursive alienation experienced by oppressed people is a result of their lived experiences, histories, culture and knowledges not being central to discussions. in developing her black feminist epistemology in her book black feminist thought: knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of empowerment (2000/2009), collins centralised black women’s experiences in her analyses: in order to capture the interconnections of race, gender, and social class in black women’s lives and their effect on black feminist thought, i explicitly rejected grounding my analysis in any single theoretical tradition. oppressed groups are frequently placed in the situation of being listened to only if we frame our ideas in the language that is familiar to and comfortable for a dominant group. (p. iv) even as the transformation of teaching and learning is highlighted in the policies and reports of south african higher education (che 2009:10), knowledges of the majority of society continue to be marginalised, not just in terms of historical redress and related content, but also of appropriate methodologies and curricula. south african black feminist yvette abrahams (2007) talks of the violence she experienced within the university academic space during her phd while writing up the historiography of sarah baartman: … khoekhoe women, were limited to one bodily part, used and abused in the ‘othering’ discourses on art history, taxonomy or postcolonial criticism. i was the only one in my university admitting consciousness, hurt, confusion and anger about this putative bodily part debate. it is the weirdest feeling when something in the historiography drives you to tears and most people don’t seem to notice anything wrong; i thought i was the crazy one. (p. 426) we see in abrahams’ words ahmed’s ‘feminist killjoy’, that is the woman troublemaker, upsetting the happiness of others. the killjoy is viewed as the originator of ‘bad feelings’, dis-ease, even to other feminists, stereotyped into the ‘angry black woman’ as identified by bell hooks (1984/2000), audre lorde (1984/2000) and ahmed (2012). ahmed (2010:67) says one can even be ‘affectively alien’ in that, ‘your proximity gets in the way of other people’s enjoyment of the right things, functioning as an unwanted reminder of histories that are disturbing, that disturb an atmosphere’. in this situation, raising epistemic disjunctures and violence can often leave one feeling alienated and as the killjoy. part of the rationale of bfk was to establish both a space and a curriculum that legitimised that one was ‘not crazy’, that one was ‘not the problem’ (ahmed 2012). it is, therefore, important to find one’s own modes of being and doing. collins establishes various methodologies for ways in which black women create and assess knowledge. we will discuss how bfk employs the following threads outlined in collin’s black feminist thought: lived experience as a criterion for knowledge, the use of dialogue in assessing knowledge claims, the ethic of personal accountability and black women as agents of knowledge (collins 2000/2009:256). the first sections of this article will further detail how bfk was experienced by the killjoys that joined, and the methodologies employed by the facilitators, arguing for how creative theorisation allows women of colour to connect with theoretical texts and own them, thereby locating themselves as scholars and epistemic selves in the social construction of knowledge. it will then proceed to consider the value of how the black feminist notion of ‘safe spaces’ is paramount to establishing black-african feminist intimacy and building a community in a diverse university context, and how this then permits differences, debate and discomfort. finally, the article concludes with a discussion on the importance of reading groups within university spaces (if we regard these as valuable south african imaginaries and not elitist enclaves). black feminist ‘killjoys’ the bfk was named after ahmed’s blogspot feminist killjoys9 – ahmed, herself, follows ghanaian novelist ama ata aidoo’s 1977 book our sister killjoy, and our naming wanted to pay homage to both women and make obvious the influence of black-african feminisms. ahmed observes that the feminist killing of joy alienates killjoys but also helps them find each other and ‘form communities and solidarities of their own’ and, thus, khan wanted to ‘reach out to other feminist and race killjoys within the academic space and the small town of makhanda’. while the number of both the rhodes and wits participants decreased quickly after initial sessions, they remained lively. the rhodes university bfk was made up of between 8 and 15 staff, students and makhanda community members over the next 3 years, and sessions were compulsory for khan’s art on our mind (aoom)10 research team. the participants mentioned a number of different elements they enjoyed about regular group meetings, as well as guest sessions (e.g. gabeba baderoon’s poetry reading, lynda spencer’s session on tsitsi dangarembga’s novel nervous conditions): rita: the openness of the discussions, the intensity … analysis of texts anne: games – abandoned fun, discussions lila: performances and films influenced by the reading group liyana: my favourite activities included discussing the different literature khan has a very different recollection of the rhodes university bfk’s engagement, remembering her initial disappointment that less than a handful of the participants read the texts until a participant one day told her: ‘look i didn’t read anything for this session. i just came for my mental healthcare’: khan: ‘and for me that was enough. that a busy student needed some kind of sustenance and thought to come to bfk for it. and, so i chilled out a bit after that and just allowed the rhodes university space to be what it was.’ shehnaz muhshi notes this dynamic at the wits bfk: ‘i must confess that i didn’t get through all the readings, but i felt welcomed in the space. the warmth, generosity and care in the group felt deeply nurturing. i appreciated the informality, yet the clear structure of the group.’ khan’s appointment at wits university’s fine arts department led to her starting up a wits bfk chapter in 2019. a crucial difference was that it was no longer possible to hold meetings after hours as the staff members and students had far distances to travel home (some came from as far as pretoria to join), and attempts were made to find a space in which the wider citizenry would have access without needing staff/student cards (this wasn’t always possible, however). late afternoons and lunch-time sessions were experimented with and sessions were held inside and outside of campus. this still impacted some members who had to leave earlier as explained by saajidah: ‘time was always against me in every meeting because i had to leave in order to catch the bus home. and so, i never got to sit until the end and enjoy those last few precious concluding moments.’ wits bfk attendance started with around 25 people and steadied down to about 10 participants over the course of the year. with the rhodes university bfk group, khan changed the theme monthly, and the group only proposed texts when she was not available. at the first wits bfk group, as usual, the opening text set was bell hooks’ book art on my mind (1995) – an influential creative text for khan. the first sessions, while being incredibly lively – with the large group eating, drinking, dialoguing and debating around topics that emerged from the texts and many more around their lives – left khan with mixed feelings: how to harness the energies and the intellectual might of this new group and channel it to contribute to black-african feminist theories and creativities, without obstructing the safe space that allowed for support, venting and allyship? khan next chose black feminist audre lorde’s concept of biomythography as the theme for the term rather than rotating themes. the stimulating response of the group led to an extension of biomythography over the year.11 while the wits bfk became more text-orientated, creative productions remained central to the group.12 as a result of the coronavirus disease 2019 (covid-19) outbreak, both the wits and rhodes university bfk groups were placed on hold in 2020. considering black-african feminist methodologies from initiation, khan determined that the bfk experiment would never strictly entail just theoretical texts but would move freely between a range of literary, visual, sonic and performative texts, as well as open dialogue and game sessions, dancing, eating and drinking. the combination of black-african feminisms and various other theoretical texts alongside creative productions across modalities has not simply been an attempt at interdisciplinarity although that has always been important to her. it is reflective of how important creativity, creative spaces and the imagination are to black-african feminists as articulated by south african black feminist pumla gqola (2006): my choice of technique is motivated, firstly, by my conviction that creative spaces offer an ability to theorise, and imagine spaces of freedom in ways unavailable to genres more preoccupied with linearity and exactness. i have become increasingly intrigued … by the creative theorisation in the arena of african feminist imagination. by ‘creative theorisation’, i intend the series and forms of conjecture, speculative possibilities opened up in literary and other creative genres. theoretical or epistemological projects do not only happen in those sites officially designated as such, but emerge from other creatively textured sites outside of these. (p. 50) one of the things noted by collins (2000/2009) in her recuperative black feminist work, is that when black women’s voices could not be found, they were often not being sought in the spaces in which they were being articulated. thus, part of collins’s work has been to engage the various sites black women were articulating their lived experiences and in the modes in which they were doing so (which include blues, jazz and rap music; literature; poetry; religion; quilting; storytelling; everyday conversations and behaviour). thus, part of khan’s modus operandi as an academic is to familiarise young women of colour with black-african feminist methodologies not just in a theoretical sense, but by practically demonstrating this. by showing young scholars examples of how black-african creatives and researchers have gone about their research gives them both discursive and imaginative markers. providing theoretical texts and having participants directly talk through their own lived experiences, makes it real for them, and ties it to – and centralises it around – their own geo-specific, gendered, sexual, racial, cultural contexts. this is communicated by various participants: lila: ‘i think most creative work is linked to lived experiences that are either personal, collective, fictional or anonymous. i’m saying creative work because the choice of readings in the group had a lot of creative imagination work that made reference to issues that most of us in the group could relate to from different walks of life.’ saajidah: ‘we gathered, discussed complex narratives and shared personal histories and stories while having tea.’ motsa: ‘the intellectual practices revolved around our individual experiences both in the world and in the academy, and reflected on a subjectivity constituted through the nexus of blackness and womanhood. the basing of our research, writing and thinking on aspects of our own lives gave the reading group greater resonance. the readings circulated in the group encouraged us to position ourselves with the broader sphere of cultural production, to introspect and to generate critical insight on the challenges faced by women both in the art world and beyond.’ mbambo: ‘i appreciated how we approached theories and texts – our text analyses were quite aware of the individual’s presence in the theory, prioritizing the personal perspective over the generalized perspective/experience.’ likewise, the co-author reflections foreground similar intersections in which bfk provided an informal learning space that concretised how personal, political and intersectional matrices of oppression play out in individual lives: fouad asfour: ‘discussing the readings throughout the meetings, what captured my attention was how this serious interrogation which scholars and writers like bell hooks, mariama ba, nawal el saadawi, sara ahmed, ama ata aidoo, audre lorde, gloria anzaldua, among others, brought about changed perceptions of reality. not only a critical questioning, the first step of conscientisation, but also to be empowered by re-writing traumatic experiences and learning to claim a space of serious reflection to include seemingly marginal thoughts on marginalisation into scholarly work.’ zodwa skeyi tutani: ‘i found a space that nurtured my academic growth experiences. i could, at last, partake on topics that added colour and depth of knowledge to my academic pursuits, and real engagement with other scholars that afforded me the ability to be able to articulate the black experience. i found the bfk group to be both formal and informal. it was formal in that there was an expectation to engage with others and the texts … it was also informal because there was room to veer off into other elements of the text that was being engaged with, a free flow experience where life meets fiction, meets academic theorisations and added to some of the group’s creative outputs within the university space.’ each of the extended testimonies above brings home the importance placed in black-african feminist scholarship on dialogue and narrative. hooks (1989:6) defines ‘dialogue’ as the ‘sharing of speech and recognition’ and talks about the intensity, intimacy, joy and pleasure she experiences from seeing her mother, aunts and their women friends engage among themselves as peers. these speech acts between women of colour are not simply ‘talking points’, but they graft subjectivities, communities, histories and knowledges in recognising each other, in being recognised. simultaneously, the speech act is translated back into the act of writing and the cyclical modes of grafting, authorising and sedimentation continues. collins outlines four other areas of black feminist epistemology: dialogue – which permits debate and difference in a safe space – that allows for an assessing of knowledge claims (and wits bfk debates could be vociferous), lived experience as a criterion for knowledge, the ethic of personal accountability, and black women as agents of knowledge which are all intricately bound to the dialogic. lived experience – which so often informs black and african women’s research areas – allows black women to be agents of knowledge, and should allow them to be authorities on their bodies of knowledge.13 exposure to the kinds of black-african feminist research methodologies that bfk employs are meant not only to make them real and practical to those for whom it has the most meaning without running a ‘methodologies’ course, but to conscientise participants that social epistemologies are both freely accessible and not strictly determined by the formal curriculum. by making students aware that there are knowledges they can tap into, they become part of the practices of self-exploration and academic solidarity across intersectional concerns. for instance, participant carrie who attended the bfk for years says one of the important features of it was, ‘open round table conversations/collaborative idea sharing, rather than being lectured at about a book’. anne, an older pedagogue, returning for a second master’s degree in art history, regards the bfk as doing the important work of a hidden curriculum in the best sense: ‘so, it was a very important part of the curriculum where people could express themselves, they could bring what they wanted to and you were not obligated to participate, you could just sit quietly. because, silence in itself is a language that we were exploring … and it wasn’t even said ‘this is for you’, actually. it was for us to discover these elements of the curriculum.’ participant lila, another bfk regular, notes, ‘i saw the black feminist group as a space of community, learning and creativity. i developed some of my art-making processes from the meetings’. this is crucial for us at bfk as our idea of creative theorisation follows african stiwanist14 molara ogundipe’s injunction that as africans we need to theorise out of our ‘epicentres of agency, looking for what is meaningful, progressive and useful to us as africans’ (lewis 2002:6). this means that part of our discursive agency is looking for and establishing methods and modes for articulating and assessing our knowledge. this implicates both lived experience as a criterion for knowledge and the ethic of personal accountability – how does one know what one is speaking of and what is the position of the implicated researcher (do you care about that which you are speaking about and for whom)? in bfk, these questions of being the ‘inside-outsider, outside-insider’ and the problems/tensions that arise from such intersectional15 positionalities but also the invested research that it produces, are constantly tussled with because of the very researcher that finds her way to the group. we do not attempt at hiding this messiness nor the hierarchies that come in relationalities between university staff, students and researcher talking to each other and about our communities. for instance, the complications of education being a class-propeller even while many of us may still have one foot in the working-class communities we originate from. while bfk sessions could be incredibly intense, they could also be very light-hearted and fun and game playing and dancing featured prominently in rhodes university bfk (these were largely absent from the wits sessions). khan and asfour are firm believers in childhood game playing as forms of indigenous, feminist and decolonial knowledge systems,16 as well as socialising mechanisms and were, therefore, promoted. participant anne elaborates on the value of play: ‘… [p]lay is a very important part of learning that we normally associate with children. but, in my work we find that, and you found that, and the bfk found that it really was an extraordinary way of just being.’ dancing as well was regularly programmed with the black-african feminist understanding that it is a joyful practice. similarly, drinks and snacks were sponsored by khan and participant lila remarks on how important a feature this was: ‘of course the snacks, drinks and finger foods made the meetings enjoyable. i mean it’s in the afternoon when i’m thinking about going to my place and unwind, then you walk into the black feminist group and feel at home:) and it’s comforting.’ [sic] these various aspects – eating, drinking, dancing and playing – the facilitators brought to bear from their own communities-of-colour. for khan, the term ‘black feminist killjoy’ permitted the authorisation of such methodologies, which in turn authorised particular bodies and ways of being while also asking participants to reflect on their expectations before entering the space. such activities may not have been initially comfortable for all participants, but those who stayed were khan’s target group: black feminist killjoys interested in decolonial praxis. this idea is shared by skeyi-tutani who notes that although bfk has always been open to anyone invested in black-african feminist thought, sometimes it is perceived as exclusive and people ‘self-exclude’: … [t]here is a tendency from others to feel excluded because they are not black or even woman. as though being feminist requires a gender or thinking through and with ‘blackness’ immediately closes the door for whiteness within the space. the bfk was not specific in who attended but was specific in what was discussed and why. … it was assumed that one chose to attend because they were interested in the theme and how it could benefit their own experiences and contribute to their wellbeing rather than because of their gender or race. the bfk never set any gender stipulations, and it has been attended by several men who identified with these positions. we also have women who have dragged their boyfriends to meetings. the bfk follows a fundamental tenet of black/african feminisms in that our men/folk are integral to our lives and well-being, and to change society, men need to be educated about gender equality. of importance to what skeyi-tutani identifies in the above quote, and what we try to establish throughout our text is that bfk aims at opening up a space where black-african feminist thought and practices can become social practices of alternative epistemologies that allow for the process ‘of rearticulating a pre-existing black women’s standpoint and recentering the language of existing academic discourse to accommodate these knowledge claims’ (collins 1989:772). skeyi-tutani poignantly points out how knowledge, which can be so abstract and elitist (and we began this text with this thought), is used to contribute to a person’s well-being, to change individual thinking. by extension, the question we want to raise here is how bfk, as an example of a ‘reading group’, can be viewed in terms of practising theory as ‘liberatory practice’ (hooks 1991), rather than through prescribed curriculum or policy, pulling on all of the ways we discuss above. however, just before this, we need to think through the importance of intimate discursive spaces and what they offer critical education. black feminist killjoy reading group as an example of reading groups as trans-disciplinary, trans-curricular activity even as we present bfk as a space for women of colour to experiment and explore how to negotiate social construction of knowledge, we want to question what exactly does this mean given our post-‘post-apartheid’ wariness for calls of ‘unity’ and ‘rainbowism’. this article approaches the concept of ‘epistemic self’ and ‘academic identity’ from the critical framework of black/african studies, which stay away from theorisation of sociological processes independent of personal experience. while the discourse around the social construction of knowledge is framed by social and policy research, it is also rooted in knowledge-making and social cohesion. steven a. rosell (1995) remarks that the concept is based not only on the analysis of social processes, but that of: [b]uilding shared values and communities of interpretation, … generally enabling people to have a sense that they are engaged in a common enterprise, facing shared challenges, and that they are members of the same community. (p. 78) for the bfk communities, these values have been loosely around the idea of ‘black-african feminist theories’ and creative imagination. based at university spaces, it is obvious that it is the academic community that is primarily catered for, even as the general public is always welcome and discussions are held in everyday language so as not to be intimidating (a fundamental principle of many black-african feminists).17 reading groups offer such a platform across disciplinary boundaries, which can become ‘non-curriculum-based unit[s]’ (mitoumba-tindy 2017:78), for young academics as they bring together students to debate urgent questions around the positionality and agency of research and its relation to the larger south african society. the role of higher education in transforming the conceptualisation of community, therefore, is significant. sociologist nira yuval-davis (2011:172) states that: [w]omen belong and are identified as members of the collectivity in the same way that men are. nevertheless, there are always rules and regulations – not to mention perceptions and attitudes – specific to women. south african professor of psychology, puleng segalo (2015:49) continues that this ‘may be perceived as “conditional belonging” where women are accepted as full citizens but with limited powers within the communities to which they belong’. even though women of colour are increasingly becoming dominant within the university space in terms of numbers (matsolo, ningpuanyeh & susuman 2016), they still feel marginalised and oppressed as has been articulated by several bfk participants. as such, we want to highlight the possibilities of a platform like the bfk and how it might contribute to the social construction of knowledge in higher education in a meaningful way. as it becomes clear from the responses, the participants feel that they gained more than anticipated from decolonial, black-african feminist methods of learning. in the first instance, we want to argue that even within university spaces – which are seen as violent by oppressed groups – it is possible to create safe spaces and, therefore, safe spaces need to be located in a more fluid, contingent notion of ‘community’. we learnt from the participants’ responses, however, that it won’t suffice to contour a safe space as one that prioritises the well-being of the members of that space by minimising risks of psychological or emotional harm while they’re there. usually, this avoided harm is one that the members come across often in their day-to-day lives because of their identity markers (e.g. being black, a woman, being differently-abled, queer, having little access to money, etc.). the bfk was safe not only because it was intimate, inviting, nurturing, structurally flexible, a space of refuge, group identification, a constant attendance to their well-being, group investment in it, but also because it dared to imagine knowledge and meaning-making as healing. thus, the reading groups experimented with decolonial approaches that were harnessed from the groups’ various home cultural identities and, thus, became a vital factor in crafting reading groups as decolonial methodologies that aided non-formal continuous learning paradigms and was not afraid to change, to be fun and be serious too. at the same time, we were encouraged to take the black-african feminist methodologies further and accept that the various discomforts they experienced could be viewed as benefitting their learning and growth experiences.18 rather, we reiterate these to posit that we believe communities are not only created by attending to ‘likeness’ of experiences and identity formations but also in the ways in which differences are safely negotiated and imagined, and that they are jointly grafted through attending to interests, self-care, self-worth, knowledge-practices and other aspects of socialisation. khan holds the responses of the bfk participants dearly. for khan, growing up under apartheid and experiencing racial contact only in her late teens, university (in 1995) became a space of possibilities. while she still lived in her indian township, the university was the place for unlearning behaviour, for reimagining her life and social world, where she was introduced to black-african feminist, critical race and postcolonial literature. critical education showed her that it was imaginable to be better, to do better. it harnessed the imaginary and allowed one to be with whomever one wanted, to be who one chose to, regardless of where one came from. emerging from apartheid, it healed her from her own racial hauntings, hurtings and nightmares. she hoped to create spaces for other women of colour to talk freely, to know that they were the centre of their universes, that their imaginations and creativities were limitless, and that they were not alone. she believed in the power of dialogue, arts, sisterhood and community to support and even heal, sometimes (when too often universities do not have sufficient resources for the extensive counselling services that are actually needed).19 this feeling is shared by others in bfk: saajidah: ‘… for me these were like healing/therapy sessions i could have never imagined having in the community i from come because these are like forbidden topics to discuss.’ [sic] anne: ‘you know, the fun part was so important because one thinks of it in many ways, but for me i find the word ‘healing’, you know the word ‘healing’, because physically you were releasing energy, running around in our games, laughing, clapping. so, in a way, it’s almost as though we’re activating awareness in our body to have not just a brain that is thinking, but a body that is thinking. you could begin to sit quietly and isolate your feeling, ‘oh, this makes my chest tight’, you know. ‘this brings the sourness behind my ears’, etc.’ anne, too, viscerally remembers the contours of apartheid, and the bfk meetings were never taken for granted as a space where diverse south africans met and shared intimate details of our lives, allowing ourselves to be challenged, dancing, eating and drinking, laughing and crying together, as if it were normal. that it is also able to provide solidarities, friendships, sisterhoods and avenues of ‘everyday therapy’ in a black-african feminist community demonstrates why such meetings are valuable as part of the social fabric of academia, as a necessary self-care practice that is oft-spoken about, but little practised. conclusion thus, discussions on the role of extracurricular spaces such as bfk are necessary and includes interrogating patriarchal forms of social epistemology, which the university is based on – this amid the quandary that students find themselves confronted with of how to negotiate the limited time earmarked for pursuing a degree. those of us who have been beneficiaries of extracurricular spaces may well argue for their value. but in situations where students are struggling with funding their education, how are they able to access, let alone enjoy the benefits of such spaces? one of our main arguments is that bfk can contribute to the formation of academic identities through acknowledging the process of the social construction of knowledge as ‘epistemic becoming’ (barnett 2009) – how we all found ourselves and our research through intense engagements with black-african feminist theorisations and informal learning platforms. we want to emphasise that reading groups can ‘contribute to holistic academic development by giving them the platform and opportunity to think critically about disciplinary content and their writing processes and skills’ (mitoumba-tindy 2017:78). they see the value of reading groups in the same way as we view writing groups: as providing non-curriculum-based learning and processing skills (and what is sometimes called ‘peer-to-peer’, ‘lateral’ or ‘horizontal learning’), of giving recognition and legitimacy (to bodies and knowledges), of creating space for different kinds and modes of participation and of grafting space for belonging, being homed and for creating a space for inclusivity-exclusivity (which we set in the black feminist framework of a ‘both-andness’ (collins 2000/2009:152) rather than as a binary). while some universities in the last decade have given more attention to academic writing circles and writing programmes, this support, recognition and investment have not been forthcoming to reading groups. we put forth that space (and resources)20 in formal curricula be set aside for such activities – where students can voluntarily attend reading and writing groups, dialogue sessions and clubs that enhance the learning experience of individuals, thereby contributing to holistic individuals and communities. part of learning has to be about ‘learning to be’. too often the refrain has been heard that education is a privilege in south africa. however, if we start to regard higher education as a right that every south african is entitled to should they want it, then university becomes imaginaries of what is possible. acknowledgements the authors would like to acknowledge the art on our mind research teams at rhodes and wits university, all the black feminist killjoy reading group participants over the years. the authors also thank prof. lynda gichanda spencer for the unwavering support and presence. competing interests the authors declare that they have no financial or personal relationships that may have inappropriately influenced them in writing this article. authors’ contributions prof. s.k., f.a. and z.s-t. equally contributed to the research and writing of this article. ethical considerations ethical clearance to conduct this study was obtained from the university of the witwatersrand human research ethics committee (non-medical) (no. h21/01/09). funding information the black feminist killjoy reading group was made possible through the national research foundation thutuka grant funding, rhodes university and university of the witwatersrand. data availability the data presented in this study are available upon reasonable request from the corresponding author (s.k.). the data are not publicly available because of ethical restrictions. disclaimer the views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any affiliated agency of the authors. references abrahams, y., 2007, ‘ambiguity is my middle name: a research diary’, in n. gasa (ed.), women in south african history: basus’iimbokodo, bawel’imilambo/they remove boulders and cross rivers, viewed 20 january 2021, from http://www.hsrcpress.ac.za/product.php?productid=2186&freedownload=1. ahmed, s., 2010, the promise of happiness, duke university press, durham. ahmed, s., 2012, on being included: racism and diversity in institutional life, duke university press, durham. aidoo, a.a., 1977, our sister killjoy or reflections from a black-eyed squint, longman group, essex. barnett, r., 2009, ‘knowing and becoming in the higher education curriculum’, studies in higher education 34(4), 429–440. chang, h., ngunjiri, f.w. & hernandez, k.c., 2013, collaborative autoethnography, left coast press, walnut creek. collins, p.h., 1989, ‘the social construction of black feminist thought’, signs14(4), 745–773. https://doi.org/10.1086/494543 collins, p.h., 2000/2009, black feminist thought: knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of empowerment, routledge, new york, ny. council on higher education [che], 2009, the response of the council on higher education to the report of the ministerial committee on transformation and social cohesion and the elimination of discrimination in public higher education institutions, council on higher education, pretoria, viewed 02 february 2021, from https://che.absol.co.za/sites/default/files/publications/che_response_to_ministerial_committee_report_dec2009.pdf. crenshaw, k., 1989, ‘demarginalising the intersection of race and sex: a black feminist critique of antidiscrimination doctrine, feminist theory and antiracist politics’, university of chicago legal forum, heinonline, pp. 139–167, viewed 18 october 2013, from http://heinonline.org/hol/landingpage?handle=hein.journals/uchclf1989&div=10&id=&page. denzin, n.k., 2018, performance autoethnography, routledge, new york, ny. gqola, p.d., 2006, ‘“crafting epicentres of agency”: sarah bartmann and african feminist literary imaginings’, quest xx(1–2), 45–76, viewed 22 january 2021, from http://www.quest-journal.net/volxx/quest_xx_gqola.pdf. hanisch, c., 1969/2006, ‘the personal is political: introduction’, women of the world unite: writings by carol hanisch, pp. 1–5, viewed 02 february 2014, from http://www.carolhanisch.org/chwritings/pip.html. hooks, b., 1984/2000, feminist theory: from margin to center, 2nd edn., south end press, new york, ny. hooks, b., 1989, talking back: thinking feminist, thinking black, south end press, boston, ma. hooks, b., 1991, ‘theory as liberatory practice’, yale journal of law & feminism 4(1), 1–12. hooks, b., 1995, art on my mind: visual politics, the new press, new york, ny. khan, s. & asfour, f., 2018, ‘whitespeak: how race works in south african art criticism texts to maintain the arts as the property of whiteness’, in a. kraehe, r. gaztambide-fernández & b. carpenter ii (eds.), the palgrave handbook of race and the arts in education, palgrave macmillan, cham. khunou, g., phaswana, e.d., khoza-shangase, k. & canham, h., 2019, black academic voices: the south african experience, hsrsc press, pretoria. kincheloe, j.l., 2008, knowledge and critical pedagogy, springer, berlin. lewis, d., 2002, ‘desiree lewis talks to molara ogundipe, leading feminist theorist, poet, literary critic, educator and activist, about the interface of politics, culture and education’, feminist africa, p. 1, viewed 20 january 2021, from http://www.agi.ac.za/sites/default/files/image_tool/images/429/feminist_africa_journals/archive/01/fa_1_conversation_2.pdf. lorde, a., 1984/2000, sister outsider: essays and speeches, crossing press, berkley, ca. matsolo, m.j., ningpuanyeh, w.c. & susuman, a.s., 2016, ‘factors affecting the enrolment rate of students in higher education institutions in the gauteng province, south africa’, journal of asian and african studies 53(1), 64–80. https://doi.org/10.1177/0021909616657369 mignolo, w.d., 2007, ‘delinking’, cultural studies 21(2), 449–514. https://doi.org/10.1080/09502380601162647 mirza, h.s., 2009, ‘plotting a history: black and postcolonial feminisms in ‘new times’ race ethnicity and education 12:1’, 1–10. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13613320802650899 mitoumba-tindy, h., 2017, ‘working in the interspace between subject knowledge and academic literacies: writing centres as a zone of proximal development’, in s. clarence & l. dison (eds.), writing centres in higher education: working in and across the disciplines, pp. 67–80, sun press, stellenbosch. ogundipe-leslie, m., 1994, re-creating ourselves: african women & critical transformations, africa world press, trenton. segalo, p., 2015, ‘gender, social cohesion and everyday struggles in south africa’, psychology in society 49, 70–82. https://doi.org/10.17159/2309-8708/2015/n49a6 spivak, g.c., 1988, ‘can the subaltern speak?’, in c. nelson & l. grossberg (eds.), marxism and the interpretation of culture, pp. 271–313, university of illinois press, il. rosell, s.a. et al., 1995, changing maps: governing in a world of rapid change. the second report of the project on governing in an information society, carleton university press, ottawa, viewed 20 january 2021, from https://www.deslibris.ca/id/435881 trinh, m.t., 1991, when the moon waxes red: representation, gender and cultural politics, routledge, new york, ny. yuval-davis, n., 2011, ‘women, migration and contemporary politics of belonging in europe’, in l. passerini & f. turco (eds.), donne per l’europa. atti delle prime tre giornate per ursula hirschmann, pp. 161–179, centro interdisciplinare di ricerche e studi delle donne, torino, viewed 20 january 2021, from: https://www.cirsde.unito.it/sites/c555/files/allegatiparagrafo/25-05-2016/e-book_9788890555602.pdf footnotes 1. this research utilises official south african racial categories established under apartheid and continued under post-apartheid, namely ‘white’ (persons of white european descent), ‘black’ (local indigenous black africans), ‘coloured’ (persons of mixed race and descendants of malay/indian/mozambican slaves and prisoners), and ‘indian’ (persons of south asian descent that arrived as slaves in cape town in the 17th century and, in the second half of the 19th century, first as british indentured labourers and then as merchants). where the terms ‘black’ (lower case ‘b’) or ‘people of colour’ are used, they are used in preference of ‘non-white’ and include black, coloured and indian south africans also grouped under the term ‘previously disadvantaged’, which in the latter half of the 1990s constitutionally includes chinese south africans. these terms are also used to denote identification with blackness as a political self-affirmative project and stance. 2. this research uses ‘black-african feminisms’ to denote where black and african feminisms intersect/overlap as well as where they diverge in our usage. we draw on these different historical traditions and strains to speak to our very specific geopolitical context and varied bodies, also acknowledging where they do not serve us as well. 3. the article started out with a larger group of writers and a larger writing brief, but as it progressed it soon dawned that there were actually two different papers emerging and this article has now been focused into a larger survey of bfk over the years by the facilitators and the second one will be focused on the wits chapter on the theme of ‘biomythography’. all initial writers produced self-reflexive written pieces on their experience of bfk and these are used here. 4. while these writings may be positioned as autoethnographic writings and the authors value this methodology, specifically as it harnesses the possibilities of narratives, the authors prefer to frame them within a black-african and feminist discourse, as these traditions have a long tradition of validating the positioning of the speaking ‘i’, as well as the relational position of the ‘i’-‘we’, and narrations with communities-of-colour. 5. the google questionnaire was entirely voluntary and could be taken anonymously or with a pseudonym – this was important as we wanted anyone who responded to feel open to critiquing bfk. the initial data set was known only to khan and anonymised by her before being provided to the co-authors. the participants were informed that although confidentiality could be guaranteed during the information gathering process and anonymised, because of the small setting of the reading group, anonymity could not be 100% guaranteed as remarks made during the initial group meetings could perhaps be recalled by those in attendance. informed consent was obtained from all participants, including all co-authors, and all who participated on the google online questionnaire who first had read and acknowledged the participant information sheet and signed the consent form giving various permissions. permission had to be obtained from university of the witwatersrand faculty registrar as the research still involved current staff and students (all participants from rhodes university had completed their studies). the art on our mind (aoom) team members, as part of their bursary conditions during 2017–2019, were obligated to attend bfk during that time period only and have no current ties to the project as the funded project ended – former participants were emailed in the same voluntary capacity as all other bfk participants without any further obligation. ethics permission was obtained for the research via the wits hrec committee (ethics protocol number: h21/01/09). no permission was required from rhodes university or from their faculty registrar as all research participants who have participated in the google questionnaire are no longer at rhodes university. 6. we also have various members who have facilitated sessions over the years like fouad asfour, rita and anne. 7. implicated research calls for accountability and responsibility as a researcher and removes distancing ‘objective’ outsider researcher positionality. 8. see among others spivak (1988:280–281) or walter mignolo (2007) who outlines how epistemic de-linking and disobedience can shift away from imperial epistemology towards a grammar of de-coloniality. 9. https://feministkilljoys.com 10. art on our mind (aoom) is a research project initiated by khan at rhodes university in 2017 and is subsequently based at the wits university fine art department in 2019. it hosts a public creative dialogue series with south african women-of-colour women visual artists, which are hosted on the online platform https://artonourmind.org.za. every four months, khan and her research team selects a woman artist and spends approximately 3 months researching the chosen artist, before hosting a public creative dialogue in front of a live audience, during which the compiled questions are asked. the hour-and-a-half creative dialogue is video and audio recorded (and transcribed) and placed online on the art on our mind (aoom) archive, along with all materials found on the artist. 11. the result was an article on biomythography that came out of these sessions. 12. the group has only had 1 year of interaction because of covid-19. khan has every intention of continuing the group’s multi-modality nature as experimented with in rhodes university bfk, which has also taken its own complexion post khan’s departure. 13. collins (2000/2009:277) provides the caveat that experience is not used as justification in and of itself, but rather as ‘useful embodied interrogation’ (mirza 2009) to assess and understand more abstract arguments. 14. african-centred feminism ‘stiwanism’ (social transformation including women in africa) was coined by nigerian scholar, critic, educator and activist omolara ogundipe-leslie in her 1994 book re-creating ourselves: african women & critical transformations. 15. these issues have been highlighted by feminists like sojourner truth, audre lorde, bell hooks, patricia hill-collins and ogunidipe-leslie and in the south african context by bessie head, pumla gqola, zoe wicomb, desiree lewis and siphokazi magadla. it is most associated with kimberle crenshaw’s term ‘intersectionality’ and her famous 1989 paper ‘demarginalising the intersection of race and sex: a black feminist critique of antidiscrimination doctrine, feminist theory and antiracist politics’. 16. for an expansion on decoloniality and decolonial aesthesis, see khan and asfour 2018. 17. see collins (2000/2009) or the writings of bell hooks who (although not a black feminist) has been very influential to black feminist discourses. 18. see, for instance, the volume by grace khunou, edith phaswane, katijah khoza-shangase and hugo canham, black academic voices: the south african experience (2019) where black academics discuss their struggle to legitimatise, validate and have their experiences of discomfort and racism articulated within the academy. 19. we are not advocating that avenues like bfk can replace proper counselling services, but university counselling services are often stretched beyond capacity and students and staff need regular community to talk to, to support each other and to reach out to (as opposed to when crisis intervention is needed). we are saying that both kinds of work need to be carried out. 20. khan’s research funding between 2017 and 2019 assisted in starting and supporting the bfk activities. once funding ended khan continued to pay for the bfk activities out of pocket. abstract introduction literature review research methods and design findings discussion conclusion acknowledgements references footnotes about the author(s) mark de vos department of linguistics and applied language studies, rhodes university, makhanda, south africa kristina riedel department of linguistics and language practice, faculty of humanities, university of the free state, bloemfontein, south africa citation de vos, m. & riedel, k., 2023, ‘decolonising and transforming curricula for teaching linguistics and language in south africa: taking stock and charting the way forward’, transformation in higher education 8(0), a200. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v8i0.200 original research decolonising and transforming curricula for teaching linguistics and language in south africa: taking stock and charting the way forward mark de vos, kristina riedel received: 31 mar. 2022; accepted: 10 oct. 2022; published: 17 feb. 2023 copyright: © 2023. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract the #rhodesmustfall (rmf) protests at south african universities (2015–2018) were the publicly visible manifestation of deep epistemic problems in the higher education (he) sector, particularly around questions of whose knowledges are validated and whether these are reflective of students’ lived realities. this exploratory research attempted a snapshot of the state of curriculum transformation of the linguistic language disciplines in south africa and to identify areas that require more attention. the authors focus on curriculum underpinning the teaching of linguistics and language-related disciplines. the study takes place at he institutions in south africa against the backdrop of substantial academic and public engagement around epistemic access in the he sector. the authors used an anonymous questionnaire distributed among a purposive sample of 32 he academics within the linguistics and language studies disciplines to elicit views around university curriculum transformation and decolonisation with particular focus on linguistic language disciplines curricula. generally, practitioners indicate that there have been substantial changes in the disciplines over the past 10 years. there have also been notable achievements with respect to building broad curricula that are responsive to student needs and which balance the need to equip students to engage in global conversations while also being embedded in the contextual realities of south africa, the african continent and students’ lived experiences. contribution: the authors conclude that although transformation has progressed considerably in key areas, the representativity of languages and theoretical approaches remain areas for development. the authors also highlight how disciplinary curricular choices are value-driven and that contestations around which values are to be validated may inhibit curricular transformation. in these contexts, individual agency around curricular choices is important. keywords: transformation; higher education; linguistics; curriculum; instructor perceptions; curriculum transformation; agency; decolonisation. introduction transformation and decolonisation of university curricula have become an integral part of epistemic access and social justice internationally. while this is an international trend, the stakes in south africa are particularly high given the urgent need for historical redress, gross levels of inequality, as well as the importance of developing a critically informed and educated citizenry with a decent quality of life. the study of language (through linguistics, applied linguistics, language teaching and language practice studies) is potentially an important area of contestation within this broader movement: language is an important life resource and importantly, is an integral part of daily activities, life, culture and identity. thus, the teaching of linguistic and language disciplines has the potential both for empowering people with tools to understand their linguistic worlds and their place in it or – if we get it wrong – for alienating people from these and entrenching the colonial notion that their languages, linguistic identities and experiences are not worthy of academic inquiry. in this study, the authors attempt to provide an overview of strategies of curriculum transformation in linguistics, applied linguistics and language departments across south africa.1 the article analyses how curricular variables – such as empowering students, reflections on change, the degree to which transformation is perceived as having been achieved, level of representation of local and diverse epistemologies and visibility of languages in the curriculum – are positioned in curricula for the teaching linguistics, applied linguistics and language and, among other things, show that transformation is not necessarily a unitary concept but that is highly contested and is approached in different ways according to the contexts that departments and academics find themselves in. in particular, there are competing discourses around transformation with respect to language and a responsibility to a global community of researchers that many academics find difficult to navigate. consequently, we are still only beginning to grapple with what transformation and decolonisation may mean for our curricula and there is a need for ongoing reflection and discussion around these issues. many of these issues are not unique to south africa and thus may be generalizable beyond south africa to both former colonies as well as to formerly colonizing countries. the empirical nature and focus on linguistic curricula in south africa make this study the first on this important aspect of the literature on transformation in higher education (he) and the authors hope it this study may initiate a wider debate. literature review at the outset, it is essential to acknowledge that the south african decolonisation conversation resonates with long-standing discussions and struggles around language and education throughout the (de)colonial world (see e.g. chen 2010; fitznor 2018; hornberger & limerick 2018; kanywanyi 1989; mamdani 2019; mazrui 2005; ngũgĩ wa thiong’o 1986; parker 2019; sullivan, langum & cocq 2018). it is also important to note that although the #rhodesmustfall (rmf) protests at formerly white, prestigious universities captured the popular imagination, and perhaps more significantly, the attention of the media, the protests themselves are probably best seen in terms of continuity of a long tradition of protest. student protests have been common at historically black institutions (hbis) since the ’90s, themselves an extension of the long tradition of anti-apartheid protests in education (cele & koen 2003). it is therefore important not to adopt an ahistorical or exceptionalist perspective of the 2015 protests merely because the protests infringed on the formerly white spaces of prestigious, historically advantaged universities. these protests were the publicly visible manifestation of deep problems in the he sector, which persist even as demographics have become more reflective of south african society. for example, the number of participants in he increased from 480 000 in 1995 to 980 000 in 2014 (universities south africa 2015). by 2012, the student population had become much more representative, consisting of 80% black and 18% white students (universities south africa 2015). although participation rates rose to 19% overall by 2012, participation rates among white people (55%) and indian (47%) students were comparatively higher than for african (16%) and coloured2 (14%) students (universities south africa 2015) showing the persistence of structural inequalities involving access to he. it is widely acknowledged that despite progress in removing structural barriers to participation, the epistemic experience offered by hei institutions was steeped in ‘recalcitrant colonial-apartheid values and whiteness culture (euro centrism) [and that] every study or report undertaken so far, has described the culture as ― alienating, disempowering with pervasive racism’ (ministerial oversight committee 2015:3). it is the epistemic orientations towards ‘eurocentric, racist, and sexist knowledge at untransformed institutions… [that] is at the heart of the experience of alienation at the university’ (fataar 2018:vi). a national response to curriculum transformation in linguistics: the linguistics society of southern africa and southern african applied linguistics association transformation workshops and their context the need to reflexively reconsider linguistics and language curricula was recognized formally by the linguistics society of southern africa (lssa) and southern african applied linguistics association (saala) who jointly hosted a curriculum workshop at rhodes university from 20 to 22 january 2016 and again from 18 to 19 january 2018 at the university of the free state, as well as a panel discussion at the joint annual conference (2016). the workshops explored issues of transformation, specifically grappling with what constitutes a transformed linguistics or language curriculum and how transformation can be implemented in discipline-specific ways. the workshops resulted in a set of draft resolutions3 covering issues such as characteristics of transformation, transformation in curriculum, research and knowledge production, etc. while the document can be critiqued on its own terms for what it includes and excludes, it is significant in that it was one of the few national responses by an academic discipline (or a set of related disciplines) at that time. it is also significant that it presented a consensus view from within the discipline(s) but nevertheless makes room for other interpretations of the decolonisation project. although a full analysis of this important document is beyond the scope of this article, it is worth pointing out a number of important themes that run through it. people focussed agency every department should be welcoming and inclusive spaces for all staff, especially those from previously disadvantaged groups, to achieve their full potential. placing people at the centre of the transformation project necessarily requires that they be active agents in the process of implementing transformative curriculum change in a reflexive manner and that students become active agents in the creation of knowledge (le grange 2014; mahabeer 2018; naudé 2019). the importance of diversity people live in a diverse and intersectional world at societal, linguistic and disciplinary levels. language curricula should therefore be tailored to ensure that students are empowered to explore their linguistic world and to equip them ‘with the tools to understand the languages they speak and the linguistic contexts they navigate every day’ (mesthrie et al. 2018:291). knowledge production the theoretical emphasis in writing and selection of research for use in teaching and supervision often serves to privilege the global north, in particular the international anglophone research community. consequently, it is relevant to ask ‘to what extent are our curricula uniquely african and to what extent do they reflect african realities?’ (mesthrie et al. 2018:291) without constant recourse to the global north. a broad view of curriculum curriculum goes beyond mere syllabus content to encompass the totality of structured learning experiences, which is necessarily replete with socio-scientific and political choices about what to include and exclude, assessment, power relations between student and lecturer and expectations of each, etc. syllabus content is thus only one dimension of a much larger curricular landscape. transformation as a continually ongoing process of balancing of multiple voices there exist competing demands at disciplinary, institutional and departmental levels, for example, historical redress, student numbers, staffing, space, finances, objects of study, alignment of curricula across multiple campuses, etc. these are often driven by different agendas, values and/or value-driven positionings: for example localization versus internationalization; transformation versus decolonisation; promoting indigenous languages versus english for the workplace; south-africa-centrism versus pan-africanism; citing local research versus citing the global disciplinary discourse; privileging disciplinary voices versus transdisciplinary voices, etc. departments, depending on their contexts and driving concerns and while acknowledging their positioning in africa, may choose different ways of navigating these complex and intersecting voices to develop transformational responses. decolonisation and curricular choices in south africa and abroad, there is a lively academic debate around the role of language and linguistic issues in decolonisation, with more recent and forthcoming work examining a broader range of linguistic subfields (agyekum 2018; eds. bock & stroud 2021; eds. charity hudley, mallinson & bucholtz in press; eds. deumert, storch & shepherd 2020; eds. kaschula & wolff 2020; leonard 2018; rudwick & makoni 2021; among others). importantly, dyers and antia (2019) discuss their attempts to implement transformation of one linguistics module at the university of th western cape (uwc) by changing which language(s) it is offered in. however, to the best of the authors knowledge there has been no other work that examines the transformation of linguistics and language curricula as a whole either in southern africa or elsewhere prior to the study reported on here. curriculum is replete with value-laden choices – what to include, what to exclude, how to contextualize issues, what is valued and what is less valued, etc. (cf. bernstein 1975; fraser, loubser & van rooy 1993; shay et al. 2016 inter alia). these choices are indexed by broad sets of value-driven and philosophical underpinnings. as universities are intellectually complex spaces, developed over long periods of time, they represent accretions ‘knowledge regimes’ of differing motives and value-driven positionings (jansen 2019). one way of thinking about these groupings of ideas draws on the analytical device of constellations (maton 2014). constellations refer to the dynamic relationships and associations between mutually reinforcing values and knowledges, principles and worldviews that may be coherent or at odds with one another and which, in the case of decolonisation and transformation, motivate views of education, ‘the university’, and what ends these serve. depending on what constellations are at play, different choices will be made around objects of study, subjects of study and narrow syllabus content, subjectivities of study, situatedness of study and pedagogies of study. for example, there is a powerful constellation underpinning he internationally including classical humanism, scientism and empiricism. closely allied to the european enlightenment project, it constructs universities as spaces for rational debate and discovering the ‘truth’ for its own sake or for maximizing human potential. more recently, neoliberal and managerial perspectives have become very prevalent in he. these constellations seek to construct universities knowledge production engines that both prepare workers for the workplace and use public funding to produce both public and private knowledges to be applied for private gain; all the while increasing fees and declining subsidies to universities and controlling staff and students through managerial processes and the ‘technology of performativity’ (le grange 2019:30) such as audits, reports, quality assurance frameworks, performance and risk management systems. additionally, within the south african context, from 1994 to the present, narratives around transformation in the formal economy and he have largely been government-driven and informed by values of the developmental state, democratic pluralism, multiculturalism and nationalism. this approach dictated a focus on demographics of staff and students, equity in contracts and conditions of service etc. – what is called ‘first level indigenization’ by hoppers (2009) in soudien (2019). these value-driven choices also dictate that curricula are constructed as important sites of creation of national identity and developing critically engaged citizens capable of engaging productively in a new, post-apartheid democracy (paphitis & kelland 2016). choices reflecting this approach affect pedagogy (particularly emphasis in humanities on critical thinking, essay writing, and to some extent multilingualism and translanguaging in education, etc.), and situatedness of study in formal, state-sponsored university classrooms favouring hierarchical power relations. it was as a critique of these constellations and their failure to drive deeper epistemic shifts that the rmf movement used the term decolonisation. however, as the nature of decolonisation itself has emerged as a site of struggle and negotiation it becomes useful as an ‘floating signifier’ where one can read a number of attributes into it thus ‘allow[ing] symbolic thought to operate despite the contradiction inherent in it’ (levi-strauss in mehlman 1972:23) thus situating it as a site of productive, dialectic struggle. for example, the ‘uct science’ video (henderson 2016) briefly explored the idea of epistemologies of spiritual belief in relation to umhlab’uyalingana ‘traditional magic’. other approaches include ethnic nationalism, radical state nationalism, socialism (mamdani 2019), pan-africanism (auerbach 2019), afrocentrism (sesanti 2018) and ubuntu(-currere) (le grange 2014), intersectionality (rhodes must fall 2015), critical universalism (fataar 2018; nyamnjoh 2016), to name a few. this is not an exhaustive list and the authors do not take any particular position on any of these, nor on whether they are mutually compatible or not, nor on which constitute the ‘correct’, current or received interpretations of decolonisation – the authors merely point out descriptively that these have been read onto the floating signifier of decolonisation at various points. drawing on the two analytical devices of floating signifiers and constellations the authors can recognize decolonisation as a healthy site of semiotic struggle characterized by dynamically shifting sets of assumptions, values, etc. it is the positionings offered by these that affects the choices made about decolonisation in the broader curriculum. some considerations and limitations there are some shortcomings in this research that the authors will point out. the aim of this research is to obtain an overview of curricular transformation as perceived by academics rather than to provide a comprehensive picture of every department. while the input is obtained from many institutions, and despite the fact that the questionnaire was distributed as widely as possible, there is significantly less input from staff at hbis (only two hbis are explicitly identified in the responses) than especially staff at formerly white universities (seven such institutions are explicitly identified) as such this work has a blind spot to the experiences of academics in hbis (see also jansen 2019:60). the authors also want to point out that the research was not oriented towards the student experience. nor does it cover broad issues of teaching (e.g. styles, methods, classroom management, etc.). such an expanded scope would have been beyond the resources available for this research and would also have presented a fundamentally different set of research questions (but see gibson et al. 2021, which examines student experiences of african languages and decolonising the curriculum). linguistics and applied linguistics are complex of subdisciplines which are constantly being renegotiated. as such, it is necessary to point out that the work in this article limits itself to disciplinary language curricula (e.g. applied linguistics, language teaching, language practice and general linguistics): it does not cover literature curricula, nor does it cover general issues of language within he in general, for example, language of teaching and learning, language policies, language use in society, etc. the focus in this article by the authors is entirely on choices around disciplinary linguistics and language curricula in south african he institutions. lastly, while the authors we aimed the survey questions to broadly cover the field, they recognize that they were influenced by their our own subdisciplines and teaching in general and formal linguistics and some participants did not find all of them relevant to their own contexts. research methods and design the authors sought to answer two main research questions: what is the state of curricular transformation in the linguistics and language disciplines. in what terms do subject specialists articulate transformational desiderata? in order to obtain an overview of linguistics and language curriculum transformation, the authors followed a mixed methods, quantitative and qualitative design, specifically a triangulating one-phase concurrent validating quantitative design (creswell & plano clark 2007). a triangulating mixed methods design aims to use different data types to explore multiple aspects of the phenomenon under study. the data were collected concurrently within a single elicitation session. in this study, the primary data is quantitative in nature and the authors use qualitative data to ‘validate and expand on’ (creswell & plano clark 2007:65) the quantitative data. the primary data collection tool was an anonymous, online questionnaire drawing on areas broadly from the lssa and the saala ‘resolutions of the first transformation in linguistics summit 2016’ document (lssa & saala 2016). the questionnaire included both fixed response (e.g. likert-type scales, checkboxes) as well as open-ended textual responses. the questionnaire was administered via google forms and was anonymous. the authors developed two sets of questions: one aimed at individuals and one aimed at heads of department. participants could also complete both if they wished to. study population and sampling strategy participants4 were required to be affiliated, employed (fulltime, part-time or contract) academic staff in any he institution in southern africa or be present or former students of such institutions. participants also needed to be identify with a linguistics or language-related discipline (including linguistics, applied linguistics, language practice and language teaching – but excluding literary studies). participants were recruited as a purposive sample (e.g. all original participants in the 2016 and 2018 workshops; all members of saala and lssa; and as many heads of departments of departments of linguistics and/or language studies as possible); participation was also invited via social media channels such as the facebook pages of saala and lssa. participants were also encouraged to invite their networks. two participants were excluded from the data set because they selected the option ‘i do not want to participate’. in total, the authors received 32 completed questionnaires including six completed on behalf of a department, school or organization and 26 from individuals. the participants included six postgraduate students (19%), seven lecturers (22%), five senior lecturers (16%), five professors (16%) and two heads of department (6%). sixty-nine per cent indicated their highest qualification to be a ph.d. twenty-three per cent held a master’s degree and 8% an honours degree. fifty-eight per cent had spent 10 years or more as an ‘active language academic’. the smallest amount of time reported as spent in the field was 4 years (11%) with the remaining participants being evenly spread out between 4 and 10 years. together the survey respondents represented nine he institutions (ru, uwc, up, stellenbosch, university of botswana, nwu, ufs, unisa, univen) and department types (e.g. linguistics, english, afrikaans & dutch, academic communication, translation studies, modern languages, literature, african languages and culture). half of the respondents indicated that they taught language-specific courses and half taught general courses that are not linked to any specific language. the respondents were thus highly qualified, experienced academics representative of a wide range of language disciplines in traditional universities across south africa. ethical considerations ethical clearance was granted by both rhodes university (ruesc 91691) and the university of the free state (ufs-hsd2018/1120). written informed consent was obtained from all individual participants involved in the study. all procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. findings participants responded on likert-type scales to stimuli in the following clusters: whether their curricula were empowering (table 1), curriculum change over the past decade (table 2), areas of curriculum transformation (table 3), the epistemologies privileged by curricula (table 4) and language in the curriculum (table 5). fifty-five per cent indicated that curricula were empowering to students. sixty-seven per cent responded that implementation of curricula transformation is an ongoing process. fifty-two per cent responded that diversity of epistemological representation was greater. with respect to language in the curriculum, 88% indicated that english and afrikaans were highly visible in curricular choices while only 24% expressed that other south african languages were highly visible. figure 1: stances on curriculum transformation. table 1: perceptions on empowering students. table 2: reflections on curricular change summarized and represented as percentages of responses. table 3: degree to which transformation is perceived as having been achieved. table 4: level of representation of local and diverse epistemologies in the curriculum in percent of responses. table 5: visibility of languages in the curriculum. discussion quantitative findings corresponding to research question: (1) are discussed in section ‘discussion of quantitative data: an overview of the state of transformation in the language disciplines’. this study’s qualitative findings and discussion corresponding to research question (2) are presented in an integrated form in section ‘qualitative findings and discussion – perspectives on curriculum transformation’. discussion of quantitative data: an overview of the state of transformation in the language disciplines decolonisation entails breaking cycles of epistemic dependency that position the global north and ‘the teacher’ as creators and curators of knowledge while southern students are positioned as nothing more than consumers or ‘learners’. heleta (2016) describes the status quo in south africa he as follows: most universities still follow the hegemonic ‘eurocentric epistemic canon’ that ‘attributes truth only to the western way of knowledge production’ (mbembe 2016:32). such a curriculum does not develop students’ critical and analytical skills to understand and move the african continent forward. gqola (2008:222) asserts that since 1994, south african universities have not done nearly enough to open their students’ horizons about africa. (p. 4) these types of issues are reflected in this study’s results. while certainly some steps have been taken, the discussion in this section shows that too little deeper change has occurred to date and provides multiple examples of the tensions surrounding curriculum change and resistance to decolonisation by some academics in the language disciplines. participants in this study responded about the degree to which their epistemic frameworks, and more broadly, their curricula were empowering (table 1). most (55%) indicated that their curricular frameworks empowered students to become active agents (le grange 2014; mahabeer 2018; naudé 2019) in their learning and production of knowledge and equipped them with skills that could be used in other knowledge domains. responding to eurocentrism, racism and whiteness culture embedded in curricula (fataar 2018), there is a perception that curricula have changed over the past decade with respect to a variety of issues affecting the transformation project such as a more contextualized, african focus, theoretical underpinnings and becoming responsive to a greater diversity of voices (table 2). in most areas, a sizeable number indicated that they had witnessed significant change in these areas. forty-eight per cent reported that there had been significant (positive) changes and 28% had not. one exception to the trend is that while 44% indicated the improved visibility of african languages in the curriculum, 44% indicated that this had not changed. the authors will return to this issue shortly. the respondents in this study were also asked directly about areas of curriculum transformation (table 3). unsurprisingly, most (67%) indicated that the transformation of their courses was an ongoing process. areas where significant progress has been made are the degree of formative assessment and internationalization – these are also areas promoted by the mainstream constellations discussed in section ‘some considerations and limitations’ above. less progress has been made in areas of making the curriculum relevant to students’ daily lived experience, including the fact that they live in a multilingual linguistic world characterized by african languages among others (mesthrie et al. 2018) – this is consistent with data in table 1. finally, least progress has been made in drawing on southern, particularly african theoretical voices. it is these areas which are the focus of the decolonisation constellation which includes voices around africanization and re-centring around indigenous experiences (auerbach 2019; fitznor 2018; sesanti 2018, among others): the recentred curriculum, which is african, is both an expression of political struggle for agency as well as an assertion and validation of african identity. it is a curriculum that ‘critically centres africa and the subaltern… treating african discourses as the point of departure.’ (mungwini 2016:525 in sayed & motala 2019:162) an integral part of the transformation project is to problematize the very nature of knowledge and its production (cloete & maasen 2015). accordingly, the authors asked the respondents about the theoretical frameworks they privileged in curricula (table 4). it is immediately apparent that most (84%) of theoretical frameworks were international in nature with moderate to low input from african scholars (28%). about half (52%) agreed that students were exposed to african scholarship without constant recourse to the global north – importantly, about half (48%) did not. this suggests that curriculum is driven by neoliberal values associated with internationalization. it is clear that much work remains to be done in this area. an integral part of curricular transformation in language studies relates to language (and language phenomena) as objects of study in their own right (e.g. through exemplification, case studies, etc.) (table 5). the previous data have already indicated that visibility of african languages in the curriculum may be an area for improvement. importantly, disciplinary boundaries play a significant role here: in general linguistics there is considerable room for reference to multiple languages since these are the disciplinary objects of study. in contrast, in language teaching (e.g. english, french) there is much less flexibility with respect to including additional languages – although one could still include african varieties of these languages (see discussion of afrikaans below). the respondents indicated that english and afrikaans remain by far the most visible languages in curricula (88%) followed by other official languages of the republic (28%). notably, other african languages, including khoisan languages and minority languages, are underrepresented. from this, the authors might infer that there is a moderate attempt to be more inclusive of official south african languages. the disproportionate focus on south african official languages may indicate that transformation seems to be driven by the political agendas of the nation state as opposed to the need to give a voice to the disenfranchised, minority and subaltern groups – or broader voices of the global south. this analysis is supported by the fact that quantitative data in this study shows that transformation is most progressed in areas that are consistent with the value constellations or knowledge regimes (jansen 2019; maton 2014) identified in section ‘some considerations and limitations’, associated with neoliberal and nation-state imperatives. in contrast, transformation appears to lag in areas associated with localization, africanization, african voices and perspectives suggesting that there is contestation around the values underpinning differing conceptions of curricular transformation. the fact that these curricular choices are ultimately value-driven was recognized by several respondents – although not all agreed on which set of values ought to be prioritized. also consistent with the notion of decolonisation as a floating signifier is the way the following respondent was able to read into it the assumptions necessary for their particular straw man argument, which can then be characterized as ‘ridiculous’: ‘i think the idea that courses necessarily have to focus on african languages simply shows some bad assumptions being made about the courses. what is the point of giving zulu examples in a case study of isolating languages? what point is there in bringing up african languages when teaching beginner’s german? given the above points, a person teaching a course in old english literature would have to conclude that their course was bad and should be done away with on the basis that it was not african enough. that is ridiculous. courses are there to teach people about a particular subject area, not pander to certain people’s value-driven outlooks.’ [respondent] similarly, some respondents raised the issue of the status of afrikaans as part of the transformation project with respect to the question: ‘to what extent does the curriculum for the courses you teach mainly refer to a hegemonic language (e.g. standard english or standard afrikaans)?’ as one respondent wrote ‘i have a massive issue with your referring to afrikaans as a “hegemonic” language. you really should know better or, at the very least, be more nuanced’. another participant expressed similar thoughts: ‘how can afrikaans be seen as a hegemonic language if the majority of its speakers are not white? do brown and black mother-tongue speakers of afrikaans not find it insulting when their home language is referred to as hegemonic? it means they have been overlooked as a demographic.’ [respondent] this is an interesting result given the historical and cultural prominence that (eastern) standard afrikaans has enjoyed certainly since 1925 and particularly after 1948 and the role of the apartheid state in promoting and racializing its use, etc.5 moreover, it is worth noting that that the variety of afrikaans used and validated in he contexts remains almost uniformly the standard variety, which is also not necessarily the same variety spoken by the majority ‘brown and black mother tongue speakers of afrikaans’ [respondent]. once again it is evident that decolonisation acts as a floating signifier onto which respondents can then read their own values and subjectivities. this issue is picked up by another respondent who noted: ‘my courses are in and about afrikaans linguistics, but i aim to include diverse perspectives on language, and very deliberately include material and examples on and from different varieties of afrikaans, not just the standard; occasionally there are opportunities to include reference to and examples from african languages.’ [respondent] the authors’ view is that any curricular choices about linguistic objects of study and the associated choices about how to elucidate those are inherently value-driven and informed by tacit disciplinary assumptions about what are valid objects of study and which are not. it is this point which is foregrounded in epistemic orientations towards transformation. the above quote shows that lecturers retain agency in making important, value-driven choices about how they engage with the languages that they study: it is perfectly feasible to construct a decolonised curriculum around languages with contested histories and semiotics – perhaps it is all the more important to do so. however, in doing so, one might run up against some disciplinary values about what knowledges are validated and what are not. the authors suggest that bringing these constellations to light is an important goal of the decolonisation project and that it is important that lecturers and departments be able to identify and articulate the constellations that underpin their particular approaches to curricular change. qualitative findings and discussion – perspectives on curriculum transformation the following section presents the combined qualitative findings and discussion around how the respondents chose to articulate their understanding of transformation. before transformation can proceed it requires self-reflection: decolonising the curriculum is, first of all, the acceptance that education, literary or otherwise, needs to enable self-understanding. this is particularly important to people not used to seeing themselves reflected in the mirror of conventional learning – whether women, gay people, disabled people, the working classes or ethnic minorities. (gopal 2017) to this end, the authors asked respondents to characterize their view of curriculum transformation: ‘what is your personal view about what transformation is?’ responses were coded according to whether the approaches were additive (25%), subtractive (22%), substituting (14%) and reconstituting (14%). each successive phase requires a deeper engagement with curriculum and can be mixed in various ways to constitute a set of transformative curricular choices. adding to a curriculum entails expanding curriculum content to include areas that were previously de-emphasized or not covered at all (supplement, including, incorporating, greater focus). additions tended to focus on an additive approach to pedagogy and languages of teaching and learning; expanding focus on formal studies of indigenous languages as well as including more material from the global south. examples from responses are quoted below: ‘the use of languages other than english to supplement the normal english lectures and a drive to incorporate scholarship from the linguistic “south.”’ ‘… including languages previously not used as pedagogical resources. for example in sa, the issue revolves highly around including the other 10 official languages and learning material.’ ‘… incorporating contributions from the global south into research, and teaching and learning…’. ‘greater focus on structures (phonetics and/or morphology and/or syntax) and comparative aspects of southern african languages.’ again, these responses largely imply an incomplete understanding of transforming the curriculum, which is limited to south africa’s official languages, rather than a more complete understanding of the linguistic ecology of south africa within the broader regional and global context. moreover, in these responses the authors see the broader limitations of the ‘addition approach’ which has been noted as supporting the maintenance of the status quo where ‘eurocentric worldviews are still dominant in the university curriculum, but an “african” voice is inserted to claim that transformation is taking place’ (zembylas 2018:4). removing (removing, moving away, less, throw off) entails making curricular choices to remove certain subject matter, particularly when it is seen as being rooted in a colonial-historical or whiteness context. ‘… make learning more accessible, promoting epistemic access, removing barriers (e.g. institutional racism) that could prevent success. in other words, it attempts to make the university a genuinely free space where everybody can thrive.’ ‘moving away from eurocentric views, theories and methodologies …’ ‘… a drive to make things less white …’. ‘… throw off the yoke of british imperialism and its aftermath …’ curriculum can also be transformed through substitution of one set of curriculum choices with another (moving away, transforming, undo, working towards, replacing, changing): ‘moving away from colonized language teaching and transforming to contemporary and new unfolding language teaching trends.’ ‘… try to relate he to africa as its context (in space and time) and that try to undo the structural injustice of the past by working towards social justice.’ ‘… removing or toning down “northern theory,” and replacing it with “southern theory” and changing the focus away from english to south african languages, or within english, the focus to south african varieties of english.’ reconstituting is arguably the most difficult and deepest approach to curriculum transformation of the ones the authors have considered. on the one hand, it involves considered questioning of existing knowledges (evaluate, rethinking, troubling and destabilizing) while also creating something new (develop, reimagining, merge): ‘carefully evaluate which concepts are useful, so as to make meaningful use of relevant and appropriate previous (not reinvent the wheel where a workable model already exists), and develop new constructs for matters that are not adequately accounted for by existing work’. ‘merging what we already know with african theories and practices.’ ‘… develop truly alternative modes of thinking and engagement with the world, ways that do not validate western, northern, eurocentric ways of thinking about things … promote indigenous knowledges and indigenous ways of being.’ ‘fundamentally rethinking, re-imagining, and changing epistemology, theory, curricula, and pedagogy to align these with who our students are (ontology), and what the current social and political context demands …’ ‘… troubling and destabilizing eurocentrism and its impact in maintaining intersectional injustices across institutions of higher learning.’ concerningly, 41% were unable to articulate any response, for example, ‘i am not clear at all on what is meant by decolonisation’ or ‘i don’t have much experience on this.’ another 41% indicated only a single strategy. this indicates that 82% of respondents either have no articulated stance on transformation or have a unidimensional stance on it. this underscores the importance of the authors’ argument in this article that being able to articulate the constellations that underpin the curriculum project is an important step. the efforts of the lssa and saala to develop a set of disciplinary understandings about the nature of transformation in the context of the south african language disciplines notwithstanding, the concepts of transformation and decolonisation are highly contested; there are many competing ideas about what it is and how best to implement it (‘there seems to be little understanding of what transformation actually means’; ‘i observe that it means many different things to many people’). as one participant put it: ‘discussions i have attended are confusing and contradictory. at this stage, i get the feeling that cosmetic curricular changes are being implemented under the umbrella term of transformation and decolonisation. and committees for these seem to function without a clear agenda. committees for the sake of committees because we don’t know what else to do and we have to be seen to be doing something.’ nevertheless, a number of responses indicated a deeper set of aims for the process of transformation. a number of responses articulated that it included changing the representation of south african academia in terms of equity, that is, employment of representative staff and removal of barriers to employment (‘it denotes changes in staff and student demography’; ‘staff and student demographics, is a university wide undertaking’) as well as removal of institutional-cultural barriers to becoming part of the community of scholars (‘specific barriers and clubs that may limit participation or the sense of belonging should be interrogated and removed’) without feeling a sense of alienation of having to adjust to institutional norms of whiteness and/or institutional norms of the academy (‘… where they are not expected to shape themselves in a particular way to be ‘like current people’ and thereby turn their back on insights they have, or even worse, and their own sense of self’). other constellations of ideas evident in this study’s data are include africanization (‘africanization of the curriculum’; ‘make provision for the african perspective’), indigenization (develop truly alternative modes of thinking and engagement with the world, ways that do not validate western, northern, eurocentric ways of thinking about things … promote indigenous knowledges and indigenous ways of being) while others are intra-disciplinary contestations (‘promoting translanguaging’; ‘promoting a sociolinguistic approach of language within society’; problematizing formal vs functional perspectives i.e. ‘any kind of reified, fixed theoretical construct that removes language from use and users’). many respondents tended to articulate epistemology and the knowledge project in general and somewhat essentialist terms, speaking of ‘african theories and practices’, ‘northern theory’, etc. it is not immediately clear that all (linguistic, applied linguistic and language) theory is necessarily easily categorized with these particular labels – at least not without the risk of adopting a reductionist or ahistorical caricature of the histories of the language disciplines.6 a more productive approach may be to reinterrogate established theory in the light of african realities as indicated by the following extract: ‘i believe various theoretical constructs were designed in contexts where the data informing the theorising are so different from the data here that it does not do justice to understanding language data, developments, etc. this requires that we carefully evaluate which concepts are useful, so as to make meaningful use of relevant and appropriate previous (not reinvent the wheel where a workable model already exists), and develop new constructs for matters that are not adequately accounted for by existing work.’ [respondent] to conclude the discussion of these results the authors return to the conceptualization of ‘additive’ vs. deeper transformation as expressed by heleta (2016): ‘when we talk about and engage in reconceptualisation and decolonisation of the curriculum in south africa, we need to consider the two approaches discussed by garuba. the first approach is to ‘add new items to an existing curriculum’. the second approach is to ‘rethink how the object of study itself is constituted’ and then reconstruct it and bring about fundamental change (garuba 2015). garuba (2015) asks ‘do we simply add new items to an existing curriculum – rather like adding raffia chairs to the master’s living room? or do we adopt the reverse approach in which we rethink how the object of study itself is constituted?’ (p. 5) many of the answers discussed here show that conceptualizations and/or current implementations of transformation often remain limited to the ‘additive’. in the authors’ opinion, a meaningfully transformed languages curriculum in linguistics means that the content is centred around a representative linguistic dataset that goes beyond official, majority and standardized languages and is grounded in a conceptually transformed approach to teaching and learning. in the next section, the authors offer some recommendations for this. recommendations based on the findings discussed in this article, the authors’ personal experiences and reflections, and other scholars’ work (e.g. gibson et al. in press; namboodiripad 2020), the authors recommend the following steps to their colleagues in the language disciplines in south(ern) africa who are seeking ways to decolonise and transform their curricula: be able to explicitly articulate a conception of transformation and/or decolonisation for your module or course and the value-driven assumptions that underpin it. ensure that work authored by a diverse set of scholars in terms of gender, race, regional and institutional affiliation, etc. is included throughout modules and given appropriate weight and time for your particular context (see namboodiripad 2020 for discussion of this). ensure that the module equips students to understand, analyse and engage with the linguistic environment of south africa, including its particular forms of multilingualism, south africa’s apartheid past and colonial experiences and their linguistic repercussions – including on the linguistic landscape and the perception of the different types of national languages. in any language classes, educators should problematize concepts such as ‘standard’ or ‘pure’ varieties and equip students with tools to integrate these conceptually with other tools of linguistic analysis. as far as possible general linguistics modules should include work on students’ own languages, lects and registers and in southern africa also khoisan languages, non-south african african languages and other languages of the global south. datasets should include signed languages and non-standard varieties in examples and homework assignments. these recommendations are particularly focussed on formal and general linguistics, which are the authors’ own fields of scholarly expertize and teaching experience. the authors also refer readers to recommendations for syntacticians and general linguists for decolonising, inclusivity and racial justice in the classroom put forward in namboodiripad (2020), sanders (2020), gibson et al. (in press) on syntax, and nevins (in press) on how linguistic theory has been shaped by minoritized languages. the authors encourage language scholars in other sub-disciplines to build on these for their own modules. conclusion this study contributes to the field in terms of being empirically based, its focus on curriculum transformation, and in exploring this in an academic subdiscipline where decolonisation has not been a central point of debate. the quantitative data in this study reveals uneven application of transformational ideals and that transformation has proceeded most where the values informing transformation coincide with those underpinning he more generally, aided by the semiotic flexibility of the floating signifier. this finding is supported by the qualitative analysis which highlights both the value-driven nature of and contestation around differing views of what curricular transformation ought to be. the position of language and languages as objects of study within the curriculum needs to be problematized and engaged with based on a nuanced understanding of transformation and decolonisation in the south african context. because transformation and decolonisation represent floating signifiers and are driven by dynamically shifting and negotiated constellations of ideas, the authors acknowledge that there can be no one-size-fits-all approach to curricular change and that how fundamental principles play out in particular contexts is very much an ongoing process of negotiation. however, this does not absolve us from taking action to make curricular choices, especially if we see curriculum as being more than syllabus content. crucially for linguistics, applied linguistics and language studies, these choices include which languages and language contexts are presented, explored and validated as legitimate objects of intellectual inquiry. these choices take on different significance in different micro-contexts. for example, in one context, a course about old english, afrikaans, swahili, or any other language or variety for that matter, may thoroughly entrench a colonial, untransformed status quo, whereas in another context and/or it may constitute an empowering, revolutionary act. to be able to perceive the difference, the we, as language specialists, need to be able to articulate to themselves and others the constellations of ideas that inform our approaches to transformation and decolonisation. acknowledgements the authors thank all participants who completed their questionnaire, the authors’ co-hosts and the participants of the two lssa and saala workshops on transformation and the lssa conference panel and the audience of the workshop on language and the (de)colonization of the african coast hosted by the department of applied language studies at nelson mandela university and the max planck institute for social anthropology (halle/saale) in october 2018. competing interests the authors declare that they have no financial or personal relationship(s) that may have inappropriately influenced them in writing this article. authors’ contributions both authors contributed to the conceptualization, survey design, data collection, analysis, writing and editing of this article. funding information this research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors. data availability data sharing is not applicable to this article as no new data were created or analysed in this study. disclaimer the views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any affiliated agency of the authors. references agyekum, k., 2018, ‘linguistic imperialism and language decolonisation in africa through documentation and preservation’, in j. kandybowicz, t. major, h. torrence & p. duncan (eds.), african linguistics on the prairie: selected papers from the 45th annual conference on african linguistics, language science press, berlin, april 17–19, 2014, pp. 87–104. auerbach, j., 2019, ‘scaling decolonial consciousness? the re-invention of “africa” in a neoliberal university’, in j.d. jansen (ed.), decolonisation in universities: the politics of knowledge, pp. 116–135, wits university press, johannesburg. bernstein, b., 1975, class, codes & control, vol. iii, routledge, london. bock, z. & stroud, c. (eds.), 2021, language and decoloniality in higher education: reclaiming voices from the south, multilingualisms and diversities in education, bloomsbury, london. https://doi.org/10.5040/9781350049109 cele, g. & koen, c., 2003, ‘student politics in south africa: an overview of key developments’, cahiers de la recherche sur l’éducation et les savoirs 2, 201–223. charity hudley, a.c., mallinson, c. & bucholtz, m. (eds.), in press, decolonising linguistics, oxford university press, oxford. chen, k.-h., 2010, asia as method: toward deimperialisation, duke university press, durham, nc. cloete, n. & maasen, p., 2015, knowledge production and contradictory functions in african higher education, african minds, cape town. creswell, j.w. & plano clark, v.l., 2007, designing and conducting mixed methods research, sage publications, thousand oaks, ca. deumert, a., storch, a. & shepherd, n. (eds.), 2020, colonial and decolonial linguistics: knowledges and epistemes, oxford university press, oxford. dyers, c. & antia, b.e., 2019, ‘multilingual and multimodal mediation in one university module: the people and processes involved’, southern african linguistics and applied language studies 37(1), 62–76. https://doi.org/10.2989/16073614.2019.1609365 fataar, a., 2018, ‘decolonising education in south africa: perspectives and debates’, educational research for social change 7, vi–ix. fitznor, l., 2018, ‘indigenous education: affirming indigenous knowledges and languages from a turtle island indigenous scholar’s perspective: pikiskēwinan (let us voice)’, in c. cocq & k. sullivan (eds.), perspectives on indigenous writing and literacies, pp. 29–66, brill, leiden. fraser, w.j., loubser, c.p. & van rooy, m.p., 1993, didactics for the undergraduate student, 2nd edn., heinemann, johannesburg. garuba, h., 2015, ‘what is an african curriculum?’, mail & guardian, 17 april, viewed 15 september 2022, from http://mg.co.za/article/2015-04-17-what-is-an-african-curriculum/. gqola, p.d., 2008, ‘brutal inheritances: echoes, negrophobia and masculinist violence’, in s. hassim, t. kupe & e. worby (eds.), go home or die here: violence, xenophobia and the reinvention of difference in south africa, pp. 209–223, wits university press, johannesburg. gibson, h., jerro, k., namboodiripad, s. & riedel, k., in press, ‘decolonising syntax’, in a.c. charity hudley, c. mallinson & m. bucholtz (eds.), decolonising linguistics, oxford university press, oxford. gibson, h., lück, j., riedel, k. & namboodiripad, s., 2021, ‘african linguistics after #rhodesmustfall’, paper presented at the 19th aila world congress, groningen, netherlands, august 15–20, 2021. gopal, p., 2017, ‘yes, we must decolonise: our teaching has to go beyond elite white men’, the guardian, 27 october, viewed 24 may 2022, from https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/oct/27/decolonise-elite-white-men-decolonising-cambridge-university-english-curriculum-literature. heleta, s., 2016, ‘decolonisation of higher education: dismantling epistemic violence and eurocentrism in south africa’, transformation in higher education 1(1), 1–8. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v1i1.9 henderson, r., 2016, ‘uct student upsets newton’s apple cart with her demand that #sciencemustfall’, times live, 14 october, viewed 24 may 2022, from https://www.timeslive.co.za/news/south-africa/2016-10-14-uct-student-upsets-newtons-apple-cart-with-her-demand-that-sciencemustfall/. hornberger, n. & limerick, n., 2018, ‘teachers, textbooks, and orthographic choices in quechua: bilingual intercultural education in peru and ecuador’, in c. cocq & k. sullivan (eds.), perspectives on indigenous writing and literacies, pp. 141–164, brill, leiden. jansen, j., 2019, ‘on the politics of decolonisation: knowledge, authority and the settled curriculum’, in j.d. jansen (ed.), decolonisation in universities: the politics of knowledge, pp. 50–78, wits university press, johannesburg. kanywanyi, j., 1989, ‘the struggle to decolonise and demystify: university education: dar’s 25 years’ experience focussed on the faculty of law (october 1961–october 1986)’, eastern africa law review 16(1), 1–70. kaschula, r.h. & wolff, h.e. (eds.), 2020, the transformative power of language: from postcolonial to knowledge societies in africa, cambridge university press, cambridge. le grange, l., 2014, ‘currere’s active forced and the africanisation of the university curriculum’, south african journal of higher education 28(4), 1283–1294. le grange, l., 2019, ‘the curriculum case for decolonisation’, in j.d. jansen (ed.), decolonisation in universities: the politics of knowledge, pp. 29–48, wits university press, johannesburg. leonard, w.y., 2018, ‘reflections on (de)colonialism in language documentation’, in b. mcdonnell, a.l. berez-kroeker & g. holton (eds), reflections on language documentation 20 years after himmelmann 1998, pp. 55–65, language documentation & conservation special publication no. 15, university of hawai’i press, honolulu. mahabeer, p., 2018, ‘curriculum decision-makers on decolonising the teacher education curriculum’, south african journal of education 38(4), 1–13. https://doi.org/10.15700/saje.v38n4a1705 mamdani, m., 2019, ‘decolonising universities’, in j.d. jansen (ed.), decolonisation in universities: the politics of knowledge, pp. 15–28, wits university press, johannesburg. maton, k., 2014, knowledge and knowers: toward a realist sociology of education, routledge, london. mazrui, a., 2005, ‘pan-africanism and the intellectuals: rise, decline and revival’, in t. mkandawire (ed.), african intellectuals: rethinking politics, language, gender and development, pp. 56–77, zed books, london. mbembe, a., 2016, ‘decolonising the university: new directions’, arts & humanities in higher education 15(1), 29–45. https://doi.org/10.1177/1474022215618513 mehlman, j., 1972, ‘the “floating signifier”: from lévi-strauss to lacan’, yale french studies 48, 10–37. https://doi.org/10.2307/2929621 mesthrie, r., de vos, m., hunt, s. & motiyane, m., 2018, ‘language studies in times of transformation: multiple perspectives’, in r. mesthrie & d. bradley (eds.), the dynamics of language: plenary and focus lectures from the 20th international congress of linguists, uct press, cape town, july 2–6, 2018, pp. 280–297. ministerial oversight committee, 2015, ‘the transformation of south african higher education’, concept paper prepared for the second national higher education transformation summit, viewed n.d., from https://www.dhet.gov.za/summit/docs/2015docs/annex%208_toc_transformation%20of%20sa%20he.pdf. namboodiripad, s., 2020, ‘centering linguistic diversity and justice in course design’, presentation at lsa webinar, 14 august, viewed 05 january 2022, from https://www.linguisticsociety.org/resource/webinar-centering-linguistic-diversity-and-justice-course-design. naudé, p., 2019, ‘decolonising knowledge: can ubuntu ethics save us from coloniality? (ex africa semper aliquid novi?)’, in j.d. jansen (ed.), decolonisation in universities: the politics of knowledge, pp. 217–238, wits university press, johannesburg. nevins, a., in press, when minoritized languages change linguistic theory, cambridge university press, cambridge. ngũgĩ wa thiong’o, 1986, decolonising the mind: the politics of language in african literature, james currey, london. nyamnjoh, f., 2016, #rhodesmustfall: nibbling at resilient colonialism in south africa, langaa research & publishing, bamenda. paphitis, s. & kelland, l., 2016, ‘the university as a site for transformation: developing civic-minded graduates at south african institutions through an epistemic shift in institutional culture’, journal of educational change 20(2), 184–203. https://doi.org/10.17159/1947-9417/2016/906 parker, g., 2019, ‘decolonising minds via curricula’, in j.d. jansen (ed.), decolonisation in universities: the politics of knowledge, pp. 255–264, wits university press, johannesburg. rhodes must fall, 2015, ‘rhodes must fall statements’, in a. mbembe, l. naidoo, b. van der haak, s. chari, j. orrantia, m. jones et al. (eds.), the johannesburg salon, vol. 9, pp. 6–19, viewed 20 may 2022, from https://studentsnotcustomers.files.wordpress.com/2014/11/vfinal_vol9_book.pdf. rudwick, s. & makoni, s., 2021, ‘southernizing and decolonizing the sociology of language: african scholarship matters’, international journal of the sociology of language 2021(267–268), 259–263. https://doi.org/10.1515/ijsl-2020-0060 sanders, n., 2020, ‘centering linguistic diversity and justice in course design’, presentation at lsa webinar, 14 august, viewed 05 january 2022, from https://www.linguisticsociety.org/resource/webinar-centering-linguistic-diversity-and-justice-course-design. sayed, y. & motala, s., 2019, ‘between higher and basic education in south africa: what does decolonisation mean for teacher education’, in j.d. jansen (ed.), decolonisation in universities: the politics of knowledge, pp. 155–180, wits university press, johannesburg. sesanti, s., 2018, ‘teaching ancient egyptian philosophy (ethics) and history: fulfilling a quest for a decolonised and afrocentric education’, educational research for social change 7, 1–15. https://doi.org/10.17159/2221-4070/2018/v7i0a1 shay, s., wolff, k.e. & clarence-fincham, j., 2016, ‘curriculum reform in south africa: more time for what?’, critical studies in teaching and learning 4(1), 74–88. https://doi.org/10.14426/cristal.v4i1.61 soudien, c., 2019, ‘testing transgressive thinking: the “learning through enlargement” initiative at unisa’, in j.d. jansen (ed.), decolonisation in universities: the politics of knowledge, pp. 136–154, wits university press, johannesburg. southern african linguistics and applied linguistics society, 2016, resolutions of the first transformation in linguistics summit 2016, viewed 26 october 2022, from https://salals.org.za/2019/03/25/resolutions-of-the-first-transformation-in-linguistics-summit-2016/. sullivan, k., langum, v. & cocq, c., 2018, ‘education is not sufficient – exploring ways to support and research indigenous writing and literacies’, in c. cocq & k. sullivan (eds.), perspectives on indigenous writing and literacies, pp. 29–66, brill, leiden. universities south africa, 2015, ‘annexure5: reflections on higher education transformation’, discussion paper prepared for the second national higher education transformation summit, viewed n.d., from https://www.dhet.gov.za/summit/docs/2015docs/annex%205_univsa_reflections%20on%20he%20transformation.pdf. zembylas, m., 2018, ‘decolonial possibilities in south african higher education: reconfiguring humanising pedagogies as/with decolonising pedagogies’, sa journal of education 38(4), 1–11. https://doi.org/10.15700/saje.v38n4a1699 footnotes 1. we acknowledge the differences between the terms ‘transformation’ and ‘decolonisation’. we choose to use the term ‘transformation’ to reflect a more general set of changes and ‘decolonisation’ for the more specific project. 2. the terms indian, african and coloured refers to categories used in the report, as per the south african employment equity act, 1998 (chapter 1[55]), when referring to race. 3. the resolutions are available at: https://salals.org.za/2019/03/25/resolutions-of-the-first-transformation-in-linguistics-summit-2016/ [accessed 11 march 2022]. 4. to protect the anonymity of participants limited participant identifiers have been provided. 5. we do not intend to engage on the issue of its hegemonic status here, merely noting that there remains considerable sensitivity around afrikaans and its continued contested relation to the decolonisation project. 6. for example, to caricature modern phonology as an exclusively ‘northern’ or ‘western’ enterprise obscures the contributions of: (1) hundreds of languages from around the world (2) of minority scholars in the north, (3) southern scholars working both in the north and the south as well as (4) scholars from traditions that are not easily characterizable in the north-south/east-west binaries. abstract introduction methods results discussion conclusion acknowledgements references about the author(s) davina govender department of optometry, faculty of health sciences, university of kwazulu-natal, durban, south africa tarryn pillay department of optometry, faculty of health sciences, university of kwazulu-natal, durban, south africa nandipha maci department of optometry, faculty of health sciences, university of kwazulu-natal, durban, south africa nokukhanya vilakazi department of optometry, faculty of health sciences, university of kwazulu-natal, durban, south africa snenkosi mthethwa department of optometry, faculty of health sciences, university of kwazulu-natal, durban, south africa umar mansoor department of optometry, faculty of health sciences, university of kwazulu-natal, durban, south africa zweli manquzi department of optometry, faculty of health sciences, university of kwazulu-natal, durban, south africa diane van staden department of optometry, faculty of health sciences, university of kwazulu-natal, durban, south africa citation govender, d., pillay, t., maci, n., vilakazi, n., mthethwa, s., mansoor, u. et al., 2023, ‘optometry students’ experience of online learning during the covid-19 pandemic’, transformation in higher education 8(0), a251. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v8i0.251 original research optometry students’ experience of online learning during the covid-19 pandemic davina govender, tarryn pillay, nandipha maci, nokukhanya vilakazi, snenkosi mthethwa, umar mansoor, zweli manquzi, diane van staden received: 25 nov. 2022; accepted: 07 apr. 2023; published: 20 july 2023 copyright: © 2023. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract optometry education, like other health professions, has historically been conducted via contact teaching and learning in classrooms, clinics and laboratories. in 2020, covid-19 imposed an abrupt move to online learning for higher education institutions. this was performed with little insight into the feasibility and readiness for its adoption within certain contexts, as well as the potential impact on learning. this qualitative descriptive project purposively recruited a representative sample of 30 optometry students from a south african university to explore their experiences of online learning during the covid-19 pandemic. data were collected using focus group interviews. the data were audio-recorded, transcribed and analysed thematically. four themes emerged from the research, namely; learning how to learn online, need for social support, technology dependent, and authentic learning. the key challenges observed were difficulty in transitioning to online learning, independent learning, and not having reliable access to internet connectivity. gaps in clinical skills resulting from restricted access to contact training and real-world clinical exposure negatively impacted competency development. contribution: pandemic disruptions to routine academic programme activities within higher education institutions have the potential to negatively impact the learning experience for students where institutions and/or students may be unprepared or under-resourced to support such a shift. the results of this study further suggest that exposure to real-world clinical contexts for optometry students should be enabled even under pandemic conditions to promote the development of clinical competencies needed for effective healthcare delivery. finally, remote online assessments must be designed to support authentic learning so as not to compromise exit-level outcomes, skills and competencies. keywords: optometry; online learning; clinical education; technology-based learning; competencies; pandemic responsiveness; online assessments; south africa. introduction for most health professions training programmes, teaching and learning have historically been conducted via contact teaching methods (zalat, hamed & bolbol 2021). this is because training in clinical procedures is fundamental to competency development for health professionals (green, edwards & tower 2022). however, the global outbreak of covid-19 in 2020 imposed significant changes to the way society operated; forcing educational programmes around the world to abruptly move to virtual modes of course delivery using online approaches (nortvig et al. 2020). online learning, which does not take place in a physical classroom with fellow students or a teacher present, has become more prevalent in institutions of higher learning in recent times (koksal 2020). yet, for most health professions programmes, it has not been fully embraced given the need for face-to-face clinical skills training. the continued reliance on face-to-face clinical skills training is underpinned by the need for clinical skills and competency development (costello et al. 2014). optometrists are considered the primary healthcare practitioners of the eye and visual system who provide comprehensive eye and vision care. this includes refraction and dispensing of eyeglasses and other optical corrective devices, detection or diagnosis and management of diseases of the eye, and the rehabilitation of conditions of the visual system (world council of optometry n.d.). consequently, practical (skills-based) and clinical (competencies) training are central to the training of optometrists. however, in the contact-restricted covid-19 context, practical training sessions at institutions of higher learning were largely suspended, with efforts to achieve some of the required learning outcomes using online approaches. at the university of kwazulu-natal in south africa, teaching and learning swiftly moved to virtual modalities for all programmes after the university adopted an emergency remote online learning strategy in response to the covid-19 pandemic in march 2020. for clinical programmes, efforts were made to achieve some of the learning outcomes using video-based instruction and assessment methods, as well as simulation software, where available. in the context of optometry training, clinical skills imply contact with patients within a healthcare setting, which is preceded by practical training in labs aimed at technical skills development for application in the clinical assessment and management of patients. making the shift from contact learning to online learning is challenging; potentially impacting the attitudes of students towards the learning project itself (kreijns, kirschner & jochems 2003). this study was undertaken to better understand the online learning experiences of optometry students during covid-19 as well as the impact of this method of learning on clinical competence. furthermore, the study sought to explore how external factors relevant to the south african context impacted the online learning experiences of optometry students. research shows that teaching and learning are influenced by more than teaching methods alone (azulay chertok, barnes & gilleland 2014). the constructivist approach to learning emphasises an environment in which learning is community-centred; that is, it recognises the importance of social construction of knowledge and connectedness as part of the learning experience (swan 2005). this is relevant to the covid-19 pandemic experience, which restricted the movement of persons, effectively removing the social community synonymous with contact learning at universities. online learning also demands self-efficacy, which impacts student satisfaction in the online environment (alqurashi 2016). lentell (2014) suggested that online learning approaches need to meet user requirements to gain students’ trust and improve their acceptance of this type of learning. even in a traditional contact learning environment, students’ self-efficacy was found to impact the learning and academic performance of medical students (hayat et al. 2020). in south africa, university students are often faced with data connectivity issues that may directly affect their engagement during online learning activities (hawthorne et al. 2009). previous research has highlighted the challenge of tools for effective online learning, which are often absent in developing countries (frehywot et al. 2013). the negative impact of factors such as inconsistent electricity availability and data instability on teaching and learning schedules, even under non-pandemic conditions, has been acknowledged (capone, de caterina & mazza 2017). given the growing interest within the field of educational research on factors that affect learning outcomes and student satisfaction in online or blended learning in higher education, this research into south african optometry students’ experiences when engaging in online learning under pandemic restrictions was deemed necessary for future planning. methods a qualitative exploratory case study design was used to investigate the phenomena of interest. this design was chosen as qualitative research approaches aim to understand the lived experiences of participants (neubauer, witkop & varpio 2019). the study population included optometry students registered in the 2021 academic year at an institution in south africa (institution name omitted to maintain integrity of the review process). students were contacted via email and invited to participate in the study following a process of oral informed consent. a total representative sample of 30 students aged between 18 and 22 years was recruited for the study. data were collected by means of four focus group interviews, one for each year of study. the focus group interviews were administered via zoom, with a maximum of eight students represented per year level. students were engaged on their online learning experiences during covid-19. key lines of questioning included transitioning to online learning, factors that impacted the overall learning experience and impact of remote learning on clinical competence. interviews were audio recorded and manually transcribed. confidentiality was maintained by allocating codes to each participant at the beginning of the focus group to ensure data anonymity. the interviews were carried out by the researchers who had undergone prior coaching on how to conduct focus group sessions. content analysis, as described by erlingsson and brysiewicz (2017), was used to draw out meaning units related to the key research questions on online learning experiences. data were analysed using inductive reasoning (creswell 2018) and reported descriptively using themes and subthemes, following a process of member checking. ethical considerations ethical clearance to conduct this study was obtained from the university of kwazulu-natal humanities and social sciences research ethics committee (hssrec) (no. hssrec/00002961/2021). results thirty optometry students aged between 18 and 22 years old who ranged from the 1st to the 4th year in the programme (levels 1, 2, 3 and 4, respectively) participated in the research, with four main themes emerging from the results (figure 1). figure 1: emerging themes. theme 1: learning how to learn online theme 1 reflects the participants’ experiences of the abrupt transitioning to online learning. the theme encompasses two subthemes, namely ‘a new way of learning’ and ‘if it’s to be, it’s up to me’. subtheme 1.1: a new way of learning most participants reported that the covid-19-imposed move to online learning was their first exposure to online learning. this resulted in the need for a swift adaptation to this new way of learning: ‘it took a little bit of getting used to at first. i think we realized that there was no one to check up on us we were responsible obviously for ourselves’ (participant 8, level 2, male) the adjustment was greater for participants in their first year of study as most had never been exposed to online learning before, with participant 7 expressing the following: ‘it was a quite big jump … a very big jump from high school; and then the switch to online learning. it was very different, but eventually i was able to adjust.’ (participant 7, level 1, female) this rapid adjustment to online learning left some participants feeling overwhelmed and pressured. many participants reported feeling increased pressure and anxiety as a result: ‘i felt intimidated by the sudden move to online learning, like from classroom to online; but i guess it was just something we had to adapt to. i thought i couldn’t do it, but as time went on, it was easy to adapt to.’ (participant 3, level 1, female) participants’ acceptance and preference levels for the new online learning approach differed. some participants felt that on-campus, contact learning allowed for a more productive, academically orientated environment, while others preferred to learn within the comfort of their own homes: ‘i feel the most challenging part of online learning was definitely being in a different environment that didn’t facilitate learning. if you were at campus in a live lecture you will be fully invested and the knowledge that you receive is much greater than compared to when you are at home with other distractions.’ (participant 23, level 4, female) ‘i personally think that it was better for me because i don’t like getting up early and going to campus every day, so you know it was better because you could be in the comfort of your own home and do the zoom lectures and the lessons at your own time and pace.’ (participant 11, level 2, female) although some preferred learning from home, most participants reported an increase in distractions and interference within the home learning environment: ‘they [family members] just think you’re at home and accessible, sending you around doing things for them, and you don’t get enough time to do your work because you are supposed to be respecting them …’ (participant 25, level 4, female) subtheme 1.2: if it’s to be, it’s up to me! subtheme 2 relates to the participants’ experiences of taking responsibility for their learning. while certain participants were able to easily adapt to the shift, others encountered various challenges relating to self-directed learning. the principle of taking responsibility for one’s learning, core to the general principle of online learning, was evident in the responses of the participant: ‘i think we realised that there was no one to check up on us. we were responsible obviously for ourselves and then that knowledge.’ (participant 9, level 2, female) taking responsibility for one’s learning was a new concept for most participants, as was learning independently. this was evident in all the years of study: ‘in school we always had a timetable where from a certain time you have a certain lesson and stuff like that and it was normally easier to attend lessons because you were in school and you had to go. for now, it was like just planning your day, making sure that you attend all your lectures and do what you need to do for that day.’ (participant 1, level 1, female) ‘now i have to study whether i attend zoom class, it’s all up to me. it became a huge learning milestone because you know from high school you always had teachers making a register so you have to be there … i have learned to discipline myself. nobody is going to be coming after you.’ (participant 19, level 3, male) ‘before we had to have lectures all the time; we had to come to class, learn, listen to the lecture … now … i just had to learn to do things on my own.’ (participant 16, level 3, male) theme 2: technology dependent this theme highlights the participants’ experiences relating to the demands of online learning, as well as their need for connectedness. it was evident that online learning placed a greater workload demand on the participants than face-to-face lectures: ‘during contact lectures, we don’t get flooded this much …’ (participant 22, level 3, female) participants reported facing pressure from lecturers who expected them to do a lot of work in a short period of time: ‘the lecturers put up a lot of videos for us to go through and read up on. we also have a lot of videos to watch during the day as well as practicals and things on campus …’ (participant 23, level 4, female) participants further expressed a need to be connected to fellow students and lecturers in order to support their online learning experience. one participant expressed that it helped to speak to someone who could provide support, in particular, being connected to peers who shared the same academic challenges: ‘it becomes a lot … sometimes [you need to] speak to your friends because everyone goes through the same things. so, i find that venting to my friends in my class who share the same feelings as me … and also surround yourself with positive people that will motivate you and not discourage you from learning.’ (participant 27, level 4, female) the need for connectedness was further evident with many participants expressing a desire for contact sessions to supplement online learning: ‘i wouldn’t mind online learning as long as maybe not every saturday, but maybe one saturday in every month a certain number of students can just go have a face to face interaction with a lecturer, if they have any questions they can sort that out during the week.’ (participant 11, level 2, female) ‘i feel like i’m a person who understands well when i see you because i can memorize you and remember how you explained in class. so online learning wasn’t for me.’ (participant 20, level 3, female) theme 3: need for social support this theme reflects core factors that enable online learning, such as access to the internet, which impacted the participants’ learning experience. poor internet connectivity as well as inadequate data allowances by the institution for online learning during covid-19 were two major concerns reported by participants, impacting their ability to effectively learn online: ‘i personally have experienced data problems with wi-fi, and it directly affected me because i failed that test i was writing.’ (participant 2, level 1, male) ‘since i reside on-campus residence we don’t get data so we only use wi-fi and sometimes it really difficult to connect so you have to buy it [data] on your own.’ (participant 4, level 1, female) the aforementioned underscores the fact that online learning is technology-dependent, with unequal and unreliable access to the internet posing a challenge for many south african students when forced to engage in online learning. the negative experiences in terms of connectivity were widespread among participants, but worse for participants living in areas with poor network coverage: ‘for people who are from rural areas, we struggle a lot when it comes to network connection, even if you have data. but then you find that spot where you have stable connection, which is rare around the area.’ (participant 17, level 3, male) power supply also presented a major challenge for participants since load shedding (power cuts) regularly affects south africans across all communities. as a result of this power instability, many participants missed lectures either because of their devices not being sufficiently charged or because of the interruption in network accessibility: ‘… besides that we had that time where we had no electricity at home and it was during the week, i didn’t attend classes because the laptop and the phone had no power. it wasn’t easy to access.’ (participant 14, level 2, male) theme 4: authentic learning this theme comprises two subthemes, ‘clinical training with no clinics’ and teaching, learning and assessment. subtheme 4.1: clinical training with no clinics almost all participants complained of the lack of access to hands-on practical training and its impact on their clinical skills development. in some cases, participants reported being exposed to the clinical environment (direct patient contact) for the first time during an assessment: ‘so, in my assessment i had to do techniques for the first time within those time limits’. (participant 13, level 2, female) this placed further pressure on the participants who were required to ‘perform’ clinically and their skills be evaluated without the necessary real-world training and exposure to the university clinic. these negative experiences were highlighted across all year levels with all participants feeling as if they were not given enough time for practical exposure during lockdown, prior to assessments. participant 15, a second year student said: ‘i feel like we never have enough time to practise before practical assessments. everything is so squashed … in order to fit the time into our prac hours’. (participant 15, level 2, female) furthermore, access to real patients, critical for clinical competency development, was acknowledged as an unmet, yet essential training need among participants: ‘optometry students need to be seeing patients on campus, and we are constantly seeing fellow classmates. it’s a huge disadvantage. personally for me, i mean going on campus every wednesday for general clinic only to know that you are going to be seeing your fellow classmate or you are going to be seeing not necessarily fellow student but someone from the university, also a student, who might not, you know, give you an experience that you would have gotten had the university been allowing patients from outside the university so … we seeing the same things over and over again.’ (participant 21, level 3, male) participants further felt that because they did not get to see ‘real’ patients, they suffered significant gaps in clinical competence. subtheme 4.2: student-centred teaching, learning approach and assessment the need for a student-centred approach, with lecturers accommodating the different learning styles and preferences of students, within an online learning context, also emerged from the data: ‘i’m a very audio-visual kind of learner, and i have to talk to someone in order to learn something. so, i ask questions in person or in email. if the email is not enough then i’d speak to the lecturers in person.’ (participant 30, level 4, female) ‘i find the recorded videos much more comprehendible because in live lectures sometimes, if you ask a lecturer to repeat it, well the same explanation two or three times they’ll probably get annoyed but on online learning you can just rewind it and play it over again.’ (participant 12, level 2, male) this suggests a need for varying modes of delivery and engagement, which address students’ different preferences. issues relating to the scheduling of assessments raised important perspectives: ‘i don’t think anything works for me in online learning, even duration time for test have been cut down. i feel like it’s too much you need to do some calculations and think in that limited time.’ (participant 29, level 4, male) another student further expressed discontentment with the way assessments were conducted: ‘i think one of the things that really caught me off guard was how terrible the university is at having exams. i mean we have six weeks of no exams and then one week of ten exams. no, i just think that’s a bit too much’. (participant 17, level 3, female) poor scheduling and time allocation of assessments also affected the participants negatively: ‘… especially the random spot tests … because you think you free at this time and then you do something but then a spot test will be thrown at you. and now you have a lot to do at the same time.’ (participant 19, level 3, male) overall, the authenticity of online assessments as a true reflection of learning was brought into question: ‘i think the online learning hasn’t taught us so much; but it has taught us on how to rush things we don’t even have time to process things … you say you cannot write the exam within 30 minutes where there are calculations, there are essay questions so i think that has affected a lot of academics if ever they could try to extend time in the exam.’ (participant 24, level 4, female) some participants felt disadvantaged by the time constraints of online assessments, where sequential questioning was employed: ‘i don’t think anything works for me in online learning, even duration time for tests have been cut down. i feel like it’s too much you need to do some calculations and think in that limited time. i feel like lecturers feel that writing online makes life easier for us which is a total opposite. when we are having tests on campus, we have more time.’ (participant 18, level 3, female) several students also reported feeling deprived of the opportunity to recheck their answers, as well the freedom to choose the order in which they attempt the questions in online-administered tests. as a result, participants across all levels felt that online assessments results were not a true reflection of their knowledge or academic performance: ‘i think it’s not a true reflection in a sense in as much as we would have prepared prior to writing but then i honestly feel as if we, sometimes you just learn not absorbing knowledge and information and the fact that sometimes we even have our books nearby you know if you probably forget something then you can … you know what i’m saying.’ (participant 6, level 1, male) another participant underscored the concerns with online assessments, suggesting that it does not support, measure, or represent true learning: ‘yeah, because i feel that true learning indicates understanding; and if we are able to guess like how we are with multiple choice … yeah i don’t know!’ (participant 10, level 2, female) discussion this research set out to better understand optometry students’ experiences of online learning in the context of the covid-19 pandemic, as well as the potential impact of this shift in learning context for students in clinical training programmes. participants of all academic levels in this study faced similar challenges with online learning during the covid-19 pandemic. these challenges centred around the practical needs of students having to adapt to a new way of learning, and the fact that online learning is technology-dependent, which posed a challenge in south africa’s unequal socio-economic and inconsistent infrastructure context with respect to internet connectivity. furthermore, being disengaged from traditional learning spaces highlighted the inherent value of social connectedness in supporting the learning process, and called into question the authenticity of virtual learning specifically with respect to assessments and assessment outcomes. online learning is technology-dependent learning because it is carried out in a virtual environment. in this study, first-year students felt more intimidated having to adapt to tertiary education via virtual means. they struggled to take responsibility for their learning, a concept relatively new to most of them because high school learners in south africa are generally monitored and held accountable for attendance and participation in classroom activities, unlike the reality at university even under non-pandemic conditions. azmat, ahmad and mater (2022) conducted a scoping review on the lack of social interaction in online classes during covid-19, and based on their results, suggested that a lack of social interaction impacted the effectiveness of online learning. while many students in this study had difficulty adapting to online learning, they found access to online lecture recordings, made available as part of the institution’s remote online learning strategy, advantageous because it afforded them the opportunity to learn at their own pace. however, majority sentiments towards online learning were that even in the context of a pandemic, virtual learning needs to be supported by contact learning in order to enhance the learning experience. in other parts of the world, the integration of information technology in education has been widely embraced, with blended learning increasingly becoming an integral component of education programmes (kanwal & rehman 2017). this may, in part, be the result of more widespread access to the kinds of technology that enables online learning. studies investigating barriers to online learning (chigeza & halbert 2014) reported internet connectivity, access to computers, technical issues and pedagogical approaches as significant challenges (jones & issroff 2005). along with these barriers, unplanned power and network outages, as was the experience of students in this study, also affect students’ ability to connect to online learning platforms. it goes without saying that internet availability or accessibility is essential for students to be able to engage with online learning. within the south african context, many of these resources are unreliable, which negatively affected students’ experiences during covid-19 as reported in this study. connectivity challenges were similarly identified as a barrier to learning in pakistan, where power cut is also a serious problem (kanwal & rehman 2017). the reality of remote online learning during the pandemic meant that social aspects that support learning in a traditional context were often absent. reports from the participants of this study confirm that learning is a social activity. where learning occurs in interaction with others the overall learning experience is enhanced, in keeping with the findings by hrastinski (2009). it is not surprising, therefore, that most participants in this study demonstrated a negative attitude towards online learning during covid-19, which in part, was because of their feeling isolated from their usual learning support network. this is further supported by the findings of baber (2021) that social interaction has a positive, significant impact on the effectiveness of online learning. covid-19 restrictions on physical interaction between students and their teachers therefore lead to a sense of isolation, with some participants indicating that they would better retain content if they were exposed to face-to-face lectures instead of online. dominant factors that create an enabling learning environment have been observed as educator’s presence in online settings, interaction between students and teachers, content taught and connections between online and offline activities, among others (moule, ward & lockyer 2010). one positive aspect of the covid-19 online learning experience was students’ flexibility while learning from home, such as being able to do the work in their own time because they were able to access lecture recordings anytime. regarding assessments, participants reported needing sufficient time to understand a question before attempting an answer: a reality they were not afforded during online assessments. when adequate time for taking assessments is compromised, as was the experience of participants in this study, students feel stressed and overwhelmed, similar to findings from other studies (suresh, priya & gayathri 2018). as a result, some participants in this study felt that online assessments were not a true reflection of their learning, suggesting that students did not fully understand the content taught online despite being able to achieve positive assessment results. this is against the principle of ‘assessment for learning’. additional findings from this study were that a lack of exposure to the clinical setting, as well as access to real patients as a result of lockdown regulations negatively impacted students’ clinical competency development as well as hands-on familiarity with clinical equipment. this is in keeping with the theory of online learning, which argues that this type of learning is most effective when supported by physical tools that are used to produce knowledge (hrastinski 2009). virtual simulation makes students feel as if they lack critical knowledge, resulting in a lack of confidence in the clinical environment (acosta et al. 2018). participants in this study were rightfully concerned that they did not get adequate exposure to real patients with genuine eye problems because of covid-19. similar findings emerged from a study by bączek et al. (2021), where other health science students in poland complained of a lack of interaction with patients, which negatively impacted skills development. despite differing preferences among participants in this study most of them reported that they would choose contact learning over online classes when given the choice, as it facilitates a more rich, authentic learning experience. conclusion the need for educational programmes to continue to deliver teaching and learning in the face of a global pandemic poses several challenges for lowand middle-income countries, which may not be ‘pandemic-ready’ in terms of being able to swiftly shift to online learning without compromising students’ learning experiences. the results of this study indicate that where students face challenges accessing the necessary learning technologies, this could have serious consequences for learning. to avoid any potential negative impact on learning and competency development in clinical programmes specifically, key resources for engaging in the ongoing educational project must be addressed. these include reliable and available access to the internet along with devices such as smartphones or computers. furthermore, where simulation software or virtual alternatives are available, these can be used to partially compensate for the lack of access to the clinical environment, which will support the development of essential clinical skills. furthermore, when designing teaching and assessment activities, the authenticity of students’ learning should be foremost in mind. on a positive note, online learning appears to support students taking personal responsibility for their learning, which is important for the personal and professional development of health professionals. while this study focused specifically on optometry students in south africa, the findings may also be relevant to other countries or health professions programmes in the developing world. acknowledgements competing interests the authors declare that they have no financial or personal relationships that may have inappropriately influenced them in writing this article. authors’ contributions d.g., t.p., n.m., n.v., s.m., u.m., z.m. and d.v.s. contributed to the research as well as the manuscript preparation, with d.v.s. supervising the seven co-authors in this honours research project. funding information this research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors. data availability the dataset is retained by the researchers with any unique identifiers removed for confidentiality purposes. disclaimer the views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any affiliated agency of the authors. references acosta, m., sisley, a., ross, j., brailsford, i., bhargava, a., jacobs, r. et al., 2018, ‘student acceptance of e-learning methods in the laboratory class in optometry’, plos one 13(12), e0209004. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0209004 alqurashi, e., 2016, ‘self-efficacy in online learning environments: a literature review’, contemporary issues in education research 9(1), 45–52. https://doi.org/10.19030/cier.v9i1.9549 azmat, m., ahmad, a. & mater, j., 2022, ‘lack of social interaction in online classes during covid-19’, journal of materials and environmental science 13(2), 185–196. azulay chertok, i., barnes, e. & gilleland, d., 2014, ‘academic integrity in the online learning environment for health sciences students’, nurse education today 34(10), 1324–1329. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nedt.2013.06.002 baber, h., 2021, ‘social interaction and effectiveness of the online learning – a moderating role of maintaining social distance during the pandemic covid-19’, asian education and development studies 11(1), 159–171. https://doi.org/10.1108/aeds-09-2020-0209 bączek, m., zagańczyk-bączek, m., szpringer, m., jaroszyński, a. & wożakowska-kapłon, b., 2021, ‘students’ perception of online learning during the covid-19 pandemic: a survey of polish medical students’, medicine 100(7), e24821. https://doi.org/10.1097/md.0000000000024821 capone, r., de caterina, p. & mazza, g., 2017, ‘blended learning, flipped classroom and virtual environment: challenges and opportunities for the 21st century students’, in proceedings of edulearn17 conference, iated, barcelona, july 03–05. p. 133–146. chigeza, p. & halbert, k., 2014, ‘navigating e-learning and blended learning for pre-service teachers: redesigning for engagement, access and efficiency’, australian journal of teacher education 39(11), 133–146. https://doi.org/10.14221/ajte.2014v39n11.8 costello, e., corcoran, m., barnett, j., birkmeier, m. & cohn, r., 2014, ‘information and communication technology to facilitate learning for students in the health professions: current uses, gaps and future directions’, online learning 18(4), 1–18. https://doi.org/10.24059/olj.v18i4.512 creswell, j.w., 2018, research design: qualitative, quantitative and mixed methods approaches, 4th edn., sage, thousand oaks, ca. erlingsson, c. & brysiewicz, p., 2017, ‘a hands-on guide to doing content analysis’, african journal of emergency medicine 7(3), 93–99. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.afjem.2017.08.001 frehywot, s., vovides, y., talib, z., mikhail, n., ross, h., wohltjen, h. et al., 2013, ‘e-learning in medical education in resource-constrained lowand middle-income countries’, human resources for health 4(11), 4. https://doi.org/10.1186/1478-4491-11-4 green, p., edwards, e.j. & tower, m., 2022, ‘core procedural skills competencies and the maintenance of procedural skills for medical students: a delphi study’, bmc medical education 22(1), 259. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12909-022-03323-9 hawthorne, k., prout, h., kinnersley, p. & houston, h., 2009, ‘evaluation of different delivery modes of an interactive e-learning programme for teaching cultural diversity’, patient education and counseling 74(1), 5–11. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pec.2008.07.056 hayat, a.a., shateri, k., amini, m. & shokrpour, n., 2020, ‘relationships between academic self-efficacy, learning-related emotions, and metacognitive learning strategies with academic performance in medical students: a structural equation model’, bmc medical education 20(76). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12909-020-01995-9 hrastinski, s., 2009, ‘a theory of online learning as online participation’, computers & education 52(1), 78–82. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2008.06.009 jones, a. & issroff, k., 2005, ‘learning technologies: affective and social issues in computer-supported collaborative learning’, computers & education 44(4), 395–408. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2004.04.004 kanwal, f. & rehman, m., 2017, ‘factors affecting e-learning adoption in developing countries – empirical evidence from pakistan’s higher education sector’, ieee access 5, 10968–10978. https://doi.org/10.1109/access.2017.2714379 koksal, i., 2020, ‘the rise of online learning’, forbes, viewed 05 november 2022, from https://www.forbes.com/sites/ilkerkoksal/2020/05/02/the-rise-of-online-learning/?sh=799c03f572f3. kreijns, k., kirschner, p.a. & jochems, w., 2003, ‘identifying the pitfalls for social interaction in computer-supported collaborative learning environments: a review of the research’, computers in human behavior 19(3), 335–353. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0747-5632(02)00057-2 lentell, h., 2014, ‘invasion of the moocs: the promise and perils of massive open and online courses’, open learning: the journal of open, distance and e-learning 29(3), 256–258. https://doi.org/10.1080/02680513.2015.1011113 moule, p., ward, r. & lockyer, l., 2010, ‘nursing and healthcare students’ experiences and use of e-learning in higher education’, journal of advanced nursing 66(12), 2785–2795. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2648.2010.05453.x neubauer, b.e., witkop, c.t. & varpio, l., 2019, ‘how phenomenology can help us learn from the experiences of others’, perspectives on medical education 8(2), 90–97. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40037-019-0509-2 nortvig, a., petersen, a., helsinghof, h. & brænder, b., 2020, ‘digital expansions of physical learning spaces in practice-based subjects – blended learning in art and craft & design in teacher education’, computers & education 159, 104020. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2020.104020 suresh, m., priya, v. & gayathri, r., 2018, ‘effect of e-learning on academic performance of undergraduate students’, drug invention today 10, 1797–1800. swan, k., 2005, ‘a constructivist model for thinking about learning online’, in j. bourne & j.c. moore (eds.), elements of quality online education: engaging communities, sloan-c, needham, ma. world council of optometry, n.d., wco’s concept of optometry, viewed 05 november 2022, from https://worldcouncilofoptometry.info/concept-of-optometry/. zalat, m., hamed, m. & bolbol, s., 2021, ‘the experiences, challenges, and acceptance of e-learning as a tool for teaching during the covid-19 pandemic among university medical staff’, plos one 16(3), e0248758. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0248758 abstract introduction academic integrity amidst a pandemic research design and methodology why is there dishonesty during (online) assessment? what will stop online cheating by students? fundamental changes needed to create and maintain academic integrity conclusion acknowledgements references footnote about the author(s) anne h. verhoef department of philosophy, faculty of humanities, north-west university, potchefstroom, south africa yolandi m. coetser department of philosophy, faculty of humanities, north-west university, potchefstroom, south africa citation verhoef, a.h. & coetser, y.m., 2021, ‘academic integrity of university students during emergency remote online assessment: an exploration of student voices’, transformation in higher education 6(0), a132. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v6i0.132 original research academic integrity of university students during emergency remote online assessment: an exploration of student voices anne h. verhoef, yolandi m. coetser received: 10 june 2021; accepted: 10 aug. 2021; published: 27 sept. 2021 copyright: © 2021. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract background: this article examines the phenomenon of academic integrity during the coronavirus disease 2019 (covid-19) pandemic, with particular reference to emergency online assessments in 2020. aim: it explores academic dishonesty, cheating and plagiarism of university students during emergency remote online assessment, from the perspective of south african students. setting and methodology: the authors explore the approaches of different universities worldwide, as well as the extant literature on the topic. an examination of the current literature related explicitly to the covid-19 online assessments reveals a dearth of engagement by researchers in the south african context. in order to address this lacuna, the authors rely on data generated from an institutional forum on academic dishonesty at a university in south africa. it focuses specifically on the voices of students presented during the forum, which explained both why students are dishonest and ways to curb dishonesty. results and conclusion: the data generated show whilst some students were dishonest due to pandemic-related issues (like lack of monitoring), there are also other reasons, such as lack of time management, feeling overwhelmed and stressed and struggling with technology that contributes to student dishonesty. students suggest that assessments be approached differently online to curb academic dishonesty. the paper concludes by providing some fundamental changes needed to address academic dishonesty. keywords: academic integrity; academic dishonesty; emergency remote online assessments; south africa; cheating; online assessments; university students; plagiarism; covid-19. introduction the question of academic integrity quickly gained prominence when global coronavirus disease 2019 (covid-19) restrictions forced higher education institutions to switch to online teaching, learning and assessment in 2020: [i]n contrast to experiences that are planned from the beginning and designed to be online, emergency remote teaching (ert) is a temporary shift of instructional delivery to an alternate delivery mode due to crisis circumstances. (hodges et al. 2020:9) at the height of lockdown measures in april 2020, almost 1.5 billion learners, or 83.8%, were affected by the pandemic and subsequent closure of educational institutions (gamage, de silva & gunawardhana 2020:1; unesco 2021). these lockdowns meant face-to-face teaching, sit-down assessments and examinations with invigilators had to be suspended. lecturers and students were unprepared for the rapid movement that had to be made, especially about online assessment. in most cases, no account had been taken of the requirements of online assessment when the assessments were designed. without invigilators on hand to detect any dishonesty, online assessments opened the door to new forms of academic cheating. at this point, when the pandemic has already entered is the second year, there is no evidence that online assessment is sufficiently reliable. despite lecturers being given training in online assessment by their universities and their making every effort to curb cheating, questions remain on the extent of cheating and the degree to which universities have successfully countered this problem. this article examines the phenomenon of academic integrity during the covid-19 pandemic. it focuses on online assessment and explores themes of academic dishonesty, cheating and plagiarism as related to online assessments during emergency remote online academic programmes. in order to do so, the approaches of different universities worldwide were surveyed, as well as the extant literature on the topic. an examination of the current literature related explicitly to the covid-19 and online assessments (bilen & matros 2020; eaton 2020; elzainy, el sadik & al abdulmonem 2020; gamage et al. 2020; jose 2021; ng 2021; reedy et al. 2021) points to a dearth of engagement in the south african context (ngqondi, maoneke & mauwa 2021). in order to address this particular deficiency, data were collected from an institutional forum on academic dishonesty at a university in south africa in 2020. by addressing a global phenomenon – that is academic dishonesty during emergency remote online assessments – from an underexplored geographical milieu – south africa – this article contributes to the existing body of literature. this article has four constituent parts. the first examines the phenomenon of academic integrity during a pandemic. the second outlines the research design. the third discusses the data under two headings: ‘why is there dishonesty during (online) assessment?’ and ‘what will stop students cheating during online assessment?’. finally, this article offers some concluding insights into the way forward. academic integrity amidst a pandemic before we continue, it is helpful to define academic dishonesty. whilst there are competing definitions, academic dishonesty may be said to be made up of several harmful behaviours in which students intentionally use unethical practices or deception in their academic work. these behaviours breach accepted standards and rules and often provide students with an unfair advantage over other students. some examples of academic dishonesty are cheating on assignments, plagiarism, providing fraudulent excuses for missed assessments or paying someone to complete an assessment on one’s behalf (marques, reis & gomes 2019:170). newton and lang (2016) note that: [b]espoke ‘custom essays’ are available from hundreds of companies, and many online contract employment sites have sections for ‘academic writing’. ‘essay mills’ may contain many thousands of prewritten assignments, available for some form of fee. (p. 249) similar points are made by wallace and newton (2014) and owings and nelson (2014). it is not only academic dishonesty that warrants definition but also the opposite: academic integrity. gamage et al. (2020:2) maintain that academic integrity is a commitment to upholding six fundamental values: ‘honesty, trust, fairness, respect, responsibility and courage’. this is reiterated by the international center for academic integrity (icai), which defines academic integrity as ‘a commitment to six fundamental values: honesty, trust, fairness, respect, responsibility, and courage’. the icai (2021) argues that ‘[b]y embracing these fundamental values, instructors, students, staff, and administrators create effective scholarly communities where integrity is a touchstone’ (p. 4). in its policy on academic integrity, the north-west university defines academic integrity as: [t]he adherence to ethics of honest scholarship and the ability to work independently; also to give credit to the ideas of others and the re-use of one’s own previous work, and the submission of original research products for assessment, examination and review. (nwu policy on academic integrity 2018:4) what becomes apparent from these definitions is that integrity is the cornerstone of the quality of academic activity – in the case of students and lecturers. whilst lecturers need to complete their duties with responsibility, so too the students need to be honest when submitting assignments. if lecturers cannot trust their students’ submissions, their workload is increased. they have to add being a private investigator to their role as an evaluator of the student’s work. traditionally, often venue-based assessment opportunities hold students to a certain degree of honesty and integrity. being in a controlled environment, having vigilant invigilators on duty and having no recourse to notes, phones or laptops make it difficult for students to cheat. in an online assessment environment, especially one to which a rapid move was made, the possibility of dishonesty increases. students can (and probably do) use their books, browse the internet or consult with friends during tests. assignments and tests can be outsourced to senior students or other experts. students are able to send screenshots or images of test questions via text messages, and acquire answers or work with other students to find answers for test or examination questions that were designed to be taken individually. plagiarism, long a problem with regard to written assignments, has now become a matter of concern during online examinations. these increased opportunities for dishonesty place a heavy burden on lecturers, who might not know how to identify dishonesty in assessments or, more worryingly, how to counter attempts at dishonesty. there is also the matter of design. the early online assessments, which were designed for traditional face-to-face environments, were often quite ineptly adapted for the online environment. undoubtedly, the possibility of being dishonest and cheating increased when an online assessment was introduced. the question is, however, whether the level of academic dishonesty has actually increased. it would be extremely difficult to answer this question accurately. part of the reason is that there are numerous possible ways for students to be dishonest. if we were to ask the students, they are likely to be reluctant to admit their dishonest behaviour for fear of repercussions. given that there are millions of students worldwide, the scope of such an empirical investigation would be daunting. some research points to evidence of the advent of a particular type of academic dishonesty since march 2020, when lockdowns were implemented worldwide. sarah eaton of the university of calgary in canada found that there was aggressive marketing of ‘commercial file-sharing and contract cheating companies during the pandemic’, raising significant concerns about academic integrity (eaton 2020:82). this is echoed in the report by the quality assurance agency (qaa) in the united kingdom that found that ‘[t]he covid-19 pandemic has seen essay mills target students as they seek to take advantage of the uncertainty and anxiety that might arise as a consequence’ (qaa 2020:2). however, eaton (2020) also points to a robust body of literature that indicates that ‘contrary to popular myths, there is actually less academic misconduct in online courses compared with face-to-face delivery’ and that academic misconduct is higher during face-to-face classes (p. 81). the literature she cites was written well before the covid-19 pandemic and so does not take account of the emergency remote learning situation of 2020. eaton (2020:81) notes that in these studies, the ‘students enrolled in online courses were typically older than their face-to-face counterparts’. she cites studies that have shown that academic misconduct decreases as students mature. she also refers to the emergency remote online teaching of 2020 when all students were online. before discussing this, she provides a useful distinction between online learning and emergency remote learning (eaton 2020): [w]hen classes rapidly transitioned from face-to-face to alternate delivery during the coronavirus pandemic, the nature of teaching and learning online was unlike what those with experience with e-learning knew it to be. the technological tools used for delivery may have been the same, but suddenly we had thousands of students and educators working in online environments who had little to no training, experience, or in some cases, willingness. let’s be clear: emergency remote learning is not the same thing as online learning. in the former, panic underpins a rapid response to ensure learning continuity in an uncertain environment. (p. 81) in their article on ‘safeguarding academic integrity’, specifically focused on online delivery and assessment during covid-19, gamage et al. (2020), interestingly enough, do not cite any research data on dishonesty, perhaps again because it is so difficult to measure dishonesty and cheating. they do, however, point out that ‘assessment restrictions are harder to enforce remotely’ (gamage et al. 2020:10). they also refer to a study by the irish universities association (iua) (2020) on whether online students cheat, which states: [r]esearch indicates that online students are no more likely to cheat on assessments than campus-based students. this is because the same opportunities exist for cheating on homework, take-home assignments, essays, group work, etc. … however, the exception to this might be in exams, where students are used to being monitored under exam conditions. students are more likely to cheat when they are under pressure, when they have opportunity and when it is unlikely that there will be consequences, if caught. (p. 1) a cross-sectional study in medical science faculties at the jordan university of science and technology indicated that students do not prefer e-exams because examination ‘dishonesty/misconduct appears as one of the major challenges with remote e-exams’ (elsalem et al. 2021:326) during the covid-19 pandemic. although it is challenging (and perhaps even impossible) to provide convincing empirical evidence that dishonesty and cheating have increased because of online teaching and assessment (especially with covid-19), it is clear that the ‘potential for a higher incidence of academic dishonesty’ (harmon & lambrinos 2008:123) in online courses exists. a question that arises from this conclusion concerns the motivation behind instances of academic dishonesty. as already indicated, academic dishonesty is not a new phenomenon. in 2010, for example, findings ‘revealed most students cheat occasionally, but only a small minority are flagrant cheaters; and these flagrant cheaters are five times more likely to be cheating via contemporary methods’ (witherspoon, maldonado & lacey 2010:2). online assessment may have increased the level of dishonesty and cheating. perhaps we need to ask a different question. a study by donald mccabe and the icai in 2012 showed that 68% of undergraduate students and 43% of graduate students admitted to cheating during written tests (icai 2012; rodchua 2017:168). the statistics might be higher now with the advent of the widespread use of online assessment, but the real question is why do these students cheat, and how can it be fundamentally changed? before attempts are made to curb the dishonest behaviour of students, the reasons for cheating need to be better understood. three things seem clear. the first is that much of the literature surrounding the covid-19 pandemic and online assessments emanates from the global north. there is a dearth of literature from the global south in general; south africa, more specifically, does not seem to be part of this critical debate. although academic dishonesty might not be a new phenomenon, there seems to have been a heightened reason for concern during the emergency remote online teaching and assessment during the 2020 academic year in one site. this unique iteration necessitates a fresh look at this phenomenon, considering the distinctive considerations of this particular academic year. the following section outlines the particular research design we employed to examine the phenomenon of academic integrity during online assessments. finally, the jury is still out on whether academic dishonesty has, in fact, increased during the emergency remote online learning period of 2020. whilst some of the above texts suggest that there might have been an increase, others indicate that there has not. this lack of clarity suggests that the topic of academic integrity warrants further investigation. in what follows, we unpack the methodology used in this article. research design and methodology at the beginning of this article, we stated that this article examines the phenomenon of academic integrity during the covid-19 pandemic, focusing specifically on online assessments. put differently, this paper explores themes of academic dishonesty, cheating and plagiarism as related to online assessments during emergency remote online teaching. as dishonesty is challenging to quantify and measure, this research question lent itself to qualitative research design. as the research focuses on a specific phenomenon, an interpretivist paradigm was chosen. an interpretivist paradigm is post-positivist, in that it rejects ‘the belief that human behaviour is governed by general, universal laws and characterised by underlying regularities’ (cohen et al. 2018:17). interpretivism places an emphasis on subjective meaning-making, holding the view that ‘the social world can only be understood from the standpoint of the individuals who are part of the ongoing action being investigated’ (cohen et al. 2018:17). the methodology that we used is phenomenology. as cohen et al. (2018:20–21) say, phenomenology holds that subjective consciousness has primary importance, that immediate experiences ought to be documented and described, that actions and interactions have social and cultural situatedness and that one can gain direct knowledge through a type of reflection. the phenomenological approach is appropriate, as the students’ immediate experience and subjective awareness about academic dishonesty during the emergency online assessment are of crucial importance. direct knowledge of academic dishonesty is gained through the engagement with the students’ reflection on their experience during this time. sampling and data generation data for this paper were generated from a forum held at a south african university on 27 may 2021 on academic dishonesty and cheating. the forum was recorded, an existing video was used (available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjntoxqpjao) to generate data. this particular video was used because to our’ knowledge, this forum is the only one in south africa that specifically addresses the issue of academic dishonesty during the rapid transition to online learning. this means that this forum represents a valuable source of information to address the dearth of south african perspectives. within this forum, a variety of perspectives were presented – from students to lecturers to management. we used purposive sampling for the research reported in this article. purposive sampling does not purport to offer a representative sample, ‘but rather to hone in on particular phenomena and/or processes’ (robinson 2014). of particular interest for this article was students’ perspectives. during this event, the voices of 10 anonymised students were heard. these were undergraduate students from all campuses and all faculties within the university, but because of their anonymity, specific demographic information is not available. the participants do not necessarily provide a representative sample of the students at this institution, but nevertheless represents a sufficient sample for the purposes of this study. it is appropriate to focus largely on the students’ perspectives within a phenomenological framework. as students have unique insights into the phenomenon at hand, their immediate experiences and subjective consciousness are invaluable sources of information. as the students were at no point identified during the forum, their anonymity is ensured. indeed, the student identities are not even known to the authors of this article. moreover, validity was achieved by both descriptive validity (i.e. ‘the factual accuracy of the account’ [cohen et al. 2018:248]) and interpretive validity (i.e. ‘the ability of the research to catch the meaning, interpretations, terms and intentions … [of] the participants themselves, in their terms’ [cohen et al. 2018:248]). furthermore, trustworthiness was achieved by the confirmability of the data as the video is publicly available and so satisfies the ‘degree to which the findings of the research study could be confirmed by other researchers’ (korsten & moser 2018:121). data analysis this paper explores a phenomenon from a south african perspective, namely academic integrity, during online assessments. it is also important to note that, at this stage, this research is exploratory. as cohen et al. (2018:18) say, within an interpretive paradigm, the ‘research […] is exploratory in nature’ and ‘theory is emergent and arises from particular situations’. as qualitative data analysis centres on ‘understanding, explaining and interpreting the phenomena in question’, it is often ‘heavy on interpretation’ (cohen et al. 2018:643). the following steps were followed to analyse data from this video: step 1: the video was used to generate transcripts in order to turn the audio-visual elements into the written word. the transcripts were meticulously edited to ensure accuracy. each of the student voices was transcribed and saved in a separate file. step 2: transcripts were uploaded to atlas.ti to facilitate the coding of the transcripts. step 3: open coding was used to code the transcripts. cohen et al. (2018) explain the process of coding as creating small units out of larger pieces of texts by ascribing a ‘category label to a piece of data, decided in advance or in response to the data that have been collected’ (p. 668). step 4: once the initial coding process had been completed, ‘groups’ or ‘networks’ were created with similar themes. two themes were created: ‘reasons for cheating’ and ‘prevention of cheating’. the coding thus followed a deductive analysis – the data were generated and groups were created following a starting point: namely, the two questions posed to the students. these two questions then served as an organising framework for the coding process (azungah 2018:391). in what follows, the findings and the related literature are discussed. why is there dishonesty during (online) assessment? students were asked two questions. the first question was ‘why do students cheat more during online teaching and assessments?’ what became evident is that there are a variety of reasons why students choose to be dishonest. the following reasons emerged most strongly. availability of content online student 4 said, ‘and another point is that students have access to quick answers’, as well as: ‘or on the internet some way where a student can copy and paste and find their own answer. so technology has made learning much more convenient than a traditional way would have been in a normal circumstance.’ student 8 said lecturers should ask less common questions ‘because [the answers to common questions] is accessible from the internet.’ students feel overwhelmed and stressed student 1 said: ‘especially in the cases of the final years, there’s so much pressure already on them to finish the module, get accepted into honours, get work, etc. that when they don’t understand the work, they tend to ask friends for help, and this can often lead to cheating.’ this was reiterated by student 2 who said that: ‘when it comes to online assessments and classes, students feel very overwhelmed and stressed and they want to stay on top of the coursework. so by cheating, it may alleviate this pressure.’ similarly, student 4 said: ‘i think also all of these things that would normally be shown to cheat and to plagiarise is the fact that there’s so much pressure and stress’. student 5 related stress to poor time management, explaining that ‘[students] get overwhelmed because now they have to work, now they have to write a test and they still learning to go through all the unit’s study material’. these perspectives are echoed in the literature, where stress is highlighted as one of the main reasons for cheating (eaton 2020; gamage et al. 2020; mccabe 2016). when students are under extreme stress, for example, during examinations, they are more likely to make poor choices that can lead to academic misconduct (eaton 2020:82). pandemic-related issues two students identified the covid-19 pandemic as a reason for dishonesty. student 2 highlighted the mental health issues, saying that ‘covid has had such an impact on not only just the student but any person’s mental health and stress levels’. student 10 had a different opinion on the negative mental effect of covid: ‘the global pandemic has forced students to take assignments, quizzes and tests from the comfort of their homes and rooms.’ the pandemic is a unique phenomenon, as it placed almost every student worldwide under pressure. the whole world has changed radically since covid-19. one effect on university life is students’ (and that of lecturers) stress level has increased. this is a variable that is difficult to gauge. apart from the general stress of life during a pandemic, and potential illness and suffering that result from the pandemic, students remain under pressure to perform academically. the pandemic has raised the unemployment rate, so students have to compete even harder with one other (and peers from other universities) for jobs or scholarship opportunities. they are thus under immense pressure ‘due to competitiveness in the job market’ and ‘massification and commercialisation of higher education’ (gamage et al. 2020:15). lack of monitoring many students agreed that the lack of monitoring was a significant contributor to academic dishonesty, as student 2’s comment illustrates: ‘there’s no actual monitoring that happens. there’s no exam sitting, or anything like that, that can prevent them from cheating. and they obviously know this. so, they will take the opportunity to try and get above the coursework, but in a negative way.’ student 3 took a similar line: ‘since everything is the online, and given that students are in an isolated system, students get that idea that no one is watching them, and that they think that it is easier to get away with cheating.’ both student 4 and student 5 agreed saying: ‘with online learning there isn’t much of onsite facilitation or supervision when assessment quizzes or assignments are handed over, as in, in a normal circumstance face to face contact session will have some side supervision at all times. and that would be, for instance, an invigilator being paid for the duration of the time students have to write either an exam or a semester test.’ student 5 said: ‘i think it’s also so much easier for students to cheat on an online platform as no one is monitoring the situation and ensuring that they don’t use any resources for writing their test.’ the lack of monitoring was highlighted by student 10: ‘when a student is alone in their room completing a quiz, assignment or test, nothing is stopping them from referring back to the slides, textbook content and extra study material. there is no authority figure preventing it from happening.’ lack of monitoring was an ‘invitation to cheat’ long before the pandemic. in a particular empirical study on online cheating, written well before the pandemic in 2008, ‘are online exams an invitation to cheat?’, harmon and lambrinos (2008) found that ‘cheating was taking place when the exams were not proctored’ (p. 116). as atoum et al. (2017) point out: when exams are administered in a conventional and proctored classroom environment, the students are monitored by a human proctor throughout the exam. in contrast, there is no convenient way to provide human proctors in online exams. (p. 1) another reason for a potential increase in cheating, at least during the covid-19 pandemic, is the reality that assessments were not designed for online purposes. emergency remote learning – especially with regard to assessments – was not designed from the beginning in the same way as online learning is designed and implemented. assessments could not be appropriately adjusted in time, and this created an opportunity for cheating. in general, the academic staff concerned had created tests, quizzes and examinations to be invigilated. when the situation made online assessment mandatory, there was not enough time to alter the assessments to ones that did not need proctoring. in short, there was no provision for ensuring that students would not be able to cheat during these assessment opportunities. lack of time management some students acknowledged that lack of time management leads to academic dishonesty. student 3 said: ‘some students are unable to manage their time effectively and cannot cope with online learning. and therefore, workload becomes more in a short period, where [for] example some may realise that the test is due within 2 hours and therefore copying from friends becomes the only option because they panic and obviously do not want to lose the marks.’ student 5 agreed: ‘first of all, i think [students cheat] because students are not making time for their studies and to work through all the new week’s study materials.’ this student went on to say: ‘[t]hey get overwhelmed because now they have to work, now they have to write a test and they still learning to go through all the unit’s study material. and obviously, they still want good grades. so cheating is seen as the only option.’ the literature confirms that a lack of time to complete assessments is a common driver of dishonest behaviour (brimble 2016). lecturers recycling questions and allowing too much time for assessments several responses also pointed to lecturers’ assessment practices, especially ‘recycling’ assessments year after year. student 4 said that students know that: ‘lecturers recycle material … students are comfortable in the fact that lecturers will not necessarily pull a strange question out of nowhere. but somehow, we’ll have the question asked in past papers.’ they said that students ‘cheat the system’ because ‘material is recycled. and there’s so much of replicas of questions with quizzes and assignments that often have been done before and lecturers still ask similar questions.’ student 8 said that lecturers should ‘go an extra mile and try to eradicate the repeating methods of asking questions.’ eaton (2020) echoes this sentiment. she says one of the biggest challenges online teaching presents is: [c]olleagues who continue to resist adapting their assessment practices to ones that are more appropriate for online learning and persist in their belief that students are the only ones responsible for maintaining academic integrity. (p. 83) another student pointed to the timing of online tests. student 1 said that: ‘another reason can be that students all wrote at different times, so one, they can send the questions to others and two, there’s no way to view the students themselves actually writing the test cases.’ academic inexperience academic inexperience seems to be a telling reason why students resort to dishonesty. student 1 acknowledged that: ‘one of the reasons according to my point of view is that the students struggled to comprehend and understand the work on their own. seeing that we mostly mean to make use of self study. students need to teach themselves work and try to understand it.’ academic inexperience has been a challenge as long before online teaching. in their research at rhodes university in south africa, hendricks and quinn found that students plagiarise because they struggle to integrate the ideas taken from the literature with their own ideas. they observe that students have difficulties ‘using their own words and distinguishing different voices in writing’ (hendricks & quinn 2000:1). lecturers need to offer assistance at the draft stage of the writing process to enable students to learn how knowledge is constructed. struggling with technology finally, student 4 also identified technological struggles as a reason that students cheat. the participant said that: ‘[s]tudents don’t need to acquaint themselves with the fundamentals of knowing how to use online learning itself knowing how to use the internet, knowing how to use a folder, for example, excel, therefore they would much rather opt for cheating the system [than getting the hang] of using technology.’ remote delivery has ‘restricted student access to information and support’ (gamage et al. 2020:10). students in financially difficult positions struggle to buy data (although universities provided some data [du preez & le grange 2020]), in addition to not having access to personal computing devices like a laptop or a desktop computer. students, therefore, often rely on the campus wi-fi and computer laboratories to access learning management systems so they can do assessments. during the pandemic, these students do not have access to these support structures. at the same time, the frequent interruption of power supply (due to load shedding and cable theft) further limits students’ access to online learning opportunities. this lack of access has led to a widening of the knowledge gap because the ‘personhood and context of the student (user of technology) is ignored’ (du toit & verhoef 2018:6). with the exclusive use of online learning and assessment, this becomes an even bigger challenge, which ‘could eventually lead students to engage in acts of academic misconduct’ (gamage et al. 2020:10). what will stop online cheating by students? the second question that was asked was ‘what will stop online cheating by students’? the response to this question is valuable as it gives academic institutions and staff some insight, not only into the reasons why students might be dishonest but also into how to address it. the findings will be presented along with literature about how universities have tried to curb dishonesty. much of the discussion here focuses on assessment practices. lecturers should ask different types of questions many students made the suggestion that lecturers should change their assessment practices. in particular, they should ask different types of questions. student 6 recommended that: ‘lecturers should set up questions that need deep understanding and should be more open minded, that is, answers to this question should not be easily found by website or google.’ in a similar vein, student 8 said that: ‘allowing the students to apply their knowledge in knowledge-based questions in that way, everyone is able to apply their mind and give their point of view unlike a series of multiple-choice questions, true, false, match column a or b. this is a repetitive line of work, which does not for me, stimulate or enhance, or even equip a student the way in which it should … so lecturers would need to come up with a way in which they structure questions in which they extract more information from learners, rather than asking common questions.’ student 9 also supported the position that cheating could be stopped if the type of assessment used changed: ‘i think we are using a more question and answer based approach, it can be changed to more application type of assessments, students will receive a test which they should download, complete and submit again, that has very little time amount. the questions asked can also be more scenario and application based, and not only knowledge based.’ assessments need to be more appropriate for the online learning environment. at north-west university, for example, the nwu working group1 tried to counter the problem of dishonesty during and after the pandemic by giving a greater number of assessments and making them smaller assessments – so-called ‘continuous assessment.’ the students had to do all the tests, and the tests were designed to be part of the learning experience. other assessment methods were introduced, like digital storytelling, online presentations, videos and memes. questions were changed to include more case studies and to focus more on insight and application and less on content representation. these changes were in line with other universities’ diverse, innovative assessment practices and the recommendations in the relevant literature and research. these include more reflective assessments, ‘student conferences as assessments’ (gamage et al. 2020:7), group reports, presentation of posters, podcasts and videos, presentations to a group of industry specialists (e.g. in the case of engineering students), legal advice in a virtual law clinic (law students), recording of ‘hands-on experiments and virtual labs’ (asgari et al. 2020:8), oral examinations, ‘using synthesis questions, peer grading’ (mckenzie 2020:23), preparing ‘different questions to different students’ (guangul et al. 2020:1) and ‘giving students less time but simpler questions on tests’ (bilen & matros 2020:1). the idea is to reduce ‘motivation to cheat by ensuring your assessment is meaningful and authentic’ (iua 2020:1). practical suggestions students also offered some practical suggestions to prevent dishonesty. specifically, they suggested implementing group work, randomising assessment questions and imposing stricter time limits as ways to reduce online dishonesty. student 7 said that group work could reduce dishonesty as: ‘students often learn better if they are collaborating with each other. and this is at least one way to ensure that cheating isn’t happening because they are working together any way to the same goal. and they will each receive the same mark. so this would actually encourage them to put their best foot forward and work hard.’ students 6 and 7 offered advice on randomising questions. student 6 suggested ‘questions should be set randomly. that is, this question should not be the same for everyone.’ similarly, student 7 said that: ‘instead of having the same questions on assignments, or online activities or assessments, you can make use of question pools. so the question pool will have multiple different questions related to the topic.’ another suggestion was about the timing of tests. in student 6’s view: ‘online tests should open and close at the same time. for example, if a lecturer sets up a 20 mark test for 30 min, it should open, for example, 2:30 and close at 3 o’clock that very same day. in this way, students cannot share questions and answers or copy each other.’ proctoring proctoring has a specific meaning in the online context. invigilation in the united kingdom ‘is known as “proctoring” in the united states, which is why remote invigilation is also known as “online invigilation,” “online proctoring” or “remote online proctoring”’ (gamage et al. 2020:10). online invigilation takes place from any place through the internet, with invigilators using their computers. some students suggested implementing some sort of online supervision to curb dishonesty. student 9 suggested that when taking a test: ‘you’re not allowed over any other tabs or browsers, you’re not allowed to minimise google and open another file … so if you’re writing a test, the lecturer can get an alert that you use google or another tab or you opened another document.’ this was echoed by student 10 who said: ‘maybe that all students must write a course assignment or test at the same time with the computer cameras on. this way they [sic] can be exam supervisors [invigilators] present to monitor all students.’ to counter the lack of monitoring, universities have introduced various measures, such as turnitin, proctoring and adjusted assessments. however, online proctoring faces challenges, such as privacy concerns. according to pierce (2020), the: [u]niversity of california santa barbara faculty association board wrote a letter to campus administrators arguing that the use of proctoru ‘violates our students’ rights to privacy’, turning the university into a ‘surveillance tool.’ concerns have also been raised about protecting students’ dignity and negatively affecting students ‘with disabilities, students with children, and other groups who already face barriers in higher education’ (rose 2020). together with assessment changes, universities have begun to work more creatively and actively towards assessment security. these methods include the use of software to track dishonesty and plagiarism (turnitin, ithenticate), setting ‘strict assessment time limits’ (ng 2020:610), not allowing backtracking, presenting questions one at a time and using technology for student verification. one of the strategies is to use proctoring software and services to secure online assessments. however, it is not as straightforward as that. the use and success of proctoring are contested. harmon and lambrinos (2008), for example, argue: the potential for a higher incidence of academic dishonesty in online courses than in face-to-face courses has been much discussed, and many authors have commented on the dearth of empirical evidence … our results suggest that online exams administered in a proctored environment might equalise the incidence of academic dishonesty between online courses and face-to-face courses. (p. 123) however, this positive evaluation of proctoring is not shared by all. there are a number of criticisms that could be levelled against it. the first is that proctoring can be costly depending on the specific equipment and software used. the second is that proctoring develops and encourages a policing culture. some recommend, therefore, that proctoring through cameras and microphones should be avoided (asgari et al. 2020:7). miller (2020:1) notes that whilst proctoring might be effective, it strikes me as a crude approach, relying as it does on active surveillance, which creates an overt atmosphere of distrust. naturally enough, there is also privacy concerns, as well as some anecdotal evidence that remote proctoring technology encodes racial biases. a further critique against proctoring is that it might be counter-productive. in the policing environment it creates, students find more ingenious ways to cheat the system. a further objection is that it transforms the role of lecturers from academics, mentors or teachers to that of detectives – trying to catch students in the act of cheating instead of teaching and helping them. this creates a highly distrustful environment where the ‘academic staff may run into the risk of “categorising” all students as “criminals”’ (gamage et al. 2020:4). therefore, the environment created by the use of online proctoring is not productive for student development. the same arguments also apply to the use of plagiarism (text-matching) detecting tools like turnitin. mphahlele and mckenna (2019) persuasively argue that text-matching software, like turnitin, is ‘misunderstood to be predominantly a plagiarism detecting tool for policing purposes, ignoring its educational potential for student development’ (p. 1). what became evident from this discussion is that students felt that lecturers carry some of the responsibility for curbing academic dishonesty. some students felt that the onus was on the lecturer to set assessments that would prevent cheating. others felt that students should be given less time to complete assessments, which would, in turn, reduce the time they have to find ways to be dishonest. students said that online tests should be set up so that each student gets a different set of questions, less time should be given to complete the assessment, and online proctoring software should be used to discourage cheating. the challenges posed by using online proctoring and other dishonesty detection tools emphasise the need for fundamental change and rethinking strategies to address dishonesty and cheating more constructively. in our view, more nuanced pedagogical interventions are needed. in the next section, some recommendations are explored in the light of the above discussion. fundamental changes needed to create and maintain academic integrity the lack of academic integrity in the digital domain, especially in the covid-19 context, is not something that can be resolved with ‘quick fix’ answers. a more comprehensive, fundamental and sustainable approach is needed – one that is pedagogically nuanced and constructive. fortunately, the literature provides a wealth of resources that assist in developing this approach. we will highlight some of these and propose some ideas of our own in this section. these address the issues raised by students and the shortcomings of existing attempts by universities to address these. understanding academic integrity a complex but essential first step is to define academic integrity and what counts as academic dishonesty and cheating. it is clear from the above discussion that academic integrity should be understood as a commitment to certain values by both students and lecturers. prohibiting behaviours will run counter to the principles of academic integrity. deep commitment to academic integrity at universities whose staff and students have diverse cultural backgrounds, as in south africa, will require care, effective communication and consensus. all of this will need to start from a relationship of trust. a relationship of trust when there had to be a sudden change to online assessments after the outbreak of the covid-19 pandemic, the university of calgary decided to ‘start from a place of trust’ (eaton 2020:82) and prioritise people’s fears, uncertainty and health at their institution. the message was clear that relationships, compassion and caring for each other – students and staff – came first, and thereafter, academic integrity issues could be addressed. mutual trust is a prerequisite for academic integrity. students have to be able to trust the staff to set fair assessments and to grade fairly, whilst the staff have to be able to trust students not to cheat or plagiarise. academic integrity protects both parties, and it requires a relationship of trust. this means lecturers need to recognise that students are not ‘criminals’, but partners in establishing an environment of academic integrity. it asks lecturers to be willing to ‘recognise that students do not deliberately engage in academic misconduct’ (gamage et al. 2020:3) but often do not understand plagiarism or the software. this recognition has implications for mentorship and development. however, building and maintaining a personal relationship with students – especially one built on trust – become extremely difficult during online teaching and learning. in the nwu working group, lecturers reported that the lack of physical or face-to-face contact (a bodily presence within the same space) with students makes the establishment of personal relationships extremely difficult. lecturers find it demotivating to engage only with names on computer screens and have little or no chance of getting to know the persons behind the name. face-to-face class discussions and debates and commitantly the experience of the human side of the academy (humour, emotion, verbal articulation, tone of voice, etc.) are generally absent in the online environment. this has a detrimental effect on personal relationships and the building of trust. there can be no doubt that live interaction is a crucial element in understanding the context and needs of the people involved (du toit & verhoef 2018:1). the challenge to lecturers and students who have to operate in an online environment is to commit to trusting each other despite being reduced to a black square in the online environment. creating opportunities to develop values and ethics other ways of building a joint commitment towards values that can enhance academic integrity have to be found. as mentioned above, this requires a team effort, ‘a commitment not only from students but also from everyone involved in higher education’ (gamage et al. 2020:3). not only should there be a clear academic integrity policy in place at universities, but there should also be opportunities for discussion and education on its vital role. in this regard, the nwu working group identified the ‘understanding the world (utw)’ – modules to fulfil a specific role at the north-west university. the utw modules are compulsory for all students and aim to address the development of the nwu’s graduate attributes as described in the university’s teaching and learning strategy: [t]he university aims to educate graduates who will become lifelong learners and independent thinkers, able to manage knowledge creatively and effectively, exercise sound ethical judgement, and appreciate and value diversity in all its forms, respecting the diverse socio-economic and cultural contexts, natural environments, and workplaces. (nwu tl strategy 2020:16) these attributes complement the values that are part of academic integrity, which uniquely positions the utw modules to play an integral role in it. thus, the focus on developing an understanding, integration and commitment to certain values is crucial to developing values and ethics. one of the aims of these utw modules is to help students to be critical of their ethical perspectives and to develop an openness to growth in this area. as mentioned earlier, students have their own personal moral philosophy or set of ethical guidelines. the utw modules, with their focus on developing graduateness, offer students some insights into their own moral perspectives and the way in which they make moral decisions. these modules deal with ethical issues and assist students in understanding why academic dishonesty is wrong and why academic integrity is a worthy ideal. one example is the importance of developing, promoting and committing to a code of honour. miller (2020) states, for example, that: [h]onour pledges not only are surprisingly effective in curbing cheating; they also promote honesty. students who abide by them refrain from cheating not because they can’t, but because they choose not to. (p. 1) the challenge is, according to miller, to extend the impact of an honour code virtually as well. continue to implement best practices developing a more fundamental change at universities in terms of academic integrity is not a once-off activity. it is a ‘continuous process that needs to be sustained through regular initiatives’ (gamage et al. 2020:14). with constantly developing technology and changing student generations, constant work and communication are needed to maintain an environment of academic integrity. some of the best practices in this regard have already been identified (before the emergency remote learning associated with covid-19) and should be implemented continuously to have an impact. universities need a proper system in place that monitors academic integrity because the reason for the ‘poor implementation of academic integrity policy is that there is no proper system in place with officers specially dedicated to execute such a policy’ (gamage et al. 2020:13). some of the best practices at other higher education institutions, such as those at universities australia (ua), the iua and the icai, can be usefully adopted. the iua’s guidelines are worth summarising here because they are in line with the main focus of this article. it lists five principles, namely: the primacy of institutional autonomy. universities have to take responsibility for ensuring academic integrity. everyone at the university is responsible for maintaining academic integrity. a whole university approach is needed for minimising academic misconduct. such a holistic approach combines (1) an educative focus on academic integrity policy dissemination, (2) a robust and fair process for dealing with breaches and (3) using data from reporting to improve teaching and learning. consistent and effective institutional policies and practices that focus on (1) educative measures, (2) different types of policy breach, (3) applicable penalties and (4) clear processes for investigating breaches. students should be engaged and empowered so they are as knowledgeable as possible about the nature of academic integrity decisions and the possible consequences (ua 2017:6–7). these principles sketch the broader framework in which more detailed and pragmatic practices can be developed. this includes those from iua, for instance, that are practicable and implementable. a serious threat to fight on a global scale the wide availability of contract cheating services has become an overwhelming threat or ‘real ongoing challenge’ (gamage et al. 2020:12) to online academic integrity since covid-19 lockdowns. gamage et al. (2020) note that contract cheating websites: [p]rovide the option of doing the assessment in 2–3 h; the student will pay more but there is no detection using the existing tools. they are sophisticated contract cheating services. (p. 12) the qaa unpacked the issue of contract cheating and concluded that the development of organisation-wide detection methods and resources and support for staff is paramount to counter contract cheating (qaa 2020:8). this report also stressed the importance of positive approaches, such as emphasising academic integrity, rather than just focusing on censure (qaa 2020:18). moreover, more fundamental changes should be sought, as argued in this article, to create an academic environment that prizes honesty and integrity. conclusion protecting academic integrity has been one of the main challenges during the covid-19 pandemic as all learning and assessments moved to online platforms. it became easier to be dishonest, cheat and plagiarise in this context. it is nearly impossible to counter this with policing and surveillance methods. even with the best technology and software available, students have opportunities to cheat. universities should rather follow a more fundamental approach to ensuring an honest online academic environment. this approach is, of course, not only needed for online learning during covid-19 but also after the pandemic. online teaching and assessment will probably play a significant role in higher education in the future, and solutions need to be found for the long term. fortunately, there are sound pedagogical guidelines to follow, as indicated in this article. however, the challenge of countering phenomena such as the growing global contract cheating business remains. students who choose to make a commitment to academic integrity (as, for example, through honour pledges) play a vital role in this context. this article has explored how different universities worldwide approach the challenges of academic integrity in an online environment to identify ways of transforming the higher education landscape to keep academic integrity intact. the review of the literature on covid-19 and online assessments revealed a dearth of engagement with this issue in the south african context. in order to address this particular deficiency, data were generated by an institutional forum on academic dishonesty at university in south africa in 2020. these data, brought into conversation with the best practices at international universities and the current literature on the topic, confirmed the need to address academic dishonesty during emergency remote online assessments. it seems that the way to address this issue lies in ‘international’ best practice combined with practicable strategies that take account of the unique needs in south africa. our findings and recommendations can be summarised as follows: assessments should be designed to meet the needs of online learning. this means that lecturers have to shoulder their responsibility in this regard. they cannot merely shift the responsibility for maintaining academic integrity onto the students. for example, lecturers should be well informed on the availability of online content that students could use to answer assessment questions and assignments. they will also need to develop different types of questions or strategies that enhance learning in this context. lecturers should bear in mind the huge stress that the covid-19 pandemic is causing when they deal with issues related to academic integrity. they cannot just assume that students are engaging in deliberate academic honesty – especially when they are under tremendous pressure. students are stressed and overwhelmed by the sudden change to only online learning and assessments, and sensitive guidance is necessary to guide them to commit to academic honesty within this context. this may include help with better time management by students but also better curriculum design by lecturers so that assessments are integrated in the online learning experience of students. in the south african context, students (and lecturers) also have to deal with technological challenges like the difficulty of accessing the internet, lack of data, electricity interruptions (due to load shedding and cable theft) and lack of technological support and devices (e.g. to resolve software problems). furthermore, many south african students are first-generation university students who have very little academic experience and do not necessarily have the support of their immediate family members or peers. within this context, lecturers should be as supportive as possible, whilst still ensuring that academic integrity is maintained. there should not be an over-reliance on plagiarism (or text similarity) identification tools like turnitin or on proctoring methods. these can become counter-productive and downgrade the role of lecturers from academics and mentors to policing agents. this would undermine attempts to build and maintain a relationship of trust that is needed for a healthy academic environment. more nuanced pedagogical interventions are thus needed. continuous development of ethics and values through different programmes at the university is needed. in this regard, the management of universities should take the lead to ensure various initiatives are taken to develop a culture of honesty. one example that could be explored is honour codes to which students and lecturers are asked to subscribe. a holistic approach by students, lecturers and university management is needed to create and maintain academic integrity. all three of these role players should take responsibility to ensure that a culture of academic honesty is maintained. the best practices of various international universities give very good guidance in this regard and apply to the south african context, but we also need to keep the unique south african challenges in mind when developing our own strategies to maintain academic integrity. acknowledgements competing interests the authors declare that they have no financial or personal relationships that may have inappropriately influenced them in writing this article. authors’ contributions the authors contributed equally to the writing of this article. ethical considerations this article followed all ethical standards for research without direct contact with human or animal subjects. funding information this research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors. data availability data sharing is not applicable to this article as no new data were created or analysed in this study. disclaimer the views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any affiliated agency of the author. references asgari, s., trajkovic, j., rahmani, m., zhang, w., lo, r.c. & sciortino, a., 2020, ‘an observational study of engineering online education during the covid-19 pandemic’, plos one 16(4), e0250041. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0250041 atoum, y., chen, l., liu, a.x., hsu, s.d. & liu, x., 2017, ‘automated online exam proctoring’, ieee transactions on multimedia 19(7), 1609–1624. https://doi.org/10.1109/tmm.2017.2656064 azungah, t., 2018, ‘qualitative research: deductive and inductive approaches to data analysis’, qualitative research journal 18(4), 383–400. https://doi.org/10.1108/qrj-d-18-00035 bilen, e. & matros, a., 2020, ‘online cheating amid covid-19’, in munich personal repec archive, pp. 3–26, viewed 1 february 2021, from https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/103185/. brimble, m., 2016, ‘why students cheat: an exploration of the motivators of student academic dishonesty in higher education’, in t. betag (ed.), 1st edn., pp. 365–380, springer science + business media singapore pty ltd., singapore. cohen, l., manion, l. & morrison, k., 2018, research methods in education, 8th edn., routledge, new york, ny. du preez, p. & le grange, l., 2020, ‘the covid-19 pandemic, online teaching/learning, the digital divide, and epistemological access’, in l. ramrathan, n. ndimande-hlongwa, n. mkhize & j.a. smit (eds.), alternation african scholarship book series: vol. 1. re-thinking the humanities curriculum in the time of covid-19, pp. 90–106, cssall, durban. du toit, j. & verhoef, a.h., 2018, ‘embodied digital technology and transformation in higher education’, transformation in higher education 3(0), a52. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v3i0.52 eaton, s.e., 2020, ‘academic integrity during covid-19: reflections from the university of calgary’, international studies in educational administration 48(1), 80–85. elsalem, l., al-azzam, n., jum’ah, a.a. & obeidat, n., 2021, ‘remote e-exams during covid-19 pandemic: a cross-sectional study of students’ preferences and academic dishonesty in faculties of medical sciences’, annals of medicine and surgery 62, 326–333. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.amsu.2021.01.054 elzainy, a., el sadik, a. & al abdulmonem, w., 2020, ‘experience of e-learning and online assessment during the covid-19 pandemic at the college of medicine, qassim university’, journal of taibah university medical sciences 15(6), 456–462. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jtumed.2020.09.005 feathers, t. & rose, j., 2020, ‘students are rebelling against eye-tracking exam surveillance tools’, vice, viewed 01 july 2021, from https://www.vice.com/en/article/n7wxvd/students-are-rebelling-against-eye-tracking-exam-surveillance-tools gamage, k.a.a., de silva, e.k. & gunawardhana, n., 2020, ‘online delivery and assessment during covid-19: safeguarding academic integrity’, education sciences 10(301), 1–24. https://doi.org/10.3390/edusci10110301 guangul, f.m., suhail, a.h., khalit, m.i. & khidhir, b.a., 2020, ‘challenges of remote assessment in higher education context of covid-19: a case study of middle east college. educational assessment, evaluation and accountability. 32, 519–535. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11092-020-09340-w harmon, o.r. & lambrinos, j., 2008, ‘are online exams an invitation to cheat?’, the journal of economic education 39(2), 116–125. https://doi.org/10.3200/jece.39.2.116-125 hendricks, m. & quinn, l., 2000, ‘teaching referencing as an introduction to epistemological empowerment’, teaching in higher education 5(4), 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1080/713699175 hodges, c., moore, s., trust, t. & bond, a., 2020, ‘the difference between emergency remote teaching and online learning’, educause review, viewed 01 february 2021, from https://er.educause.edu/articles/2020/3/the-difference-between-emergency-remote-teaching-and-online-learning. international center for academic integrity (icai), 2012, statistics: overview, viewed 01 june 2021, from http://www.academicintegrity.org/icai/integrity-3.php. international center for academic integrity (icai), 2021, the fundamental values of academic integrity, 3rd edn., viewed 01 june 2021, from www.academicintegrity.org/the-fundamental-valuesof-academic-integrity. irish universities association (iua), 2020, viewed 14 april 2021, from www.iua.ie/publications/academic-integrity-in-onlineassessment/. jose, a.s., 2021, academic integrity during covid 19 pandemic. a student perspective, grin verlag, munich, viewed 16 july 2021, from https://www.grin.com/document/1012391. marques, t., reis, n. & gomes, j., 2019, ‘a bibliometric study on academic dishonesty research’, journal of academic ethics 17(2), 169–191. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10805-019-09328-2 mccabe, d., 2016, ‘cheating and honor: lessons from a long-term research project’, in y.t. bretag (ed.), handbook of academic integrity, pp. 187–198, springer, singapore. mckenzie, a., 2020, ‘covid-19: a silver lining for academic integrity from a pandemic’, canadian perspectives on academic integrity 3(2), 1–3. https://doi.org/10.11575/cpai.v3i2.71644 miller, c.b., 2020, ‘just how dishonest are most students?’, the new york times, viewed 22 april 2021, from https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/13/opinion/sunday/online-learning-cheating.html. mphahlele, a. & mckenna, s., 2019, ‘the use of turnitin in the higher education sector: decoding the myth’, assessment & evaluation in higher education 44(7), 1079–1089. https://doi.org/10.1080/02602938.2019.1573971 newton, p.m. & lang, c., 2016, ‘custom essay writers, freelancers, and other paid third parties’, in y.t. bretag (ed.), handbook of academic integrity, pp. 249–271, springer, singapore. ng, c.k.c., 2020, ‘evaluation of academic integrity of online open book assessments implemented in an undergraduate medical radiation science course during covid-19 pandemic’, journal of medical imaging and radiation sciences 51, 610–616. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jmir.2020.09.009 ngqondi, t., maoneke, p.b. & mauwa, h., 2021, ‘a secure online exams conceptual framework for south african universities’, social sciences & humanities open 3(1), 100132. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssaho.2021.100132 north-west university, 2018, north west university policy on academic integrity, 2018, viewed 20 june 2021, from http://www.nwu.ac.za/sites/www.nwu.ac.za/files/files/i-governance-management/policy/policies%20-%202020%20update/2p-2.4.3.2_academic%20integrity_e.pdf. north-west university, 2020, north-west university teaching and learning strategy, 2020, viewed 20 june 2021, from http://www.nwu.ac.za/sites/www.nwu.ac.za/files/files/i-governance-management/documents/t%26l-strategy-2021-2025.pdf. owings, s. & nelson, j., 2014, ‘the essay industry’, mountain plains journal of business and economics 15(1), viewed 19 june 2021, from https://openspaces.unk.edu/mpjbt/vol15/iss1/1. pierce, d., 2020, ‘online proctoring keeps remote exams secure but raises privacy questions’, ecampus news, viewed 01 july 2021, from https://www.ecampusnews.com/2020/09/04/online-proctoring-keeps-remote-exams-secure-but-raises-privacy-questions/2/ quality assurance agency, 2020, contracting to cheat in higher education: how to address essay mills and contract cheating, viewed 01 june 2020, from https://www.qaa.ac.uk/docs/qaa/guidance/contracting-to-cheat-in-higher-education-2nd-edition.pdf. reedy, a., pfitzner, d., rook, l. & ellis, l., 2021, ‘responding to the covid-19 emergency: student and academic staff perceptions of academic integrity in the transition to online exams at three australian universities’, international journal of educational integrity 17, 9. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40979-021-00075-9 robinson, r.s., 2014, ‘purposive sampling’, in a.c. michalos (eds.), encyclopedia of quality of life and well-being research, pp. 227–311, springer, dordrecht. rodchua, s., 2017, ‘effective tools and strategies to promote academic integrity in e-learning’, international journal of e-education, e-business, e-management and e-learning 7(3), 168–179. https://doi.org/10.17706/ijeeee.2017.7.3.168-179 unesco, 2021, education: from disruption to recovery, viewed 01 june 2021, from https://en.unesco.org/covid19/educationresponse. universities australia (ua), 2017, ua academic integrity best practice principles, viewed 23 april 2021, from https://www.universitiesaustralia.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/ua-academic-integrity-best-practice-principles.pdf. wallace, m.j. & newton, p.m., 2014, ‘turnaround time and market capacity in contract cheating’, educational studies 40(2), 233–236. https://doi.org/10.1080/03055698.2014.889597 witherspoon, m., maldonado, n. & lacey, c.h., 2010, ‘academic dishonesty of undergraduates: methods of cheating’, paper presented at the annual meeting of the american educational research association, 30 april – 4 may 2010, denver, co. footnote 1. this working group of the north-west university (hereafter nwu working group) involved different role players at the nwu: a subject leader from each faculty, representatives of the centre for teaching and learning and representatives from the qualification and programme planning office. the working group’s responsibilities are (amongst others) to research and develop content for the compulsory ‘understanding the world’ (utw) modules at the nwu. these modules aim to address the development of nwu’s graduate attributes, the nwu vision and mission and the values of the nwu. abstract introduction review of literature and intersectionality findings and discussion discussion and conclusion acknowledgements references footnotes about the author(s) zamambo mkhize department of gender studies, faculty of humanities, university of cape town, cape town, south africa citation mkhize, z., 2022, “they are just women, what do they know?”: the lived experiences of african women doctoral students in the mathematics discipline in south african universities’, transformation in higher education 7(0), a218. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v7i0.218 note: throughout this article the terms black and african are used interchangeably and are inclusive of african only not mixed race or indian people. original research ‘they are just women, what do they know?’: the lived experiences of african women doctoral students in the mathematics discipline in south african universities zamambo mkhize received: 30 may 2022; accepted: 27 july 2022; published: 19 oct. 2022 copyright: © 2022. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract background: the presence of african women in mathematics has been nearly invisible. the underrepresentation of african women in this field is a result of their historical socio-political marginalisation. the mathematics discipline is politicised, racialised, and gendered to systematically oppress african women. the mathematics fields continue to be a masculine and white male dominated field, which reinforces and preserves masculine culture which is hostile and unwelcoming to women. african women mathematicians are further oppressed because of their racial and gendered identities in fields that are ideologically founded on proving the racial, gendered, social, cultural, and intellectual inferiority of africans. aim: the article aims to exemplify the lived experiences of african women doctoral students in the mathematics disciplines in south african universities. the article critically interrogates the factors that influence the participation, progression, and retention of african female doctoral students in the mathematics disciplines. setting: the article comes from a larger study which investigated the reasons why african doctorate students do not become academics after they receive their doctorates in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (stem) disciplines in south african universities. this paper focuses on the experiences of 10 african female doctoral students at five universities in south africa. the universities were selected because they ranked in the top five in south africa. two of the institutions are historically black universities and the rest are historically white institutions, with one historically afrikaner-speaking university—between 2019–2021. methods: this article employed a qualitative research methodology, where semi-structures interviews were conducted with 10 african female doctoral participants in mathematics disciplines in five south african universities and is underpinned by the theory of intersectionality. results: the findings reveal how interlocking systems of oppression continue to influence the recruitment, retention, and progression of women in the mathematics discipline, thereby providing insight into the mechanisms that need to be altered and/or put in place to actively recruit african female doctoral students and retain them in academic positions. conclusion: the article concludes that despite the mathematics field proclaiming neutrality and objectivity nevertheless, african women still experience racism, sexism, and classism. the experiences of african women in mathematics are vital to understanding the reasons why there is a high attrition rate of african women in the mathematics discipline in academia and why they do not become academics when they could transform this discipline. keywords: black women; intersectionality; mathematics; stem; transformation; higher education. introduction isizathu esenza ngiphuze ukuqala iziqu zami kwi mathematics kunesikhathi engangizimisele ngaso ingoba idepartment of education yayibamba imiphumela yami yabamba nesi tifiketi sami. bathi basafuna ukuphenya ukuthi uthisha wami akazange yini anginike izimpendulo ngoba wayengakaze abekhona umuntu owake waphasa u matric higher grade kwi mathematics ngo a. ngiyacabanga ukuthi babengangithembi ingane ehluphekayo ephuma ehigh school yase lokishini ukuthi ingathola u a kwi higher grade mathematics. ngakhoke baqhubeka nophenyo lwabo bamosha unyaka wonke wami. ngaphoxeka ngoba ngangiyithanda imathematics kusukela ngisemncane ngangenza kahle kakhulu.1 this quote is extracted from zandile’s interview, an african women student in her final year of her doctorate in pure mathematics in a historically black university. her experience of oppression and exclusion from mathematics began in her secondary schooling, in matric2 where she was able to achieve a distinction in mathematics from a black township school, which is severely under-resourced and understaffed and where african students historically have not succeeded or passed their high school sufficiently to enter universities. zandile, having overcome all the obstacles of being african, coming from a poorer socio-economic background and being a woman, was further victimised by a black administration. this administration oppressed her by withholding her matric results to validate their authenticity, forcing her to defer an entire year of university and to relinquish her scholarship for that year. such ideologies of mathematics being a white domain and the innateness of mathematical ability being solely for white people or males are internalised by some black people. as a result, they pit members of historically marginalised groups, such as black people especially black women, against each other (bailey et al. 2011; battey & leyva 2016; thomas, speight & witherspoon 2004) and oppress them. fanon (1968) and freire (1970) have theorised on the notion of colonised mentality, where the oppressed (african people) aspire to be like their oppressors (white people) by imitating their ideological beliefs and following their racist educational guidelines. these scholars also pondered the question of how to deal with the problem of people who are oppressed, also oppressing their own people. the conundrum of consciousness and reflexivity in which some individuals prevent other individuals from progressing further in educational inquiry is an act of violence, an act of self-violence freire (1970:157) alludes to. this is what is occurring, where you have an african administration preventing an african child from achieving a university qualification and therefore achieving social upward mobility and consequently breaking the cycle of poverty. this highlighted the herculean efforts african women in mathematics must exert to overcome the enormous battles of racism, sexism and classism that begin in high school and continue to university where they face the same persecutions from every race and gender as they advance and progress in south african universities. the reason this article begins with a quote in isizulu is to dispute how mathematics is a field grounded in the english language, percolated in the certainty of its objectivity and confidence in meritocracy to be successful. conversely, all those ideological beliefs are false and rooted in a racial hierarchy amongst people to justify racial and perceived differences, especially around the intellectual and social inferiority of african people. this shaped the constructed and productive knowledge in the mathematics community, institutionalising racism and sexism. the construction of mathematics and race is linked to how academic talent in the mathematics disciplines is grounded in racialised and gendered notions of superiority and inferiority. this article examines what has been occurring in the mathematics discipline in south african universities specifically around transformation. what has been reported as transformation is reform. there are african students who are pursing doctoral degrees in mathematics, but their presence in these spaces does not mean transformation is happening (mkhize in press). the south african government has many policies and acts to enact transformation, and there have been campaigns to recruit african students in mathematics. the department of higher education (dhet) and the department of science and innovation (dsi) have agendas such as the 2030 agenda, specifically targeting african girls and increasing their number of participations in the mathematical fields. however, what does that mean when students such as zandile are high achievers in mathematics but are ostracised and heavily scrutinised for it. hussénius (2020) and leslie et al. (2015) have presented a picture of how ideas, assumptions and stereotypical notions continue to contribute to who is and who is not viewed and recognised as a true member of a science and mathematics community. studies have been conducted in the global north, which found that women are underrepresented in mathematics fields, and those practitioners believed that raw, innate talent is the main requirement for success in mathematics, and women are stereotyped as not possessing such talent. most of those studies are based on white women, and the subjects in question were found in disciplines such as physics, mathematics, engineering and computer science (leslie et al. 2015). scholars have documented and critiqued how the mathematics field continues to be a masculine and male-dominated field, which reinforced and preserved masculine culture that is hostile and unwelcoming to women (jett 2022; leyva 2017, 2021; rubel 2016). these studies highlight how african women mathematicians are further oppressed because of their racial and gendered identities in fields that are ideologically founded on proving the racial and gendered social, cultural and intellectual inferiority of africans. literature has been conducted on reform in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (stem) (gaotlhobogwe 2019; mlambo 2021) and the transformation of stem in south africa (babalola, du plessis & babalola 2021; liccardo & bradbury 2017; liccardo, botsis & dominguez-whitehead 2015; idahosa & mkhize 2021), but research on african women doctorate students in the mathematics field is scarce and that is where the uniqueness of this study lies. in south africa, the mathematics discipline remains overwhelmingly white and male, yet african people are the majority of the country. before presenting the findings of this research, it is necessary to anchor the research in the relevant theoretical framework and to identify gaps in current knowledge. this article begins by reviewing the literature of black women in mathematics, african women in mathematics in institutions of higher education in the south african context and the theoretical framing of intersectionality, followed by the research methods and thereafter the findings, the discussion and conclusion. review of literature and intersectionality this section will be discussing the literature reviewed and the theoretical framing of the article. black women in mathematics historically, mathematics was considered an elite field, primarily for white men. the reception for women participating in this field has been less than inviting (borum & walker 2012:366). the presence of black women mathematicians has been nearly invisible, despite these advances (albers & alexanderson 2008; borum & walker 2012; case & leggett 2005; murray 2000; warren 1999). recent literature shows that women are now the majority when it comes to undergraduate enrolment at colleges and universities in the usa (borum & walker 2012). although females are the predominant population in higher education, they still lag behind males when majoring in certain stem fields (freeman 2004). while women earn more bachelor’s degrees in science than men (65% and 61%, respectively), their representation in graduate school for stem fields reflects a gender disparity (peter & horn 2005). mathematics is historically a white male-dominated field, so the norms or standards originally created centre on the ideologies of that specific group. when women and other minorities enter the field, they have the option of either conforming to the norms or rebelling against them. therefore, building structures that alleviate the norms of a mathematics culture, which can ultimately hinder the progression of women and minorities, is necessary to increase the participation of these groups in mathematics (borum & walker 2012:374). gender research into elite fields such as mathematics has emphasised the masculinisation of the mathematics field (leyva 2017). studies have highlighted how white, masculine, competitive and exclusionary mathematics is to individuals who do not fit those identity categories. leyva (2021) argued that mathematics education is a white, patriarchal space characterised by ideologies and structures that shape relational experiences of blacks’ within-group tensions and resilience. leyva (2021:117) argues that a black feminist revolution has not arrived in mathematics education, where racial-gendered ideologies thrive and limit opportunities for building intersectional solidarity. such ideologies of the innateness of mathematical ability being solely for white people or males are internalised, and they pit members of historically marginalised groups, such as black people including black women, against one another (bailey et al. 2011; battey & leyva 2016; thomas et al. 2004). literature has mentioned several reasons that impede the progress of women in mathematics beyond the baccalaureate degree (leedy, lalonde & runk 2003; powell 1990; tartre & fennema 1995). these reasons include a lack of self-efficacy in mathematical abilities that can deter particular groups of students from pursuing the field and an ‘internalised’ self-perception of incompetence in mathematics and science. in addition, borum and walker (2012) argue that negative perceptions and practices of teachers and faculty, discriminatory institutional and departmental structures, and a lack of role models, are all suggested to have an impact on underrepresented groups and their persistence in mathematics (burrelli 2008; fennema et al. 1990; ferguson 2003; herzig 2004; nichols & tanksley 2004). battey and leyva (2016) argue that the only reason certain races do better in mathematics than others is because of the historical and institutional inequities that produced differential opportunities and access, which are tied to racist structures (p. 52). bonilla-silva (2003) and martin (2007) mentioned frames that serve to position black students as deficient and needing to aspire and attain the mathematical standards of white achievement in mathematics. this assumes privilege to white students that they have high abilities in mathematics and are pathologised as a group of high achievers in mathematics. however, international mathematics achievement tests have shown that asian groups are outperforming white students in mathematics, but white students are not pathologised as‘underperforming underachievers in mathematics (martin 2003). whiteness therefore serves as a means to resist attaching deficient frames to white students (battey & leyva 2016). borum and walker (2012) and leyva (2021:119) argued that black women’s isolation in previously white institutions (pwis) and historically black colleges and universities (hbcus) reflect white and masculine ‘norms’ of a mathematics culture, including meritocratic competition and individualism. such influences limit black women’s and girls’ opportunities for building solidarity with black peers, even in predominantly black contexts. mcgee (2013) wrote: ‘inequities within the educational system have somewhat inhibited [mathematically high-achieving black students] involvement and exposure to building healthy relationships with other black students’ (p. 268). previous literature (borum & walker 2012; dortch & patel 2017; leyva 2021) has largely characterised black women’s oppression and resilience in stem (with the specific focus on mathematics in this article) in terms of group tensions with members of the dominant and more represented groups such as white men and asian students. some literature (leyva 2021) have documented tensions amongst black peers in the mathematical contexts but from an american context. this research is crucial because it highlights the existing tensions that are largely unresearched, and it is necessary to disrupt the black within-group tensions to foster solidarity in unracialised gendered spaces of higher education mathematics within the south african context. african women in higher education in south africa in south africa, the minority status of african women in higher education is juxtaposed against their numerical majority status in broader society. the positioning of african women in higher education in south africa as the majority population provides a unique perspective compared to the usa and europe where african women are minority populations (mlambo 2017:40). identifying the reasons african women in an african majority context are absent in academe provides insights into the global and cross-cultural nature of african women’s underrepresentation in stem (mlambo 2017:40–41). numerically african women are graduating at a higher rate with the combined black (non-white) rate at 63%, almost double that of white females. underrepresentation of african women professors, women and african women remains grossly underrepresented in other senior administrative positions, and their standpoints expose them to unique challenges and experiences (mlambo 2017:42). african students represent the majority (75.6%) of the student population, with african women being the majority. however, academic staff remain predominantly white. african students in this study reported having never been taught by an african female lecturer or professor whilst others said, in their undergraduate or postgraduate studies, they were taught by african lecturers from other african countries and were mostly male. mlambo (2017) observed that african professors in south african universities make up 4% of professors and 0.85% represent african women professors. there was a 19.9% increase of african professors in 2017 in south african universities and african women now represent 4.2% of the professoriate in 2020 (higher education data analyzer 2020). department of higher education (2020) highlighted that black academic staff (african, mixed race, indian or asian) represent only 39.6% of academic staff at public universities. white people represented the largest population proportion of academic staff at 42.7% (dhet 2020) in a country of almost 60 million where african people are the majority and white people make up less than 9% (mlambo 2021:158). africans are overrepresented in support roles where they occupy about 97% of administrative and service positions (mabokela & mlambo 2017). those statistics illustrate how untransformed academia remains and that what is occurring in higher education is reform and not genuine transformation (mkhize in press). racial transformation in higher education post-democracy universities in south africa had three challenges: reproduce and retain the next generation of academics, transform the historical social composition of the academic workforce through equity and redress, specifically for african and female south africans, and whilst transforming, retain and enhance the academic capabilities of the next generation, through intellectual and academic capabilities related to teaching, learning, research and community engagement. some universities enacted transformation charters and made efforts at transformation, but it has resulted in reform. the south african government and universities enacted affirmative action policies to increase the number of african students, especially women in the mathematics disciplines. affirmative action was in favour of groups marginalized based on historical prejudices, socio-cultural negative attitudes and practices. mugambwa, mwebaza and namubiru (2017) argue that affirmative action was a strategy for closing the gender gap and towards substantive equality. however, statistics show that affirmative action has significantly benefitted white women and not the intended group of african students, specifically african women in south african universities (borum & walker 2012; mugambwa et al. 2017). badat (2010) mentions that the recruitment and retention of african academics cannot be divorced in some cases from the institutional culture in historically white universities. the experiences of historically white universities as discomforting and disempowering cultural environments that exact a considerable personal, psychological and academic toll. this also influences students specifically in stem disciplines where african students are expected to handle experiences that they consider unfair in a calm, dispassionate and disconnected way; whiteness is restricting acceptable ways of grappling with the emotions of discrimination and racism (moore 2008). the persistent assumption is that african appointments, no matter how outstanding their academic records, are ‘affirmative action’ candidates and are deemed ‘unsuitable’ despite meeting the necessary criteria (cornell & kessi 2017; kessi & cornell 2015). suitability is conflated with ‘best’ and is often associated with those who historically, academically and culturally belong to the dominant academic social group, which are white people. white men did not believe women could do mathematics, especially not african women, who they deemed inferior racially, culturally and biologically. it is important that factors that contribute to the attrition and success of african women in mathematics must be examined because it would aid in increasing the number of women in this field and retaining them as academics. the real conditions they inhabit need to be investigated to understand what encourages and discourages women from pursuing mathematics. mathematics is historically a white male-dominated field, so the norms and standards originally cater for that specific group. when women, specifically african women, enter this field they must either conform or rebel. in post-democracy, south africa had a ‘good intentions’ transformation, which msibi (2020) argued focused on the inclusion of african people in white spaces rather than true transformation and change. true transformation (msibi 2020; nodoba 2020) argue is transformation of equity, fairness and social cohesion in institutions of violence and exclusion of african people, such as (white universities). white institutions were a project of colonisation, with the sole agenda of dividing and conquering the natives. universities foster and support white notions of superiority and excellence and association with whiteness to maintain the status quo. the system exists to erase blackness, does not welcome it, or see it, and consequently africans must assimilate. the systemic structures and barriers african students face are colonial constructions that persist and show that the white power will not relent and will push back constantly. a particularly insidious form of racism that exists within the universities and stem discipline is the colour-blind ideology. this ideology perpetuates the idea that it is uncouth to recognise an african person’s race, ethnicity or culture. it works with tokenism and the academic rhetoric that is protracted is that resilience is the key to success and career achievement in stem. this untruth dismisses the invisible forms of racism, such as structural and institutional racism, which are the impenetrable barriers to african students thriving and succeeding in stem fields (mcgee 2021:7). african students in universities and specifically african women in this study reported that they were either encouraged to reconsider perusing stem disciplines or they were told to be grateful to have been ‘allowed’ to pursue stem degrees, they were expected to be quiet, submissive and constantly prove their intellect to show they are worthy to be in these stem disciplines. transformation and african women in higher education transformation cannot be understood as a blanket term because it is applied differently to different institutions. every institution has its own institutional culture and challenges, which require a contextualised approach to change (ramohai 2019:2). in the south african context, the institutions of higher education have very different transformation needs. previous white afrikaans institutions faced challenges relating to racial inequalities than previous black institutions. all higher education institutions in south africa are subject to rules and regulations, and one of them is to prioritise african women in the transformation initiative (badat 2010 in ramohai 2019:6). attempts of transformation need to redress these imbalances of the past, by understanding the need and experiences of this marginalised group, that is, african women academics. the south african government communicates its mandate to institutions, informing them that african women academics should be prioritised when transforming and diversifying their staff (dhet 2016). gender needs to be seriously prioritised in higher education institutions, but how do these institutions implement that. higher education institutions need to respond to gender equity matters, especially pertaining to black women academics. african women still face numerous challenges pertaining to upward mobility, research success and overcoming gender-based epistemological stereotypes (ramohai 2019:2). institutional cultures are still predominately masculine, and the staff is still predominately white (kele & pietersen 2015; tsiksata 2007). in the south africa context, transformation must be used in ‘undoing’ of the historical injustices that most of the african population suffered in terms of access, availability and representation in the higher education sector. although redress should include all african people (men too), gender complexities still make african women a priority in transforming higher education institutions (ramohai 2019:2). intersectionality the analytic approach employed in this study is grounded in the intersectional perspective to examine the experiences of african women doctorate students in mathematics in south african universities. kimberley crenshaw (1989) coined the term intersectionality, but it is rooted in black feminist thought. intersectionality described the way multiple identities based on race, gender, class, ethnicity, nationality and sexuality are systematically and structurally oppressed. these structures systematically oppress african women in ways that do not persecute african men or white women (idahosa & mkhize 2021). tamale (2020) argues that african women experience racism differently from african men, because hers is a ‘melded’ experience of gendered racism. african women are othered on two fronts (race and gender), while african men are othered on only one (race). seabrook (2019) argues that intersectionality is a specific feminist theory that interrogated the ways different identities combine to create unique and complex dynamics of oppression and power for individuals and communities as well as the broader social structures that sustain the marginalisation of certain identity positions (carastathis 2014). these axes of difference go beyond descriptive, but they co-constitute each other (slater & liz 2018:341). cho, crenshaw and mccall (2013) state what makes an analysis intersectional is an adoption of an ‘intersectional’ way of thinking about the issues around sameness and difference and their relation to power. nash (2008) argues intersectionality focuses on two main areas: the race/gender binary, which argues for an understanding of the multi-dimensions that include ways in which race, gender, class, ethnic identity and context affect experience. intersectionality reveals the ‘racial variations within gender and the gendered variations within race through its attention to subjects whose identities contest race or gender categorisation (nash 2008:2–3). intersectionality moves beyond race and gender to consider the ways in which political milieus affect identity and individual experience; for example, colonialism, capitalism and nationalism are incorporated into intersectional analysis (levine-rasky 2011). this conceptualisation allowed the researcher to highlight the intersectional ‘matrix of domination’ and understand the legacy of exclusion in the south african context on multiple subjects and avoid the problem of essentialism and exclusion of particular groups (nash 2008:8). research methods this article comes from a larger study conducted during the author’s sabbatical, which explored the reasons why african women doctoral students in stem disciplines do not become academics. this study is situated within a critical research paradigm informed by interpretivism and social constructionism because these two perspectives argue that the way in which individuals make sense of the world is subjective and purely derived from their experiences (creswell 2008). the critical research paradigm identifies, contests and helps resolve power imbalances in society that contribute to systemic inequalities and injustice (taylor & medina 2013:6). this article employed a qualitative research methodology, where semi-structured interviews were conducted with 73 participants in stem disciplines in five south african universities. the questions asked the participants to narrate their reasons for pursuing mathematic disciplines in postgraduate studies in universities, their plans after they receive their doctorates in mathematics and whether they are interested in becoming academics in mathematics. the participants were encouraged to narrate their stories and what recommendations they can offer in terms of transforming the mathematics discipline to be more inclusive of women mathematicians. the universities were selected because they ranked in the top five in south africa. two of the institutions are historically black universities and the rest are historically white institutions, with one historically afrikaner-speaking university. the author interviewed 73 african doctorate women in stem, but only 10 were in the mathematics discipline and they were used for this article. because of the sars-cov-2 pandemic that prohibited travel and therefore could no longer physically interview the participants, 11 interviews were conducted using online platforms. the author begun by asking the interviewees their demographic information (name, age, highest qualification and organisation affiliation), background information, including place of birth, education and motivations for entering the field, and questions about their experiences as african women in stem. the participants were guaranteed confidentiality therefore all the names used in this article are pseudonyms. using a semi-structured questionnaire, the interviews lasted between 40 and 45 min. interviews were then transcribed and analyzed using thematic analysis. table 1 summarises the list of the participants. table 1: profile of participants.† a thematic analysis of the data was employed using nvivo data analysis software to analyse how participants’ social positions intersected with the historical and current political milieu to impact their experiences in the mathematics discipline (bazeley & richards 2000). the data were coded for patterns in the intersectional experience of participants to understand the main factors that impacted their inclusion and exclusion in the mathematics discipline (saldaña 2009). participants cited an intersection of institutional, disciplinary, cultural and interpersonal factors as responsible for the decision to remain in mathematics or leave after attaining their doctorate degree. the narratives revealed structural, institutional and disciplinary issues such as socioeconomic status, an intersection of social positions such as race, gender, class and age with historical legacies, departmental politics and the complexities of ethnicity. cultural issues such as social norms, gendered stereotypes, discrimination and interpersonal issues such as feeling alienated, isolated, excluded and racial-gendered fatigue, which impacted their academic journeys. findings and discussion this section discusses the findings and examines the lingering colonial legacies, ideological and structural discrimination and socio-cultural and interpersonal factors and exposes if transformation is occurring in the mathematics discipline for african women in universities. lingering colonial mentalities liberating the colonised mind from oppression, as argued by biko (1978), fanon (1968), freire (1970) and wa thiong’o (1986), is necessary for africans to experience true emancipation. this theme has become popular in recent academic debates as we have witnessed the calls to decolonise the academic curricula especially in higher education. however, whilst the call for decolonising the university curricula has gained traction, especially after the student protests of 2015 and 2016 what appears to have gone untheorised, unventilated and unexposed is the insidious nature of how some african academic administrations continue to oppress and prohibit the progress of young african girls, especially in mathematics, as zandile’s narrative at the beginning of the article illustrated. zandile’s narrative highlighted what many african students especially african girls experience when they are academic high achievers in poor rural or urban areas. their academic records are overly scrutinised and investigated to confirm that there were no illegal or devious tactics used by the black girl student to have achieved a distinction in mathematics. two things are being expressed by the black department of education: the first being that they are continuing the colonial and most recent apartheid ideology that african students are academic inferior, and the only way african students could achieve high grades in school is if they cheated. the second point they are reiterating is that african people, specifically african girls, are incapable of being mathematically inclined and certainly not high achievers in mathematics. the fact that they used the argument of ‘zandile’s school never had a black girl achieve a distinction in mathematics, so they must have been something underhanded going on’ illustrates the colonial mentality that is deeply entrenched in their psyches. the fact that zandile’s results were an anomaly indicates that this education administration does not believe that an african child can achieve a distinction in mathematics, especially not a female african child. this is a black administration, which should have celebrated zandile’s phenomenal achievement instead it investigated it. subsequently, they frustrated zandile to the point of her considering going into a different stem field because she realised that her natural ability and mathematical inclination is problematic for administrators. it was serendipitous that zandile was able to find her way back to mathematics and will now graduate with a doctorate in mathematics. the question becomes how many other african girls have gone through zandile’s experience and have not been fortunate enough to enter university or dropped out because they were forced to enter other fields of study when they wanted to pursue mathematics but were declined because of their intersectional identities of being african, women, poor and from disadvantaged secondary schools. londiwe londiwe stated: ‘when you are a woman people tend to look down on you. as if you don’t know what you are talking about. they often don’t trust you and you constantly have to keep on proving yourself. people tend to look down on you especially when you seem young, they treat you as if you don’t know anything. that what makes you feel isolated … the only problem starts when you are working with men, they think that they know everything. they act as if they are brilliant but in reality, that is not true.’ londiwe’s narrative emphasised that as a woman, everyone (including other women) always undermine and underestimate them. african women are especially compounded with the additional layer of being raced as well as gendered making their experiences intersectional in nature. african women experience microaggression based on their multiple identities, and then they must co-exist in a mathematical environment whose ideology does not believe women to be capable of producing high-quality mathematics, especially not african women. the participants all reiterated that they were not immediately deemed intellectually capable, and they had to constantly prove their competence. unlike white male mathematicians who were trusted solely based on their being white and male and in a field in which the dominate nature and culture was designed for them to thrive and succeed in. as mentioned above the knowledge bearers have always been expected to be white men, and when individuals who are the antithesis of those identities enter white hegemonic spaces, they are disruptive, which forces the institutional culture and environment to constantly resist their intrusion. londiwe offers a further analysis of her experiences within mathematics, in that of being young, african and female in an environment where old white men are dominant norm which is especially tricky landscape to navigate. ageism is something literature only acknowledges when pertaining to the elderly facing discrimination because of their old age. age as an additional discriminatory factor has not heavily been researched. some studies foreground age, but they all focus on ageism pertaining to the elderly and not the youth. mkhize (in press) argues that the combination of sexism and ageism forms a new form of marginalisation, which is further intensified by being in a discipline such as mathematics where the other layers of race, gender, class and ethnicity are already deemed unsuitable. londiwe also mentions the patriarchy that is a consistent factor in mathematics. men believe they are intellectually superior as well as gender superior to women. african women experience the microand macroaggression of the superiority of white men in mathematics, but it is combined with racial-gendered discrimination, which is directly linked to the colonial and apartheid mentality of viewing african women as people only capable of domestic labour and not intellectual acumen. the african men who treat african women the same way, their discrimination is situated by patriarchy and based on gender, and this is further explained in the last theme. ideological and structural discrimination mathematics is an elite field that requires superior intellect and focused dedication to mastering it. ideologically mathematics was a discipline only for white men; only exceptional women could participate and certainly not any african or african women. with that historical ideology that persists today, african women face enormous challenges when they enter the mathematical field and their obstacles are ideological, structural as well as socio-cultural, as the narratives will illustrate. this exclusion begins even before african women enter university, because, as zakifa’intombi expressed, in high school the teachers did not encourage them to do mathematics. zakifa’intombi’s narrative focused on higher grade3 mathematics not mathematics as a whole. higher grade mathematics is more challenging and offers the students more opportunities, such as being able to pursue a mathematical degree in university as opposed to taking standard grade mathematics. what has been occurring is that high schools have been under increasing pressure from the school boards, school leaders and the department of basic education to increase the number of african students passing mathematics. therefore, there is strategic exclusion by student numbers occurring in these townships and rural schools to increase the pass rate. consequently, these schools have an agenda to pass as many students as possible by discouraging students not to take mathematics or to take it on a lower level such as standard grade to increase their chances of passing mathematics. the implications of encouragement, gender, school number of passes are all a result of pressure from the leadership of the school and department of education to meet certain targets and agendas at the expense of african students, specifically african girls wanting to pursuing mathematics. if students have already subconsciously received these messages of discouragement (from teachers who are also african) when they enter universities, this discouragement is compounded by race as well as gender and to some extent even class. zandile zandile said: ‘yes, i have there was this undergrad module (math *) i was employed for to tutor and just because i was a black female after some time, they fired me because the pay for that module was high, and workload was not high. according to them they said that they were only going to hire lecturers to tutor the course. in general, to become a tutor to you must be a postgraduate student, it would be a first for lecturers to be hired as tutors as well. the students even signed a petition to bring me back as their tutor, but the department didn’t care.’ as the narrative emphasised as soon as african women enter certain spaces, their presence forces the structural rules and criteria to change to further exclude them from these occupations. the fact that zandile was now tutoring and in effect responsible for the grades (and subsequent future) of mathematics students progression (or not) the system shifted and reorganised itself to create a ‘new rule’ where she would no longer be able to be a tutor unless she meets a new criteria they arbitrarily put in place. they replaced zandile with a white male lecturer. if zandile was of a better socio-economic class and not a first generation student she may have had access to networks and resources that would have helped her fight her unfair dismissible because of a new arbitrary rule that was implemented when she became a tutor. this illustrates how the ideological (women, especially african women are deemed unsuitable for mathematics), the political (women are intellectually inferior to be in mathematics) and the systematic (women cannot teach mathematics) all work simultaneously to exclude african women from full participation in the mathematics field. another participant nelisiwe highlighted how even though they are all doctorate students in mathematics only certain races and not women are elected to teach mathematics. nelisiwe nelisiwe said: ‘everyone knows only the white students and sometimes, although very rare, will be indian or nonindigenous african students are elected to be tutors and they are all men.’ institutional spaces constrain or afford differential access to people, resources and work. in distributing this access, institutions legitimise certain ideologies through the physical space, positioning of different groups in terms of power and presentation of history, such as having a young african woman mathematics teach or tutor mathematics. this woman is the opposite of what the institution deems individuals with innate mathematical abilities and those are white, male and old. this african woman mathematician is disrupting the ideological, structural and historical norm of mathematics education and that is disorientating and results in the system pushing back to ‘remove the disruption’. this once again highlights the mathematical fields’ ideology of only trusting students who they deemed the ‘legitimate’ mathematicians and those are white and males but not african or indian. as the narratives have all highlighted this systematic and structural exclusion of them as teachers for other mathematics students in fact benefited them as they were able to finish their doctorate degrees on time or early because they were not burdened with teaching or administrative work or tutoring. unlike their male counterparts who are still pursuing their mathematical doctorates and are progressing slower because of their teaching commitments. it is very interesting that nelisiwe mentions how nonindigenous african males are considered for teaching and tutoring positions and not indigenous south african students. this points to the perceived xenophobic belief that nonindigenous african students are intellectually superior to the indigenous african students. however, this example attests to the tensions that do exist between indigenous and nonindigenous africans, especially in stem higher education (mkhize in press), but this phenomenon was not the central focus of this current work. socio-cultural and interpersonal factors the stereotypes faced by black women as mentioned earlier have an influence on their experiences and how they are treated in the mathematics disciplines in south african universities. monica as the following narrative of monica highlights: ‘so, i think the reception wasn’t, it wasn’t too uhmm … because we were ladies. i could remember one of the lectures saying normally if people come for post graduate mathematics, they give them classes to teach but even if it is just for tutorials or something. he was addressing it to the, i think was it the … one of the, he was suggesting to one of the big guys there, let me put it that way. and the big guy said … we were there, and he said what can they do, they are females what can they do, can they stand in front of 50 students, a class of 50 students? and the other man was like it’s what we normally do, and he said no no no no, they are females …. anyway, it was for the best because it gave us more time and the two of us (two females doing phd in mathematics) we finished in two years, like no extension nothing. we finished, the people that came after us they had a tough time finishing because they had to teach and tutor.’ this emphasises how the system is vehemently invested in maintaining the status quo of exclusion, especially of african women, that in effect it is allowing african women mathematicians to progress and to finish their doctorates before or on time because they do not have the added responsibilities of administrative work and tutoring other students. the men they deemed legitimate teachers are consequently saddled with teaching and administrative work that goes with being a tutor and therefore struggle to solely focus on their doctorate work. it is interesting to note that these narratives of structural exclusion are from students who come from historically white universities and historically black universities. african women are either burdened with enormous pressure of having to constantly prove their competency and are given additional work, almost to test their resilience and aptitude, so if they fail, they are fulfilling an already established ideological belief that african women are intellectually inferior and do not belong in mathematical spaces. on the other hand, african women are ignored and excluded, which has both a good and bad outcome. a good consequence is that they cannot be encumbered with additional work and other responsibilities that take them away from their mathematical work; however, the bad outcome is that they do not get any support or mentorship to advance as quickly as the other male and white students. participants raised important points about transformation. they argued that if we are promoting transformation then it needs to go beyond just demographic change. mkhize (in press) argued that what is occurring in mathematics disciplines in south african universities is demographic change and not genuine transformation. sincere transformation can only occur when certain strategic positions of decision making are inhabited by people who are the demographic majority of the country and not the white minority (mkhize, in press). zakifa’intombi also mentioned an important and usually overlooked observation in that the promotions criteria are skewed in favour of the men. african women face gender structural obstacles and systemic cultural biases that are founded on a history of patriarchal family systems. women have additional responsibilities that society demands of them, such as childcare and children rearing, which takes them away from their research and ability to consistently publish. men do not have those gendered patriarchal expectations placed on them, so they are able to conduct research and publish more consistently, faster and constantly compared to women. discussion and conclusion a critical area of concern for south africa has been how to attain gender equality as well as gender parity so women can be equal contributors to the knowledge economy, especially in the science and mathematical fields. african students are extremely underrepresented in the mathematics disciplines and the number is even smaller amongst african women in the field. this miniscule number has consequential implications to their contribution and representation in the mathematics field. as the narratives have indicated, african women in mathematics are systematically excluded from being teachers of mathematics. there are many reasons for this, racism, sexism and classism, but what the mathematics departments do not realise is that by preventing these african women from teaching they are giving them more time to finish their doctorate degrees before or on time and thus become doctorate graduates before their male doctorate student counterparts who are saddled with teaching and other administrative work. therefore, their discriminatory practices are advancing the people they aim to disadvantage. racialised patriarchy heavily influenced the participants’ experiences in that their high school teachers did not actively encourage them to pursue mathematics, and a black administration vigorously tried to prohibit some of them from entering university to continue to study mathematics, because of the ideology that african girls do not belong in mathematics. these narratives expose how despite the call for transformation and the belief that transformation is occurring it is not. transformation will not be achieved if the mathematics discipline continues to overtly and covertly discriminate and exclude african women mathematicians. replacing white mathematicians with african ones does not mean progress is being made, because as noted at the beginning of this article it is the black administration and african mathematicians who also oppress and victimise african women. there needs to be a sincere effort to find viable solutions that are premised on achieving racial and gender equality for african women in the mathematics field. battey and leyva (2016:59) highlight that in the west a racial hierarchy of ability in mathematics exists whereby whites, and asians at the top, produce real benefits for these groups. perceptions become real and this directly influences how blacks are treated in mathematics classrooms, the forms of instruction available to them and what courses schools provide, which, in turn, lead to different testing outcomes (gaps). institutions make these ideologies concrete when they provide blacks impoverished forms of instruction and teachers through tracking and reduced funding. this then serves to legitimise the ideology that blacks are innately worse at mathematics rather than deconstructing the role of institutions or noting the efforts of educators and communities to combat these racist structures daily. this is also true of the south african context whereby there is a national agenda of increasing the number of african students, especially african girls in mathematics, yet the actions of certain black schools are contravening that agenda by actively discouraging african students from pursuing mathematics from high school to university levels. dhet is at the top and other departments, such as department of science and technology and department of basic education, all follow the policies and agendas stipulated by dhet. one could argue that dhet is not transformed, and the question becomes what it means for the national system and all other educational departments that fall under dhet if dhet itself is not transformed. as zandile’s quote at the beginning highlights how she was oppressed as a high achieving african student in mathematics by an african administration in education. zandile’s mathematical results were scrutinised by the department of basic education that falls under and reports directly to dhet. this type of oppression is at worst allowed to occur and at best condoned by dhet to continue scrutinising high marks attained by african students in mathematics from poor urban schools. the implication is that all these departments need to be transformed especially when knowledge needs to be produced in these mathematical spaces because the colonial mentality and internalised racism that only white people’s knowledge is legitimate persists even within african administrations. these departments and institutions are perpetuating a racial and gendered hierarchal belief that only white people have mathematical abilities; this belief may be subconscious, but their actions make it real. an aspect that is not heavily researched is the emotional labour african students need to navigate when faced with racism and sexism. even for students achieving mathematical success, the management of hostile environments were emotionally debilitating. whether it was the effort to prove a stereotype wrong by being high achievers to project conformity, the students experienced emotional distress and exhaustion. therefore, more racially hostile environments produce more emotional labour from racism (battey & leyva 2016). these african students experienced oppression even from african men, hence the title of this paper, they are women what do they know, was articulated by an african man in a classroom of african mathematical students. these african women were oppressed because of racialised patriarchy and the white masculinised mathematical environment that privileged whiteness first and maleness second. being african women, they did not inhabit any of their identities and even their racial commonality with the african men did not protect them from their sexism and belief of their gendered and intellectual inferiority. in mitigating the negative experiences and struggles of african women in mathematics a lot of measures have been implemented, but most of the policies remain ideological at best. the narratives reveal that while policies put in place have addressed some of the structural and material challenges with including women, challenges remain with ensuring progression and retention. subtle discursive, institutional and interpersonal practices continue to ensure the exclusion of african women in the mathematics disciplines. this points to the need for policy to integrate and take into consideration material and the discursive issues, in addressing the challenges with inclusion, progression and retention. one way of addressing the discursive aspect is to implement programmes to foster the development of critical consciousness on how assumptions and stereotypes not only deter women from enrolling into mathematics fields but also work to ensure that those who make it into the field do not succeed. acknowledgements the author would like to thank the national research foundation, vice-chancellor professor mamokgethi phakeng, uct research office and dr. charles masango, professor relebohile moletsane, dr. grace idahosa, dr. ntombikayise nkomo, sinenhlanhla mtshali, colisile mathonsi, izuchukwu okoye-ogbalunfor, siphamandla nyambo, tandiwe mdlungu, dr. abdul bawa-allah and siseko kumalo, khondlo mtshali, dr. rejoyce mpfareleni gavhi and the participants for this study. competing interests the author declares that she have no financial or personal relationships that may have inappropriately influenced her in writing this article. author’s contributions z.m. is the sole author of this article. ethical considerations ethical clearance to conduct this study was obtained from the university of cape town humanities faculty ethics in research committee (no. humrec201906-19). funding information this work was supported by the national research foundation. data availability my data management follows the uct guidelines. disclaimer the views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any affiliated agency of the author. references albers, d.j. & alexanderson, g.l., 2008, mathematical people: profiles and interviews, a. k. peters, wellesley, ma. babalola, o.o., du plessis, y. & babalola, s.s., 2021, ‘insight into the organizational culture and challenges faced by women stem leaders in africa’, social sciences 10(3), 105. https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci10030105 badat, s., 2010, the challenges of transformation in higher education and training institutions in south africa, viewed 27 march 2019, from http://www.ru.ac.za/media/rhodesuniversity/content/vc/documents/the%20chalienges%20of%20transformation%20in%20higher%20eduaction%20and%20trai.ning%20institutis%20in%20south%20afrjcalpdf. bailey, t.k.m., chung, y.b.., williams, w.s., singh, a.a. & terrell, h.k., 2011, ‘development and validation of the internalized racial oppression scale for black individuals’, journal of counseling psychology 58(4), 481–493. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0023585 battey, d. & leyva, l.a., 2016, ‘a framework for understanding whiteness in mathematics education’, journal of urban mathematics education 9(2), 49–80. https://doi.org/10.21423/jume-v9i2a294 bazeley, p. & richards, l., 2000, the nvivo qualitative project book, sage, london. biko, s., 1978, i write what i like, bowerdean press, london. bonilla-silva, e., 2003, racism without racists: color-blind racism and the persistence of racial inequality in the united states, rowman and littlefield, lanham, md. borum, v. & walker, e., 2012, ‘what makes the difference? black women’s undergraduate and graduate experiences in mathematics’, journal of negro education 81(4), 366–378. https://doi.org/10.7709/jnegroeducation.81.4.0366 burrelli, j., 2008, thirty-three years of women in s&e faculty positions (nsf-08-308), national science foundation, arlington, va. carastathis, a., 2014, ‘the concept of intersectionality in feminist theory’, philosophy compass 9(5), 304–314. https://doi.org/10.1111/phc3.12129 case, b.a. & leggett, a.m., 2005, complexities: women in mathematics, princeton university press, princeton, nj. cho, s., crenshaw, k. & mccall, l., 2013, ‘toward a field of intersectionality studies: theory, application, and praxis’, signs: journal of women in culture and society 38(4), 785–810. https://doi.org/10.1086/669608 cornell, j. & kessi, s., 2017, ‘black students’ experiences of transformation at a previously “white only” south african university: a photovoice study’, ethnic and racial studies 40(11), 1882–1899. https://doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2016.1206586 crenshaw, k., 1989, ‘demarginalizing the intersection of race and sex: a black feminist critique of antidiscrimination doctrine, feminist theory and antiracist politics’, university of chicago legal forum 139. creswell, j.w., 2008, research design. qualitative, quantitative and mixed methods approaches, sage, california. department of higher education and training (dhet), 2016, report on the second national higher education transformation summit, viewed 22 june 2020, from http://www.justice.gov.za/commissions/feeshet/docs/2015-reportsecondnationalhetsummit.pdf. department of higher education and training (dhet), 2020, statistics on post-school education and training in south africa, viewed 18 february 2021, from, https://www.dhet.gov.za/information%20systems%20coordination/statistics%20on%20post-school%20education%20and%20training%20in%20south%20africa%202020.pdf dortch, d. & patel, c., 2017, ‘black undergraduate women and their sense of belonging in stem at predominantly white institutions’, naspa journal about women in higher education 10(2), 202–215. https://doi.org/10.1080/19407882.2017.1331854 fanon, f., 1968, the wretched earth, orion press, new york, ny. fennema, e., peterson, p., carpenter, t. & lubinski, c., 1990, ‘teachers’ attributes and beliefs about girls, boys, and mathematics’, educational studies in mathematics 21, 55–69. https://doi.org/10.1007/bf00311015 ferguson, r.f., 2003, ‘teachers’ perceptions and expectations and the black-white test score gap’, urban education 38(4), 460–507. https://doi.org/10.1177/0042085903038004006 freire, p., 1970, pedagogy of the oppressed, continuum international publishing group, new york, ny. freeman, c.e., 2004, trends in educational equity of girls & women: 2004. nces 2005 016. national center for education statistics. gaotlhobogwe, m., 2019, ‘making a case for a decolonised stem curricula: the african context’, in preface to the conference proceedings, mauritius institute of education, mauritius, november 6–9, 2019, p. 90. herzig, a.h., 2004, ‘becoming mathematicians: women and students of color choosing and leaving doctoral mathematics’, review of educational research 74(2), 171–214. https://doi.org/10.3102/00346543074002171 higher education data analyzer. 2020, peer data reports. https://www.heda.co.za/powerheda/dashboard.aspx. hussénius, a., 2020, ‘trouble the gap: gendered inequities in stem education’, gender and education 32(5), 573–576. https://doi.org/10.1080/09540253.2020.1775168 idahosa, g.e.o. & mkhize, z., 2021, ‘intersectional experiences of black south african female doctoral students in stem: participation, success and retention’, agenda 35(2), 110–122. https://doi.org/10.1080/10130950.2021.1919533 jett, c.c., 2022, ‘“third floor respect”: a black masculinist examination of morehouse college’s mathematics learning community’, the journal of higher education 93(2), 248–272. https://doi.org/10.1080/00221546.2021.1971486 kele, t. & pietersen, j., 2015, ‘women in leadership in south african higher education institutions: narrations of their leadership operations’, international journal of sustainable development 8(5), 11–15. kessi, s. & cornell, j., 2015, ‘coming to uct: black students, transformation and discourses of race’, journal of student affairs in africa 3(2), 1–16. https://doi.org/10.14426/jsaa.v3i2.132 leedy, g., lalonde, d. & runk, k., 2003, ‘gender equity in mathematics: beliefs of students, parents, and teachers’, school science and mathematics 103(6), 285–292. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1949-8594.2003.tb18151.x leslie, s.j., cimpian, a., meyer, m. & freeland, e., 2015, ‘women are underrepresented in disciplines that emphasize brilliance as the key to success’, science 347(6219), 262–265. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1261375 levine-rasky, c., 2011, ‘intersectionality theory applied to whiteness and middle-classness’, social identities 17(2), 239–253. https://doi.org/10.1080/13504630.2011.558377 leyva, l.a., 2017, ‘unpacking the male superiority myth and masculinization of mathematics at the intersections: a review of research on gender in mathematics education’, journal for research in mathematics education 48(4), 397–433. https://doi.org/10.5951/jresematheduc.48.4.0397 leyva, l.a., 2021, ‘black women’s counter-stories of resilience and within-group tensions in the white, patriarchal space of mathematics education’, journal for research in mathematics education 52(2), 117–151. https://doi.org/10.5951/jresematheduc-2020-0027 liccardo, s., botsis, h. & dominguez-whitehead, y., 2015, ‘background knowledge and epistemological access: challenges facing black women in a set scholarship programme’, south african journal of higher education 29(1), 373–389. liccardo, s. & bradbury, j., 2017, ‘black women scientists: outliers in south african universities’, african journal of research in mathematics, science and technology education 21(3), 282–292. https://doi.org/10.1080/18117295.2017.1371980 mabokela, r.o. & mlambo, y.a., 2017, ‘women, leadership, and organizational culture in higher education: lessons learned from south africa and ghana’, in h. eggins (ed.), the changing role of women in higher education, pp. 75–92, springer, cham. martin, d.b., 2003, ‘hidden assumptions and unaddressed questions in mathematics for all rhetoric’, the mathematics educator 13(2), 7–21. martin, d.b., 2007, ‘beyond missionaries or cannibals: who should teach mathematics to african american children?’, the high school journal 91(1), 6–28. https://doi.org/10.1353/hsj.2007.0023 mcgee, e., 2013, ‘young, black, mathematically gifted, and stereotyped’, the high school journal 96(3), 253–263. https://doi.org/10.1353/hsj.2013.0011 mcgee, e.o., 2021, black, brown, bruised: how racialized stem education stifles innovation, harvard education press, cambridge, ma. mlambo, y.a., 2017, ‘why not academia? – the streamlined career choice process of black african women engineers: a grounded theory study’, phd thesis, michigan state university. mlambo, y.a., 2021, ‘black african women in engineering higher education in south africa’, in h.k. ro, f. fernandez & e.j. ramon (eds.), gender equity in stem in higher education: international perspectives on policy, institutional culture, and individual choice p. 158, routledge, london. moore, w.l., 2008. reproducing racism: white space, elite law schools, and racial inequality. new york, ny: rowman & littlefield. msibi, t., 2020, confronting racism in higher education in south african universities university of cape town webinar, 31 august 2020, viewed 31 august 2020, from https://www.news.uct.ac.za/article/-2020-08-18-confronting-racism-in-higher-education. mugambwa, j., mwebaza, s. & namubiru, b., 2017, ‘gender equality policy, elites and women empowerment in higher education institutions’, in a. shahriar & g.k. syed (eds.), student culture and identity in higher education, pp. 93–110, igi global, pennsylvania. murray, m.a., 2000, women becoming mathematicians, massachusetts institute of technology press, cambridge. nash, j.c., 2008, ‘re-thinking intersectionality’, feminist review 89(1), 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1057/fr.2008.4 nichols, j. & tanksley, c., 2004, ‘revelations of african-american women with terminal degrees: overcoming obstacles to success’, the negro educational review 55, 175–185. nodoba, g., 2020, ‘journey of transformation in higher education in the era of democracy’, youtube talk, uploaded on august 30, watched 03 september 2020 at 14:09 pm. peter, k. & horn, l., 2005, gender differences in participation and completion of undergraduate education and how they have changed over time (nces 2005-169), u.s. department of education, national center for education statistics, u.s. government printing office, washington, dc. powell, l., 1990, ‘factors associated with the underrepresentation of african americans inmathematics and science’, the journal of negro education 59, 292–298. ramohai, j., 2019, ‘a black women’s perspective on understanding transformation and diversity in south african higher education’, transformation in higher education 4, a58. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v4i0.58 rubel, l.h., 2016, ‘speaking up and speaking out about gender in mathematics’, the mathematics teacher 109(6), 434–439. saldaña, j., 2009, the coding manual for qualitative researchers, sage, london. seabrook, d., 2019, ‘toward a radical practice: a recuperative critique of improvisation in music therapy using intersectional feminist theory’, the arts in psychotherapy 63, 1–8. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aip.2019.04.002 slater, j. & liz, e.l.c., 2018, ‘normalcy, intersectionality and ableism: teaching about and around “inclusion” to future educators’, in k.r. cole, t. curran & k. liddiard (eds.), the palgrave handbook of disabled children’s childhood studies, pp. 333–349, palgrave macmillan, london. tamale, s., 2020, decolonization and afro-feminism, daraja press, ottawa. tartre, l.a. & fennema, e., 1995, ‘mathematics achievement and gender: a longitudinal study of selected cognitive and affective variables [grades 6–12]’, educational studies in mathematics 28(3), 199–217. https://doi.org/10.1007/bf01274173 taylor, p.c. & medina, m.n.d., 2013, ‘‘educational research paradigms: from positivism to multiparadigmatic’, journal for meaning-centered education 1(1), 1–16. thomas, a.j., speight, s.l. & witherspoon, k.m., 2004, ‘internalized oppression among black women’, in j.l. chin (ed.), the psychology of prejudice and discrimination: vol 3. bias based on gender and sexual orientation, pp. 113–132, praeger, new york. tsikata, d., 2007, gender, institutional cultures and the career trajectories of faculty of the university of ghana. feminist africa 8: rethinking universities i, 8, pp. 26–41. wa thiong’o, n., 1986, decolonizing the mind: the politics of language and literature in africa, james curry, london. warren, w., 1999, black women scientists in the united states, indiana university press, bloomington, in. footnotes 1. the reason why i started my mathematics degree a year later than planned is because the department of education withheld my marks and would not release my matric certificate. they said they had to investigate that my teacher did not give me the answers because no one has ever in [x] high school ever passed matric higher grade mathematics with an a. i think it is because they could not believe me, a poor township girl, from a township high school could get a distinction in higher grade mathematics, so they investigated and wasted a year of my life. i was discouraged because i have loved mathematics from my childhood and have always done well. when i do something good it is unbelievable, yet now i am in my final year of phd in mathematics. 2. grade 12 in south africa is commonly referred to as matric. short for matriculating your final year in high school. 3. in south africa certain subjects like mathematics are offered in two levels: higher grade mathematics and standard grade mathematics (mathematics literacy). abstract introduction academic identities research design and methodology findings and discussion discussion conclusion acknowledgements references footnotes about the author(s) ncamisile t. zulu department of humanities institute, faculty of humanities, university of kwazulu-natal, durban, south africa citation zulu, n.t., 2022, ‘academic identities of south african black women professors: a multiple case study’, transformation in higher education 7(0), a151. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v7i0.151 original research academic identities of south african black women professors: a multiple case study ncamisile t. zulu received: 31 aug. 2021; accepted: 15 mar. 2022; published: 24 may 2022 copyright: © 2022. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract background: literature on the academic identities of south african black women in higher education institutions predominantly focuses more on students and academics in general and less on professors. studying the academic identities of black women is important in understanding how their reality in higher education is constructed and professors are particularly important to study as their leadership position can shape the types of opportunities and challenges they and others encounter. aim: this article aimed to explore the academic identities of five black women professors in two south african universities and what influences them. this study uses empowerment theory to understand the way these five black women academic professors see themselves academically and what informs the way they see themselves academically. setting: the black women professors were recruited from two south african universities in 2018. methods: semi-structured interviews were used to collect data from the five black women professors. data were analysed using thematic analysis. results: collectively, the five participants seemed to show two academic identities: the encouraging scholarship and student learning academic identity and conducting research for (social) transformation academic identity. these identities seemed to arise from both the inspiring and discouraging encounters they had with some of their teachers and lecturers. the article has implications for policy and practice. conclusion: the significance of the study is that it highlights themes, which can be useful to understand how black women professors talk about their identity and understand how their reality is constructed. keywords: academic identities; black women; empowerment theory; professors; south african universities. introduction in 1948, the south african national party gained power and phased out traces of black participation in the central political system (thompson 2008). for decades, the national party had the support of the overwhelming majority of white people. the national party applied apartheid to various laws and administrative measures. there were four main ideas embraced by the apartheid ideology. firstly, south africa’s population was made up of four ‘racial groups’: white people, african, mixed race and indian, each with its own unique culture (thompson 2008). secondly, as a civilised race, white people had the right to complete control of the nation. thirdly, the interests of white people took precedence over the interests of black people. the state was not obliged to provide equal facilities to its subordinate races. fourthly, the white racial group formed a single nation with afrikaans and english-speaking elements but black people belonged to several (probably 10) different or potential nations – a method that made the white nation the largest in the country (thompson 2008). patriarchy is another discriminatory system of power in society in which men are dominant and women are largely excluded from any control or influence (martin 1998). patriarchy is exercised and reinforced by not only men but various institutions within society. as a result of south africa’s racist and sexist political past that permeated even institutions of higher education, black women academics have continued to experience and report negative encounters within these spaces. this is because black women have intersectional identities because their gender and racial characteristics are linked to make their experience of oppression unique (crenshaw 1994). for instance, black women academics have been said to experience challenges in gaining promotion to the professorial1 level as a result of the discrimination in higher education (dlamini & adams 2014). various difficulties such as limited mentoring, lack of support network and high classroom load are also cited in the literature (collins 2001; divala 2014; dlamini & adams 2014; mohope 2014; ndlovu 2014; zulu 2013). these challenges are most likely to impact the academic identities of black women academics. this is because, as billot (2010) asserts, in the context of academia, the individual develops his sense of ‘academic self’ through their thoughts about what constitutes ‘academic’, their past experiences and their understanding of the present situation. the academic identity of an individual is important as it influences the way in which they see and define themselves and inform the decisions that they take and the way in which they behave in academic spaces. this means that the academic identity of an individual can influence their management of student learning, their delivery of courses (winter 2009), their contribution to their discipline and maintenance of their academic autonomy, professionalism and collegial relations (normative values) (winter 2009). as walker (1998) notes, women are represented even more strongly in the lower ranks. almost never found in professors or governing bodies (department of higher education and training [dhet] 2018; subbaye & vithal 2017). this article focuses on the academic identities of black women professors. doing research that focuses on the identity of black women professors will be helpful in determining how they understand and experience the academic world, whilst shaping the types of opportunities and challenges they face so that higher education institutions can be better able to accommodate for them. billot (2010) further suggests that identity is continually changing and involves a subjective interpretation of our individuality in the context of activities. the changing of identities as a result of context can mean that the identity of black women within the academic space can change as a result of the environment in which they find themselves. historically, south africa comprised different higher education institutions which were separated based on race. little research has been carried out to understand the academic identities of black women professors within this south african landscape. this article, therefore, focuses on the academic identities of black women professors based in two universities. particularly, it seeks to explore: (1) how black women professors position themselves academically and (2) what influences their identities within south african higher education institutions. academic identities conceptually, identity is a dynamic construct in which an individual’s identity arises from personal, racial and national contexts, but it also builds socially over time (billot 2010). academic identity is a multifaceted and unstable notion (hyde, clarke & drennan 2013:8), which is not easy to define (madikizela-madiya & le roux 2017). however, according to winter (2009), academic identity can be defined as the extent to which an individual defines himself or herself primarily in terms of the organisation (and their position of managerial authority) or as a member of a profession. as suggested here, academic identity relates to what academics do, what they should do, what they can do and what they want to do (madikizela-madiya & le roux 2017). for example, identity as a social construct can mean, for an academic woman, that her identity can become fundamentally bound up with the values, beliefs and practices held in common with others of their institutions or departments (billot 2010). social construction can also mean that a black woman can simultaneously confront the splitting of identity between the powerful person (the academic) whom she might or might not recognise as herself and the powerless being who might lack confidence (the woman) (walker 1998) as a result of the environment which they find themselves in. influencers of academic identities madikizela-madiya and le roux (2017) indicate that both physical and metaphorical space matters in the construction of academic identity in higher education. context plays a significant role in how the academic identities of black women are created in higher education institutions. historically, south african higher education institutions comprised of white and black universities, with each having its own history and culture. under apartheid, white universities were run by executives and councils, which gave strong support to the apartheid government (bunting 2006). consequently, white institutions were based on white people (and male) social power and privilege and displayed little sense of social accountability to the broader south african community (mamdani 1998). black universities, on the other hand, were instrumental in training young black people to be useful in the maintenance of the overall apartheid sociopolitical agenda (bunting 2006). twenty-seven years after the abolishment of apartheid, with numerous attempts at making positive changes in challenging the racist and patriarchal system, south african higher education institutions still struggle with the apartheid legacy. it is therefore important to investigate how black women professors have been academically affected by the current context of the south african higher education institutions. for the development of their academic identities and to meet their academic expectations, academics need to reflect on whether they have a beneficial physical space (such as an office, a parking space, a library or other physical places) and an enabling metaphorical space. metaphorical space in this case refers to academics’ agency – their freedom and power to choose what and how to do things that develop their academic identities, the opportunities for them to grow academically, time to think and reflect critically and time to be creative (madikizela-madiya 2014). in her study, which focused on space and academic identity construction, madikizela-madiya (2014) observed that academics often complain of limited space and time to develop their identities because of increasing workloads and expectations. she continues to assert that each academician needs to reflect on their position in relation to space in their institution and think of possible ways of acting in that particular situation, which may be positive for their academic identity construction. academic identity is also influenced by the corporate identity that is adopted by some of the higher education institutions and departments, which the academicians find themselves in (melewar, karaosmanoglu & paterson 2005). specifically, requirements such as developing programmes that attract as many students as possible and research, teaching and related practices being performed in a way that secures funding for the university and attracting grants from government and the industrial sector (madikizela-madiya 2014) can also influence the academic identity of black women academics. furthermore, being active in community engagement projects and producing more researchers through postgraduate supervision (billot 2010) can also inform the academic identities of black women professors. as lecturers, academics often emphasise their professional identities given their specialised teaching roles and discipline expertise. hence, normative values such as the ‘importance (and joys) of teaching and learning’ (brown & humphreys 2006:240) and knowledge for its own sake (nixon 1996) are stressed and more distinctive values for example ‘creating knowledge, educating youth and contributing to their discipline professions’ (churchman 2006:9). for more senior academics, winter (2009) presents an important argument stipulating that because professors are ‘responsible for managing budgets largely dictated by senior management’ (lafferty & fleming 2000:260), it is therefore expected that they might align themselves with the corporate enterprise and emphasise their managerial identities (winter 2009). other factors outside of the academic space (such as family, friends, etc.) may also influence the academic identity of black women professors. yosso (2005:79) talks about social capital, which she conceptualised as ‘networks of people and community resources’ that provide both instrumental and emotional support to move through society’s institutions. black women academics can survive and even thrive using social capital if they have the right skills and cultural techniques in higher education institutions, which can also inform their academic identities. for example, using social contacts and community resources to locate and get a research opportunity and funding can help black women professors. academic positionings of black women professors south africa has made progress in the number of black women who have become academics (subbaye & vithal 2017) through the establishment of initiatives (such as developing policies, research grants, mentoring projects and more positions for black women academics) to ensure that black women can be actively involved in higher education as academics (maodzwa-taruvinga & divala 2014; mzangwa 2018). nevertheless, many black women academics still lament on the oppressive treatment that they come across in higher education institutions as a result of racism and sexism. abbamonte (2018) states that: [i]ntersectionality is a concept often used in critical theories to describe the ways in which oppressive institutions (such as racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, xenophobia, and classism) are interconnected and cannot be examined separately from one another. (p. 108) the term ‘intersectionality’ itself was introduced by crenshaw (1989), when she discussed issues of black women’s employment in the united states (yuval-davis 2006). naturally, acknowledging one’s race and gender is a form of identity for anybody; yet, what distinguishes black women’s experiences of oppression from those of other groups is the fact that their gender and racial identities merge to make their experience of oppression unique (crenshaw 1994). as a result, black women are more likely to encounter significant barriers to full involvement and contribution in the workplace, especially in higher education (jones, hwang & bustamante 2015; mokhele 2013; zulu 2013). literature indicates that black women academics encounter discrimination such as lack of supportive networks, including mentoring (collins 2001; divala 2014; mohope 2014; ndlovu 2014; zulu 2013). the discrimination that black women academics experience is most likely to influence them to feel and take on a victim of disempowerment academic identity. this victim of disempowerment academic identity can manifest itself in individuals having lowered beliefs about their own competency and a reduced sense of belonging, which can play a role in their performance and adaptation in the academic space (ponjuan, conley & trower, 2011). isolation may be the result of poor institutional fit, cross-cultural and social disparities and a lack of support (mahabeer, nzimande & shoba 2018; williams 2001) resulting in victim of disempowerment academic identity. in addition, some of the obstacles that black women face include having their intellect, credentials and power continuously questioned, being excluded from critical activities and having white people judge them based on negative stereotypes (bhana & pillay 2012; subbaye & vithal 2017), which can lead them to take on a victim of disempowerment academic identity. this may discourage some black women in higher education institutions and eventually abandoning it. for those who continue participating in higher education institutions, the vast majority of them are not promoted to higher positions (subbaye & vithal 2017). whilst some black women academics position themselves as victims, rejected and discriminated against in their departments, there are those black women who have been able to triumph and succeed over the historical, systemic and cultural barriers (jones et al. 2015; eds. khunou et al. 2019) and take on resilient academic identities (mullings, gooden & spencer 2020). despite real and perceived obstacles, these scholars maintain their ambitions and plans for the future. those who allow themselves to imagine possibilities beyond their present circumstances, frequently without the tools to achieve their aspirations, demonstrate this resiliency (yosso 2005). as a result of taking on a resilient identity, some black women academicians have been able to achieve professorship (griffin 2016). black women academicians who have overcome their challenges through resiliency are more likely to participate as equal and full partners in the academic space, produce outputs and attain promotions (which can lead up to professorship) (griffin 2016). for black women, taking on a resilient academic identity can also manifest itself through taking a stance and vocalising and demonstrating the type of support for faculty diversity and success that others can emulate (jones et al. 2015). literature on the academic identities of south african black women in higher education institutions does not focus on professors much. therefore, the research questions for this study are: (1) how do black women professors position themselves academically; and (2) what influenced the academic identities of black women professors within south african higher education institutions? finding out how black women professors talk about their identity is useful to understand how their reality is constructed. understanding the identities of black women professors can then help understand how black women academics can acquire agency to get promoted and how to design programmes to overcome these challenges. empowerment as a framework for academic identity this study intended on expanding the discourse on black women’s academic identity. empowerment has its roots in community psychology theory-based movements for fairness, equity and justice (gonzalez 1991; rappaport 1981). the concept of empowerment is useful in understanding how black women professors succeed in a challenging academic environment. social activism, resistance to oppression and liberation struggles are the foundations of empowerment (christens, win & duke 2015). although empowerment theorists and researchers argue that empowerment is contextually determined and changes over time (foster-fishman et al. 1998) for this article empowerment is: [a] group-based, participatory, developmental process through which marginalised or oppressed individuals and groups gain greater control over their lives and environments, acquire valued resources and basic rights, and achieve important life goals and reduced societal marginalization. (maton 2008:5) according to the definitions of empowerment, black women academics who go on to become professors may have been empowered by going through a developmental process that allowed them to obtain control over crucial life events and results. firstly, the perception and feeling that a person’s association and active involvement can influence social and civic decision-making is discussed in the emotional component of psychological empowerment (christens et al. 2015). secondly, the cognitive component of psychological empowerment entails an understanding of the elements that influence policies and structures, as well as a critical and strategic understanding of how to change them. commitment to common interests, leadership and decision-making skills and awareness and understanding of various options for social and civic activity are amongst the cognitive component’s characteristics (zimmerman 1995). the relational aspect of psychological empowerment emphasises the importance of connections and ‘relational capacities’ in psychological empowerment (christens et al. 2015:19). finally, the behavioural aspect of psychological empowerment describes the actions used to achieve authority and control in civic and community settings. as a result, it is a development of the concept of citizen engagement (christens et al. 2015). this sort of empowerment might be used for black women academics because they may have exerted influence and acquired authority in higher education political communities such as student and employee bodies and were able to have a positive impact through their critical consciousness. according to the empowerment concept, black women academics will be able to resist racial and sexism prejudice in higher education if they gain more control over their lives and surroundings, acquire valuable money and basic rights and achieve significant life goals. research design and methodology this study, which is embedded in a larger study on a qualitative study design, was utilised to collect and analyse data on the discourses of black women academics in south african universities. because it is naturalistic (not controlled), observational and in-depth (‘thick’), the qualitative research design was suited because literature suggests that it deals with the intricacies of meanings in a social environment (babbie & mouton 2001:270; trappes-lomax 2004). the qualitative research design was appropriate for this study as it allowed for the identification and complete comprehension of the data-driven creations. as a result of the qualitative design, the researcher gained a thorough grasp of black female academics, with a special focus on their academic accomplishments. the study adopted an interpretivist paradigm. this was because interpretivism believes that the mind interprets experiences and events and constructs meanings from them (vosloo 2014). an interpretive approach was appropriate as it was directed at the meaning and understanding of the complexity of a social phenomenon (vosloo 2014). study population this study included black women professors from two public universities, one of which was historically white and the other of which had recently amalgamated. these two institutions were chosen because they are amongst south africa’s top research-producing universities, whilst simultaneously making remarkable attempts to be more racially fair than their peers. the decision to select participants from these colleges was made to allow formerly disadvantaged individuals’ academic identities (in these places) to emerge, allowing participants to reflect on and evaluate where black women were in the process of transformation in higher education and professorship. nine black women professors participated in the larger study. five case studies of the nine black women professors were developed for this article: the case study method ‘explores a real-life, contemporary bounded system (a case) or multiple bounded systems (cases) over time, through detailed, in-depth data collection involving multiple sources of information… and reports a case description and case themes’. (creswell 2013:97) these five case studies were used because these case studies provide predominantly rich accounts of academic identity constructions. a multiple case study design was appropriate for this study as it provided a deep understanding of a specific phenomenon – in this instance, the academic identities of black women professors (zach 2006). multiple case studies also offer the similarities and differences between the cases (baxter & jack 2008). a multiple case study also enables the researcher to analyse the data both within each situation and across situations (yin 2003). case descriptions gabi was an associate professor in the college of humanities, and she had 12 years of experience as an academic staff member at the time of the study. gabi reported putting in a lot of hard work and hours in order to become a professor. she indicated that teaching and preparing for teaching, reading and writing all needed focused, uninterrupted time. through her focus, she was able to get a promotion from a lecturer to a senior lecturer and thereafter to an associate professor. as she heads her department, gabi reported that she does have an agenda of grooming postgraduate students that show potential. she encourages and shares opportunities such as bursaries and involves them in research project work. these students have been successful and some have even become staff members in the university. nozizwe was also an associate professor in the college of humanities, with 10 years of experience as an academic staff member at the time of the study. when talking about professorship, nozizwe described the pride she had on becoming a black professor. she reported that there was much knowledge to be produced and that it was ‘unlimited as the world [was] constantly changing’. nozizwe indicated her excitement about brought a unique perspective to the phenomenon being studied, as a result of her background as a black woman. she acknowledged that she was able to bring a kind of intersection between, class, race, gender and positionality into her work as a black woman. mbalenhle was an associate professor in the college of health sciences, with 25 years of experience in a university as an academic staff member. despite dealing with a lot of racism in her school, mbalenhle continued to work hard and excelled in her professorship by constantly being cognisant of her supportive mother and husband. what also helped her was passionately pursuing initiatives without any expectations and focusing on what she could control. thandeka was a full professor in the college of health sciences, and she had 22 years of experience as an academic staff member at the time of the study. she asserted that: ‘wherever you put me, i respect work. i don’t have that victim mentality. i am not someone who just complains. i work very hard but i also believe god had a hand in this because somehow i happened to be at the right place at the right time.’ (thandeka, associate professor, health sciences) abigail was a full professor in law and management studies and had been an academic staff member for 22 years. although she had experienced numerous challenges, abigail enjoyed being with her students. she believed that she had the responsibility to be there for them and to be their inner voice. data collection procedure after ethical clearance was obtained for the study, participants were recruited through emails. interested participants then e-mailed the researcher back and then purposive and snowball sampling techniques were used to recruit other participants. the purposive sampling method was appropriate as it allows the researcher to focus on the particular characteristics of the participants who are of interest, which best enable the researcher to answer the research questions (durrheim 2006; merriam 2009; patton 1990). through contacts and referrals, the snowball sampling technique allowsfor the steady building of a sufficient sample (ary et al. 2014). this strategy was appropriate because it provided individuals with the qualities needed to answer the study questions. it also aided in reaching members who would have been impossible to approach otherwise. the participants consented to participate in the study after the researcher explained the information sheet and informed consent form to them, which they signed. the interviews took place at the participants’ office spaces and were 45 min – 90 min long. as the study was conducted under an interpretive paradigm, one-on-one semi-structured interviews with black women professors were the most appropriate method for gathering data. by asking the participants to expand on their comments whilst maintaining some structure in the interviews, this form of interviewing allowed for contemplation and in-depth conversations (alshenqeeti 2014). an interview schedule, which also consisted of follow-up questions, helped to understand black women professors on a deeper level (e.g. what was your experience of being a black woman in your field of work? any perks (bonuses, benefits), challenges, surprises and support in the workplace?). a semi-structured interview schedule had a prepared set of questions, which were only used as a guide and not necessarily verbatim or in order (silverman 2013). the researcher was able to follow the participants’ directions in the interview whilst probing for their responses within the parameters of the issue of interest thanks to the semi-structured interview schedule (fontana & frey 2000). as there were no participants from the disciplines of commerce, law or management studies in this article, the extent of the participants’ academic identities was limited. it’s probable that black female professors from these fields may have shed more light on the occurrence. the second constraint was that whilst there were black women academics in higher education and much has been written about them, there was little literature on black women who had advanced to professorship. another drawback of this study was the absence of literature on black women academics, as there was little literature to compare and contrast the findings of this study with the south african context. interviews were conducted in english and isizulu. data analysis thematic analysis was used to analyse the transcriptions from the interviews. braun and clarke’s (2012, 2019) six steps of thematic analysis were appropriate to use as they seek to describe data in rich detail by identifying, analysing and reporting emergent patterns in the data. the researcher familiarised herself with the interviews by reading the transcripts and listening to the audio-recorded data. the codes (features that appear interesting and meaningful) were generated thereafter. the common key codes were extracted from all five interviews. the overarching themes were identified from the common codes. the themes identified were then refined and defined. finally, the researcher interpreted the extracts that related to each of the themes from the study (braun & clarke 2019). the emergent themes were used to structure the findings and discussion section of the article. credibility and trustworthiness the congruency of the findings with the study design and procedures is referred to as credibility (gray 2014; shenton 2004). this improves the accuracy of the conclusions about the phenomenon in question. the researcher’s conclusions and inferences must be backed by the data (silverman 2013). the data must be interpreted in a believable, persuasive, rational, reasonable and convincing manner (silverman 2013). the explanations for each of the methodological decisions made for this investigation have been discussed here to increase the validity of the study. an audio tape recorder was also used to mechanically record the data. the researcher’s theoretical statements are backed up by evidence from the participants’ accounts, which increases the trustworthiness of the research’s findings. to improve the analysis’ credibility, specific snippets are supplied. in qualitative research, extracts are used to increase validity because they force the researcher to document the claims for readers who weren’t present during the talks to observe the interactions as they happened (shenton 2004). the ability of study’s findings to be transferred to similar situations and individuals is referred to as transferability (kelly 2006). this study demonstrated how its findings may be applied to different scenarios by providing a large amount of data that could help other potential users make transferability decisions (lincoln & guba 1985). the phenomena under investigation were described in depth, as were the cultural and social contexts in which the data were collected. the location of the interviews was explained in detail. the participants’ backgrounds and the various academic environments are described in depth. the number of fieldwork participants, data collecting methods and the number and length of data collection sessions were all explained in the previous section of this article. ethical considerations all women who participated in this study provided their informed consent. details pertaining to the study and methods of data collection were clearly outlined in the invitation letter to the participants. to adhere to the ethics requirements, application for ethical clearance was granted by a large public university. an information sheet was given and explained to the participants. this information sheet provided ethical information about the participants’ rights, such as their confidentiality, volunteering and that they could discontinue whenever they felt uncomfortable during the research process. other ethics that guided this research were informed consent, ensuring that no harm was caused to the participants in the study and that the sampling, data collection and analysis processes were fair and equitable. findings and discussion in relation to the first research objective, the study identified the academic identities of the five participants in south african higher education institutions. there were two themes that pertained to academic identities that emerged from the data with the five case studies. the first theme was encouraging scholarship and student learning and the second theme was conducting research for transformation. in relation to the second research objective, the study showed what influenced their identities. the findings showed how the five case studies developed their passion (for the above mentioned) through both the encouraging and discouraging encounters they had with some of their teachers and lecturers, respectively. in discussing these findings, the article will draw on previous supporting literature and frameworks. all names used are pseudonyms to maintain anonymity. how black women professors position themselves academically: the academic identities of black women professors theme 1: encouraging scholarship and student learning the passion for teaching and scholarship that four case studies involved in this study had seemed to indicate them making a commitment to nurture the talents of younger academics in their departments. the four participants cultivated student learning and academia by setting out a supportive environment (with opportunities and prospects) that made it possible for younger (especially black) academics to triumph in these institutions. the four case studies were demonstrating that they used their status and influence as senior academic members in their universities to empower younger academics. when talking about her passion for her teaching and learning, gabi stated: ‘i love my work, i love teaching, it’s my passion. i’ve had the ability to attract a lot of black postgraduate students. i’m not sure if i still look younger so they find me accessible, and also because i speak mostly african languages and so they find that also accessible. i encourage them and i share opportunities with them, and they get these opportunities.’ (gabi, associate professor, humanities) similarly, mbalenhle mentioned: ‘if i see a student that is really committing themselves so much, i would give them a book that i wrote. i like to nurture leadership, good people, positive people. you know i want that gene to carry on, it must spread so i would do anything to encourage that.’ (mbalenhle, associate professor, health sciences) the findings showing encouraging scholarship and student learning are aligned with winter (2009) who reported that the academic identity of an academic influences their management of student learning, their delivery of courses, their contribution to their discipline and collegial relations. from the quotes above, it is evident that gabi and mbalenhle identify and position themselves as nurturers of scholarship and student learning. as lecturers, academics often emphasise their professional identities, given their specialised teaching roles and discipline expertise (winter 2009). hence, normative values, such as the ‘importance (and joys) of teaching and learning’ (brown & humphreys 2006:240) are stressed and more distinctive values, such as ‘creating knowledge, educating youth and contributing to their discipline professions’ (churchman 2006:9). the participants were eager to nurture and encourage younger academics, especially those who were black. gabi and mbalenhle deemed guiding their junior academics as an important task and duty in their role as academic leaders and professors who were deemed accessible to some students in terms of age and language. when talking about her relationship with her post-graduate students, abigail asserted: ‘i enjoyed being with my students, and i always thought that i owed them that … because i could see how during, for example proposal presentations or any other decision being made about their assessment, i could see the kind of thinking when it came to that, the kind of [black discrimination]. so, i thought that i have that responsibility; to be there and be their inner voice and be the voice of reason so that nobody goes through what i’m going through.’ (abigail, full professor, law and management studies) whilst discussing her plans as a professor and dean of her department, thandeka mentioned: ‘i’ve given myself a target of five women who will become full professors, and the way i’m planning to do that is to create opportunities for them, give them chances to go and spend overseas in different institutions, fund that, give them sabbatical leave, give them visiting scholarships, be supportive.’ (thandeka, full professor, health sciences) as winter (2009) asserts, academic identity can be defined as the extent to which an individual defines themselves primarily in terms of their position of managerial authority or as a member of a profession. abigail and thandeka, through the quotes here show themselves as embracing the identity of developing and nurturing scholarship. this is particularly important as (black) women academics have been said to experience difficulties in gaining promotion to the professorial level as a result of the discrimination in higher education. in the given quote, thandeka (as a professor) indicated the goal she had of promoting women to professorship and the strategic ways in which she would achieve this (which was by affording them prospects for academic development). these findings show that four of the case studies supported their junior colleagues by demonstrating their commitment to gender (and racial) changes and diversity in the academic scene by being proactive, outspoken and courageous. these findings back up peterson’s (2014) claim that women academic leaders believe they have a specific responsibility to make a difference consciously, both as managers and as women and hence wish to start improvements by accommodating those (women) who will come after them. gabi, mbalenhle, abigail and thandeka depicted themselves as enablers in privileged leadership positions in higher education institutions who were exploiting their authority to support and help promote their students and previously marginalised junior colleagues. this was in line with christens et al.’s (2015) definition of empowerment which asserts that it has its roots in social activity, resistance to oppression and liberation attempts. furthermore, the emotional component of psychological empowerment examines how a person’s affiliation and active participation might influence social and civic decision-making (christens et al. 2015). this could mean that the four case studies, as cultivating leaders who assisted some other academics in locating and obtaining university scholarships, promotions and other international possibilities, assisted to influence their future promotions. theme 2: conducting research for (social) transformation thandeka and nozizwe also talked about their desire to make impactful contributions within their fields, and therefore initiated research that contributed to some (social) transformation endeavours. thandeka focused on research that yielded direct social transformative impacts within specific communities and nozizwe was more attentive to producing and disseminating knowledge that was transformative. when giving an example of her research endeavours, thandeka said: ‘we had done a study there and we saw that there was health illiteracy among the drivers. they were not aware of certain things and they believed a lot in traditional things and we recommended out of that that we needed to do a follow up study and established that they needed some condoms etc. as a result of the work that we did, the minister established some clinics in [these areas]. that has been the impact of my work. i am a community worker; i do a lot of community work.’ (thandeka, full professor, health sciences) as nozizwe was speaking on the importance of black women professors in research, she mentioned: ‘knowledge is unlimited, and the world is constantly changing. the exciting part of being a black woman is the context that you are able to bring. i mean you are able to bring that kind of intersection between class, race, gender, positionalities, all these things in the knowledge you produce.’ (nozizwe, associate professor, humanities) supported by the given quotes and by virtue of their presence in higher education institutions, black women academics provide diversity and transformation to the research management environment (peterson 2014). in her example, thandeka shows how she aims in her research to reach, educate and inform parts of society who are illiterate about important health issues. she identifies herself as a ‘community worker’, signifying that she is passionate about promoting welfare in her area of expertise. the promotion of welfare ultimately brings about transformation within the people she serves (such as taxi drivers) in terms of the way in which they think about and live particular subjects. this example and self-identification presents the participants as those occupying the ‘conducting research for (social) transformation’ academic identity. nozizwe, on the other hand, acknowledged that for her, the production of knowledge influenced by intersectionality (such as being black and a woman) is powerful. because of the way their gender and racial identities overlap to make their experience of oppression distinct from that of other groups, black women have intersectional identities (crenshaw 1994). producing knowledge from this kind of positionality brings about transformation within disciplines especially those deeply entrenched in non-african and patriarchal foundations. black women professors can be change agents in higher education and beyond (because of their unique background), and they can also better position themselves to challenge the racial and patriarchal system and normalised eurocentric and masculine views. the findings show how the participants portray themselves as holding an identity of transforming society through research. what influences black women professors’ identities within south african higher education institutions: influencers of academic identities thandeka and mbalenhle talked at length about the support systems (and lack thereof) that influenced them and shaped the academic positions that they eventually saw themselves taking in higher education institutions. the following case studies showed how they were able to cultivate a passion for teaching, scholarship and (social) transformation. they developed their passion through the encouraging and discouraging encounters they had with some of their high school teachers and university lecturers, respectively. theme 1: encouraging encounters as a result of experiencing empowerment happenstances with some of their teachers and lecturers, thandeka was influenced to also adopt an empowering approach to her own juniors. when talking about the key role players in her successful educational and career trajectory, thandeka mentioned: ‘he [my teacher who was also the principal] made me join a debate team, ha! ha! … he unearthed that talent in me while i was reluctant to face people and stand at podiums, but he made me lead it … he cared about the education of a black child … gave up on being a lecturer to be a high school teacher … he felt the african child needed role models … to be nurtured …. that instilled a sense of selflessness, it made a big impression on me … we were disadvantaged differently … so that is one of the things i have pushed as well; transformation. i’ve appointed a number of developmental lecturers and i supported them.’ (thandeka, full professor, health sciences) in her given quote, thandeka presents her high school teacher as someone who made and left a lasting impression on her because of his sacrifice of giving up prestigious opportunities (of being a university lecturer) for a more modest position to influence african learners positively. during the apartheid dispensation, black people were subjected to inferior education through the law of bantu education that had disturbing implications that marginalised black people from pursuing quality higher education. taking the south african historical background into consideration, thandeka is portraying her teacher as empowered and empowering, as he was educated and wanted other black people to be educated. he was in charge of his life and chose to devote his time, energy and knowledge on younger black high school students because he desired the same for them. thandeka acknowledges and thanks the teacher for his efforts, as she was a benefactor. in her teaching profession, the teacher is being positioned as a strong agent. inspired by her teacher thandeka, later on in her career as a professor, has also developed a passion for giving back and supporting previously disadvantaged academics to advance in their careers. she does this in conjunction with supporting the overall call for transformation within the south african landscape. the findings from the thandeka case study are congruent with yosso (2005), who suggested that social relationships can help people navigate through institutions in both a practical and emotional way. academic relationships, according to croom and patton (2012), provided junior academics with crucial advice on teaching, service and research. this highlights the significance of a mentoring connection between senior and junior academics, particularly for black women. observing and interacting with older academics on a regular basis also influenced the nurturing style they adopted as professors. this is consistent with yosso’s (2005) assertion that black communities pass the information and resources gained through institutions on to their social networks; in this case, it was through encouraging, cultivating and promoting others, particularly previously disadvantaged groups within the university space. theme 2: discouraging encounters on the contrary, some of the participants did experience discrimination from their lecturers and seniors, but as a result were inspired to be supportive of others, especially their juniors. whilst discussing her experience in her department, mbalenhle stated: ‘it was difficult. for my phd i had to look for mentors outside of south africa; no one wanted to support me. so, in my position now i have even asked for the top 20 students from each year, you know why i want to nurture them, i want to groom them so that they can be like me one day. i want to identify them from first year and grow with them.’ (mbalenhle, associate professor, health sciences) as a result of not receiving mentorship from her seniors within her institution, mbalenhle started developing a passion for mentoring younger academics as she was made aware of the difficulties of not having the appropriate supportive networks within the same institution. she uses the discourse of mentoring to show her passion for teaching, scholarship and social transformation within her department. this participant was also showing that she possessed components of critical consciousness, as she was able to question social arrangements and structures that marginalised her (and other members of her race) whilst committing to preventing these injustices from happening in her presence by taking critical action (christens et al. 2015). this example of not being supported academically was echoed by other participants as well. as a result of not being mentored as black academics whilst their white counterparts were, many black women professors felt compelled to make a difference in their academic settings, thus they took up the responsibility of mentoring, guiding, nurturing and grooming younger academics (especially, those from the black race). the participants demonstrated awareness of the oppression that being a black woman might bring in terms of support and exclusion in the academic sphere. oppression is defined as a system that maintains an unequal distribution of basic resources, lowering the quality of life for marginalised people (christens et al. 2015). firstly, the participants described themselves as deliberate and aggressive in providing opportunities for more black academics and guaranteeing that they may flourish and thrive in higher education institutions. according to christens et al. (2015), critical consciousness makes it apparent that the activities it encompasses are those geared towards changing unjust systems and practices (christens et al. 2015). they were defending themselves by claiming to be powerful. secondly, because the participants demonstrated that they had influence over events and outcomes that were important to students and junior colleagues, the findings can be connected to empowerment theory. most black female professors, for example, portrayed themselves as committed to assisting younger academics in setting and achieving goals, and dedicated time in their education, coaching and training. discussion the theme of encouraging scholarship and student learning stresses the importance of academics that encourage learning of students and are supportive nurturers that show care for their students. such academics show the ability to empower others. lord and hutchison (1993) argue that supports are vital in expanding empowerment. the academic encouragement of students whom the participants showed is in line with the concept of empowerment, which focuses on identifying capabilities instead of sorting risk factors and exploring environmental influences of social problems instead of blaming victims (perkins & zimmerman 1995). lord and hutchison (1993) argue that sometimes support from people is the catalyst that enables individuals to begin the journey towards more personal control. perhaps further research on students feeling encouraged and supported by their lecturers is needed to investigate the scale in which academics make students feel supported at the scholarship level. this is especially because a lot of attention is paid to the financial aid of students but attention must also be given to academic support in terms of student learning for their academic success. to a certain degree, the findings of the encouragement of student learning are also not surprising as education within black communities is highly valued by those who value it. this is especially as a result of oppression (resulting in poor education and low socio-economic standing) that black people underwent during the apartheid and education being perceived as the only gateway to true freedom (gardiner 2008; puttick 2012). conducting research that enables transformation is another way in which the participants were empowering individuals and institutions. empowerment is a structure that links strengths and abilities, natural support systems, and positive behaviour with sociopolitical and social change (rappaport 1981, 1984). it is further asserted that empowerment-oriented interventions improve well-being, with the goal of mitigating problems, providing individuals with the opportunity to develop knowledge and skills and engaging professionals as collaborators rather than authoritative professionals (perkins & zimmerman 1995). having the initiative to conduct research for transformation suggests that social justice is a prime concern for some black academicians. one of empowerment evaluation’s principles include social justice – a fair, equitable allocation of resources, opportunities, obligations and bargaining power (wandersman et al. 2005). transformation also concerns itself with inclusivity and therefore academics should be mandated to explore issues that bring about justice and transformation, especially within the south african landscape. there are basic social inequities in society and empowerment can help to improve these conditions by helping people to improve so that social conditions and communities are positively impacted in the process (wandersman et al. 2005). the case studies were empowered and as a result were able to empower others. none of the case studies became empowered on their own. rather, social context and community life were critical to understanding the changes that the participants experienced over time. using both the encouraging and discouraging encounters to empower themselves suggest that the participants were determined to succeed and want to encourage the same for others. lord and hutchison (1993) argue that having confidence in the person; providing the right information at the right time; showing initiative so that the person could envisage new possibilities for themselves and finally, challenging the person to change and participate are all important in mentoring and self-encouragement of an individual for empowerment. the study has implications for policy and practice. firstly, the academic identities of the black women professors in this study seem to be characterised by their nurturing and transformative academic leadership. this study challenges the stereotype that all women in leadership positions are masculine and lead like men. women leaders should be encouraged to lead in whatever way that is most comfortable to them without judgement. this is likely to lead them to better perform their job. instituting through policy that academics (from different backgrounds) be more involved and active in nurturing (and not just lecturing) the scholarship of students and younger academics will be beneficial for the transformation of institutions of higher education. an implication for policy is for all (not just black women) academics to be mandated to play an active role in the transformation of higher education (and to provide evidence of such). this can take the form of conducting research for transformation in higher education institutions, which can assist in the understanding of the importance of diversity and inclusivity in these spaces. the researcher acknowledges that the topic of academic identity amongst black women professors needs further exploration as there is more to it than what the article has presented. research with a larger study population could assist in unveiling more academic identities amongst black women professors (and professors in general). conclusion the study focused on the academic identities of five black women professors from two south african universities. when exploring how they position themselves academically, the theme of encouragement of scholarship and student learning, along with the theme of conducting research for (social) transformation came out strongly in the interviews. when investigating the influencers of their identities, the black women professors talked about how experiencing both encouraging and discouraging encounters with their seniors inspired them to be supportive of their juniors. these findings highlighted how the identities of the five black women professors are marked by empowerment as they demonstrated behaviour that both critiques oppression and shows a desire for equity, harmony and social justice. acknowledgements this article is partially based on the author’s thesis of the degree of doctor of philosophy in the school of applied human sciences, college of humanities, university of kwazulu-natal, south africa, with supervisor dr nicholas munro, 2020, available here: https://researchspace.ukzn.ac.za/jspui/bitstream/10413/18780/1/zulu_ncamisile_thumile_2020.pdf competing interests the author declares that he has no financial or personal relationships that may have inappropriately influenced him in writing this article. author’s contributions n.t.z. is the sole author of this article. ethical considerations ethical clearance to conduct this study was obtained from the university of kwazulu-natal human and social sciences research ethics committee (hss/2053/017m). funding information this work is based on the research supported by the national institute for the humanities and social sciences. data availability data sharing is not applicable to this article as no new data were created or analysed in this study. disclaimer the views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any affiliated agency of the author. references abbamonte, l., 2018, ‘black lives matter’: cross-media resonance and the iconic turn of language, cambridge scholars publishing. alshenqeeti, h., 2014, ‘interviewing as a data collection method: a critical review’, english linguistics research 3(1), 39–45. https://doi.org/10.5430/elr.v3n1p39 ary, d., jacobs, l.c., sorensen, c.k. & walker, d.a., 2014, introduction to research in education, 9th edn., wadeworth cengage learning, belmont, ca. babbie, e. & mouton, j., 2001, the practice of social science research, wadsworth, belmont, ca. bhana, d. & pillay, v., 2012, ‘how women in higher education negotiate work and home: a study of selected women at a university in south africa’, journal of higher education in africa 10(2), 81–94. billot, j., 2010, ‘the imagined and the real: identifying the tensions for academic identity’, higher education research & development 29(6), 709–721. https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2010.487201 braun, v. & clarke, v., 2012, ‘thematic analysis’, in h. cooper, p.m. camic, d.l. long, a.t. panter, d. rindskopf & k.j. sher (eds.), apa handbook of research methods in psychology, vol. 2, research designs: quantitative, qualitative, neuropsychological, and biological, pp. 57–71, american psychological association, washington, dc. braun, v. & clarke, v., 2019, ‘reflecting on reflexive thematic analysis’, qualitative research in sport, exercise and health 11(4), 589–597. https://doi.org/10.1080/2159676x.2019.1628806 brown, a.d. & humphreys, m., 2006, ‘organizational identity and place: a discursive exploration of hegemony and resistance’, journal of management studies 43(2), 231–257. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6486.2006.00589.x bunting, i., 2006, ‘the higher education landscape under apartheid’, in n. cloete, p. maassen, r. fehnel, t. moja, t. gibbon & h. perold (eds.), transformation in higher education. higher education dynamics, vol. 10, pp. 35–52, springer, dordrecht. christens, b.d., winn, l.t. & duke, a.m., 2015, ‘empowerment and critical consciousness: a conceptual cross-fertilization’, adolescent research review 1(1), 15–27. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40894-015-0019-3 churchman, d., 2006, ‘institutional commitments, individual compromises: identity-related responses to compromise in an australian university’, journal of higher education policy and management 28(1), 3–15. https://doi.org/10.1080/13600800500283676 collins, a.c., 2001, ‘black women in the academy: an historical overview’, in r.m. mabokela & a.l. green (eds.), sisters of the academy: emergent black women scholars in higher education, pp. 29–41, stylus publishing, sterling, va. crenshaw, k., 1989, demarginalizing the intersection of race and sex: a black feminist critique of antidiscrimination doctrine, feminist theory and antiracist politics, pp. 139–167, the university of chicago legal forum. crenshaw, k.w., 1994, ‘mapping the margins’, in m. fineman & r. mykitiuk (eds.), the public nature of private violence, pp. 93–118, routledge, new york, ny. creswell, j.w., 2013, qualitative inquiry and research design: choosing among five approaches, sage, thousand oaks, ca. croom, n. & patton, l., 2012, ‘the miner’s canary: a critical race perspective on the representation of black women full professors’, negro educational review 63(4), 13–39. department of higher education and training (dhet), 2018, statistics on post-school education and training in south africa: 2016, department of higher education and training, pretoria. divala, j.j., 2014, ‘black women academics in higher education: in search of inclusive equal voice and justice: part 2: being and belonging in south african higher education: the voices of black women academics’, south african journal of higher education 28(6), 2079–2087. dlamini, e.t. & adams, j.d., 2014, ‘patriarchy: a case of women in institutions of higher education’, perspectives in education 32(4), 121–133. durrheim, k., 2006, ‘research design’, in m. terre blanche, k. durrheim & d. painter (eds.), research in practice: applied methods for the social sciences, pp. 33–59, uct press, cape town. fontana, a.m. & frey, j.h., 2000, ‘the interview: from structured questions to negotiated text’, in n.k. denzin & y. lincoln (eds.), handbook of qualitative research, pp. 645–671, sage, thousand oaks, ca. foster-fishman, p.g., salem, d.a., chibnall, s., legler, r. & yapchai, c., 1998, ‘empirical support for the critical assumptions of empowerment theory’, american journal of community psychology 26(4), 507–536. https://doi.org/10.1023/a:1022188805083 gardiner, m., 2008, education in rural areas, centre for education policy development, johannesburg. gonzalez, i., 1991, ‘empowerment and democratic education’, southern changes 13(4), 3–6. gray, d.e., 2014, doing research in the real world, sage, singapore. griffin, r.a., 2016, ‘black female faculty, resilient grit, and determined grace or “just because everything is different doesn’t mean anything has changed”’, the journal of negro education 85(3), 365–379. https://doi.org/10.7709/jnegroeducation.85.3.0365 hyde, a., clarke, m. & drennan, j., 2013, ‘the changing role of academics and the rise of managerialism’, in b.m. kehm & u. teichler (eds.), the academic profession in europe: new tasks and new challenges, pp. 39–51, springer, dordrecht. jones, b., hwang, e. & bustamante, r.m., 2015, ‘african american female professors’ strategies for successful attainment of tenure and promotion at predominately white institutions: it can happen’, education, citizenship and social justice 10(2), 133–151. https://doi.org/10.1177/1746197915583934 kelly, k., 2006, ‘lived experience and interpretation: the balancing act in qualitative analysis’, in m. terre blanche, k. durrheim & d. painter (eds.), research in practice: applied methods for the social sciences, pp. 345–369, uct press, cape town. khunou, g., phaswana, e.d., khoza-shangase, k. & canham, h. (eds.), 2019, black academic voices: the south african experience, hsrc press, cape town. lafferty, g. & fleming, j., 2000, ‘the restructuring of academic work in australia: power, management and gender’, british journal of sociology of education 21(2), 257–267. https://doi.org/10.1080/713655344 lincoln, y.s. & guba, e.g., 1985, naturalistic inquiry, vol. 75, thousand oaks, ca, sage. lord, j. & hutchison, p., 1993, ‘the process of empowerment: implications for theory and practice’, canadian journal of community mental health 12(1), 5–22. https://doi.org/10.7870/cjcmh-1993-0001 madikizela-madiya, n., 2014, ‘rethinking space and academic identity construction in a higher education context: an application of mouzelis’s typology’, mediterranean journal of social sciences 5(14), 298. https://doi.org/10.5901/mjss.2014.v5n14p298 madikizela-madiya, n. & le roux, c.s., 2017, ‘space and academic identity construction in higher education: an open and distance learning perspective’, higher education policy 30(2), 185–201. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41307-016-0013-9 mahabeer, p., nzimande, n. & shoba, m., 2018, ‘academics of colour: experiences of emerging black women academics in curriculum studies at a university in south africa’, agenda 32(2), 28–42. https://doi.org/10.1080/10130950.2018.1460139 mamdani, m., 1998, teaching africa at the post-apartheid university of cape town: a critical view of the introduction to africa’ core course in the social science and humanities faculty’s foundation semester, university of cape town, cape town. maodzwa-taruvinga, m. & divala, j.j., 2014, ‘experiences of black women teacher educators in the south african higher education system: part 2: being and belonging in south african higher education: the voices of black women academics – leading article’, south african journal of higher education 28(6), 1961–1971. https://doi.org/10.20853/28-6-436 maton, k.i., 2008, ‘empowering community settings: agents of individual development, community betterment, and positive social change’, american journal of community psychology 41(1–2), 4–21. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10464-007-9148-6 melewar, t.c., karaosmanoglu, e. & paterson, d., 2005, ‘corporate identity: concept, components and contribution’, journal of general management 31(1), 59–81. https://doi.org/10.1177/030630700503100104 merriam, s.b., 2009, qualitative research: a guide to design and implementation, jossey-bass, san francisco, ca. mohope, s.s., 2014, ‘becoming a new kind of professional: a black woman academic caught in a transition: part 2: being and belonging in south african higher education: the voices of black women academics’, south african journal of higher education 28(6), 1986–1998. mokhele, m., 2013, ‘reflections of black women academics at south african universities: a narrative case study’, mediterranean journal of social sciences 4(3), 611. https://doi.org/10.5901/mjss.2013.v4n3p611 mullings, d.v., gooden, a. & spencer, e.b., 2020, ‘catch me when i fall! resiliency, freedom and black sisterhood in the academy’, cultural and pedagogical inquiry 12(1), 91–104. https://doi.org/10.18733/cpi29535 mzangwa, s.t., 2018, ‘the effects of higher education policy on transformation: equity, access and widening participation in post-apartheid south africa’, bangladesh e-journal of sociology 15(1), 1592737. https://doi.org/10.1080/2331186x.2019.1592737 ndlovu, n.s., 2014, ‘turning adversity into opportunity: a black woman’s journey into academia: part 2: being and belonging in south african higher education: the voices of black women academics’, south african journal of higher education 28(6), 2041–2051. https://doi.org/10.20853/28-6-443 nixon, j., 1996, ‘professional identity and the restructuring of higher education’, studies in higher education 21(1), 5–16. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079612331381417 patton, m.q., 1990, qualitative evaluation and research methods, sage, newbury park, ca. perkins, d.d. & zimmerman, m.a., 1995, ‘empowerment theory, research, and application’, american journal of community psychology 23(5), 569–579. https://doi.org/10.1007/bf02506982 peterson, h., 2014, ‘someone needs to be first: women pioneers as change agents in higher education management’, gender transformation in the academy (advances in gender research) 19, 395–413. https://doi.org/10.1108/s1529-212620140000019018 ponjuan, l., conley, v.m. & trower, c., 2011, ‘career stage differences in pre-tenure track faculty perceptions of professional and personal relationships with colleagues’, the journal of higher education 82(3), 319–346. https://doi.org/10.1353/jhe.2011.0015 puttick, k., 2012, ‘first year students’ narratives of “race” and racism in post-apartheid south africa’, unpublished doctoral dissertation, university of the witwatersrand, johannesburg. rappaport, j., 1981, ‘in praise of paradox: a social policy of empowerment over prevention’, american journal of community psychology 9(1), 1–25. https://doi.org/10.1023/a:1005161528817 rappaport, j., 1984, ‘studies in empowerment: introduction to the issue’, prevention in human services 3(2–3), 1–7. https://doi.org/10.1300/j293v03n02_02 shenton, a., 2004, ‘strategies for ensuring trustworthiness in qualitative research projects’, education for information 22(2), 63–75. https://doi.org/10.3233/efi-2004-22201 silverman, d., 2013, doing qualitative research, 4th edn., sage, london. subbaye, r. & vithal, r., 2017, ‘gender, teaching and academic promotions in higher education’, gender and education 29(7), 926–951. https://doi.org/10.1080/09540253.2016.1184237 thompson, l., 2008, a history of south africa, yale university press. trappes-lomax, h., 2004, ‘discourse analysis’, in a. davies & c. elder (eds.), the handbook of applied linguistics, pp. 133–164, blackwell publishing, milton. vosloo, j.j., 2014, ‘a sport management programme for educator training in accordance with the diverse needs of south african schools’, doctoral dissertation, north-west university, vanderbijlpark. walker, m., 1998, ‘academic identities: women on a south african landscape’, british journal of sociology of education 19(3), 335–354. https://doi.org/10.1080/0142569980190304 wandersman, a., snell-johns, j., lentz, b.e., fetterman, d.m., keener, d.c., livet, m. et al., 2005, ‘the principles of empowerment evaluation’, in d.m. fetterman & a. wandersman (eds.), empowerment evaluation principles in practice, pp. 27–41, guilford press, new york, ny. williams, l.d., 2001, ‘coming to terms with being a young black female academic in u.s. higher education’, in r.m. mabokela & a.l. green (eds.), sisters of the academy: emergent black women scholars in higher education, pp. 93–102, stylus publishing, sterling, va. winter, r., 2009, ‘academic manager or managed academic? academic identity schisms in higher education’, journal of higher education policy and management 31(2), 121–131. https://doi.org/10.1080/13600800902825835 yin, r.k., 2003, case study research: design and methods, sage, thousand oaks, ca. yosso, t.j., 2005, ‘whose culture has capital? a critical race theory discussion of community cultural wealth’, race ethnicity and education 8(1), 69–91. https://doi.org/10.1080/1361332052000341006 yuval-davis, n., 2006, ‘intersectionality and feminist politics’, european journal of women’s studies 13(3), 193–209. https://doi.org/10.1177/1350506806065752 zach, l., 2006, ‘using a multiple-case studies design to investigate the information-seeking behavior of arts administrators’, library trends 55(1), 4–21. https://doi.org/10.1353/lib.2006.0055 zimmerman, m.a., 1995, ‘psychological empowerment: issues and illustrations’, american journal of community psychology 23(5), 581–599. https://doi.org/10.1007/bf02506983 zulu, c., 2013, ‘women academics’ research productivity at one university campus: an analysis of dominant discourses’, south african journal of higher education 27(3), 750–767. footnotes 1. according to bitzer (2008), a professor holds a doctorate or relevant comparable qualification, provides evidence of integrating teaching with research and community interaction and leadership in terms of teaching and learning. a professor takes leadership in promoting the university as a research institution and maintains a research and publication record and has at least a c3 research rating at the nrf (social sciences). a professor takes leadership in community interaction programmes with high relevance to teaching and research programmes. a professor is also involved in national and international professional and disciplinary associations. she or he must be recognised, at least nationally, as a leader in her or his field of expertise. lastly, a professor must be able to provide leadership in an academic department and participate constructively in faculty and institutional initiatives. the editorial team of transformation in higher education recognises the value and importance of the peer reviewer in the overall publication process – not only in shaping the individual manuscript, but also in shaping the credibility and reputation of our journal. we are committed to the timely publication of all original, innovative contributions submitted for publication. as such, the identification and selection of reviewers who have expertise and interest in the topics appropriate to each manuscript are essential elements in ensuring a timely, productive peer review process. we would like to take this opportunity to thank all reviewers who participated in shaping this volume of transformation in higher education: in an effort to facilitate the selection of appropriate peer reviewers for transformation in higher education, we ask that you take a moment to update your electronic portfolio on http://www. thejournal.org.za for our files, allowing us better access to your areas of interest and expertise, in order to match reviewers with submitted manuscripts. if you would like to become a reviewer, please visit the journal website and register as a reviewer. to access your details on the website, you will need to follow these steps: 1. log into the online journal at http://www. thejournal.org.za 2. in your ‘user home’ [http://www.thejournal. org.za/index.php/the/ user] select ‘edit my profile’ under the heading ‘my account’ and insert all relevant details, bio statement and reviewing interest/s. 3. it is good practice as a reviewer to update your personal details regularly to ensure contact with you throughout your professional term as reviewer to the transformation in higher education. please do not hesitate to contact us if you require assistance in performing this task. publisher: publishing@aosis.co.za tel: +27 21 975 2602 fax: +27 21 975 4635 a. becker aida terblanché-greeff annamagriet de wet christo lombaard christoff botha dairai dziwa franci cronje greta galloway josef de beer k. maree kai horsthemke louis van staden m. fourie-malherbe merridy wilson-strydom munamato chemhuru petro du preez r. albertyn rose munisi savo heleta stefan ramaekers takalani mashau w. vass yusef waghid open access page iii of iii reviewer acknowledgementpage 1 of 1 we appreciate the time taken to perform your review/s successfully. http://www.thejournal.org.za acknowledgement to reviewers http://www.thejournal.org.za� http://www.thejournal.org.za� http://www.thejournal.org.za� http://www.thejournal.org.za� http://www.thejournal.org.za/index.php/the/user http://www.thejournal.org.za/index.php/the/user http://www.thejournal.org.za/index.php/the/user mailto:publishing@aosis.co.za http://www.thejournal.org.za� abstract introduction: the context, the question and the project research methods and design different ways of knowing and what can be imagined results discussion conclusion acknowledgements references primary sources about the author(s) corinne r. knowles extended studies unit, chertl, faculty of education, rhodes university, makhanda, south africa nomphumelelo q. babeli department of political and international studies, faculty of humanities, rhodes university, makhanda, south africa athabile ntlokwana department of political and international studies, faculty of humanities, rhodes university, makhanda, south africa zhikona q. ntombolwana department of african languages, faculty of humanities, rhodes university, makhanda, south africa zinathi z. sobuza department of economics and economic history, faculty of commerce, rhodes university, makhanda, south africa citation knowles, c.r., babeli, n.q., ntlokwana, a., ntombolwana, z.q. & sobuza, z.z., 2023, ‘the politics of knowledge in south african universities: students’ perspectives’, transformation in higher education 8(0), a244. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v8i0.244 project research number: 1476 original research the politics of knowledge in south african universities: students’ perspectives corinne r. knowles, nomphumelelo q. babeli, athabile ntlokwana, zhikona q. ntombolwana, zinathi z. sobuza received: 17 oct. 2022; accepted: 18 jan. 2023; published: 27 feb. 2023 copyright: © 2023. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract knowledge-making in south african universities is set up and framed in particular ways, with a euro-centric bias. we argue that many of the contributions that african first year entering students could make to this process of knowledge-making are dis-abled, leading to alienation. in this article, we argue for a different perspective and approach to teaching and learning in the humanities. former extended studies students from a south african university have worked collaboratively in a knowledge-making project, and using data generated from this, suggest different kinds of environments and strategies for more inclusive teaching and learning. using an african feminist theoretical and methodological lens, we consider alternative ways of knowing, and recognition that supports powerful senses of belonging and agency, using examples from student experiences of an extended studies humanities programme. we contrast this with how humanities programmes are experienced by some first-year students at the university, sometimes with tragic consequences. finally, we recommend pedagogic, curricula and extra-curricular changes that can be made, to realise the possibilities of decolonised knowledge-making that is more relevant and inclusive. the authors believe that the ideas around decolonising knowledge that are explored here are more broadly applicable and necessary. contribution: the article contributes to the conversation on decolonising the humanities curriculum, by including students’ experiences, concerns, and suggestions. keywords: african feminism; decolonial; knowledge-making; university; first-year students. introduction: the context, the question and the project knowledge-making in universities is shaped by ideas about knowledge that have been developed over centuries, mostly in the imperial west (moletsane 2015). our study considers the implications of this in a small south african university, where in 2021 the majority of first-year students were black and from lower-income group families and qualified for the state-supported national student financial aid scheme (nsfas). it is safe to say that in the most unequal country in the world (sguazzin 2021), with the highest percentage of youth unemployment (flanagan 2021), there are important contributions to these and other social problems which are anticipated from the relatively small percentage of young people who find themselves in south african universities. in this article, rhodes university (ru) is used as a case study to consider how to reframe how we think about knowledge to be decolonised, inclusive, relevant and sustainable. rhodes university is a small, formerly white, state university in south africa, where 88% of the undergraduate student population is black people (ru digest of statistics 2022). it will use the reflections of former extended studies (es) students who were engaged in a knowledge-making project in 2020–2021. the es programme is part of a national intervention to increase access to previously disadvantaged groups (che 2013). it is an academic support programme where students are provided with additional augmented support for their two first-year subjects – in this case, political and international studies 1, and sociology 1. the es class is usually about 30–40 students, and we see each other for five double periods each week. the article considers pedagogy (ways of teaching), curriculum (content and assessment) and organisational context as the mutually constitutive components that affect this kind of knowledge-making. research methods and design the knowledge-making project, with dreams in our hands (wdioh), that gave rise to the findings in this article was set up during the coronavirus disease 2019 (covid-19) lockdown in south africa in 2020 (for more details on the project, see knowles 2021). the project was part of a phd (knowles 2023) and former es students were invited to be part of the project through an open facebook post. frustrated with ways in which the author felt es and other students are marginalised in the university system, the project’s aim was to set up a platform for knowledge-making that recognised students as legitimate knowledge-makers. the project was ethically run, using principles of african feminism (mkabela 2005) and permitted by the education faculty ethics committee. the 24 former es student participants who volunteered for the project are scattered across south africa – some are still students (undergraduate and postgraduate), some are working and some are in-between. we collaborated in the qualitative knowledge-making project, guided by african feminist methodology principles (knowles 2021; ntseane 2015). working online over 6 months, through a series of workshops, we firstly came up with topics we felt were relevant to the times. secondly, the project participants responded to one of four final topics, according to the guidelines drawn up collaboratively in our online workshop. once these responses were submitted, we anonymously reviewed each other’s work (two or three each), again according to the guidelines agreed upon in online workshops. we reflected on the process of writing and reviewing and the content of the submissions in a further set of workshops. we then volunteered to become part of writing (among other forms of meaning-making and dissemination) teams to address the topics in more depth, using the submissions, reviews and workshop transcriptions as data. the authors of this article are two undergraduate and two postgraduate students at rhodes university and our es lecturer. over the past year, through nine online workshops and tasks in between, we scrutinised the submissions and transcriptions using reflexive african feminist analysis to find themes and compare claims that people made, looking for similarities and differences. we used empathy and openness in our readings and discussions, recognising that experience is a valid form of knowing, which people experience differently depending on their context and looking for connections between them. these are distinctly african feminist ways of working with knowledge (ntseane 2011). we worked together online and on our own in between workshops to bring our individual voices to the process of writing, critique each other’s work and build our argument for this article. our positionality as participants in the project and located in a web of power arrangements was carefully and reflexively navigated, using individual and group reflections to remind ourselves of our political, intellectual and ethical responsibilities (see knowles 2021). what we have produced from this process is, we believe, an african feminist praxis and a contribution to knowledge about inclusive teaching, learning and research. the findings from the project are ongoing and the subject of future articles, and this article sets the tone for them. it demonstrates the kind of knowledge that can be produced by an afrocentric and student-centred pedagogy and practice that began for us in es classes and continued for the duration of the project, even though constrained by pandemic lockdown conditions. this article will address the politics of knowledge – firstly, by discussing different ways of knowing and being that students bring with them when entering the university and what we imagine knowledge could be in universities; secondly, by contrasting this with how knowledge is set up and legitimised in university humanities programmes, using our experiences at rhodes university. it will look at how the es programme provided an alternative space to the mainstream and what kinds of recognition and support this encouraged. finally, it will make recommendations about what could change to make knowledge-making more inclusive and relevant. different ways of knowing and what can be imagined the question of ‘what can be imagined in how we think of knowledge?’ is partly addressed by luckett (2016:416) when she poses the question: ‘what must the world be like for black students at a post-colonial university?’ she writes in response to protesters’ anger and their demands in the 2015 student protests in south africa, calling for decoloniality and curricula that centred the experiences of (poor, black) students and africa. lewis and baderoon draw on the work of collins to suggest ‘seeing from below’ (collins in lewis & baderoon 2021:2–3) as a way to see the world differently. they argue that these perspectives and understandings ‘speak not only about and to – but beyond – their own locations’ (2021:3). this has been our strategy in the wdioh project and in the writing of this article. lander (2000) and chavunduka (1995) have argued that western views of knowledge, since their introduction in africa and other non-western societies, have failed to understand or include an encompassing, holistic way of knowing and knowledge production. the current problem with educational structures that have inherited this system is that their knowledge is based on cultural values that are different from those existing in most of the african indigenous societies and that shape peoples’ ways of knowing and being (lewis & baderoon 2021). this is a complex challenge in that, firstly, the institutional cultures of all universities everywhere will be challenging to some; secondly, it is the nature of universities to challenge students to bring about new learning and ways of learning; and thirdly, the binaries of what is western and what is african are often blurred. ndlovu (2018) addresses some of these conundrums, arguing that ‘crafting a different future for the african subject’ involves conscientisation of the chains of coloniality, in order to withdraw from and transform the ‘structural system of colonial domination’ (p. 110). this article is a contribution to this work. the authors argue that how we could foster knowledge in the country, and in universities, that allows people to be recognised and to thrive is by working with knowledge that speaks to who they are in the most holistic sense. knowledge that speaks to their political, social, economic, cultural and spiritual communities helps them to better understand their backgrounds and futures and enables criticality (hames 2021). the authors argue for knowledge that is collective, spiritual, transformative and generative – the knowledge that ‘does not only counter racist and patriarchal world views; it envisions new ways of being human and is therefore relevant to all’ (lewis & baderoon 2021:3). despite problematic practices and inadequate resources in the state schooling system (see amnesty international’s report of 2021, broken and unequal), students come to university with prior experience of life, knowledge and ways of knowing. the authors argue that their presence at university deserves recognition that embraces diversity of experiences, knowledge and pedagogy to form more inclusive and relevant curricula. heleta (2016:2) observes that universities have not done much to welcome ‘different bodies and traditions of knowledge and knowledge-making in new and exploratory ways’. and as heleta (2016) suggests, lecturers make assumptions about who their students are and fail to adjust their pedagogy to a demographic beyond their own comfort zones. the implications are that first-year students are treated as though they come to university lacking moral and cultural maturity, and as blank slates and empty vessels, students are dependent on the university to fill them with knowledge to address the deficiency (shahjahan, wagner & wane 2009:64). the tragic consequence is that alternative ways of knowing, teaching and making knowledge are too easily excluded or marginalised. the extent of this exclusion hinders many first-year black students in their ability to resonate, understand and reciprocate. it is set to erase indigenous knowledge as though there is no place for the kind of knowledge passed on by grandmothers and grandfathers through storytelling, riddles and idioms in the university space. we argue that it does not have to be this way. african feminism, as we will explain, gives us insight into how ‘there are various practices that tend to legitimise particular knowledges, rendering them of most worth – while marginalising others’ (moletsane 2015:42). moletsane goes on to argue that this needs to be re-ordered by, for instance, valuing indigenous and context-specific knowledge. she discusses research practices in local communities that have resonance with how lecturers sometimes think about their first-year students, urging us to ‘recognise and acknowledge them as dynamic individuals and groups capable of understanding and articulating their own issues, and as able to identify local solutions to address these’ (2015:43). this can happen in lecture rooms when students feel recognised and safe and can then think critically about the challenges in communities and how to address them. some of the values that are recommended as principles for knowledge-making from an african feminist perspective are a sense of the collective and a shared orientation towards knowledge; spirituality as part of the knowledge-making process; and communal knowledge-making (ntseane 2011). later we will make recommendations about how some of these different ways of knowing and being can be achieved. before that, we discuss some of the difficulties and challenges to achieving them, given the colonial roots of south african universities. results how university knowledge-making is set up and legitimised knowledge-making framed in academic institutions in racial, religious and gendered ways, through culturally insensitive lenses, results in a reluctance to recognise alternative pedagogies and epistemologies (moletsane 2015; tamale 2020). it is our experience and argument that knowledge-making in universities fails to transcend many of the western ideas and principles that have been put in place to operate the academy over centuries. instead, the first-year programmes in humanities are often set up to ‘suppress heterogeneity’ (tamale 2020:63), as they devalue prior experiences of many black, first-time entering students. lewis and baderoon (2021) argue that voices such as these from the margins ‘can intervene at distinct moments’ to envision ‘new ways of being human’ and to produce ‘future possible worlds’ (p. 3). one of the ways in which this marginalisation is evident is in the texts recommended in curricula, for instance in sociology and political and international studies. the texts that first-year students are compelled to consume are raced, classed and gendered in such a way that bears no resemblance to the lives of young black students. the authors of this article experience much of the teaching and learning as emphasising eurocentric white male ways of thinking about knowledge while excluding a more maternal influence on knowledge, which is what has shaped many of the knowledge experiences of black first-time entering students. for instance, many of us have experienced that there is a rejection of spirituality and the embodiment of knowledge in the realm of academia. the project wdioh was co-created by students to reflect on topics we selected and to use these to make knowledge. in a follow-up workshop, we asked: how did you experience university knowledge in your first year? the answers reflect how humanities knowledge is perceived: ‘i understood at that time knowledge as white and male because we would engage the dead white men theories in every course, be it sociology or politics, there was marx and durkheim. i had this idea that knowledge is white and dominated by men.’ (wdioh workshop 2021) it is unclear whether this experience is a continuation from experience in school curricula or specific to university. but it points to what stood out for us in our first year. another fellow student explained: ‘i was going to say that before even considering gender as a defining category [for knowledge in first-year university], race is the biggest defining category. so, before asking the question of what gender is knowledge, we should firstly ask the question of what race and what religion is knowledge, because for the most part people who wrote back in whatever century were the first to construct the supposedly knowledge. those people were probably christians and white. so, that affected how we understand knowledge because for the most part back in whatever century it was, women were not even allowed to produce knowledge.’ (wdioh workshop 2021) what emerged in discussion were collective experiences of alienation in the university environment, where students feel unrecognised by the kinds of text they are presented with and then are unable to make meaningful contributions in class discussions or assignments. as we will discuss in more detail later, this is exacerbated by the language issue. in a submission earlier in the project, a fellow former student spoke of the strangeness of learning everything in english when he arrived at university and how this limited his engagement with deeper issues the knowledge brought up: ‘all of my life up to that moment i had communicated in vernacular languages. even the english i encountered, i engaged it in my vernacular language … so before one even engages with karl marx, one was confronted with english itself. reading was much easier than raising a hand to ask a question in barrat [lecture room] i must confess … so to avoid this seemingly apparent embarrassment on raising a hand to ask, say, why marx’s “historical materialism” pays no regard to problem of race in society for instance. not asking at all felt safe.’ (wdioh submission 10, 2020) another argued that the inequalities, for instance of social class, evident but seemingly unrecognised in the lecture room, limited how much he felt he could engage, resulting in a kind of rote reproduction of knowledge that had very little relevance to his life: ‘inside universities materialism create “outsiders within” whereby i am part of the university but because of my poverty university rejects me all the time. these inequalities and hardships we experience makes one question the relationship between inequalities and academic achievement. as it stands, i feel alienated. the fact that i have no personal control over learning shows powerlessness. this absence of personal control makes me to be pushing to able to submit the required work that i should submit, not to learn. in terms of meaninglessness, learning becomes irrelevant knowing that i do not learn for the future. there is no welcoming and conducive environment that i feel needs to build to what i cover in academics. this condition created disconnection from myself and academics.’ (wdioh submission 16, 2020) these sentiments were echoed by another: ‘i did not feel like i belong. to a certain extent, i do believe i was projecting my own insecurities out into the world. i saw myself as inadequate, as undeserving of a seat at this table and believed that everyone else saw me the same way. so, i shied away from anything that would make me the centre of attention, if i had a question i would not ask, if i had an opinion or knew the answer to a question, i would not say anything.’ (wdioh submission 4, 2020) these reflections reveal that not all knowledge at the first-year humanities level is welcoming of some students’ ways of being. the historical and foundational framing of knowledge gives authority to white, male eurocentric knowledge and disables what can be important contributions of students in universities and particularly the black majority. as a result, we do not recognise ourselves in this knowledge and are alienated from our own rich cultures and histories of knowledge-making. many of the project submissions spoke about the way that language limited how much they felt they belonged or could engage with knowledge-making: ‘in my experience it is the pressure that comes with the studies that you have to take in a language that is not your own. a language that you do not fully understand but you are expected to know it well, according to the demands of being at university in south africa … not coming from a model c school at times can affect confidence also within lectures because at times the content that is being taught or questions asked, can be things that we understand and know only if they were asked and taught in our language. then things would be far better in terms of success in the university space. but instead, it can make you feel inadequate and become an under performer because of the impact it has on our ability to think and show creative capacity as black students. it can make us get trapped in a vicious cycle of toxic thoughts, hating on yourself for not being born in a better off family which would have afforded you better education, that would allow one to function better within the university space.’ (wdioh submission 6, 2020) this experience is an example of ways that university knowledge is lopsided, and these experiences of anxiety and depression are far more common than they should be (malaika 2020). indigenous language and culture were neither welcomed in academic knowledge-making nor represented in the academic texts which were used for this. as a fellow student observed: ‘in my first year in humanities, i would look at the reference list at the end of my tutorial submissions or essays and never find a familiar surname or name. the more i engaged with texts, the more i longed for representation and familiar experiences. i ended up consoling myself saying, “that is why i don’t understand western theories”. at first, i used to think this how it supposed to be, that the only legitimate voices are western voices through a particular language, and the harder it is to understand this western knowledge means the power in it and the relevance of it. for some time, i held this view, until i realized that this is deliberate exclusion, some oppositional voices and nuances to traditional knowledge-making are not fitted, thus denied legitimacy, and my failure to understand does not signify how powerful the knowledge is, but rather how deliberate the exclusion of poor black students is.’ (wdioh reflection 2022) lewis and baderoon (2021:2) help us to understand the issues around knowledge production and point out that to honestly answer the question what kind of knowledge matters, we need to link it to whose knowledge matters. they argue that identity politics in the 20th century has enabled understandings of the wide range of knowers. weiler (2009), on the other hand, argues that the question of what kind of knowledge and whose knowledge should instead be linked to the question of power and that it is crucial to understand it through this lens, as it will help us to create a political theory of knowledge production. lewis supports this, arguing that the powerful ‘also wield control over and access to knowledge’ (lewis in arnfred & adomako ampofo 2010:205). first-year humanities lecturers, where sociology and politics curricula deal with subjects such as inequality, are more powerful than their students, with the responsibility to recognise issues of inequality that exist in every lecture room. they could collaborate with students to produce contextually relevant, african-centred, culturally respectful, ethical knowledge that seeks ways to reconfigure the inequalities. instead, unfortunately, this submission suggests otherwise: ‘the sad thing about poverty is that as students at some point we get tired that every time we must constantly perform our poverty for us to get assistance. the fact that we must prove that we are poor every time to the institutions of higher learning for consideration of our grievances is a proof that universities lack comprehensive understanding of our societies. the experience of those coming from disadvantaged background have less platform in informing the realities of the university. for me, universities should know by now that they are an unequal space. it is the duty of universities to know that we are an unequal society, universities deal with knowledge. it is the duty of universities to also inform decisions that help to close the gap of inequalities not to deny them.’ (wdioh submission 16) discussion what was different in extended studies students in the humanities es programme that we consider here see each other for five double periods every week to augment the work of mainstream subjects. the bulk of this work is learning how to read, write and understand the concepts taught in the politics and sociology mainstream courses and trying to make these relevant to our lives. the lecturer attends many of the mainstream lectures with her students. because the es class is a smaller group of students, and we see each other every day, we can do things differently. the kind of pedagogy employed is based on bell hooks’ transgressive, liberatory pedagogy (1994), which argues for a ‘radical pedagogy’ where ‘everyone’s presence is acknowledged’ (1994:8) – and in our case, this included our language, race, class, gender, culture, problems at home or on campus, our fears and our dreams for our futures. the es students can express themselves in any language that they are comfortable in, even their native language – and where necessary, someone will translate for those who do not understand. even though we were coming from different schools and had different life experiences throughout high school, the es class brought us together because we all shared one common goal in mind, to learn. extended studies offered a different experience for first-year students; this stood out because first-year students in mainstream experienced their first year differently, and this will be explored in the following section. in mainstream lectures, lecturers typically follow the conventional ways of teaching, which mainly comprises doing most of the talking themselves, teaching in english and requiring students to speak in english. students who attended es classes shared how they were uncomfortable in mainstream lectures, and this influenced their overall class participation, as they felt out of place. in es, there was an emphasis on group work, where students were encouraged to discuss concepts, find local examples, share their experiences, dissect difficult readings and work on assignment questions together. one former fellow student explains: ‘extended studies felt like a safe space, a family, for so many of us. it gave me the opportunity to be myself because i knew i was surrounded by one of my own, people who understood me and afforded me the opportunity to make mistakes. when i wanted to voice out something, i did not have to think about how it would sound to the next person, how my english accent would be, worry about the need to sound intellectual and smart. i was surrounded by people who needed to hear what i had to say as much as i needed to hear what they had to say. we did not have to perform for anyone.’ (wdioh submission 4) for those who struggled to speak in class, the open-door policy with the lecturer outside of lecture times meant that students could see her on their own or in small groups. one student admitted despite the relative freedom in class, she preferred, at first, these one-on-one opportunities: ‘i grew more comfortable in the es class as weeks went by because we engaged one-on-one with the lecturer and could easily open up … es lecturers are somehow aware that not engaging in class discussions does not necessarily translate to “not knowing” or “understanding” the work, but we lack confidence and the ability to address a large group of students … it is not easy opening up, it is a process.’ (wdioh submission 1) one of the lessons we learn from the experience in es classes, and supported by former students here, is an atmosphere of recognition. inequalities are not ignored – they are acknowledged. getting to know each other in regular group work, which operated with the ethics of care and respect, enabled a sense of freedom and confidence. where that freedom was inhibited in some way, one-on-one sessions with the lecturer helped to build understanding and confidence. a focus on group work, using the language of choice, enables students to grapple with concepts and work with knowledge in ways that are relevant and sustainable. as a former fellow student observed: ‘in conclusion, the amount of confidence one has in the teaching and learning process has effect on their knowledge production. students need to own knowledge production, they have to understand that they play a crucial part in it. this will cause an unbelievable amount of improvement.’ (wdioh submission 4) steps we can take to make university knowledge-making more inclusive there are ways that universities can address the inequalities between students from the so-called developed and underdeveloped backgrounds to make knowledge-making more relevant and inclusive. we make some recommendations based on the data from the project and our own experiences. experiential knowledge, produced reflexively, gives unique perspectives that reveal aspects of social issues that are otherwise hidden beneath more dominant discourses. following moletsane’s (2015) arguments around the politics of knowledge production, we thoughtfully bring our own experiences as ‘substantial participation and contribution from those most affected’ (moletsane 2015:36). the recommendations arise from epistemological and ontological challenges inherent in the colonial knowledge framework that influences how universities operate and determine what counts as knowledge. we look at the data through a lens of african feminism, which argues that knowledge is embodied and communal, and it can also be spiritual and maternal (see lewis & baderoon; knowles 2021; ntseane 2015). all the points we make here are interlinked and contribute towards enabling a more inclusive teaching and learning environment. language matters usage of different languages is vital for students to feel welcomed and important in the lecture room. being taught in a foreign language makes it challenging to express yourself, especially when you come from a differently developed background and schooling and have been taught even the subject of english in isixhosa or other indigenous languages. as shown in this article, language can often be a barrier to speaking, raising a point or asking a question in a lecture room (wdiou submissions 2020). these barriers to engagement are epistemological as well as ontological. when students’ ways of being and ways of knowing are recognised and accommodated, it changes how they feel and engage intellectually. a former fellow es student compares the learning experience in a monolingual english humanities lecture and in isixhosa lectures: ‘it was different for a student who came from a class in which english was their second language because you would listen attentively. the lecturer would speak those bombastic english words. you would lose track of what is being said and focus on figuring out what the word means but not paying too much attention to what is being taught. you would write down those words on a piece of paper so that you could look it up when you are in res; while the lecturer is speaking, you would be looking at a slide show, note-taking maybe looking through the reading, and listening to what other students engaging with the lecturer. in the isixhosa home language, it was a complete shock that you could feel so relaxed, laugh out loud and engage with the lecturer without overthinking and thinking about how to construct the sentence in your head before you speak. everyone was engaging.’ (wdioh, reflection 2022) in our experience, not enough effort has been made to encourage critical engagement with students who feel more comfortable in indigenous languages, but there are some laudable exceptions. notably, the political and international studies department at rhodes university now provides course outlines and assignment questions in isixhosa for first-year students, and they are invited to submit assignments in their own languages. dr siphokazi magadla, working with the isixhosa department, makes a number of arguments for the use of multilingualism in mainstream teaching. dr magadla (head of department of political and international studies at rhodes) is one of the champions of multilingualism in the university and has presented and written on the subject. she was interviewed for this article by one of our team. firstly, magadla argues that being able to work with concepts in isixhosa strengthens english language development. she describes how working with senior students to translate course outlines and assignment questions into isixhosa had the knock-on effect of improving english skills through this work. her argument is that gaining confidence in isixhosa increased confidence to work with the concepts in english (s. magadla & n. babeli, pers. comm., 25 april 2022). related to the given point, in es classes, students reported that a sense of belonging was fostered even where english was the main language spoken: ‘we feel as though you are important. we are a small group of students from “similar backgrounds”, and our ideas and opinions about a particular topic are valid. our lecturer would always say, “there are no wrong answers, we must speak our minds, and we can express it in any language, and it will be translated”. this focus on a freedom of expression, and welcoming different views, rather than being correct, gave many students the freedom to speak, raise their points and ask many questions. it was different in a mainstream class. we would watch other students who would engage with a lecturer regularly. besides knowing the work context, they spoke fluently and confidently.’ (wdiou reflection 2022) secondly, and related to this former student’s experience, magadla argues that one of the most successful parts of her multilingualism project is the tutorial work, where they have ‘normalised a multilingual discussion so that students just understand what’s going on here’ (s. magadla & n. babeli, pers. comm., 2022). if students can make sense of the concepts and questions in their indigenous language, they are more likely to articulate their understanding of concepts, even if it is in english: at the heart of it, with the understanding that most of them are going to write in english, but they will understand the question to understand the content because it’s in their language. (s. magadla & n. babeli, pers. comm., 2022) thirdly, multilingualism is helpful on a broader, national scale, where, as magadla argues, ‘we are by nature bilingual, really multilingual’ given the number of indigenous languages in our country. normalising the use of isixhosa in an eastern cape province university where this is the main language spoken has the effect of welcoming non-isixhosa speakers from other provinces and countries into the language and world of its people. she argues that: [t]hey then acquire a new language which is predominant to where they are, you know … after four years it should make sense that they acquire isixhosa as another language of competence. (s. magadla & n. babeli, pers. comm., 2022) final comments on this aspect are that it is clear from the submissions of students to this project and the interview with dr magadla that we need to encourage students and lecturers through multilingualism to be comfortable enough to raise their views on different perspectives and to develop translation skills in their collaborative efforts to understand and be understood. this will create an environment where innovative ideas from difficult aspects of life can be developed. the promotion of multiple languages can be followed through to signage on campus, online university sites and even books and learning materials. this kind of recognition of who the students are influences how welcome students feel and how they engage with knowledge. but importantly, without political will, strategic prioritising and investment, it rests on a few motivated individuals to carry this forward. as magadla notes: it must not be symbolic as it is now. right now, it depends on individual departments, and really the enthusiasm of individual academics within departments… you definitely need political will beyond just a cosmetic approval, you know or statement that says that they support this. they really need to invest in it. (s. magadla & n. babeli, pers. comm., 2022) the relationship between power and knowledge includes the resource allocation to projects that are deemed valuable by the institution. we argue that despite the issue of language and inequalities of access, the success of students disadvantaged by endemic inequalities is not yet sufficiently valuable to those who could release the funding required to address language issues in the institution. representation matters representation without a transformational agenda will not necessarily bring about the changes that are necessary in society (hassim, goetz & hassim 2003:5). but it is one of the identified shifts that would lead to a greater sense of inclusion and legitimacy for first-year students. the wdioh students argue that having more black african lecturers, and lecturers who care about students, is essential (wdioh reflection 2022). even if they do not necessarily actively make allowances for these, they can understand many black african student challenges such as language barriers, a lack of information, poverty and even family issues. some topics are raised in classes about societies, for instance in the study of sociology. it helps to have a lecturer who understands the experience and uses examples from familiar societies such as the townships. it helps students to be more open and give their views, experiences and challenges. if a particular student cannot understand what is being said, the lecturer can explain in the language that the student understands. the student can also respond or ask questions in the language on how they understand the work in their language. importantly as well, the texts that inform first-year curricula are too often disproportionally authored by white, male, elite thinkers. texts that are written by african women and men are more likely to speak to the complexities of black life and serve to recognise and inspire students who feel encouraged to become academics themselves. representation makes a difference to how welcome and legitimate students feel and the extent to which they feel they belong and can aspire to academic careers. who their lecturers are in the classrooms and who the scholars and voices of authority are in required texts and reference lists all contribute to legitimising the contributions of young black people in knowledge-making in universities. recognising inequality of opportunity and capability matters we have noticed that students from disadvantaged backgrounds have few to no computer skills. almost everything in university now requires knowing how to use computers. our assignments must be typed in a specific way, so a student must know how to create and save a word document accordingly (wdioh submission 3). we recommend that universities should provide computer literacy to all first-year students or students struggling to use a computer, based on the computer literacy course we do in es. reading and writing skills are essential. each department should emphasise and demystify the reading and writing skills associated with their discipline, based on the information literacy and academic literacy and augmented courses offered in es. some students also face challenges in constructing good academic essays because of their backgrounds. building their confidence through regular writing opportunities, assessed through peer review, would build their capacities as knowledge-makers. there are other life skills that would be useful to learn while completing undergraduate courses, which also recognise the inequalities that students bring to university. skills associated with research, such as translating and transcribing, and skills around job searching, cv writing, and how to interview are all important for life beyond university. learning to drive, learning to budget, learning about nutrition and cooking for oneself, are all skills which recognise that students have a life outside of the classroom but which they have not necessarily had equal opportunities to develop. what we argue is that the energy and experiences of students themselves can be more fruitfully employed in making these things happen as part of an institutional commitment to recognise and address the inequalities that are exacerbated by a narrow approach to knowledge and knowledge-making in our universities. conclusion knowledge-making as individualistic, and linguistically exclusive, has been constructed through predominantly colonial, patriarchal and capitalist ideas which are simply not relevant to the lived experience and futures of young black people in south africa. we argue that an african feminist lens helps us to see a different kind of knowledge-making that does not pretend to be neutral while exacerbating the inequalities inherent in south african society. it helps us to see that knowledge-making can be embodied, communal and welcoming of differences. using data generated from a project that sees former es students making knowledge together, we have centred student voices to argue for a different orientation in humanities studies. our recommendations include: (1) much more rigorous engagement with multilingualism in teaching and learning; (2) more lecturers who understand or have experienced the kinds of conditions common among the majority of poor black students; (3) more afrocentric scholarship and representation in curricula; and (4) working collaboratively with students themselves in creative and sustainable ways to initiate courses and opportunities outside of the set curricula of the university. this enables the agency of students, who can engage critically with the concepts in an atmosphere that celebrates a diversity of languages and experiences and can produce knowledge that is relevant and sustainable. the article hints at structural and systemic changes that need to happen in the university. we have brought attention to the differences in teaching and learning cultures present in es classes on one hand and many of the mainstream classes on the other. we believe that treating students with respect and kindness and finding ways to inspire their active participation in knowledge-making do not have to be limited to es classes but can in fact be part of a broader transformation. knowledge-making as an inclusive, welcoming process requires an orientation that is supported by african feminist principles of connection, the embodiment of knowledge and mutual respect. inspired by collins’ idea of ‘seeing from below’ (collins in baderoon & lewis 2021:2–3), we have argued for a re-politicisation of knowledge to include black students’ contributions and aspirations. acknowledgements competing interests the authors declare that they have no financial or personal relationships that may have inappropriately influenced them in writing this article. authors’ contributions all the authors collaborated over a period of 18 months, first as part of a knowledge-making project and then in the analysis of the data from the project, as well as the writing and reviewing of the article. while the corresponding author, c.r.k., conceptualised and managed the many workshops held during this time and took responsibility for the final editing. each author has participated fully and made a significant contribution to this original work. ethical considerations ethical clearance to conduct this study was obtained from the rhodes university education faculty ethics committee (ref. no. 2020-1476-3515). the data for the project, with dreams in our hands, has been given ethical clearance, and each member of the project has signed consent and given permission for their words to be used in academic articles. all material has been anonymised as per the consent agreement. original files are stored on a computer. funding information this research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors. data availability the data that support the findings of this study are available upon reasonable request from the corresponding author, c.r.k. disclaimer the views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any affiliated agency of the authors. references amnesty international, 2021, broken and unequal: the state of education in south africa, viewed n.d. from https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/afr53/1705/2020/en/. arnfred, s. & ampofo, a.a. (eds.), 2010, african feminist politics of knowledge: tensions, challenges, possibilities, nordiska afrikainstitutet, viewed 1 september 2022, from https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:288583/fulltext01.pdf chavunduka, m., 1995, ‘the missing links’, in keynote address to the workshop on the study and promotion of indigenous knowledge systems and sustainable natural resources management in southern africa, vol. 24, midmar, kwazulu-natal, april 24. che report of the task team on undergraduate curriculum structure, 2013, a proposal for undergraduate curriculum reform in south africa: the case for a flexible curriculum structure, che, pretoria. flanagan, j., 2021, ‘75% of youth in south africa are unemployed’, the sunday times (uk), viewed n.d. from https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/75-of-youth-in-south-africa-are-unemployed-2krzpzvmx. hames, m., 2021, ‘teaching black, teaching gender, teaching feminism’, in d. lewis & g. baderoon (eds.), surfacing: on being black and feminist in south africa, pp. 56–72, wits university press, johannesburg. hassim, s., goetz, a. & hassim, s., 2003, no shortcuts to power: african women in politics and policy making, david philip publishers, claremont, ca. heleta, s., 2016, ‘decolonisation of higher education: dismantling epistemic violence and eurocentrism in south africa’, transformation in higher education 1(1), 1–8. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v1i1.9 hooks, b., 1994, teaching to transgress: education as the practice of freedom, routledge, new york. knowles, c., 2021, ‘with dreams in our hands: an african feminist framing of a knowledge-making project with former esp students’, education as change 25(1), 1–22. https://doi.org/10.25159/1947-9417/8744 knowles, c.r., 2023, ‘with dreams in our hands: towards transgressive knowledge-making cultures’, phd thesis, environmental learning and research centre, education faculty, rhodes university. lander, e., 2000, ‘eurocentrism and colonialism in latin american social thought’, nepantla: views from south 1(3), 519–532. lewis, d. & baderoon, g. (eds.), 2021, surfacing: on being black and feminist in south africa, wits university press, johannesburg. luckett, k., 2016, ‘curriculum contestation in a post-colonial context: a view from the south’, teaching in higher education 21(4), 415–428. https://doi.org/10.1080/13562517.2016.1155547 mkabela, q., 2005, ‘using the afrocentric method in researching indigenous african culture,’ the qualitative report 10(1), 178–189. moletsane, r., 2015, ‘whose knowledge is it? towards reordering knowledge production and dissemination in the global south’, educational research for social change 4(2), 35–47. ndlovu, m., 2018, ‘coloniality of knowledge and the challenge of creating african futures’, ufahamu: a journal of african studies 40, 2. https://doi.org/10.5070/f7402040944 ntseane, p., 2011, ‘culturally sensitive transformational learning: incorporating the afrocentric paradigm and african feminism’, adult education quarterly 61(4), 307–323. https://doi.org/10.1177/0741713610389781 rhodes university digest of statistics 2022. viewed 1 september 2022: https://my.ru.ac.za/media/rhodesuniversity/content/dmu/documents/digest2022.pdf sguazzin, a., 2021, ‘south africa wealth gap unchanged since apartheid, says world inequality lab’, time magazine, viewed n.d. from https://time.com/6087699/south-africa-wealth-gap-unchanged-since-apartheid/. shahjahan, r., wagner, a. & wane, n., 2009, ‘rekindling the sacred: toward a decolonizing pedagogy in higher education’, journal of thought 44(1), 59–75. https://doi.org/10.2307/jthought.44.1-2.59 tamale, s., 2020, decolonization and afro-feminism, daraja press, ottawa. wa azania, m., 2020, corridors of death: the struggle to exist in historically white institutions, blackbird books, polokwane. weiler, h., 2009, ‘whose knowledge matters’, development and the politics of knowledge’, in t. hanf, h.n. weiler, h. dickow (eds.), entwicklung als beruf, pp. 485–496, nomos baden-baden. https://doi.org/10.5771/9783845219424-485 primary sources wdiou submissions 2020 wdiou workshops 2021 wdiou reflections 2022 abstract introduction refugee education policy, noneducational actors and theorising the lifeworlds of refugee students in response methodology analysis: the categorisations of higher education, the role of non-higher education actors and the importance of social networks on the lifeworlds of refugee students theme 1: universities as spaces of categorisation, access and local arrangements theme 2: the nexus of ‘support’ from non-higher education actors theme 3: the role of social networks on refugee participation in higher education discussions of the findings and implications for practice conclusion: holistic approaches, mapping broader contexts and categorisations acknowledgements references about the author(s) rovincer najjuma department of foundations and curriculum studies, college of education and external studies, makerere university, kampala, uganda michael gallagher centre for research in digital education, moray house school of education and sport, edinburgh university, edinburgh, united kingdom rebecca nambi department of foundations and curriculum studies, college of education and external studies, makerere university, kampala, uganda citation najjuma, r., gallagher, m. & nambi, r., 2022, ‘the role of institutional practice, non-educational actors and social networks in shaping refugee student lifeworlds in ugandan higher education’, transformation in higher education 7(0), a184. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v7i0.184 original research the role of institutional practice, non-educational actors and social networks in shaping refugee student lifeworlds in ugandan higher education rovincer najjuma, michael gallagher, rebecca nambi received: 10 jan. 2022; accepted: 13 june 2022; published: 26 july 2022 copyright: © 2022. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract background: participation in higher education can be empowering for refugees, yet this participation is contingent on a range of structures, practices and policies, many of which are not readily accessible. aim: informed by habermas’ lifeworlds, this study examined higher education meso-level institutional practices and how non-higher education actors support access and participation of refugee students. setting: this research was conducted with (1) refugee students in three private universities and one public university representing several regions in uganda, (2) administrative staff from these same universities and (3) staff from non-higher education support organisations that help navigate universities for refugee students. methods: data were generated through desk research identifying policy language, a survey and 25 semi-structured interviews with students and staff at universities and staff at support organisations. results: institutional policy homogeneously frames refugee students as international students, which in turn has a cascading impact on the lifeworlds of these students. the first theme includes university policies and administrative practices which structure the lifeworlds of these students. the second is the role of non-higher education supporting organisations that focus on refugee support and education. the third theme describes how non-academic structures, such as clubs and social networks designed to meet the students’ social welfare, are contingent in structuring the lifeworlds of these students. conclusion: these themes interoperate and have a structuring effect on the lifeworlds of these students. the cascading impact of classifying refugee students as international students deserves further scrutiny, particularly in its impact on institutional and individual student patterns of participation. keywords: refugees; higher education; uganda; social reproduction; lifeworlds; universities; communicative action. introduction there are 89.3 million people forcibly displaced worldwide as a ‘result of persecution, conflict, violence, human rights violations and events seriously disturbing public order’ (united nations high commissioner for refugees [unhcr] 2022), and increasingly, this is a result of climate-induced change which necessitates migration (scott 2020). as these displacements become protracted and displaced populations become more and more a fixture of societies, the political imperative tends to be less directed towards repatriation than towards integration into host societies. in this transition towards integration, the challenges for host countries are mounting. refugees often compete with local citizens for resources, and their presence increases demands for education, health services, access to host infrastructures (barman 2020) and access to employment opportunities. in lower-income refugee host countries, governments’ ability to implement supportive and widening participation measures for its own citizens is often limited, and the situation is even more complex for refugees. one space where this is acutely felt is education. although progress has been made in increasing access at the primary and secondary levels of education, only 3% of youth with refugee backgrounds are enrolled in higher education compared to 36% globally. refugees seeking higher education in the context of host countries face numerous and unique structural and individual challenges (lambrechts 2020). these challenges are due to their culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds (baker, due & rose 2021) and their presettlement experiences of instability, insecurity, trauma (osmanovic 2021) and interrupted education (baker & irwin 2021). for refugees, barriers to participation in higher education not only accumulate, but also interrelate and exacerbate each other, leading to what lambrechts (2020) described as ‘super-disadvantage’. this ‘super-disadvantage’ cannot be overcome without deliberate, strategic support and changes delivered by educational systems through contextually relevant policies, strategies and structures. the challenge is that the complex suite of specific needs that students from refugee backgrounds bring to higher education may not be recognised and met through existing institutional structures (naylor et al. 2021). the super-disadvantage that refugees experience in the context of higher education, as barriers accumulate and intertwine, is a potentially rich line of inquiry in the literature. uganda hosts over 1.38 million refugees, the most in sub-saharan africa (unesco 2019). most of the refugees have fled from the crises in burundi, somalia, the democratic republic of the congo and south sudan. except for urban refugees residing in kampala, refugees are located in 12 districts scattered throughout the country. roughly 66% of refugees are from south sudan, 26% from the democratic republic of congo and 3% from burundi; 5% are refugees from somalia, rwanda, eritrea, sudan and ethiopia, who have lived in protracted exile in uganda for the past three decades (unhcr 2019). the country has a long history of welcoming refugees within its borders and is known for its progressive refugee integration policies (betts 2021), allowing refugees to settle among the local population and have access to basic services, including education. furthermore, these policies have enjoyed political continuity as ‘refugee policy has been used by ugandan leaders to strengthen patronage and assert political authority within strategically important refugee-hosting hinterlands’ (betts 2021:243). yet despite this political continuity and these progressive integration policies, significant barriers remain for refugee students’ participation in ugandan higher education. therefore, this study explores these barriers through a meso, largely institutional, level of analysis. it attempts to surface how particular institutional practices and policies, administrative and academic agents intertwine to create a context that refugee students must navigate to succeed in ugandan higher education. in doing so, it situates itself between the micro, largely individual, accounts of practice for refugee students focused on access to education (dryden-peterson 2006b, 2003; mugerwa-sekawabe 2021; paul 2022) and the broader macro layers of analysis of the higher education sector overall (dryden-peterson 2011). the study is designed to complement this existing research on refugee access to education, as well as the existing structural barriers that complicate this access, by focusing on participation in higher education and how that is structured by actors both within and outside universities. the study was conducted throughout uganda from november 2020 to july 2021, and included three private universities, one public university and one refugee support organisation in uganda. the core research focus was to determine which non-academic actors are impacting how refugee students navigate higher education. firstly, the authors performed a desk research to determine the actors involved in the support of refugee students in ugandan higher education. secondly, the authors conducted 25 semi-structured interviews with two different categories of participants: staff at support organisations or universities and students who identify as refugees currently participating in the study at ugandan public and private universities. thirdly, a survey was administered in an open call for those who wished to participate but did not necessarily want to be subjected to an interview. this survey was anonymous and yielded 50 responses. to analyse this data, this study uses a theoretical framework combining bourdieu’s (1977b) social reproduction and habermas’ lifeworlds (1993) as a means of identifying the institutional actors that are structuring the access and participation of refugee students in the ugandan context. in doing so, it presents the nexus of social reproduction as an ensemble of institutional policies and practices, a range of internal and external supporting organisations and actors, and a series of formal and informal communities ostensibly designed to support these refugee students. the lifeworlds of refugee students in this context are shaped, to some degree, by this social reproduction. such an analysis posits that this ensemble, and refugee students’ interaction with it, is sophisticated. it is defined as much by what is omitted in terms of policy, practice, actors and community as it is by what explicitly is present. such an analysis identifies the specific institutional activity in higher education that impedes or permits participation by refugee students. it explores how these elements accumulate and begins to note how this might be more equitably imagined in ugandan higher education. refugee education policy, noneducational actors and theorising the lifeworlds of refugee students in response the debate on refugee integration in host countries in general and in higher education in particular is an enduring topic of discussion globally (cleaver 2001; dryden-peterson 2011; griffiths sigona & zetter 2005). the unhcr (2019) advances the global framework for refugee education, and here they elaborate what needs to be done at different levels of education – early childhood development, primary, secondary and tertiary education – in order to meet the 2030 education commitments. the framework presents possible areas for action and highlights the areas that different stakeholders can focus on to mobilise and articulate educational policies and support for refugees. the inclusion of refugees in any education system is a matter of policy, and hence it is the responsibility of institutions and host nations to develop policies that support quality education to both citizens and noncitizens. indeed, there are reports (especially in the global north) where institutional policies appear to positively support refugee integration in higher education (bacher et al. 2019; ben-moshe, bertone & grossman 2008). however, some literature indicates that countries go to great lengths to develop inclusive policies, but they barely put them into practice, especially in developing contexts (dryden-peterson, adelman & chopra 2019; hakami 2016; morrice 2013). in such contexts, where access is limited due to a lack of formal or active policies, refugee students struggle to participate in higher education due to challenges relating to accreditation of their academic documents, navigation of the entry requirements and actual participation in day-to-day university activities (dryden-peterson et al. 2019; el-ghali & ghosn 2019; griffiths et al. 2005; naidoo 2009). hence, donor organisations and government agencies bridge the gap between refugee students and higher institutions of learning to assist them to access and participate in higher education by providing support for these complex processes, alongside a range of other support mechanisms such as counselling. expanding the focus of participation beyond the higher education institution itself to include these additional organisations also broadens the study position of social reproduction to avoid the critique of the concept being ‘strongly institutionalist, although often vague’ (cleaver 2001:40). social reproduction in this context ‘depends upon the character of the networks and the relations between the actors involved in those networks’ (griffiths et al. 2005:6). this emphasis on relations rather than the defining characteristics of an ‘accepted’ social order further describes the supporting structures and relations that allow for or limit participation for refugee students and other actors in this context. the theoretical framework employed in this research is adaptable and can accommodate new concepts as they are introduced, noting how they are worked and reworked in a refugee context defined in some way by its liminality or ‘radical uncertainty’ (horst & grabska 2015). theory provides a mechanism for illuminating the trajectories made possible by this uncertain future. the theoretical framework used to frame and interrogate this context draws on bourdieu’s concept of social reproduction (1977), alongside the theory of communicative action – specifically, habermas’ notion of lifeworlds (1993). bourdieu’s social reproduction identifies the actors involved in refugee education in ugandan higher education and their impact on social reproduction, while the theory of communicative action provides a means for identifying the lifeworlds of the actors involved and what ‘action’ is indeed possible in these contexts. this theoretical framework provides critical utility at both the macro level (institutionally and within the sector) as well as micro levels (the lived experiences of individual actors) and allows for an interrogation of how and when ‘the knowledge and experiences of refugees’ past lives becomes negated and disqualified’ (morrice 2013:654). bourdieu’s idea of social reproduction (1973) provides a critical lens for understanding how the social order is reproduced and potentially amplified across time, a lens that can potentially shed light on the role that both the pursuit of and the institution of higher education has in reproducing this social order. it is important to note at the onset that bourdieu does not inherently position social reproduction as inevitable; indeed, change is possible within this context of social reproduction in higher education as this study attempts to demonstrate. furthermore, social reproduction does not prioritise any actor in this process, but rather it ‘affirms the primacy of relations’ between actors (bourdieu & wacquant 1992:15). this focus on the primacy of relations rather than ‘common-sense opinions’ about social order surfaces the ‘taken for granted’ and ‘self-evident’ positions that attempt to make the arbitrary appear as ‘natural’ (bourdieu 1977:164–167). this emphasis on relations rather than defining characteristics of an ‘accepted’ social order further surfaces the structures, the institutions, the rhetoric and the material that allow for participation in the existing social order. it further affirms that the substance of the social order is the relationality of these entities. social reproduction is ‘linked to possession of a durable network of more or less institutionalized relationships of mutual acquaintance and recognition’ (bourdieu 1983:249). within the context under investigation in this article, this is contingent to this durable network of institutions within and contributing to higher education. the availability of these resources for refugee students is potentially compromised by this issue of mutual recognition. not all within this durable network acknowledge or are acquainted with these refugee actors in terms of classification, structure and support. as such, these potential resources are difficult to obtain and employ for refugee students and their support organisations – less so for the more established actors in these durable networks who ultimately participate in the social reproduction of the network itself. an emphasis on social reproduction provides critical utility across two strands. firstly, it presents the ‘buried’ structures of the social worlds and activities these refugee students participate in, particularly in higher education. secondly, it recognises the ways these same structures are potentially replicating inequalities and constraining the ability of these students to act. this provides deeper consideration of the larger social inequalities and potential for reproduction of these inequalities that may influence outcomes, actions and experiences. these frameworks have been used extensively in this context to explore issues of identity (refai, haloub & lever 2018), access to higher education for refugees in uganda (hakami 2016), the social space of refugees in higher education as they enter and move through university (morrice 2013; naidoo et al. 2018), expressions of agency (owen 2014) and the impact of socialising messages sent to refugee students via policies and practices related to higher education (dryden-peterson & giles 2010), among others. within this study, social reproduction provides a theoretical lens for identifying meta-level actors and practices on which refugee students’ participation is contingent. furthermore, the study draws on habermas’ theory of communicative action to determine how this social reproduction is expressed in language. the theory of communicative action allows researchers to begin to privilege ‘ways of knowing, being and doing’ (urquhart et al. 2020:2) that potentially sit outside the dominant discourses underpinning social reproduction. within the theory of communicative action, criteria are presented in which to understand action as either rational or irrational, communicative or strategic (habermas 1984) in relation to the cultural normativity of the social context in which it is being expressed. it is critiqued not by expression of facts in the objective world but rather by the reliability, insightfulness and ‘normally right’ qualities in the context of the expression (habermas 1984). ‘this provides a lens to reveal the manipulation and strategic distortions of communication through exposing the true, undisclosed motivations of teleological action toward system success’ (urquhart et al. 2020:4). within this is the lifeworld, a space where actions or consensus are arrived at through a communicative process. habermas defined it as the ‘the milieu where actors are taking part in interactions through which they develop, confirm, and renew their membership in social groups and their own identities’ (habermas 1987:139). these lifeworlds are complex intersections of ‘shared norms, expectations, and practices of social actors that enable them (members) to communicate and coordinate their conduct’ (baynes 2015:22). lifeworlds relate to the ability to act in a particular context in the present and future as ‘the rest of the lifeworld is over the horizon, ready for use in other contexts, made up of a stock of ways of interpreting the world’ (fairtlough 1991:549). lifeworlds are, however, compromised when traditional forms of life are dismantled and when ‘hopes and dreams become individuated by state canalization of welfare and culture’ (habermas 1987:356), as they often have been with refugee students trying to navigate ugandan higher education. language itself becomes a means of exploring these lifeworlds and if and how they have been compromised. critically for this research, lifeworlds have been used as a frame to explore the role of civil society organisations on refugee integration (aldea 2021) and as a means of analysing the divergent needs and aspirations of students and the structure and ethos of higher education institutions in developing contexts (regmi 2021). within this article, lifeworlds are presented as contingent on a range of meta-level, largely institutional, structures and practices. students’ engagement with these structures and practices is readily identifiable in the language they employ to describe these engagements. these two theoretical positions sit together in an overall theoretical framework: social reproduction presents the actors and practices involved in reifying the social order in higher education, while lifeworlds indicate what action is indeed possible in these contexts, and how this is expressed in language. this pairing of theories provides critical utility along multiple lines of both meso (largely institutional) and micro (largely individual) inquiry. methodology the methodological position advanced in this study utilises data collection methods that speak to this position and draws from the advanced methodologies from several discrete research projects exploring refugee education in uganda and beyond (e.g. awidi & quan-baffour 2020; dryden-peterson 2006a, 2006b, 2011; stark et al. 2015). the study was conducted throughout uganda from november 2020 to july 2021, and it included three private universities, one public university and one refugee support organisation. firstly, the authors performed a desk research to determine the actors involved in this nexus of support within higher education for refugee students in uganda. this desk research involved identifying support organisations, alongside policy or guidance being issued by the institutions themselves, whether they were support organisations or universities that host refugee students routinely. this desk research was designed to begin to reveal, at least partly, the contours of the lifeworlds these students inhabit and interrogate what opportunities, if any, were made available to them. secondly, the authors conducted 25 semi-structured interviews with two different categories of participants. five of these interviews were carried out with administrative staff and 20 interviews were performed with refugee students in public and private universities in uganda. the administrative staff were at the level of deputy vice-chancellor in all universities that participated in the study, and they were purposely selected because of their advantageous positions of being close to and part of policy formulation and implementation at their institutions. the university administrators introduced the authors to the student leaders of refugee students, who in turn helped the authors to initiate other research activities with refugee students. for instance, the authors were able to hold introductory meetings with refugee students that were available on campus, taking into consideration that the study was largely carried out during the coronavirus disease 2019 (covid-19) pandemic and subsequent total and partial national lockdowns. the selection criteria for respondents to the interview schedule was based on respondents who could self-identify as refugee students and those who were actively registered and attending a formal course at a higher education institution; as a result, a maximum variation purposive sample was achieved. participants had a communicative level of english and were of varying ages between 25 and 40 years. countries of origin were south sudan (11), somalia (8) and rwanda (2), and male and female participants were included. they were recruited through a network of contacts from university administrators and refugee student leaders. the respondents to the survey questionnaire were also selected based on similar selection criteria; however, because of the national lockdown, they could not be accessed for a face-to-face interview. the findings from the survey questionnaire were used to corroborate the findings from the face-to face interviews and are not reported in this article. thirdly, a survey was administered in an open call for those who wished to participate but did not necessarily want to be subjected to an interview, as well as those students who were not at campus due to the covid-19 pandemic. this survey was anonymous and yielded 50 responses. the purpose of the survey was to explore perspectives and experiences of refugee students on their journeys of participation in higher education, and the survey questions were directly related to the interview questions. as such, the interview data formed the basis of most of the analysis presented in this article, with the survey data being used to corroborate the findings emerging from the interviews. as a limitation, the universities participating in this study do not have a refugee student database to enable systematic sampling of refugee students. a refugee status declaration is not considered as part of the admission data. available admission data are in de-identified aggregate form, showing only country of origin and gender. therefore, a snowball sampling methodology was used to select participants (refugee students) for the study; for example, the administrators linked the researchers to refugee student leaders, and refugee student leaders linked the researchers to refugee students. the data emerging from the survey and interviews were anonymised, transcribed and coded using an encrypted online application (dedoose) and made available only to the authors. the authors performed open coding on the data, where interview transcripts were read holistically. emergent themes emerged through a second round of axial coding. this process was repeated for all the transcripts and the results were discussed within the core research team (the three authors of this study). pseudonyms are used in this article for the participants whose data is presented. the research recognised the ethical complexities associated with involving participants from vulnerable populations, especially the importance of capturing accurate data relating to their experiences (ellis et al. 2007; jacobsen & landau 2003). ethical review was carried out and achieved at the authors’ institutions through formal institutional review boards. the authors note, however, the distinction here between ‘procedural ethics’ and ‘ethics in practice’, an instructive distinction for the research described in this article. ‘ethics in practice’ involves identifying and responding to context-dependent circumstances and ethical contingencies – or ‘ethically important moments’ – that arise over the course of research projects (block et al. 2013:70). in this regard, the authors were conscious to continue seeking both verbal and written permission from the different university contexts during the process of data collection. for instance, the authors approached their work in a hierarchical manner by first seeking permission from the university administrators before talking to the staff and eventually to the students. this multilevel approach eased communication channels and enabled various visits to meet different people for data collection. as ‘ethical questions are not static’, and need to be considered and reflected upon across the lifecycle of a research project (bilger & van liempt 2009:13) as ethics in practice, the authors incorporated reflexive discussions at intervals to discuss the ethical implications arising from the work in the field to note whether informed consent was still applicable or needed to be renegotiated, as well as determining whether risk of any sort was being introduced to the participants and reviewing the data as it was being collected to ensure that no revealing inclusions that could identify participants were present. analysis: the categorisations of higher education, the role of non-higher education actors and the importance of social networks on the lifeworlds of refugee students an analysis of the data revealed three themes of importance. first, it was found that universities are predictably complex systems where seemingly small decisions or omissions cascade through the lifeworlds of these students and in turn impact their capacity to navigate higher education. the study presents evidence of this theme from both the institutional (meso) and individual (micro) levels to note this cascading. the second theme moves the frame away from the university to note the further structuring of these lifeworlds by support organisations. these are largely civil society organisations that provide a broad range of support to refugees, including counselling, scholarships and educational opportunities. they act as essential conduits to higher education and in some ways precipitate the practices of participation that many refugee students subsequently cultivate in their respective universities. the third theme describes the social reproduction that exists within these universities and the broader systems that these support organisations have enabled, by which refugee students are in some ways bound. in the discussion of this theme, the study looks at the practices of participation that refugee students communicated in the data and the perceived impact these had on their evolving lifeworlds. table 1 presents these three themes in summary form. table 1: a summary of themes impacting the lifeworlds of refugee students. theme 1: universities as spaces of categorisation, access and local arrangements this theme describes how universities themselves act as spaces where both access and barriers are presented in institutional practice and policy. often this is contingent on how these refugee students are categorically positioned within the larger university as international students, the multitude of languages presented in ugandan higher education and whether institutional policy exists that caters to refugee students. these categorisations have a significant impact on students’ capacity to navigate the university. ‘local arrangements’ exist that mitigate the disadvantages posed by international student classification and language barriers, but there is a suggestion that a more comprehensive refugee student support structure would prove beneficial. the enactment of national and institutional policy and commitments for ensuring refugee access and participation is dependent upon how individual institutions interpret their responsibilities to all international students. the absence of visible refugee higher education policy has created homogeneity in terms of classification: refugees are categorised as international students. this categorisation has a cascading effect on the lifeworlds made possible to refugee students in their conflation with international students. these institutional practices sit in tension with international and national commitments, such as the comprehensive refugee policy framework. for example, as relayed by afiya, a senior staff member in the international students’ office at university x, there is no policy in place that moves beyond broad efforts at internationalisation: ‘… well, we do not have a specific policy that targets refugees per se, but i know in the university act, of course there are provisions that support internationalisation of education.’ there is an indication that policy activity is being initiated, yet these efforts are in their infancy and are conflating international and refugee students: ‘we have policies pertaining to academics, beginning with admission, examinations, graduation, name it, but not specifically for international students or refugees. of course, we are preparing to begin working on it, but [it is] not yet in place.’ this policy omission and categorical conflation cascades directly to the refugee students themselves, both financially (being asked to pay international fees) and from a communicative perspective (being able to effectively negotiate potentially a rate commensurate with a refugee’s financial status), as the following passage from balondemu, a third-year male refugee student at university x indicates: ‘… [u]nfortunately, they have just put us under the same umbrella as international students. so whatever things they come up with, they rate us as international students and they don’t differentiate us from the other students. yeah. also in accessing these offices, at times you are treated differently. you find most of the issues, they treat refugees also unfairly. like you go to office and then you are told to pay certain things like you’re an international student. you explain you’re a refugee, like this – they said no. as long as you’re from another country, you have to pay as an international student.’ this broad institutional omission is nominally mitigated by particular actors within the university, a mitigation that is most realised at significant barriers in the student experience, particularly with regard to language of instruction. language barriers remain as one of the most significant challenges for refugee students, and these barriers were prevalent throughout the data, yet these are partially mitigated by ‘local arrangements’ within the broader university, as indicated by this passage from dr g, a lecturer in the school of education who works with refugee students at university y: ‘… the department of english language has been very instrumental helping students of this kind, but this is just, i could say, local arrangement. yeah. i wish we could do it at a higher level where we say when the students come we test their english … so i wish we could also reach there where we can assess these students …yeah. they’re being assisted by the department of english languages.’ the above passage notes the role of evaluation of students’ capacities for participation in university study and overall university life, an evaluation that is taking place through ‘local arrangements’ within the university rather than at the onset of university engagement. the ‘system’ that the above passage refers to is a bridging programme of pre-sessional instruction designed to prepare students for university life, including but not exclusive to language instruction. such programmes are increasingly being provided through the support organisations discussed later in this article and serve to provide capacity for these students and to stimulate adaptations to the students’ lifeworlds. refugee students also rely on online university systems for enabling access, as the following passage from the dean of students at the university of x staff relates: ‘… the courses at the university, most of them really – they get from our website. they then read and they know … they learn about it even if they’re not yet in the country, not yet in university z. but where they have queries, we have the e-mail address, which is there in the website … so any query pertaining to programs, admission, you send to that e-mail and they are assisted. sometimes they send to vc, they send to the public relation office. but all the same, they send to the academic registrar for clarification. so that one is being handled, really.’ the above passage suggests firstly that there is some belief that refugee students are being supported to some degree within current university systems, particularly in the online spaces of the university. secondly, there are potential expressions of communicative agency within these queries from refugee students as they learn to navigate the communicative and administrative practices of the university, even when not yet in the university or country. for some universities, there are additional layers of support provided for the students’ ‘social security’, as the following passage from dr m, a lecturer at the university z, indicates: ‘well, we have the office of the dean of students, which is in charge of students’ welfare, and i think it takes it upon itself to ensure that these students are well looked after … so the office of the dean of students looks after them. and then within the office of the dean of students, there is a counsellor who should be able to talk to those students whenever they have any problems, if ever they have any problems, yeah. there is a warden who also is particularly concerned about the accommodation of the students and so on, so they usually called meetings with the owners of the hostel to ensure that they maintain a conducive environment for these students. i think those kinds of things are there. as i said, once you join now as a student, you should be having the same treatment, yeah.’ the above passage is indicative in that firstly, it identifies the cascading layers (dean, counsellor, warden) of support needed to ensure that these students are in a position where their basic welfare is being met, without which university participation is all but impossible. secondly, there is significant complexity in these layers of support that is potentially made more challenging due to the classification of refugee students as international students, as the last sentence suggests (‘once you join now as a student, you should be having the same treatment’). throughout the data, there is a nominal equation of equality (all students being treated the same) with an unfairness (this equal treatment disproportionately impacting refugee students). this last passage, and indeed this entire theme, casts doubt on whether these students are in ‘possession of a durable network of more or less institutionalized relationships of mutual acquaintance and recognition’ (bourdieu 1983:249), as what is presented as a network is contingent on an assortment of ‘local arrangements’ which are offset by a lack of mutual recognition as refugee students at the institutional level. there is a cascading effect on how this categorial omission impacts their capacity to engage with the lifeworlds present in the university and its ‘shared norms, expectations, and practices’ (baynes 2015:22). each negotiation to adjust fees, each attempt to engage with the language of instruction and each engagement with an administrative process is ultimately an engagement with university culture, which ‘requires sufficiently valid knowledge to cover the need for mutual understanding in a lifeworld’ (standing standing & law 2013:490). a refugee student, in their categorisation as an international student (which mutes the characteristics of their educational experience), may not be in possession of such knowledge. theme 2: the nexus of ‘support’ from non-higher education actors the second theme describes the range of actors that support the ‘local arrangements’ taking place within universities and notes their impact on structuring the lifeworlds of these students. a range of organisations have been working with refugees to assist them to access and participate in higher education by providing support for these complex administrative processes, alongside a range of other support mechanisms such as counselling. broadening the focus of participation beyond the higher education institution itself to include these additional organisations also broadens the context of the lifeworlds of these students as they depend ‘upon the character of the networks and the relations between the actors involved in those networks’ (griffiths et al. 2005:6). this emphasis on relations rather than defining characteristics of an ‘accepted’ social order further presents the supporting structures and relations that allow for or limit participation for refugee students and other actors in this context. their access to the lifeworlds at university is predicated on first engaging with these supporting organisations. therefore, the study examines the structure and the practices of actors in brokering access for refugee students into higher education. several types of organisations have undertaken activity to support refugee students, including international nongovernment organisations (ingos), civil society actors, organisations with nominal or chartered association with universities and government agencies. these organisations provide conduits into higher education for refugee students; they routinely provide support across a range of processes that refugee students must navigate to participate in higher education. what presented repeatedly in the data was the role these organisations had in raising awareness of the landscape, processes and promise of higher education itself by acting to disseminate information into refugee communities on available universities, admissions processes, funding and so on. tom, a counsellor from institution y, a civil society actor focused on refugee support, indicated that the roles that these organisations serve in mitigating the barriers to entry span a range of activity: ‘… [a]n international ngo visits refugee camps and provides information about available higher education opportunities for accessing and participating in higher education, courses, admissions and admission timelines and available funding for refugee students …’ from raising awareness of higher education, this work continues through to the identification and evaluation of academic documentation from refugee students, which in the data is routinely pointed to as being a considerable barrier to entry. the practices of these organisations in supporting entry to higher education reveal the complexity of barriers presented. all of them are interdependent to some degree and must be accounted for to participate in higher education. many of these organisations also provide english language instruction and bridging courses to enable refugee students to access higher education. these exist in parallel to the ‘local arrangements’ that universities themselves offer. it is within these bridging courses that a range of support could be seen that is being offered which potentially contributes to the students’ increasing access to the lifeworlds of higher education, including english language instruction, psychosocial counselling and support, administrative and financial support and the modelling of academic practice that will allow them to participate in higher education. these bridging programmes (detailed in abdelfattah ahmed younes 2020; el-ghali & ghosn 2019; symons et al. 2021) are increasingly common in the landscape, partly to offset institutional support gaps in universities, and they serve to address a range of barriers to entry in one structured programme of activity. they also serve to proactively mitigate the feelings of confusion, inauthenticity and isolation that accompany entry into higher education (gourlay 2011). these organisations in some cases provide measures of support and oversight that would be difficult for an individual student to perform, particularly administratively. financial support, when provided, can come with additional support to ensure that the student is engaging with their education; this additional support carries with it a degree of pastoral care and a nominal surveillance, as indicated in the following passage from mr mukisa, a head teacher at a secondary school that services many refugee students attempting to transition to higher education: ‘… we track their record. we have records of every refugee. and when a refugee doesn’t turn up, most especially, we immediately inform the partner in charge of education … they do follow-up such refugees, up to home level. actually, they must find out why that student has dropped, especially when he’s on scholarship.’ while there is indication that these support organisations are crucial brokers in shaping access to higher education for some students, without the support provided by these organisations, refugee students have few or no means to access and participate in higher education. the role that both the universities and these support organisations provide in mitigating barriers to access to higher education is significant, multilayered and it involves a highly interdependent set of both problem-solving measures and more holistic student development activities. barriers remain, predictably, yet there is significant effort in these spaces to be merited, efforts that allow for the participation of select refugee students. as described in this theme, participation in universities for refugee students is contingent on first having access to the support structures provided by these largely non-higher education actors, who place the practices of the lifeworld of the university ‘within the actual reach’ (habermas 1987:123) of these refugee students. these non-higher education actors provide these refugee students the possibility, even if not uniformly available to all (or even likely for all), to ‘secure solidarity’ (p. 124) within university. without the brokering of these non-higher education actors, access to university is fragmented and ultimately ‘disconnected from [the] local realities’ (pradhan 2019:86) of these students. drawing on habermas, regmi (2021) notes the importance of this integration and the role these brokers play in reducing the complexity of ‘systematic mechanisms that are out of the reach of members’ intuitive knowledge’ (habermas 1987:149). the practices of these non-higher education organisations provide the possibility of ‘a system that aims to recouple higher education with the lifeworld at cultural, social and individual levels’ (regmi 2021:51). without this recoupling and the reduction of complexity, these refugee students’ engagement with the lifeworld of the university remains fragmented. theme 3: the role of social networks on refugee participation in higher education often in discussions of social reproduction, there is ‘an over-emphasis on formal organisations to the expense of informal networks’ even though ‘the latter may be more significant for the maintenance of support mechanisms in a community’ (griffiths et al. 2005:7). as such, the study turns its attention to the third theme, namely the nexus of social reproduction experienced by the students themselves within the intersections of universities, support organisations and the informal social structures that refugee students depend upon for navigating university. while the first two themes speak to largely formal administrative and categorical barriers, support structures and omissions, often encoded in language and often mitigated with the help of non-higher education actors, the third theme speaks specifically to the informal networks within universities to correct the ‘over-emphasis on formal organisations’ (griffiths et al. 2005:7). in this section, the study looks at the roles that specific refugee students have in their respective student communities in engaging with and potentially actioning the efforts from universities and these supporting organisations. in doing so, the study presents the characteristics of the students’ lifeworlds and the social reproduction that is being generated in this context. in many cases, refugee students have taken on roles as student representatives in their respective institutions. the refugee student leaders expressed being empowered to act and develop the awareness of staff about their needs, a particularly revealing point in that it suggests some contraflow between universities and these students in terms of expressing where the university space of social reproduction sits within the lived experiences of these students. some students spoke to purposive action, tacitly drawing attention to their own communicative action in this process as well as an awareness of the support mechanisms that exist within this nexus of activity. several noted the positive impact of clubs on psychological well-being, a particularly prevalent theme in the data. such clubs occupy a bridging space in these university contexts, allowing students a social and potentially therapeutic context to continue to participate in university life, as the following passage from faith, a refugee student financially supported by an ngo, makes clear: ‘… psychological problems, as you can hear, for the peace club it was … ok, they give you a device, something like that. yeah, and you would be psychologically relieved, so that was so helping. but it ended.’ some turn naturally to existing social circles for information; there was repeated reference in the data to the social nature of information-sharing and subsequent problem-solving, as the following passage from this same student reveals: ‘… [w]e just share ideas with my fellow friends in case of any opportunity or an advert concerning education.’ these social circles provide the students with the capacity to navigate unfamiliar processes more aligned with social welfare, but they are critical in providing the stability to subsequently engage in university life, as the following words from muhumuza, a refugee student in his fourth year of university, suggest: ‘i’ve made some good friends. good friends from central here. so if there’s any other thing that i would like to buy from the market, i would call the person. we go to the market. and the person has tried also to teach me, when we go to the market, in luganda [the bantu language of the baganda people] you will ask … so the person tells you the price.’ more formal associations of students are extensions of these social circles in many ways, serving a critical role in identifying barriers and strategically and communally working towards the mitigation of these barriers, as the following passage from damba, a friend of muhumuza (also in his fourth year at university), suggests: ‘… within us, because we are many. and we have also our association, and in that association, we help ourselves. if there is someone with the challenge, we come together and address it. there are times where we’re doing group discussion and i’ll also take part.’ the social structures that allow for navigation of the university were identified (‘you would be psychologically relieved, so that was so helping’) and their absence noted (‘but it ended’). these systemic expressions are significant insofar as they indicate both purposive action (by means of which the actor intervenes in the world through these social structures to achieve goals) and communicative agency (by means of which the actor wishes to reach understanding with another speaker about something in the world) (habermas 1993:45). these organisations, clubs, informal social communities and other groupings allow for these interpersonal relations to emerge in ‘weak-tie’ heterogeneous groups (almohamed & vyas 2019:41:6) in a way that ‘affirms the primacy of relations’ between actors (bourdieu & wacquant 1992:15). the disruption of structure that allows for these interpersonal relations to emerge naturally erodes the capacity of refugee students to navigate the lifeworlds of university. many were able to identify the need for stable structures that could meaningfully allow for participation in higher education, suggesting a need to leverage existing institutional and national structures, systems and resources to facilitate refugee students’ access and participation. a need for orientation arose quite routinely in the data, particularly as an extended, ongoing form of pastoral support, as suggested by mrs hanifah, a senior staff member in the student services office at the university of x: ‘[n]eed for an extended orientation that has both institutional and policy components. so they need a specific orientation system so that they really cope, because you don’t talk to them one week and you feel they have orientated. no.’ language again surfaced as a significant barrier in access to university systems. this barrier carries with it a policy dimension, as the following passage from the same staff member suggests: ‘they also need english empowerment. those who are coming from non-english speaking countries. yeah. there should be a system. that one is being done in the university, but i wish we could have it more as a policy. as i told you, we don’t have a policy yet, but if this policy can come really very clearly, it would streamline.’ some saw these systemic issues being addressed in bridging programmes (detailed in abdelfattah ahmed younes 2020; el-ghali & ghosn 2019; symons et al. 2021). however, these programmes were paired with an attendant policy (to ‘streamline’), as suggested by the following passage from the dean of students at the university of x: ‘… i wish we could come up with a bridge-up program where those with weak background of english can really be trained in a better way so that they can follow their programs easily. and we need a policy, a fully approved policy on that.’ while it is much more challenging to initiate and sustain these structures than to identify them, there are points here in this third theme that might provide guidance for broader university systems (universities, refugee support organisations and policymakers) to develop programmes of activity that provide meaningful access for these refugee students to university life. the first is to recognise the empowering role these social structures have on the students’ ability to meaningfully interact with the lifeworlds of higher education. participation in education depends on these students ‘creating and sustaining particular kinds of communicative relationships’ in a way that allows them to participate in the structures of ‘the shared social life’ (kemmis 1998:270) of higher education. discussions of the findings and implications for practice it is important to return to the theoretical framework framing this study to further interrogate the themes as presented thus far. in this section, the study also looks to determine the utility of this theoretical model in providing a lens to understand how the nexus of individual and institutional actors, along with the artefacts employed within, contribute to a context in which refugee education is enacted in and around ugandan higher education. there were significant traces in the data of communicative agency being cultivated and expressed, mostly expressions of ‘resources gained through participation in social networks’ (naidoo 2009:265). this is linked to membership in groups and ‘provides each of its members with the backing of the collectively-owned capital’, a ‘credential’ for later use (bourdieu 1986:249). this credential depends on ‘the size of the network of connections an individual can mobilise for his or her social benefit’ (p. 249). routinely found in the data, these networks of connections included clubs, societies, groups of friends, mentors and interactions with lecturers, staff and fellow students at university. many of these interactions are not academic at all, yet they allow for academic participation. many are aimed at social welfare and the ability to navigate the larger societies in which these universities find themselves; many are aimed at developing social networks of mutual recognition and support; many, such as the non-higher education actors, provide glimpses of what life in university will be like, alongside measures of financial support. all of these influence the lifeworlds of these students in higher education and provide some measure of access to the ‘durable network of more or less institutionalised relationships of mutual acquaintance and recognition’ (bourdieu 1983:249) that other students might enjoy. returning to habermas, the themes suggest that the lifeworlds of these refugee students are structured by a range of associations, policy artefacts and actors. the overall construction of the lifeworld – that ‘milieu where actors are taking part in interactions through which they develop, confirm, and renew their membership in social groups and their own identities’ (habermas 1987:139) – is dependent in that it relies on the satisfaction of basic needs, such as the ability to communicate and to provide for basic welfare and financial security, and relational in that it is linked to mechanisms for communicative action, such as clubs, groups of friends, access to support organisations and mentoring. the authors would argue that both are necessary for refugees to access and meaningfully participate in higher education. the authors argue that both speak to the central role that non-higher education actors and activities have on academic participation. yet a distinction is made here between these students’ lifeworlds, that is, ‘those areas or aspects of the social world where action is coordinated by communicative interaction’, and the systems in which these lifeworlds are enacted and which might be structured in opposition to these lifeworlds – ‘systems are those areas or aspects where action is coordinated by the steering media of money and power’ (‘systemically integrated’) (tilak & glassman 2020:230), ‘over which have neither full control nor full consciousness in their everyday life’ (chernilo 2002:439). while this research does not engage in macro-level analysis suggested in this systems approach, it does explore meso-level (institutional) systemic practices that contribute to how lifeworlds are enacted and expressed. the study posits that the expressions of these systemic practices – in some cases the lack of institutional policy coordinating refugee students, classifying refugees as international students, financial restrictions and processes associated with universities and at times opaque administrative practices – have a structuring effect on the lifeworlds of these students and their capacity for communicative action. yet the relational elements of these lifeworlds that contribute to the capacity for communicative action can, in some cases, allow the student to address, divert or ignore the barriers presented in these systemic practices. these relational entities, particularly clubs, groups of friends and access to support organisations, provided a mechanism for refugee students to engage in university life. initiating, sustaining or reinvigorating the mechanisms of the lifeworld economy – an economy that is coordinated by communicative interaction – can serve to partially address the barriers provided by the systems economy (elder-vass 2018:221) of institutional policy and practice. this lifeworld economy is framed through a range of support for refugee students, particularly clubs, associations, friends and mentoring programmes, as well as access to non-higher education support organisations and the provision of basic welfare needs. how these economies become productive for refugee students depends, in some measure, on institutional policy and practice that explicitly acknowledges their lived experiences, acknowledges and supports the ‘local arrangements’ and non-higher education actors that have heretofore been providing help, and marshals institutional support accordingly. without such an explicit approach, the lifeworlds of these refugee students, as recognised actors within the larger systems’ economy of higher education, will remain fractured. there are implications for institutional practice in higher education that extend beyond this particular focus on refugee students as marginalised groups, or those largely underrepresented in higher education would conceivably require similar nuanced understandings of their lifeworlds and the relationality of actors, both higher education and non-higher education, that structure those lifeworlds. conclusion: holistic approaches, mapping broader contexts and categorisations the lifeworlds of these students seen at the meso level (institutionally) suggest that more holistic approaches are needed, ones that attempt to combine these meso-level findings with nuanced micro-level accounts of individual practice and broader macro-level analyses of the political economics of higher education. these holistic approaches are often difficult for distributed and complex institutions such as universities and any resource limitations they may be operating under, as was particularly the case for the universities engaged in this research. yet it is important to widen the focus on the broader ‘primacy of relations’ between actors (bourdieu & wacquant 1992:15) in providing a context in which these refugee students participate in higher education, a context that is structuring their lifeworlds in higher education. as much of this participation ‘depends upon the character of the networks and the relations between the actors involved in those networks’ (griffiths et al. 2005:6), further work is needed to map these broader contexts, to note how their relationality potentially provides a contingency through which refugee students can participate in higher education. within these maps, it is critical to note the role of largely noneducational actors and noneducational activity in providing bridges to university participation, whether through addressing basic welfare or through negating the muting effects of institutional social reproduction on the communicative agency being cultivated in students’ lifeworlds. partnerships are critical in this regard between universities and support organisations, and when possible, these can be extended and ties strengthened. the cascading impact in classifying refugee students as international students deserves further scrutiny, particularly in its impact on meso (institutional) and micro (individual student) practices of participation. further research might also explore how a less porous policy framework might work to further integrate these students into university life and signal the desire of the sector to fully integrate refugee students into higher education. acknowledgements competing interests the authors declare that they have no financial or personal relationships that may have inappropriately influenced them in writing this article. authors’ contributions r. najjuma, r. nambi and m.g. co-wrote this entire article. r. najjuma and r. nambi led the data collection in uganda. all three authors worked together to code and recode the transcripts, and each author wrote significant sections of the overall manuscript. r. najjuma is the principal investigator of this project and as such is the lead author. ethical considerations ethical clearance to conduct this study was obtained from the university of edinburgh the school education and sport ethics sub-committee (ref. no. 2854). funding information this research received funding from the university of edinburgh’s theme development fund in 2020 to support this project. data availability the data collected for this project and this manuscript are available upon request. disclaimer the views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any affiliated agency of the authors. references abdelfattah ahmed younes, m., 2020, ‘blended learning and syrian refugees’ empowerment through a capability approach lens’, doctoral dissertation, lancaster university. aldea, m.m., 2021, ‘at the core of lifeworld and system, a socio-legal study of civil society organizations’ role in refugee integration’, unpublished thesis, lund university. almohamed, a. & vyas, d., 2019, ‘rebuilding social capital in refugees and asylum seekers’, acm transactions on computer-human interaction (tochi) 26(6), 1–30. https://doi.org/10.1145/3364996 awidi, s.j. & quan-baffour, k., 2020, ‘situating adult learning and education in refugee livelihood adaptation and progression toward self-reliance: the case of refugees in the kyaka ii settlement in southwestern uganda’, adult education quarterly 71(2), 48–165. https://doi.org/10.1177/0741713620963575 bacher, j., fiorioli, e., moosbrugger, r., nnebedum, c., prandner, d. & shovakar, n., 2019, ‘integration of refugees at universities: austria’s more initiative’, higher education 79, 943–960. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-019-00449-6 baker, s., due, c. & rose, m., 2021, ‘transitions from education to employment for culturally and linguistically diverse migrants and refugees in settlement contexts: what do we know?’, studies in continuing education 43(1), 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1080/0158037x.2019.1683533 baker, s. & irwin, e., 2021, ‘disrupting the dominance of “linear pathways”: how institutional assumptions create “stuck places” for refugee students’ transitions into higher education’, research papers in education 36(1), 75–95. https://doi.org/10.1080/02671522.2019.1633561 barman, b.c., 2020, ‘impact of refugees on host developing countries’, in s.k. das & n. chowdhary (eds.), refugee crises and third-world economies, pp. 103–111, emerald publishing limited, bingley. baynes, k., 2015, habermas, routledge, london. ben-moshe, d., bertone, s. & grossman, m., 2008, refugee access and participation in tertiary education and training, institute for community, ethnicity and policy, university of victoria, melbourne, australia. betts, a., 2021, ‘refugees and patronage: a political history of uganda’s “progressive” refugee policies’, african affairs 120(479), 243–276. https://doi.org/10.1093/afraf/adab012 bilger, v. & van liempt, i., 2009, ‘introduction: methodological and ethical concerns in research with vulnerable migrants’, in i. van liempt & v. bilger (eds.), the ethics of migration research methodology: dealing with vulnerable immigrants, pp. 1–22, sussex academic press, eastbourne. block, k., warr, d., gibbs, l. & riggs, e., 2013, ‘addressing ethical and methodological challenges in research with refugee-background young people: reflections from the field’, journal of refugee studies 26(1), 69–87. https://doi.org/10.1093/jrs/fes002 bourdieu, p., 1973, cultural reproduction and social reproduction, vol. 178, pp. 71–112, tavistock, london. bourdieu, p., 1977a, ‘cultural reproduction and social reproduction’, in j. karabel & a.h. halsey (eds.), power and ideology in education, pp. 487–511, oxford university press, new york, ny. bourdieu, p., 1977b, outline of a theory of practice, cambridge university press, cambridge. bourdieu, p., 1983, ‘forms of capital’, in j.c. richards (ed.), handbook of theory and research for the sociology of education, greenwood press, new york, ny. bourdieu, p., 1986, ‘the forms of capital’, in j. richardson (ed.), handbook of theory and research for the sociology of education, pp. 241–258, greenwood, westport, ct. bourdieu, p. & wacquant, l., 1992, an invitation to reflexive sociology, polity, cambridge. chernilo, d., 2002, ‘the theorization of social co-ordinations in differentiated societies: the theory of generalized symbolic media in parsons, luhmann and habermas’, british journal of sociology 53(3), 431–449. https://doi.org/10.1080/0007131022000000581 cleaver, f., 2001, ‘institutions, agency and the limitations of participatory approaches to development’, in b. cooke & u. kothari (eds.), participation: the new tyranny?, pp. 36–55, zed books, london. dryden-peterson, s., 2003, education of refugees in uganda: relationships between setting and access, refugee law project working paper no. 9, refugee law project, kampala, uganda. dryden-peterson, s., 2006a, ‘“i find myself as someone who is in the forest”: urban refugees as agents of social change in kampala, uganda’, journal of refugee studies 19(3), 381–395. https://doi.org/10.1093/jrs/fel010 dryden-peterson, s., 2006b, ‘the present is local, the future is global? reconciling current and future livelihood strategies in the education of congolese refugees in uganda’, refugee survey quarterly 25(2), 81–92. https://doi.org/10.1093/rsq/hdi0127 dryden-peterson, s., 2011, ‘refugee children aspiring toward the future: linking education and livelihoods’, in k. mundy & s. dryden-peterson (eds.), educating children in conflict zones: research, policy, and practice for systemic change (a tribute to jackie kirk), pp. 85–99, teachers college press, new york, ny. dryden-peterson, s. & giles, w., 2010, ‘higher education for refugees’, refuge: canada’s journal on refugees 27(2), 3–9. https://doi.org/10.25071/1920-7336.34717 dryden-peterson, s.e., adelman, m.b. & chopra, v., 2019, ‘the purposes of refugee education: policy and practice of including refugees in national education systems’, sociology of education 92(4), 346–366. https://doi.org/10.1177/0038040719863054 elder-vass, d., 2018, ‘lifeworld and systems in the digital economy’, european journal of social theory 21(2), 227–244. https://doi.org/10.1177/1368431017709703 el-ghali, h.a. & ghosn, e., 2019, ‘connected learning: the future for higher education?’, forced migration review 60, 65–66. ellis, b.h., kia-keating, m., yusuf, s.a., lincoln, a. & nur, a., 2007, ‘ethical research in refugee communities and the use of community participatory methods’, transcultural psychiatry 44(3), 459–481. https://doi.org/10.1177/1363461507081642 fairtlough, g.h., 1991, ‘habermas’ concept of “lifeworld”’, systems practice 4(6), 547–563. https://doi.org/10.1007/bf01063113 gourlay, l., 2011, ‘new lecturers and the myth of “communities of practice”’, studies in continuing education 33(1), 67–77. https://doi.org/10.1080/0158037x.2010.515570 griffiths, d., sigona, n. & zetter, r., 2005, refugee community organisations and dispersal: networks, resources and social capital, policy press, bristol, uk. habermas, j., 1984, the theory of communicative action: vol. 1, reason and the rationalization of society, beacon press, boston, ma. habermas, j., 1987, the theory of communicative action: lifeworld and systems, a critique of functionalist reason, vol. 2, beacon press, boston. habermas, j., 1993, ‘modernity – an incomplete project’, in t. docherty (ed.), postmodernism: a reader, pp. 98–109, london, routledge. hakami, a., 2016, ‘“education is our weapon for the future”: access and non-access to higher education for refugees in nakivale refugee settlement, uganda’, master’s thesis, university of stavanger. horst, c. & grabska, k., 2015, ‘introduction: flight and exile-uncertainty in the context of conflict-induced displacement’, social analysis 59(1), 1–18. https://doi.org/10.3167/sa.2015.590101 jacobsen, k. & landau, l.b., 2003, ‘the dual imperative in refugee research: some methodological and ethical considerations in social science research on forced migration’, disasters 27(3), 185–206. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-7717.00228 kemmis, s., 1998, ‘system and lifeworld, and the conditions of learning in late modernity’, curriculum studies 6(3), 269–305. https://doi.org/10.1080/14681369800200043 lambrechts, a.a., 2020, ‘the super-disadvantaged in higher education: barriers to access for refugee background students in england’, higher education 80(5), 803–822. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-020-00515-4 morrice, l., 2013, ‘refugees in higher education: boundaries of belonging and recognition, stigma and exclusion’, international journal of lifelong education 32(5), 652–668. https://doi.org/10.1080/02601370.2012.761288 mugerwa-sekawabe, m., 2021, ‘increasing access to education for refugees in uganda’, law, democracy and development 25, 546–574. https://doi.org/10.17159/2077-4907/2021/ldd.v25.19 naidoo, l., 2009, ‘developing social inclusion through after-school homework tutoring: a study of african refugee students in greater western sydney’, british journal of sociology of education 30(3), 261–273. https://doi.org/10.1080/01425690902812547 naidoo, l., wilkinson, j., adoniou, m. & langat, k., 2018, refugee background students transitioning into higher education: navigating complex spaces, springer, london. naylor, r., terry, l., rizzo, a., nguyen, n. & mifsud, n., 2021, ‘structural inequality in refugee participation in higher education’, journal of refugee studies 34(2), 2142–2158. https://doi.org/10.1093/jrs/fez077 osmanovic, s., 2021, ‘the experiences of refugees in higher education: an interpretive phenomenological analysis study’, doctoral dissertation, university of nevada, reno. owen, j., 2014, ‘recounting migration: political narratives of congolese young people in uganda’, journal of contemporary african studies 32(4), 513–516. https://doi.org/10.1080/02589001.2014.984947 paul, o.t., 2022, ‘refugee education: refugees’ perceptions of educational challenges in uganda’, international journal of educational administration and policy studies 14(1), 38–45. https://doi.org/10.5897/ijeaps2022.0729 pradhan, u., 2019, ‘transforming language to script: constructing linguistic authority through language contact in schools in nepal’, in s.k. sonntag & m. turin (eds.), the politics of language contact in the himalaya, pp. 57–75, open book publishers, cambridge, uk. refai, d., haloub, r. & lever, j., 2018, ‘contextualizing entrepreneurial identity among syrian refugees in jordan: the emergence of a destabilized habitus?’, the international journal of entrepreneurship and innovation 19(4), 250–260. https://doi.org/10.1177/1465750317750322 regmi, k.d., 2021, ‘nepali lifeworld and its higher education system: a critical assessment of the dis/connection’, in b. hall & r. tandon (eds.), socially responsible higher education, pp. 42–54, brill sense, leiden. scott, m., 2020, climate change, disasters and the refugee convention, cambridge university press, cambridge. standing, c., standing, s. & law, f., 2013, ‘the role of the lifeworld concept in wiki adoption and use’, the design journal 16(4), 486–508. https://doi.org/10.2752/175630613x13746645186205 stark, l., plosky, w.d., horn, r. & canavera, m., 2015, ‘“he always thinks he is nothing”: the psychosocial impact of discrimination on adolescent refugees in urban uganda’, social science & medicine 146, 173–181. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2015.10.045 symons, k., nanyunja, s., mulondo, a., miranda, j.j., lugala, c., kampogo, m. et al., 2021, ‘blended learning in refugee education: the case of the foundations for all project in kampala and kiryandongo, uganda’, in the proceedings of the 13th eai international conference on e-infrastructure and e-services for developing countries, 1–3 december 2021, zanzibar. tilak, s. & glassman, m., 2020, ‘alternative lifeworlds on the internet: habermas and democratic distance education’, distance education 41(3), 326–344. https://doi.org/10.1080/01587919.2020.1763782 unhcr, 2019, global framework for refugee education, viewed 1 may 2022, from https://www.unhcr.org/5dd50ce47.pdf. unhcr, 2022, global trends in forced displacement, viewed 1 may 2022, from https://www.unhcr.org/62a9d1494/global-trends-report-2021. urquhart, l., brown, l., duncanson, k., roberts, k. & fisher, k., 2020, ‘a dialogical approach to understand perspectives of an aboriginal wellbeing program: an extension of habermas’ theory of communicative action’, international journal of qualitative methods 19, 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1177/1609406920957495 abstract introduction problem statement objectives social justice as a conceptual framework literature review research methodology and sample population methods of data analysis results discussion conclusion acknowledgements references about the author(s) maboragane j. magedi office of the vice-chancellor and principal, tshwane university of technology, pretoria, south africa tebogo j. rakgogo department of applied languages, faculty of humanities, tshwane university of technology, pretoria, south africa onica s. mnguni department of student development and support, faculty of higher education development and support, tshwane university of technology, pretoria, south africa madikwa h. segabutla department of applied languages, faculty of humanities, tshwane university of technology, pretoria, south africa lazarus kgwete department of student development and support, faculty of higher education development and support, tshwane university of technology, pretoria, south africa citation magedi, m.j., rakgogo, t.j., mnguni, o.s., segabutla, m.h. & kgwete, l., 2023, ‘covid-19 and its impact on students with disabilities: a social justice expression at a south african university’, transformation in higher education 8(0), a212. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v8i0.212 original research covid-19 and its impact on students with disabilities: a social justice expression at a south african university maboragane j. magedi, tebogo j. rakgogo, onica s. mnguni, madikwa h. segabutla, lazarus kgwete received: 19 may 2022; accepted: 30 jan. 2023; published: 31 may 2023 copyright: © 2023. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract background: covid-19 as a pandemic has sparked robust debates within the education sector about the need to save lives, save the academic year, ensure that no student is left behind while being cognisant of issues of culture, equity and social justice. aim: the study explored the challenges faced by disabled students after the introduction of online teaching and learning as a concomitant part of covid-19. setting: the study was conducted at a selected university of technology (uot) that is based in gauteng province. methods: the article employed a qualitative approach where face-to-face interviews were used for data collection. purposeful sampling was used to select 30 student participants, five lecturers and five staff members from the disability unit. results: the study revealed that majority of disabled students are disadvantaged when it comes to assessments. it was further established that some of the special arrangements such as additional time and font enlargement of study notes are easily forgotten by the academic staff. in addition, accountability and poor communication between lecturers and support staff from the disability unit was cited as one of the qualitative variables that compromise students’ learning outcomes. online teaching and learning was considered a mode that can be beneficial to both disabled students and their counterpart, normal students. conclusion: online teaching and learning is beneficial to the academic project. however, all the necessary resources should be put in place to ensure that no one is compromised in the process. communication should also be maximised within all the relevant stakeholders. contribution: the article will profoundly contribute to ensure that there is alignment between policy and practice, especially within the context of teaching and learning that involves students with special needs. keywords: covid-19; disabled students; disability unit; online teaching and learning; assessments; higher education sector; resources; healthy communication; students’ learning outcomes and social justice. introduction background crous (2004) as cited by mutanga (2017:136) reports that few people with disabilities participate in higher education and the small number that do access higher education face many challenges. this is partly because policy provisions regarding disability matters are fragmented and currently there is no national policy. according to kamga (2021:1), the covid-19 pandemic poses one of the severest global challenges that the world has in recent times experienced. to deal with this crisis, empowered by the south african disaster management act 57 of 2002 (dma), the executive on 15 march 2020 declared a state of disaster, which paved the way for the national lockdown declared on 23 march 2020. at the time of writing this article, the country, republic of south africa was in lockdown level 5 as a concomitant part of the third wave. in terms of this article, there is a noticeable relationship that can be realised between the works of mutanga (2017) and kamga (2021). the other one cites policy-related problems that do not promote full participation of students with disabilities, while the other one mentions the covid-19 pandemic that intensified the problem. it is against this background that this article concerns itself with the impact of the aforementioned pandemic on students with disabilities at a south african university. the world health organization (who) confirms that persons, including learners, with disabilities will be ‘impacted more significantly’ by the pandemic (who 2020:1). there may be additional barriers to people with disabilities in implementing social distancing, underlying health conditions may put them at greater risk of developing more severe cases of covid-19 if they become infected or they may be disproportionately impacted because of serious disruptions to the services they rely on (who 2020:2). it is for this reason that khumalo, singh-pillay and subrayen (2020:188) articulate that the pandemic has sparked robust ethical debates within the education sector regarding the need to save lives and the academic year. in the process, the department of higher education, science and technology committed itself that no student will be left behind while being cognisant of issues of culture, equity and social justice. the covid-19 enforced lockdown has required universities to suspend contact sessions to contain the spread of infections among the university population and to embark on remote-online teaching and learning. taking cognisance of the above-mentioned, this article argues that the normal teaching, learning and assessment for students who are differently abled is through contact teaching where they receive support from specialists, peers, carers and the disability unit. specialized equipment and physical support for students who are differently abled are located in the university facilities and mostly occur within the university environment. the covid-19 pandemic disrupted face-to-face contact teaching and in an effort to contain the spread of the virus and save the academic year, universities were required to shift to remote-online teaching and learning (khumalo et al. 2020:188). within the parameters of this article, it needs to be stipulated that the constitution of the republic of south africa was promulgated and accepted as the supreme law of the country. section 29(1) of the above-mentioned constitution, act no. 108 of 1996 states that everyone has the right: to a basic education, including adult basic education. to further education, which the state, through reasonable measures, must make progressively available and accessible. (republic of south africa 1996:n.p.) in addition to the above-quoted clause of the constitution, mckinney, mckinney and swartz (2020:8) add that the bill of rights, which forms part of the constitution of the republic of south africa (1996), states that all people, including people with disabilities, are equal, that everyone has the right to access healthcare services, that everyone has inherent dignity and the right to have their dignity respected and protected, and that everyone has the right to life. similarly, the un’s disability-inclusive response to covid-19, published in may 2020, states that people with disabilities should also be included in covid-19 responses, which is in line with international commitments that the countries have signed. these include the united nations convention of the rights of persons with disabilities (uncrpd), the 2030 agenda for sustainable development and the agenda for humanity (2016) and the united nations disability inclusion strategy. the united nations’ (un) stance emphasises that non-discrimination is a fundamental right for all people, and for this reason covid-19 responses must ensure that they are not biased against disability (united nations 2020). based on the foregoing, a critical issue to be explored in this article is to establish how south african higher education sector responds to the challenges that may be faced by students with disabilities. this is in line with the introduction and implementation of online teaching and learning that was encouraged after the emerging of the covid-19 pandemic. in terms of this article, the author argues that the higher education landscape in the south african context seems to be silent on how the universities should deal with the above-mentioned type of students. conversely, the authors argue that the civil rights law prohibits discrimination against people with disabilities in all areas of public life (jobs, school, transportation and all spaces open to the general public) to ensure that people with disabilities have the same access and availability as anyone else. the researchers’ view is supported by mckinney et al. (2020) when expressing that people with disabilities experience discrimination and hardship in all spheres of life, including employment, education and access to healthcare. in addition, it can be opined that people with disabilities are more likely to experience increased health needs, worse health outcomes and discriminatory laws, as well as stigma when compared with their counterparts, normal people. by sharing a similar perspective, scholars such as armitage and nellums (2020), kittay (2020) and kuper et al. (2020) emphasise that the above-mentioned issues are likely to be intensified during the covid-19 epidemic. it is for this reason that the present article aims to look into the technical challenges that may be experienced by students with disabilities. within the parameters of this article, the authors cogently argue that within the south african higher education sector, students with disabilities may also be disadvantaged when compared to their counterparts, normal students, when it comes to online teaching and learning. this contention is supported by zhang (2020) who argues that the impact of covid-19 on students has been enormous, with an increase in worries about fiscal and physical health, a rapid shift to online learning, and increased isolation. in addition to these changes, students with disabilities and/or health concerns face accessibility problems with online learning or communication tools, and their stress may be compounded by additional risks such as financial stress or pre-existing conditions. he adds that the findings of this study show that students with disabilities were more concerned about classes going online than their peers without disabilities. in addition, students with disabilities and/or health concerns also reported that they have experienced more covid-19-related adversities compared to their peers without disabilities and/or health concerns. we argue that students with disabilities and/or health concerns in higher education need confidence in the accessibility of the online learning tools that are becoming increasingly prevalent in higher education not only because of covid-19 but also more generally. to add to the above-mentioned, mckinney et al. (2020) aver that in addition to prevalent prejudice related to race, gender and socio-economic factors; people with disabilities experience discrimination based on their disabilities. this includes a lack of access to education or appropriate support within schools, lack of access to employment opportunities and a lack of access to healthcare. curtis and lawson (2001:22) add that in on-campus study, students have access to interactions with academic teachers in seminars and in individual consultations. it is against this backdrop that the authors explore the technical challenges that students with disabilities faced since the introduction of online teaching and learning as a concomitant part of covid-19. it also needs to be mentioned that the article will in addition establish if psychological implications may be suffered and experienced by students with disabilities as a result of lack of inclusive and coordinated plan that will make sure that everyone is accommodated by online teaching and learning. it is against this background when united nations (2020:4) confirms that people with disabilities are disproportionately impacted by the covid-19 outbreak more than their counterparts, people without disabilities. problem statement what triggered this article is the lack of coordinated plan in the south african higher education landscape to deal with the technical challenges and other barriers that may be experienced by students with disabilities, particularly when it comes to online teaching and learning. the author’s contention is that students with disabilities are overlooked and discriminated compared with their counterparts, students without disabilities, especially when it comes to online teaching and learning. this problem is further postulated by kamga (2020:549) when articulating that basic and higher education, which is compulsory under international law, was inclusive of learners with disabilities during the covid-19 pandemic. to this end, it examines measures taken by the government to ensure the continuity of basic education and the extent to which these measures are inclusive of learners with disabilities. it further argues that moving education to online platforms and conducting classes via radio and television are not accompanied by related reasonable accommodation measures to ensure the inclusion of learners with disabilities. among others, study material and numerous resources, online platforms and media are not in accessible formats, and learners with disabilities do not have access to data or internet broadband. it is against this perspective that the current article concerns itself with the technical challenges that confront students with disabilities. objectives in taking into consideration the foregoing state of the online teaching and learning as a result of the covid-19 pandemic, the objectives of the present article were to: to explore the technical challenges that may be faced and experienced by students with disabilities during online teaching and learning; to determine if students with disabilities may develop some psychological-related implications as a result of stress and trauma suffered during teaching and learning process; to establish if there is sufficient institutional support of educational technologies and other resources can be easily accessible as a way of supporting students with disabilities. social justice as a conceptual framework the current article is underpinned by social justice as a conceptual framework that shapes and guides the authors’ contention. van den bos (2003) defines social justice as the fair and equitable distribution of power, resources and obligations in society to all people, regardless of race or ethnicity, age, gender, ability status, sexual orientation, and religious or spiritual background. the fundamental principles underlying the above-provided definition may include values of inclusion, collaboration, cooperation, equal access and equal opportunity. equally important, it is worth postulating that such values are also the foundation of a democratic and egalitarian society (sue 2001). in this article, there is a crucial link that can be realised between social justice as a conceptual framework and the problem statement that initiated this article. the relevance of this theory is further motivated by the fact that it gives students with disabilities to express themselves regarding some sort of discrimination they may have received in educational facilities during the covid-19 pandemic. for several reasons, it can therefore be understood that social justice theory is relevant to the current article, especially when considering the context of discrimination that may have been suffered by students with disabilities compared to their counterparts, normal students. emanating from a social justice perspective, matshedisho (2007) interrogates the challenges of access to higher education for students with disabilities from a human rights perspective. he states that one of the difficulties of redressing unequal access to higher education for students with disabilities arises out of the challenge of transforming formal rights on paper into real rights. he says that the south african higher education system has been systematic in perpetuating structural inequalities and social injustice. similarly, mutanga (2017:136–137) theorises that the south african government asserts that it views disability from the social model perspective. as has been argued by mutanga and walker (2015), proponents of the social model seem to have neglected the need to understand the challenges for people with disabilities, not only emanating from the social environment but from other factors such as the individual, environmental, economic and political spheres. as a result of the dominant perspectives on understanding disability, international scholars’ attention has now shifted towards developing better understanding of disability by incorporating multiple and intersecting factors (economic, social, environmental, political and cultural barriers) that place restrictions in the way of full inclusion and success of students with disabilities in higher education landscape. it is for this reason that howell (2005:49–50) postulates the following: the first issue that should be interrogated is the lack of planning for disability at a systemic and institutional level. she found that there was not enough integration and inclusion taking place campus-wide, with a large part of the disability function residing in the disability office or disability unit. this was echoed by the foundation of tertiary institutions of the northern metropolis (fotim 2011) study six years later, in which it was found that a large focus was placed on disability units (or its equivalent on campus) to provide support to students, in this way not integrating disability into key aspects of the university. any disability-related problem, from facility and maintenance issues to academic exclusions, became a matter for the disability units to deal with. disability was therefore not sufficiently included in the planning and functioning of all faculty, administration and support services. literature review in this regard, the authors will provide a brief synopsis of how covid-19 brought some complications to the education sector worldwide. the author will also encapsulate how students with disabilities were discriminated, after some policies and regulations were imposed as a way of managing the pandemic. lastly, some international perspectives will also be incorporated in order to provide a comparative analysis of the phenomenon under attention. topical and timing of the article it is relevant for the authors to highlight that at the time of writing this article, south africa was one of the epicentres of covid-19 worldwide and level 5 was also in place as a concomitant part of third wave. the authors further add that online teaching and learning took place even when most of the south african universities were closed for face-to-face contact. incidentally, students with disabilities were sent home like their counterparts to reside with their families. within the context of this article, what intensifies the problem is the lack of interrogation on training, knowledge and skills from the family members and the community at large on how to academically support students with disabilities. another qualitative variable that exacerbates the current article is the noticeable relationship between disability and lack of resources. this article argues that the universities are equipped to support these students but the families are not. yet, students with disabilities were treated the same as their counterparts when most of the universities were closed due to high rate of covid-19 infections. from a theoretical point of view, critics may argue that the current article aims to respond to the gap identified in the literature and it concerns itself with the technical challenges that may be faced by students with disabilities, particularly during online teaching and learning, during the covid-19 pandemic era. the meaning behind ‘disability’ as a medical condition according to the strategic policy framework on disability for the post school education and training system (2022:4): disability is defined as the loss or elimination of opportunities to take part in the life of the community, equitably with others, encountered by persons having physical, sensory, psychological, developmental, learning, neurological or other impairments, which may be permanent, temporary or episodic in nature, thereby causing activity limitations and participation restriction within mainstream society. these barriers may be due to economic, physical and/or structural, social, attitudinal and/or cultural factors. challenges faced by students with disabilities amid covid-19 according to mckinney et al. (2020:3), on 26 march 2020, the who (2020) developed a document, considerations for disabled people during covid-19, that includes actions that need to be taken to ensure that people with disabilities are able to access healthcare services, water and sanitation services and public health information. however, the majority of these are not fully feasible in countries such as south africa. it is against this backdrop when khumalo et al. (2020:190) reason that the effect of covid-19 has increased economic, physical, social, attitudinal and/or cultural barriers particularly to students with disabilities because of the shift from contact learning to online learning without physical and technological support. kamga (2020:559–560) warns that it is important because south africa is party to the international covenant on economic and social, cultural rights (icescr), the african charter on human and peoples’ rights (african charter), the african charter on the rights and welfare of the child (african children’s charter) and the united nations (un) convention on the rights of persons with disabilities (crpd). these instruments provide for a compulsory right to basic education to all without discrimination; this right being enshrined in the south african constitution as well as numerous policy instruments. to add on to the above-mentioned, the white paper for post-school education and training has mandated the department of higher education and training (dhet 2013) to recognise the rights of people with disabilities and their participation in or access to higher education as part of the transformation process in south africa. similarly, scholars such as tremmel et al. (2020:201) propound that as a result of the covid-19 pandemic, many school districts have moved from brick-and-mortar instruction to remote instruction with little planning time and limited resources. rural localities, already facing barriers and hardships, attempted to provide special education and related services in accordance with rapidly changing state and federal guidelines. for many schools and tertiary institutions, the transition from face-to-face instruction to remote learning during the covid-19 pandemic was not their finest hour, particularly for under-resourced, underserved rural schools. khumalo et al. (2020:188) further provide that the shift in the mode of delivery from contact sessions to online learning by universities during the covid-19 period has been hailed as a panacea for the academic year, but it restricts the inclusion of students who are differently abled. students who are differently abled are more vulnerable than other students as they have more needs related to healthcare, safety and accessibility. in the decisions made about remote-online learning during the covid-19 pandemic, students who are differently abled have become most vulnerable and isolated. scholars such as kuper et al. (2020) hold the view that some of the disabled people require frequent physical contact with others to obtain the support they require (such as carrying, lifting or feeding by care assistants), which becomes challenging in the context of social distancing and self-isolation. in terms of this article, it needs to be mentioned that students with disabilities depend on other students and staff members from the disability unit for teaching and learning to take place. to university lecturers, administrators, managers and other relevant stakeholders, one of the salient questions that can be posed to them is: how do students with disabilities cope with their studies when during online teaching and learning? equally important, another critical question that may be posed is: how do students with disabilities cope with their studies during online teaching and learning, particularly when universities are closed? socio-economic conditions as part of the qualitative variables according to sowetan published on 18 august 2020, a new study has revealed that most university students cannot study from home during the lockdown as they lack essentials such as laptops and data. the study argued that the majority of university students lack ‘critical’ resources such as data and laptops and this makes it to be impractical for them to study from home during the lockdown pandemic. in this survey, a total of 362 participants consisting of students across 26 universities, as well as graduates and parents were interviewed as part of the study by feenix, a crowdfunding platform. therefore, qualitative and quantitative data from the report were extracted from a series of 54 online questions to help effectively measure the affect that funding has on students from an academic, emotional and financial perspective. it is against this backdrop when the research showed that the challenges faced by students have become even more apparent during the lockdown, as students who were living on campus are unable to afford laptops and data to continue their online studies. scholars such as emmett (2006) and groce et al. (2011) add that the majority of people with disabilities cannot make online purchases as they have no credit cards or funds available, cannot access online shopping platforms because of a lack of internet or devices, or reside in informal settlements where deliveries are not made. kamga (2020:575) adds that apart from the very problematic absence of study materials, special programmes and qualified teachers at home, assistive devices such as perkins brailler or video technology for communicating remotely in sign language often are not available at home. in addition, even if these device supporting systems were to be delivered to families, not only are they not affordable, but they are not always user-friendly for parents who may be unfamiliar with them and consequently unable to assist their children. in the same vein, the home environment is not equipped with stimulating tools related to sights, sounds and notion embedded in the education of learners with sensory, physical and intellectual disability disabilities. apart from the issue of difficulties in teaching and learning as a concomitant part of lack of resources, heide and simonsson (2014) argue that open lines of communication, especially in times of crisis, can mitigate feelings of uncertainty and anxiety. lambert and dryer (2018) cite another problem when alluding that social life exclusion and shifting of mode of learning and teaching to online learning contribute to stress and anxiety experienced by students with disabilities. when the authors take into consideration the survey that was conducted by mcmanus, dryer and henning (2017) on barriers to learning online experienced by students with a mental health disability, one of the findings suggests that the learning environment was a major challenge for students with disabilities. mckinney et al. (2020:1) articulate that the exclusion of people with disabilities goes against the principles established in south africa’s constitution, in which all people are regarded as equal, have the right to life and inherent dignity, the right to access healthcare, as well as the protection of dignity. in addition, the triage policy contravenes the un crpd, which the south african government has signed and ratified. khumalo et al. (2020:196) rightly observe that connectivity, power outages, assistive devices, technical support, technical training, teaching methods, content design, time, home environment, access, institutional support, lack of parental support, no contact with fellow friends from the disability unit and confidence are cited as some of the qualitative variables that threaten the quality teaching and learning that should be received by students during online engagements. it is for this reason that the authors underscore that the above-cited challenges may underscore that some of the students with disabilities may need extra attention including personal assistants, a variety of academic support, psychological or emotional support so that they can be able to sustain their studies. the critical question that may be posed in this study is: how are these services rendered when the universities are closed? focusing strictly on the discrimination of students with disabilities, ngubane-mokiwa and zongozz (2021) put forward that students with disabilities have been going through different forms of discrimination and exclusion in the south african higher education system. these include inaccessible learning materials and learning platforms, negative attitudes from lecturers, fellow students and more. it is against this background that the united nations declaration article 1 [17] on the right to development also states that: the right to development is an inalienable human right by virtue of which every human person and all peoples are entitled to participate in, contribute to, and enjoy economic, social, cultural and political development, in which all human rights and fundamental freedoms can be fully realised. similarly, the national planning commission (2030) articulates that the national development plan (ndp) of south africa vision 2030 [9] proposed the following: [p]eople with disabilities must have enhanced access to quality education and employment. efforts to ensure relevant and accessible skills development programmes for people with disabilities, coupled with equal opportunities for their productive and gainful employment, must be prioritised. (n.p.) research methodology and sample population the study employed a qualitative approach where face-to-face interviews were used as a qualitative method of data collection. the study was conducted at a selected south african university of technology (uot), which is based in the gauteng province. participants for the article were purposively selected based on their proficiency and knowledge about the researched phenomenon (creswell & creswell 2017). for the purpose of this article, 30 participants, five lecturers and two disability unit personnel were selected to participate in the study. it is important to mention that all the selected students were in their first year of study and the lecturers who volunteered to participate in the study were those who are teaching and engaging with first-year students with disabilities. methods of data analysis descriptive and interpretative research paradigms were mainly used for data analysis. the two methods helped the researcher to make sense of the collected data and also contributed to rigourous analysis of a considerable amount of verbal responses gathered from face-to-face interviews. verbatim responses from the participants were also provided with the intention of showing validity, reliability and trustworthiness of the collected data. in addition, dominating points were converted into qualitative themes that were also supported by the verbatim responses. interview as a qualitative method ‘interview’ is defined by babbie (2014:281) as a data collection encounter in which one person (an interviewer) asks questions of another (a respondent). furthermore, babbie (2014:281) is of the perspective that interviews are an alternative method of data collection. rather than asking respondents to read questionnaires and enter their own answers, the researcher sent interview assistants to ask questions orally and to record participants’ answers. for the purpose of the present study, 37 participants were interviewed and recorded. results the primary aim of this section was to focus on the technical challenges that may be faced by the students with disabilities during online teaching and learning. it is important to mention that at the time of writing this article, most of the south african universities including the university under attention were still using online as a platform to deliver teaching and learning. the analysis from this section is qualitative because face-to-face interviews were used and analysed narratively. the quantitative data were also taken into consideration because the responses of students and lecturers combined were also calculated percentage wise and represented in figures and pie charts. in this article, q stands for question and iq will mean interview question. the iqs asked were qualitative because they comprised both closed-ended and open-ended questions. for this article, 30 students were interviewed and recorded in face-to-face situations. five lecturers and two personnel from the disability unit were also interviewed and recorded. there were eight qualitative questions that were directed to the participants. the first four research questions were directed to student participants. the second set of questions (two questions) were meant for lecturer participants. the two interview questions (iqs) were directed to personnel from the disability unit. what follows next are the four iqs directed to student participants. research question iq1 are there any technical challenges that you are experiencing since the implementation of online teaching and learning? elaborate. in terms of this article, this question is the one that initiated the topic under attention. the significant majority (90%) of students who participated in this study articulated that they are experiencing technical difficulties when it comes to online teaching and learning. however, it is fair to mention that there are those students who held a view that they experienced no technical difficulties. in this regard, a student participant expressed: ‘it is extremely difficult to deal with the two issues at the same time. covid-19 is affecting almost everyone, whether physically or psychologically. however, when it comes to some of us, you have to deal with the fear and anxiety like everyone else and at the same time you have to cope with the difficulties that are brought by lack of resources so that you can actively participate on teaching activities like other students. now things are better because i can always go to the disability lab in order to attend my online classes but back then it was extremely difficult since we were not allowed to be on campus.’ (p9, male, student) figure 1: technical challenges experienced by students with disabilities. in addition, another student participant articulated that: ‘i so wish people can learn to understand that we are not like other students. i am not saying that we should be given a special attention when it comes to assessments but other lecturers forget that there are students with disabilities in their classes. the lecturer will just upload the assignment on brightspace (online teaching platform) and decide to not send that particular assignment to a staff member who is working at the disability lab so that it can be brailed or enlarged accordingly. the very same lecturer will expect you to submit the assignment on the same day as other students and that is not fair because we did not receive it on the same day.’ (p17, student, male) the views and perceptions of the minority cannot be ignored and undermined. one of those students (p6) opined that: ‘i personally do not experience any technical difficulties with regard to online teaching and learning. i can cope with my own but i have to admit that most of my friends are suffering and sometimes i feel so bad that i am not in a position to assist them; especially when we are at home. i can feel for my friends but i hope the university will start to treat us like those students who are always prioritized when it comes to phase in approach of returning students to campus.’ (p6, student, male) in support of this student, p4 stated that: ‘i am fine with online classes but it is important for people to understand that the nature of our disabilities is not the same. other students need help of others in order to survive the university environment. this is the reason why residence administration make sure that they pair us according to our situations. the one who can cope is paired with the one who cannot cope so that they can assist each other.’ (p4, student, female) in taking into account the views and perspectives expressed by the above-excerpted students, it is arguable to state that online teaching and learning has some negative implications on students with disabilities. it is interesting to notice that even those who articulated that they are not experiencing any difficulties admit that some of their friends are really struggling when it comes to online sessions. social justice as a theoretical framework that is used to guide and buttresses this article argues that no one should be left behind or discriminated because of race, gender, ethnicity, disability, etc. however, critics may support that students with disabilities are in this case quite disadvantaged than their counterparts students without disabilities. the literature consulted in this article argued that there is a relationship between socio-economic conditions and the success of students with disabilities. the intersection between the two phenomena is that students with disabilities require some special learning devices, which largely depend on the financial stability of the funder. in most cases, these students tend to be compromised when it comes to the student learning outcomes than their counterparts students with disabilities. the reason behind this is that they have to acquire the aforementioned devices before learning can take place. in addition to the above-mentioned, howell (2005) shares a similar finding when revealing that one of the contributing factors that negatively affects students with disabilities is the lack of planning for disability at a systematic and institutional level. it was further postulated that the lack of proper integration between all the relevant stakeholders at an institutional level exacerbates the problem. research question iq2 which teaching platform works better for you between contact and online? elaborate. this question is quite similar to the above-mentioned one. the authors wanted to validate if the responses from the participants will be similar. on the issue of best teaching platform between online and contact sessions, p29 outlined: ‘these two are important and they have their own advantages and disadvantages. i will always prefer face-to-face contact sessions because i have an opportunity to attend all the classes since i do not rely on someone to assist me with online connection. however, i have to admit that online sessions benefit the students because they are able to download recordings after the class.’ (p29, student, male) figure 2: the best teaching platform between online and contact classes. in support of the above-articulated, p11 added that: ‘contact sessions are the best they accommodate most of us with disabilities. the teaching and learning process becomes an easy one. online is good but it does not accommodate those students with special needs.’ (p11, student, female) according to the literature consulted in this article, scholars such as emmett (2006), groce et al. (2011), kagma (2020), and khumalo et al. (2020) cited a lack of resources such as connectivity, power outages, assistive devices, technical support, technical training, teaching methods, content design, time, home environment, access and institutional support as one of the challenges that are confronted by students in general. in this regard, it is noticed that the students do see the advantage of online teaching and learning. however, there is a need to take into consideration the fact that when it comes to students with disabilities, it is not only about the resources. there are still those who cannot touch or see and they still need to be assisted so that they can fully participate like their counterpart students. research question iq3 do you see your university doing enough in ensuring that you are on the same page with the other students? justify your answer. on the question of whether the university is doing enough to support students with disabilities all the student participants stated that the university’s intervention is not sufficient when it comes to students with disabilities. in this regard, p15 expressed that: ‘the university is failing us because we always have to remind some of the lecturers that they need to send our notes and assignments to the disability unit. without doing this, we will end up not learning anything because the lecturers do not want to admit that the university has students with disabilities. i am not saying we should be treat special but at least they should just acknowledge that we are not the same with the majority of the students.’ (p15, student, male) figure 3: the university´s intervention on students with disabilities. in support of this, p19 reasoned that: ‘it is so unfair for the university to send us home every time the country is confronted with a new wave. we are so fine at school and the environment is conducive for us to participate in academic activities. some of us do not have funding and we are still relying on our friends when it comes to the learning facilities. the moment you go home you do not even have that friend who will assist you with the necessary device so that life can go on.’ (p19, student, female) in addition, p21 stated: ‘the university is not supporting us because we are expected to attend same classes with those students who are normal. at high school, we did not attend same classes with those who are normal because the department of basic education acknowledges that it admitted students with special needs. some of the lecturers when they teach they forget that some students cannot see in class. the pace that they teach at can also disadvantage some of the students who are normal.’ (p21, student, male) another student participant added that: ‘sometimes i feel like they are doing us a favour by registering us. the system is not really ready to accommodate students with disabilities. the reason i am saying this because they are only two staff members who are responsible for the whole campus. should they get sick at the same time, meaning there is no school for us.’ (p6, student, male) expounding for the literature that has been consulted in this article, the following clauses and legislations (republic of south africa 1996): section 29 (1) of the constitution of south africa (act no. 108 of 1996), the ndp of south africa vision 2030 [9], the united nations declaration article 1 [17], the who (2020), and the un crpd, which the south african government has signed and ratified all share a similar perspective that no one should be disadvantaged because of disability. the article postulates that it is the responsibility of the university under attention to provide a conducive environment to ensure that everyone receives equal opportunity to participate in educational facilities. emanating from a social justice point of view, the students’ response to this question is quite concerning. the reason for this contention is that 100% of students with disabilities who participated in this article held the view that the university’s intervention is not sufficient. critics may support that in the university under attention there is no alignment between the above-mentioned legislations and the service that is received by students with disabilities. in this article, the authors articulate that there is an urgent need for the south african higher education sector to come up with a coordinated plan on how the students should be supported. this will ensure that their learning outcomes are not compromised as they receive the same content and write the same assessments as their counterparts. according to the literature consulted in this article, crous (2004) in mutanga (2017:136) reported that very few people with disabilities participate in higher education and the small number who do access higher education face many challenges. the student participants in this article echo a similar submission that they do not see the university’s interventions as sufficient when it comes to the support that should be given to students with disabilities. from a policy implementation point of view, there is a need to get an accurate analysis of the realities on the ground to ensure that there is a synergy between policy and practice. research question iq4 how is your right to education violated? when it comes to the issue of the violation of the constitutional right to education, students had different ideologies on this matter. other students were of the view that their right is being violated, while others were of the viewpoint that their right is protected. in this regard, p3 articulated that: ‘our constitutional right to education are not violated because the system accommodates us. when i did my application for admission, the application form wanted to know if i have disability or not. secondly, the university invested a lot of money in making sure that we have a disability lab. they also employed people who love working with students with disabilities.’ (p3, student, male) figure 4: the violation of students’ constitutional right. participant 12 held a different perspective that their constitutional right to education is not fully respected. in this regard, p12 stated that: ‘our constitutional right to education is not entirely violated because we were given a chance to be admitted. however, the quality of teaching that is received by normal students is not the same as the one that is received by students with disabilities. normal students are not in any way disadvantaged by online teaching but we always have to struggle when we are confronted with online classes.’ (p12, student, male) by sharing a similar perspective, p1 shared that: ‘our constitutional right to education is not violated because students with disabilities are welcomed to study like other students. the university should just make sure that all the staff members are doing their part as stipulated in their contracts. the quality of education that is received by students with disabilities should not only lie at the hands of staff members working at the disability lab. we should also have mentors, tutors and student assistants who are physically challenged so that it can be quite easier for them to relate and understand our challenges.’ (p1, student, male) according to the literature consulted in this article, there is a noticeable relationship between what initiated this article and the constitutional imperatives on students’ right to education. organisations such as icescr, the african charter on human and peoples’ rights (african charter), the african charter on the rights and welfare of the child (african children’s charter) and the un crpd all share a similar advocacy that a compulsory right to basic education to all without discrimination is not debatable. on this research question, what captures the attention of the authors is the students’ observation on the violation of their constitutional rights. it is interesting to note that the participants acknowledge the significance of online teaching and learning because it has its own advantages. however, they put forward that proper measures should be put in place to ensure that no one is left behind. their contention is based on the fact that the nature of their disabilities is not the same. they reason that there are those students who can cope on their own while there are those who rely on the help of their peers so that they can participate in learning activities. the theory of social justice dictates that everyone should be given fair and equal opportunity in the educational space. the implication of this theory is that it is the responsibility of the universities to ensure that whatever measures that were brought in place as a way of managing the spread of covid-19 should be inclusive enough. as part of the transformation of the south african higher education sector, there is a need for the universities to intensify their support to students with disabilities as a way of protecting students constitutional right to education. the authors put forward that to grant students admission and not put sufficient measures in place so that they can receive quality education like their counterparts may be perceived as a violation of human rights. what follows next are the two iqs that were directed to lecturer participants. research question iq1 what is your knowledge on the challenges that are experienced by students with disabilities in your class? on this question, all the lecturers indicated that they do know that they have normal students and those with disabilities. in this context, one of the lecturers shared that: ‘i know very well that i have students with disabilities in my class and i always try by that i accommodate them when i teach and when i assess. i have to admit that i sometimes forget that i need to send their notes to the disability lab so that they can be designed in such a way that the students will be able to access them. i honestly feel like it should be a collective responsibility between lecturers and support staff employed at the disability unit.’ (p9, lecturer, female) in addition to the above-mentioned, p28 who is also a lecturer articulated that: ‘the university is failing us because it expects us to deal and cope with the students with disabilities. we were not trained to deal with this type of students and this is the reason why they will always be problems there and there. the department of basic education employ qualified teachers to deal with students with special needs. the dynamic are not the same and the university should take that into consideration. we are doing everything within our best to ensure that these students are supported but the university should also support us. these students deserve quality teaching and learning like other students. i understand that the resources may be a problem in order to appoint specific lecturers who will be able to attend to these students but we should at least receive a training so that we can all be capacitated.’ (p28, lecturer, female) it is interesting to see that some of the points that are mentioned by the lecturer participants were also mentioned by one of the student participants. the first issue is that the university should be able to appoint qualified people who will be able to deal with students with disabilities. the second issue is that lecturers are always reminded that they have students with disabilities in their classes. so, need to make sure that they send notes and other teaching material to the relevant support division that is working with students with disabilities. critics may support that it is not the responsibility of the students to remind the lecturers about sending the notes, assignments and other teaching material to the disability unit. scholars such as groce et al. (2011) and kamga (2020) argue that one cannot advocate for online teaching and learning without taking cognisance of the socio-economic conditions of our society. in terms of this article, it was argued that a lack of access to proper learning devices, data, and other necessary resources makes online teaching and learning to be an exclusive platform because it will exclude those who are confronted by poor socio-economic conditions. it is against this background that the lecturer participants cite the issue of the university being ready to deal with the kind of students that the university is enrolling. it is reasoned that a lack of training or workshop to lectures on students with disabilities is also part of the contributing factors because the dynamics of these students and their counterparts are completely different. in this context, the article records that there is a need for universities to equip staff members to their fullest potential so that they become aware on how to deal with students with disabilities. social justice as a theoretical framework that underpinned this article argues that no one should be left behind in the academic project. it can therefore be understood a lack of uniform way of dealing with students with disabilities from their lectures exposes the entire higher education sector. in the department of basic education, no one will, be employed to deal with students with disabilities without a necessary qualification and appropriate training. the findings of the article establish that a lack of proper training to those staff members who are dealing with students with disabilities does not resonate well with the transformation agenda of the higher education landscape. research question iq2 do you see yourself doing enough in ensuring that these students receive quality teaching and learning? elaborate. on this question, it is interesting to note that all the lecturers’ share a similar perspective that they are not doing their best to ensure that students with disabilities receive quality teaching and learning. they articulated that it is important for the university to acknowledge that training or some sort of orientation is important so that they can be fully equipped to deal with students with special needs. in this regard, p4 who is also a lecturer respondent stated that: ‘my answer is no. i am not doing enough to ensure that students with disabilities are fully supported. equally important, i am not the only one who feeling this way. it is a common thing at the university and this is also common in other universities.’ (p4, lecturer, male) in support of this view, p16 outlined that: ‘i am not doing enough to ensure that the students with disabilities receive quality teaching and learning. however, going forward i will make sure that i also try to organize extra classes with these students to ensure that they are at the same page with the normal students.’ (p16, lecturer, male) in terms of this article, it is interesting to see how the lecturer participants admitted their mistakes when it comes to the type of treatment that they unconsciously provide to students with disabilities. critics may support that in order to do the right thing one has to identify the things that he or she is not getting them right. in this article, the lecturers admission may give them a very good opportunity to do the right thing, which is, always having in mind that the university accommodates all type of students and all of them need to be treated the same. on this question, it is interesting to observe that the lecturer participant is in full support of students with disabilities. what captures the attention of the authors is another lecturer who admitted that he or she is not doing enough in ensuring that the learning outcomes of the students with disabilities are not compromised. a social justice theory advocates that principles of access and equity should be debatable. the lecturer’s acknowledgement of not doing in enough when supporting students with disabilities is a great concern. from a policy implementation point of view, there is a need to establish a lecturer accountability when it comes to students’ academic success. the authors put forward that it appears as if lecturers are not obliged to provide quality service to students with disabilities because their utmost focus is directed to students without disabilities. what follows are the two iqs that were directed to disability unit personnel. research question iq1 what is your knowledge on the challenges that are experienced by students with disabilities in your environment? the two staff members who are working at the disability lab mentioned that they know almost all the challenges that are experienced by students with disabilities. they further mentioned that they are also familiar with the dynamics that threaten the future of students with disabilities. however, they pointed out that they are working hand in hand with other relevant stakeholders in ensuring that these issues are resolved. participant 34 stated that: ‘i know all the dynamics and challenges that are experienced by students with disabilities. you can wake me up in the middle of the night and ask me any question regarding the challenges that are threatening the future of students with disabilities i will answer that particular question. i have to know their challenges so that i can try to come up with the coping mechanism that can be put in place. it is practically not possible for me to actively contribute to my environment without knowing the issues that are affecting the students.’ (p34, disability unit staff member, female) from a theoretical point of view, the authors articulate that what is mentioned by staff members from the disability unit is what should have been mentioned by lecturer participants in the previous question. one may postulate that staff members from the disability unit are familiar with all the challenges that are confronting students with disabilities simply because they are mandated to work with them. therefore, there is a need to sensitise academic staff regarding the constitutional rights of students with disabilities. in this article, it is interesting to note that students with disabilities are well taken care of at the disability centre. however, it is important for the authors to mention that this should be the service that these students receive in all the operational sectors of the university. this can only be achieved by having a proper integration between the support and academic divisions. the literature consulted in this article postulate that the success of students with disabilities rely on a collective effort of the divisions that exist in a university. the service offered by staff members at the disability unit is what the principles of social justice advocate for. research question iq2 do you see your environment or division doing enough in ensuring that these students receive quality teaching and learning? elaborate. it is interesting to see how the two participants from the support division responded to this question. they stated that their environment is doing everything within its powers to ensure that students with disabilities receive quality teaching and learning. equally important, they also mentioned that they are receiving sufficient support from the university to ensure that these students succeed like any other normal student who registered. in this context, p36 mentioned that: ‘yes, our environment is doing everything within its powers to support the students with disabilities. our university is also giving sufficient support to make sure that we achieve our main objective. the only problem that we are experiencing is the lecturers who do not want to co-operate, especially when it comes to teaching material that has to come to our office for our students. people just need to accept that the university admits normal students and those who need special arrangements. at some point, i had to run with the academic departments so that i can at least get a question paper. at that point, normal students are busy writing the assessment while my students are still waiting. these issues have to be resolved because they also bring in unnecessary psychological implication in the minds of those students with disabilities.’ (p36, disability unit staff member, female) in support of this, p37 added that: ‘i am confident that i am doing what is supposed to be done as an employee of the university. i am doing everything within my powers to ensure that my students receive sufficient support from the unit. i am also certain that my other colleagues in the disability centre are also maximizing their support to ensure that we collectively achieve the fundamental objective of the university. however, the colleagues from the academic division should also play their part as we are playing ours. we are all committed to work for this university and we should always note that our role is to serve the people without any discrimination.’ (p37, disability unit staff member, female) similarly, to the response provided in the previous question, staff members participants still maintain that their environment is doing everything to ensure that students’ learning outcomes are met. the literature consulted in this article argued that students with disabilities have been going through different forms of discrimination and exclusion in the south african higher education system. these include inaccessible learning materials and learning platforms, negative attitudes from lecturers, fellow students and more. on this interview question, it is interesting to note that the disability unit is maximising its efforts to ensure that the students under attention are well supported and do not experience any form of discrimination. in terms of this article, it can be deduced that this effort is in alignment with the principles of social justice that advocates for equity, fairness and access to everyone. discussion qualitative themes from the findings of this article, the following are the qualitative themes that have emerged from the above-discussed qualitative data that came from students, lecturers and support staff from the disability unit. verbatim responses from the participants will also be included as a way of making sense and validating the qualitative themes that derived from the analysis of interview responses. qualitative theme one online vis-à-vis contact sessions both the student and lecturer participants articulated that online teaching and learning is quite beneficial to students because they can always download the recordings. it was also pointed out that both of them have advantages and disadvantages. however, it was reasoned that students with disabilities should not be sent home during stricter regulations so that they can continue to learn like others students. it emerged in this article that it is difficult for the students with special needs to cope with the technical challenges that come with online teaching, especially when they are at home. social justice as theory that has been used to fortify this article argued that no one should be discriminated in the educational space. the implication of this theory in this article dictates that there should be a proper integration between all the relevant stakeholders to ensure that whatever teaching platform is used it does not disadvantageous for students with disabilities. regarding this theme, p13, who is a student, articulated that: ‘there are several benefits that attached to online teaching and learning. one of them is access and availability of the recordings in case one missed a class. however, these recordings can also be made available to students in a face to face class. it is just a matter of benchmarking with other universities as to how do they assist students inside and outside of the class. this kind of resource will also be beneficial to normal students. if we were to say online classes only, some of us are going to suffer because we always need one’s help to join a virtual class.’ (p13, student, male) p2 who is a lecturer stated that: ‘i personally prefer both online and contact sessions. the reason for my submission is that online sessions alone compromises the quality of discussions that should happen in class. other students just join the class and leave the device while others join the class and be busy with other things. it is only few of them who will pay attention until the end of the session. so, if we were to rely on online sessions only; the quality of teaching and learning will be compromised. with regards to students with disability, i think face to face sessions work better for them since lack of resources will never be a barrier for the to learn.’ (p2, lecturer, male) in terms of this article, the researcher submits that both student and lecturer participants share a similar perspective on the advantages and disadvantages of online and contact sessions. what caught the attention of the researcher is the students’ view when articulating that the issue of access to recordings should not be limited to virtual classes. they can also be available and accessible in a face-to-face class. it is just a matter of benchmarking with other south african universities. qualitative theme two fear, anxiety and psychological implications it was found in this study that covid-19 brought fear, anxiety and psychological implications to everyone. however, students with disabilities have to deal with the aforementioned issues and at the same time try to cope with the other challenges that come as a result of lack of support from other relevant stakeholders. the literature that was consulted in this article expounded that challenges that are confronting and threatening the future of students with disabilities are not only limited to teaching and learning. it was further argued that some of these challenges have a potential of affecting the mental health of students with disabilities. it is against this finding that the authors postulate that proper measures should be put in place in ensuring that there is a strong support structure to students with disabilities as it is the case with their counterparts. on this theme, it was found in this article that covid-19 did not only affect students when it comes to teaching and learning. in this regard p8 who is a student expressed: ‘i have friends who study at the university of johannesburg and they always indicate that it is quite easier for them to get professional help inside the university. however, one has to wait for more than a month in our case in order to be attended to. to my surprise, the university knows very well that covid-19 almost everyone on earth was psychologically affected by this pandemic.’ (p8, student, male) participant 36 (p36) encapsulated that the issue of mental health affects almost everyone in the university. however, one agrees that it may be a double crisis to students with disability since they are quite vulnerable in nature.’ qualitative theme three poor communication between lecturers and personnel from the disability unit critics argued in this study that there is noticeable poor communication between lecturers and the support staff members from the disability unit. this is one of the qualitative variables or contributing factors that makes the students with disabilities to continue suffering. the issue under attention was also confirmed by student participation when they highlighted that some of the lecturers have to be reminded that they have students with special needs in their respective classes. therefore, it should be a norm for them to send the teaching material to the disability unit so that it can be arranged accordingly. on this aspect, p11 ventilated: ‘sometimes it is so disappointing when you hear a student with disability communicating with the lecturer regarding the question paper that was supposed to be sent to the disability unit maybe a day before the assessment. it is heart-breaking because they make us to feel that we are disabled every time we have to remind them about the question paper that was not delivered at the unit. i do not remember us starting to write at the same time with normal students. in some cases, the academic departments forget to even send people who can assist some of us who cannot write on our own. you know the answers but you need someone who can put your verbal responses on the answer sheet.’ (p11, disability unit staff member, male) interestingly, some of the lecturers admitted that they tend to forget that they have students with disabilities, especially when it comes to communicating with the relevant support staff members who are dealing with the mentioned type of students. critics argued that much can be achieved if communication can be improved, particularly between lecturers and support staff members who are attached to the disability unit. participated 35 (p35) raised: ‘the issue of effective communication between the departments and the disability unit should be something that is listed as an item in all the meetings that concern teaching and learning. i think the more we talk about these issues is the more colleagues are going to realise that the university made a commitment that it will support students with special needs.’ (p35, lecturer, male) social justice as a theoretical framework that was used to fortify the researcher’s point of view emphasised the issue of fairness, inclusivity, collaboration and cooperation as some of the fundamental principles to be taken into account while dealing with people with disabilities. the above-mentioned qualitative theme validates that there is a communication breakdown between all the relevant stakeholders that are institutionally mandated to support students who need special support. qualitative theme four transformative policy on students with disability the literature consulted in this article argued that one of the contributing factors to poor efficiency when dealing with disabled students is lack of alignment between policy and practice. in this article, the authors submit that there is a need for universities to develop transformational policies that will advocate for students with disabilities. social justice as a conceptual framework agrees that no one should be disadvantaged because of age, race, gender, disability, etc. conclusion this study explored the technical challenges that students face with disability after the introduction of online teaching and learning as a concomitant part of covid-19. the study was conducted at a selected south african uot that is based in the gauteng province. social justice as a theoretical framework that was used to guide and shape the authors’ argument helped in ensuring that there is alignment between title, problem statement, literature review and the findings of the article. the qualitative approach and its methods of data gathering employed in this article helped the authors to meet the objectives of the article. face-to-face interviews as a qualitative method of data collection enabled the authors to interact closely with the research participants and also to explore issues in depth, that concern students with disabilities. the findings of the article established that students with disabilities are not only disadvantaged by online teaching and learning platform; they are also disadvantaged when it comes to assessments that are allocated and given the same hours with their counterparts, students without disabilities. it was also revealed that some of the special arrangements such as additional time and font enlargement of study notes are easily forgotten by some of the academic staff, which makes an academic project to be a difficult one to student with disabilities. in addition, accountability and poor communication between lecturers and support staff members of the disability units was also cited as one of the qualitative variables that put students with disabilities in a compromised situation. this article encapsulates that online teaching and learning may be beneficial to the students with disabilities, only if there can be a healthy communication between lecturers and other relevant stakeholders such as staff members from the disability unit. this will ensure that a constitutional right to education of the students with disabilities is not disregarded and neglected. the literature review consulted in this article together with social justice as a theoretical framework support that there is a noticeable discrimination that can be realised on students with disabilities than their counterparts during the era of covid-19 pandemic. acknowledgements the authors would like to express their sincere gratitude and appreciation to all the students and personnel from the relevant support division who allowed the researchers to conduct face-to-face interviews with them. competing interests the authors have declared that no competing interest exists. authors’ contributions the content of this article is an equal contribution of m.j.m., t.j.r., o.s.m., m.h.s. and l.k. who all drafted, revised and finalised the article. ethical considerations ethical clearance to conduct this study was obtained from the tshwane university of technology research ethics committee (no. rec/2021/06/012). funding information the authors would like to thank the university development capacity grant (tut), funded by the department of higher education (dhet) for financial support and stability. data availability data sharing is not applicable to this article. disclaimer the views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any affiliated agency of the authors. references agenda for humanity. 2016. ‘united nations’, disponível 6(11), 2021. https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/documents/2282agendaforhumanity.pdf. armitage, r. & nellums, l.b., 2020, ‘the covid-19 response must be disability inclusive’, the lancet public health 5(5), e257. https://doi.org/10.1016/s2468-2667(20)30076-1 babbie, l., 2014, the basics of social research, cengage learning, wadsworth. creswell, j.w. & creswell, j.d., 2017, research design: qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches, sage, london. crous, s.f.m., 2004, ‘the academic support needs of students with impairments at three higher education institutions’, south african journal of higher education 18(1), 228–251. https://doi.org/10.4314/sajhe.v18i1.25440 curtis, d.c. & lawson, m.j., 2001, ‘exploring collaborative online learning’, journal of asynchronous learning network 5(1), 21–34. https://doi.org/10.24059/olj.v5i1.1885 dhet, 2013, white paper for post-school education and training: building an expanded, effective and integrated education and training system, department of higher education and training, pretoria. emmett, t., 2006, ‘disability, poverty, gender and race’, disability and social change: a south african agenda 17(4), 207–233. groce, n., kett, m., lang, r. & trani, j.f., 2011, ‘disability and poverty: the need for a more nuanced understanding of implications for development policy and practice’, third world quarterly 32(8), 1493–1513. https://doi.org/10.1080/01436597.2011.604520 heide, m. & simonsson, c., 2014, ‘developing internal crisis communication’, corporate communications, an international journal 19(2), 128–146. https://doi.org/10.1108/ccij-09-2012-0063 howell, c., 2005, south africa higher education responses to students with disabilities: equity of access and opportunity?, higher education monitor no. 23. the council on higher education, pretoria. kamga, c., 2021, ‘slowing the spread of covid-19: review of “social distancing” interventions deployed by public transit in the united states and canada’, transport policy 126, 25–36. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tranpol.2021.03.014 kamga, s.d., 2020, ‘covid-19 and the inclusion of learners with disabilities in basic education in south africa: a critical analysis’, african human rights law journal 558–583. https://doi.org/10.17159/1996-2096/2020/v20n2a9 khumalo, s., singh-pillay, a. & subrayen, r., 2020, ‘reflections on differently abled students’ challenges with online learning amidst the covid-19 pandemic and lockdown’, learner and subject at the dawn of digital research-led teaching and learning in the time of covid-19, pp. 188–208. kittay, e.f., 2020, ‘people with disabilities are at a disadvantage when scarce medical resources are being allocated’, statnews, 29 april, viewed 06 june 2020, from https://www.statnews.com/2020/04/29/people-disabilities-disadvantage-covid-19-scarce-medical-resources/. kuper, h., banks, l.m., bright, t., davey, c. & shakespeare, t., 2020, ‘disability-inclusive covid-19 response: what it is, why it is important and what we can learn from the united kingdom’s response’, wellcome open research 5, 79. https://doi.org/10.12688/wellcomeopenres.15833.1 lambert, d.c. & dryer, r., 2018, ‘quality of life of higher education students with learning disability studying online’, international journal of disability, development and education 65(4), 393–407. https://doi.org/10.1080/1034912x.2017.1410876 matshedisho, k.r., 2007, ‘access to higher education for disabled students in south africa: a contradictory conjuncture of benevolence, rights and the social model of disability’, disability and society 22(7), 685–699. https://doi.org/10.1080/09687590701659535 mckinney, e., mckinney, v. & swartz, l., 2020, ‘covid-19, disability and the context of healthcare triage in south africa: notes in a time of pandemic’, african journal of disability 9, a766. https://doi.org/10.4102/ajod.v9i0.766 mcmanus, d., dryer, r. & henning, m., 2017, ‘barriers to learning online experienced by students with a mental health disability’, distance education 38(3), 336–352. https://doi.org/10.1080/01587919.2017.1369348 mulibana, m., 2020, ‘lack of consultation led to persons with disabilities being neglected in the covid-19 response’, africlaw, 18 may, viewed 06 june 2020, from https://africlaw.com/tag/coronavirus/. mutanga, o., 2017, ‘students with disabilities’ experience in south african higher education: a synthesis of literature’, south african journal of higher education 31(1), 135–155. https://doi.org/10.20853/31-1-1596 mutanga, o. & walker, m., 2015, ‘towards a disability-inclusive higher education policy through the capabilities approach’, journal of human development and capabilities 16(4), 501–517. https://doi.org/10.1080/19452829.2015.1101410 ngubane-mokiwa, s.a. & zongozz, j.n., 2021, ‘exclusion reloaded: the chronicles of covid-19 on students with disabilities in a south african open distance learning context’, journal of intellectual disability-diagnosis and treatment 9(1), 137–147. republic of south africa, 1996, final constitution of the republic of south africa (act 108 of 1996), government printers, pretoria. republic of south africa, 2002, disaster management act, 2002 (act 57 of 2002), government printer, pretoria. sue, d.w., 2001, ‘multidimensional facets of cultural competence’, the counselling psychologist 29, 790–821. tremmel, p., myers, r., brunow, d.a. & hott, b.l., 2020, ‘educating students with disabilities during the covid-19 pandemic: lessons learned from commerce independent school district’, rural special education quarterly 39(4), 201–210. https://doi.org/10.1177/8756870520958114 united nations, 2020, policy brief: a disability-inclusive response to covid-19, united nations, viewed 06 june 2020, from https://unsdg.un.org/sites/default/files/2020-05/policy-brief-a-disability-inclusive-response-to-covid-19. van den bos, k., 2003, ‘on the subjective quality of social justice: the role of affect as information in the psychology of justice judgments’, journal of personality and social psychology 85, 482–498. world health organization, 2020, responding to community spread of covid-19, viewed 05 april 2023, from https://www.who.int/publications-detail/responding-to-community-spread-ofcovid-19. zhang, h., 2020, how does covid-19 impact students with disabilities/health concerns?, cornel university, new york, ny. abstract introduction research methods and design trends in south africa’s international research collaboration international research priorities in south african policies and strategic plans results and discussion conclusion acknowledgements references about the author(s) savo heleta international education and partnerships directorate, durban university of technology, durban, south africa divinia jithoo international education and partnerships directorate, durban university of technology, durban, south africa citation heleta, s. & jithoo, d., 2023, ‘international research collaboration between south africa and rest of the world: an analysis of 2012–2021 trends’, transformation in higher education 8(0), a246. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v8i0.246 original research international research collaboration between south africa and rest of the world: an analysis of 2012–2021 trends savo heleta, divinia jithoo received: 04 nov. 2022; accepted: 22 jan. 2023; published: 06 apr. 2023 copyright: © 2023. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract south african higher education policies have since 1997 called for the expansion of research collaboration with the african continent and global south. in this article, the authors’ analysed south africa’s international research collaboration trends and patterns during the 2012–2021 period. focusing on co-authored scholarly publications, the authors’ analysed bibliometric data from scopus, highlighting the countries south african public universities have collaborated and produced knowledge with, and the parts of the world they have neglected in the past decade. the findings highlight the growth of south africa’s international research collaboration and the expansion of the number of countries universities collaborate with. while the past decade has seen a growth in research collaboration with brazil, russia, india, china and nigeria, south african universities continue to be largely eurocentric and prioritise collaboration with the global north while sidelining research collaboration with the african continent and global south. contribution: the findings presented in this article contribute to an understanding of south africa’s international research collaboration footprint during 2012–2021 and highlight which parts of the world should be prioritised by universities in the expansion of research collaboration in the future. keywords: international research collaboration; academic publishing; co-authorship; internationalisation; south africa. introduction international research collaboration (irc) contributes to the exchange of ideas across borders and development of new knowledge. international research collaboration is seen as the cornerstone of higher education and science globally (kwiek 2021). mouton, prozesky and lutomiah (2018) and onyancha (2021) argue that irc positively impacts the quality of research and education, while it also contributes to better visibility of scholarly research (asubiaro 2019; pouris & ho 2014). while international collaboration provides numerous opportunities for universities to engage, network and collaborate with institutions across the globe, it can also contribute to the reinforcement of historical and contemporary power dynamics and inequalities in knowledge production (zeleza 2012). this, in turn, can entrench global and regional systemic and structural inequalities and inequities in research collaboration and knowledge production. south africa is a prime example of such phenomena. as a result of colonial and apartheid impositions and influences, historical and contemporary global inequalities, and the eurocentric hegemony in higher education and knowledge production, south african universities tend to engage and collaborate primarily with their counterparts in the global north, while neglecting the collaboration with institutions and researchers on the african continent and the rest of the global south (maringe & ojo 2017; sehoole 2006). reasons for this can be found in the colonial roots of higher education and the violent, racist and segregationist nature of apartheid, which disconnected the country from the rest of the african continent and much of the global south up until 1994. in addition, coloniality, neoliberal impositions and the lack of adequate funding for intra-africa and south–south collaboration, combined with the lack of epistemic transformation and decolonisation in higher education, have negatively impacted academic relations, engagements and collaboration between south africa, the african continent and most parts of the global south (heleta 2023). various south african higher education policies and strategic plans have since 1997 called for the expansion of international research collaboration between the country and the african continent and global south, while continuing to maintain links and collaborations with other parts of the world. in this article, the authors explore how far the south african higher education system has advanced when it comes to these calls. focusing on co-authored scholarly publications, this study covers the 2012–2021 period and analyses bibliometric data from scopus from 24 south african public universities, highlighting the countries and parts of the world they have collaborated and produced knowledge with, and the parts of the world they have neglected in the past decade. this article builds on the research by onyancha (2011), who studied the trends in south africa’s irc between 1986 and 2005 and mouton et al. (2019), whose study focused on south africa’s research landscape, including irc, between 2000 and 2016. the 2012–2021 time period is significant as it covers the years before and after the #rhodesmustfall and #feesmustfall protests of 2015–2016. during this time, south african higher education system experienced large-scale disruptions and calls for dismantling of eurocentric domination in higher education and decolonisation of knowledge, among other things (heleta, fatyela & nkala 2018). #feesmustfall student activists called for decolonisation through dismantling of eurocentric epistemic hegemony (ndlovu-gatsheni, 2018) and including africa in everything south african universities do (heleta 2018; mbembe 2016). this study of irc trends and patterns over the past decade, and the extent to which south african universities collaborate with the african continent and the global south on co-authorship of new knowledge, will provide an important indication of where the decolonial project is at this point in time. the authors are interested to see whether there are any significant changes in irc trends since 2016 that show if progress has been made on increasing academic collaboration with the african continent and the global south. using the scopus bibliometric data and the scival analytics platform, this study focuses on the: (1) analysis of south african knowledge production trends and patterns in the 2012–2021 period; (2) identification of top countries the south african public higher education system has collaborated with on co-authorship of academic publications; (3) examination of annual collaboration trends; (4) examination of trends and patterns in south africa’s international co-authorship of academic publications in terms of world regions and groupings. in terms of the structure of the article, the next section will describe the methodology used in this study. this will be followed by a discussion of the relevant literature on the trends in south africa’s irc. the authors will also unpack post-1994 policies and strategic plans that discuss research priorities in south african higher education, including irc priorities and focus areas. the findings section will unpack and discuss the results from this study. the authors will end the article with concluding remarks and recommendations for future research. research methods and design research collaboration plays a key role in scholarly engagement and development of new ideas, knowledge and innovation. research collaboration is measured by analysing bibliometric data, trends and patterns in co-authorship of academic publications (mouton et al. 2019). this can include collaborations within an institution, country or international collaborations. international research collaboration refers to international co-authorship of academic publications involving two or more researchers from at least two different countries (kwiek 2021). it is important to note that co-authorship of publications and the analysis of bibliometric data do not tell a full story about the extent and depth of international collaboration in higher education. for example, co-authorship of articles that emerge from large scientific projects that involve 100’s of scientists do not necessarily involve genuine collaboration, but only sharing of data and small contributions by scholars from different parts of the world to research projects (kahn 2018; mouton et al. 2019). while co-authorship of scholarly publications is not the only way to measure irc and international engagements in higher education, it remains one of the main indicators for assessment of the extent of research engagements and collaborations involving academics and researchers (hedt-gauthier et al. 2019). for examination and analysis of south africa’s irc trends and patterns over the past decade, the authors have used scopus data and the scival online analytics platform, which provides access and tools for a comprehensive analysis and visualisation of research performance, benchmarking, exploration of research trends and patterns, and in-depth analysis of academic collaboration across the world. scival can be used for institutional, national or international analysis of research trends and patterns over different time periods. scival uses the publication and citation data from scopus, one of the largest curated bibliometric databases in the world. in 2020, scopus database had over 76 million publication records, with around 3 million new records added to it annually. scopus contains records from academic publishers from all parts of the world (baas et al. 2020). scholarly output listed in scopus refers to the number of publications in academic journals, books, book series, conference proceedings and trade journals from different publishers that are indexed by scopus. the authors acknowledge that one of the main limitations of bibliometric research that uses scopus or another similar database is that it does not include all scholarly output. many journals and other scholarly sources, particularly those published on the african continent, are not indexed by scopus. however, while bibliometric analyses of irc have limitations, they remain an important methodology for assessing collaborations and co-authorship in higher education (onyancha 2021) and offer an important glimpse about south africa’s irc trends and patterns. the data used in this study included all academic subject areas and all internationally co-authored publications by academics and researchers affiliated with 24 south african public universities indexed by scopus. the data from the university of mpumalanga and sol plaatje university (both established in 2014) is not included in this analysis as these two universities were not indexed by scopus in the second half of 2022 when the study was conducted. in addition, the authors were interested in broader publication trends since 2012 in order to assess the importance of international collaboration. for this, the figures for all publications by the south african public higher education system, including international, national and institutional collaborations and single authorships, were included. apart from using scival for analysis of the data, the scopus data were exported to a comma-separated values (csv) file and the analysis of south africa’s irc trends and patterns was performed in microsoft excel. in terms of the data analysed in this study, south africa’s scopus-indexed research output through international collaboration for the 2012–2021 period was 117 917 publications. the data analysed in this study were retrieved from scopus on 26 july 2022. ethical considerations this study received an ethics waiver from the ethics committee of durban university of technology because the data used within this study is already available in the public domain. trends in south africa’s international research collaboration south africa’s complex and violent history has had a profound influence on the types and patterns of international collaborations and engagements at the country’s universities. the south african higher education system and institutions were established after the colonial conquest. the institutions established by the colonisers were replicas of dutch and british universities, their institutional and educational models, and curriculum (maringe & ojo 2017; sehoole 2006). colonial and apartheid universities have propagated eurocentic knowledge and ideas, while sidelining african and other knowledges (canham 2018). despite the end of apartheid in 1994, institutional cultures and curriculum at south african public universities have remained largely eurocentric (canham 2018; heleta 2018; mbembe 2016) and much of country’s academia continues to valorize eurocentric knowledge as superior (department of education 2008; modiri 2021). when it comes to irc, during colonial and apartheid times, south african universities, and particularly the historically white institutions, have collaborated almost exclusively with their counterparts in europe and elsewhere in the global north. between the 1960s and 1990s, the international sanctions and academic boycott, which were part of the global struggle against apartheid, prevented much of international engagement and collaboration between south african academics and institutions and their counterparts in other parts of the world (onyancha 2011). after the end of apartheid in 1994, when south africa and its higher education institutions opened to the rest of the world, south african universities, academics and researchers continued to favour the engagements and collaboration with the global north. at the same time, they largely neglected the collaboration and epistemic engagements with the rest of the african continent and other parts of the global south (heleta 2022; maringe & ojo 2017; ndlovu-gatsheni 2021; onyancha 2011; sehoole 2006). research by onyancha (2011) has investigated south africa’s irc trends and patterns between 1986 and 2005, showing the changes in collaboration trends from the last decade of apartheid to the first decade of the post-apartheid period. this research has shown that, while during apartheid south african academia collaborated largely within the country because of the international academic boycott, research collaboration trends changed after 1994, with significant growth in international collaboration. in 1986, the total number of countries that south african universities collaborated with was 43; in 2005, this figure grew to 115 countries, including 46 countries in africa. however, the majority of south africa’s irc during the 1986–2005 period was with the global north, with the top 10 countries being the united states, england, germany, australia, canada, france, netherlands, belgium, italy and scotland. the irc with the united states (5811 co-authored publications), england (3274) and germany (2126) amounted to 66% of all irc by south african researchers and academics that resulted in co-authored scholarly output during this time period. in the top 20 countries, the global north was represented in the top 18 spots, with india (269 co-authored publications) at 19 and brazil (260) at 20. the top african country was zimbabwe (224 co-authored publications) at the 24th spot, followed by namibia (180) at 26, kenya (168) at 28, nigeria (123) at 33 and botswana (102) at 39. for comparison, the collaboration between south african academics and their australian counterparts between 1986 and 2005 produced more co-authored scholarly publications than the collaboration with 46 african countries that the south african public higher education system collaborated with during this period. the given figures show that collaboration with the global north has been prioritised by south african institutions, academics and researchers during the last decade of apartheid and the first decade after 1994, while intra-africa collaboration was largely neglected. similar conclusions have been made by mouton et al. (2019) in a comprehensive study about south africa’s academic research performance between 2000 and 2016. their study included international collaboration, comparison with countries of similar size and population around the world, and an in-depth analysis of the state, performance and scholarly output of different fields of study in south african academia. they highlight that the most pressing challenges facing south african public higher education are insufficient investment by the government and a small research capacity within the country. they found that the countries of similar size around the world in most cases invest considerably more in research and innovation and have twice as many researchers per 1000 of the population. despite these challenges, the south african higher education system continues to increase its scholarly output annually. when it comes to irc, the study by mouton et al. (2019), using the web of science bibliometric data, highlights that south african universities have expanded their international co-authorship of scholarly publications from 34% of all output in 2000 to 52% in 2016. the study further indicates that most of the international research collaboration by south african researchers and academics during the 2000–2016 period was with the scholars and institutions outside the african continent. other relevant research that needs to be highlighted has explored the international collaboration trends between the african continent and the rest of the world, and the trends and patterns in intra-africa academic research collaboration that results in scholarly publications. this is important as south africa’s research collaboration data are included in the studies that focus on research collaboration on the african continent. a study by pouris and ho (2014) has explored the state of research collaboration in africa during the 2007–2011 period. they highlighted that over this time period, the internationally co-authored research output grew from 52% in 2007 to 58% in 2011. the study also explored irc trends between african countries, pointing out the extent of irc and the focus on collaboration with the countries and regions outside the african continent while largely neglecting intra-africa research collaboration. bibliometric research by mouton and blanckenberg (2018) shows that from the period 2005–2016, african researchers and scientists have collaborated primarily with their counterparts from outside the african continent (about 50% of co-authored articles) and with colleagues within their countries (about 40% of co-authorships). the intra-africa research collaboration that resulted in research output and production of new knowledge was negligible during this period. research by vieira and cerdeira (2022), which encompasses the 1990–2018 period, has found that in most african countries, the number of co-authored publications with collaborators from outside the continent far outstrips the number of publications through intra-africa collaborations. similar trends and patterns have been found in other studies focusing on irc in africa (asubiaro 2019; hedt-gauthier et al. 2019; onyancha 2021). mouton et al. (2019:53) point out that international research collaboration on the african continent often ‘reflects deeper issues around the political economy of science in a country or region.’ similarly, pouris and ho (2014:2181) write that the irc on the african continent tends to be driven ‘by the availability of resources and interests outside the continent’ rather than the continental, regional, national and institutional priorities. a lack of funding for higher education, research and innovation is highlighted as one of the most pressing contemporary challenges facing african higher education and research sectors, which directly impacts the ability of researchers and institutions to engage in intra-africa and south–south academic collaboration. as a result of the low investment in higher education and research on the african continent, higher education institutions often depend on external funding for their research activities. this is creating dependencies on foreign donors and often forces african institutions and academics to align their research priorities to those of the donors and collaborate primarily with the institutions from donor countries, which are often based in the global north (beaudry, mouton & prozesky 2018; mouton et al. 2019). international research priorities in south african policies and strategic plans in this section, the authors highlight relevant higher education white papers, policy documents and strategic plans that discuss research priorities in south african higher education, including the irc priorities and focus areas. the 1997 education white paper 3: a programme for the transformation of higher education outlines the vision for post-apartheid higher education in south africa. the vision of the then department of education was to ‘contribute to the advancement of all forms of knowledge and scholarship, and in particular address the diverse problems and demands of the local, national, southern african and african contexts, and uphold rigorous standards of academic quality’ (1997:6). the white paper stressed the need to rethink ‘all existing practices, institutions and values’ in order to transform them for the democratic era (department of education 1997:3). the document called for universities to prioritise in their research and other activities the challenges and needs of the south african society and the challenges and priorities of the african continent (department of education 1997). the department of higher education and training’s (dhet) 2013 white paper for post-school education and training highlights irc as one of the key aspects of internationalisation. the white paper argues that international partnerships and research collaborations need to be expanded in order to enhance knowledge production and innovation in south africa. the document called for the expansion of academic and student mobility within the southern african development community (sadc) to promote collaboration in research, learning and teaching. the white paper further encourages expansion of research collaboration between south african institutions, academics and researchers and their counterparts on the african continent, within the brazil, russia, india, china and south africa (brics) grouping, and elsewhere in the global south. this, the white paper notes, should not prevent the maintenance of existing and establishment of new collaborations with the institutions and scholars in the global north (dhet 2013). the south african national development plan 2030 notes that the country should prioritise socio-economic, geopolitical, diplomatic, educational and cultural engagements with the sadc region, the rest of the african continent, brics countries and other parts of the global south, as well as maintain and expand its engagements with the countries in the global north. the document calls for ‘positioning south africa as one of the continent’s powerhouses that would lead african development and influence in world affairs’ (national planning commission 2013:239). the national development plan stresses that the south african government needs to facilitate the creation of an environment where the country’s scholarly community can engage with their counterparts on the continent and beyond, to ‘improve the intellectual resources and economic prosperity of the country and the region’ (national planning commission 2013:256). the department of science and technology’s (2019) white paper on science, technology and innovation highlights that ‘south africa’s future is inextricably linked to that of the rest of the african continent,’ and that the country’s scientific community must invest in the expansion of intra-africa and pan-african research and innovation linkages, partnerships and collaborations (2019:xi). the white paper.argues that the collaboration strategies between south african institutions and their counterparts on the continent need to prioritise strengthening of continental higher education, research and innovation systems and institutions. the document further calls for the promotion and sharing of intra-africa research and innovation networks, platforms and infrastructure and development of pan-african innovation and research agendas that promote excellence and development based on continental needs, visions and priorities (department of science and technology 2019). the dhet’s strategic plan 2020–2025 mentions collaboration and partnerships in reference to the need to develop a responsive higher education system. this requires ‘enhanced liaison and engagement with communities at local, regional and international levels, as well as socially responsive research, collaboration, partnerships and capacity building’ (2020:29–30). this is the only mention of regional and international collaborations and the plan does not provide any specific information or strategic priorities. finally, the policy framework for internationalisation of higher education in south africa (dhet 2019) highlights that one of its strategic aspirations is the enhancement of irc: [t]o contribute to an increase in knowledge production, intellectual property and innovation in south africa, in the sadc region, in the rest of the african continent and in the world. (p. 21) furthermore, the framework calls for the enhancement of intellectual diversity in all aspects of higher education, including through broadening international research linkages and partnerships (dhet 2019). south africa is also part of various continental initiatives and strategic plans, which include a focus on education and research. the continental education strategy for africa: 2016–2025 (african union 2016:8), for example, calls for the expansion of continental partnerships and collaboration in order to ‘address continental challenges and promote global competitiveness.’ in addition, the strategy highlights that african countries need to honour their commitments to allocate 1% of gross domestic product to research and innovation on the national level, and to provide adequate infrastructure and resources for research, innovation and development. when it comes to collaboration, the strategy stresses that international research and innovation cooperation, partnerships and engagement must be based on the continental interests, needs, priorities and ownership. similarly, the african union’s agenda 2063 calls for african universities to expand their collaborations and partnerships in order to strengthen higher education, research and innovation on the continent (african union 2015). this is important if the african continent is to achieve its vision of improving the livelihoods of african people and becoming a ‘strong, united and influential partner on the global stage, making its contribution to peace, human progress, peaceful co-existence and welfare’ (african union 2015:15). in all this, the expansion of intra-africa research collaboration, while also continuing to strengthen and expand linkages and collaborations with the countries in the global south and elsewhere in the world, is of utmost importance. results and discussion south african knowledge production trends and patterns between 2012 and 2021 in this section, the authors examine south african knowledge production trends and patterns for the 2012–2021 period. using the scopus data, the authors analyse the overall international, national and institutional co-authorship and single author authorship trends, patterns and figures for the public higher education sector. the authors also unpack annual scholarly output figures and the proportion of the scholarly output that results from irc. figure 1 shows that during the 2012–2021 period, irc has dominated research endeavours in south african public higher education. creation of new knowledge through international collaboration makes up almost half of the scholarly output in the country. this is followed by institutional collaboration at 22.8%, single authorship at 16.6% and national collaboration at 12.4%. an in-depth look at the annual trends over the past decade is shown in table 1. figure 1: south africa’s research output (2012–2021). table 1: south african research output per year (2012–2021). table 1 shows that between 2012 and 2021, the overall research output produced by 24 south african universities that are indexed by scopus has doubled. the proportion of the research output produced through irc has also been increasing from 42.4% in 2012 to 54.1% in 2021. apart from a small decline in 2014, every other year has seen growth. the highest growth of 2.8% took place in 2015, following a decline in the previous year. the second highest annual growth of 2.4% took place in 2021. it is possible that the incorporation of virtual engagements in higher education because of the coronavirus disease 2019 (covid-19) pandemic has contributed to the expansion of international collaboration, which led to this increase. another notable revelation is that despite the disruptions caused by the #rhodesmustfall and #feesmustfall student protests in 2015 and 2016, south african academics and researchers continued to collaborate with their counterparts around the world. the given data suggests that the protests, disruptions and closure of many campuses for periods of time, particularly during 2016, did not have a negative effect on scholarly output through irc. top collaborating countries for south african public higher education system, 2012–2021 in this section, the authors focus on the top 20 countries south african public universities have collaborated with on research output in the 2012–2021 period. apart from the top 20 countries, the authors identify african countries in the top 100 countries that have collaborated with south africa and also take a closer look at south africa’s irc with brics countries. the scopus data analysed in this study indicates that during the past decade, south african academics and researchers have collaborated with counterparts from 223 countries and territories around the world. this is a significant increase from 115 countries that south africa collaborated with in 2005, as highlighted by onyancha (2011). figure 2 shows the annual trends for the top 20 countries that the south african public universities have collaborated with on co-authorship of academic publications in the 2012–2021 period. the annual growth in collaboration with the united states and the united kingdom, and to a lesser extent with australia and germany, outstrips irc growth with other countries. in south africa’s top 20 collaborating countries, there are 15 countries from the global north. nigeria is the only african country in south africa’s top 20 collaborators. brazil, china, india and russia, which make up the brics alliance together with south africa, are also part of south africa’s top 20 international research collaborators for the past decade. when overall collaboration figures for this time period are taken into consideration, we get the picture as shown in figure 3. figure 2: south africa’s international research collaboration, 2012–2021. top 20 countries. figure 3: overall number of south africa’s international research collaborations with the top 20 countries, 2012–2021. like figure 2, figure 3 shows that south africa’s collaboration with the united states and the united kingdom has dominated the country’s overall international research collaboration during the 2012–2021 period. a study by onyancha (2011) has explored the trends in south africa’s irc between 1986 and 2005, highlighting that the top seven south africa’s collaborators during this period were the united states, the united kingdom, germany, australia, canada, france and the netherlands. it is evident from figure 3 that these collaboration trends and patterns have continued with very little change. the most important changes have taken place in terms of the expansion of collaboration with the brics countries. between 1986 and 2005, only india and brazil featured in south africa’s top 20 collaborators, in the 19th and 20th spot, respectively. in addition, during the 1986–2005 period, no african country was in south africa’s top 20 collaborators. the findings of this study show that nigeria has emerged as one of south africa’s top collaborators, on 12th spot overall. given south africa’s policy priorities and focus areas, which were previously discussed and which emphasise increasing irc on the african continent and with the brics members, the authors unpack the intra-africa and brics research collaboration in more detail. figure 4 shows the trends in south africa’s irc with the african continent during 2012–2021, with countries that feature among south africa’s top 100 collaborating countries included. the most significant growth is evident in south africa’s collaboration with nigeria. another notable growth, albeit not on the same level, is irc with kenya. collaboration with other african countries shows small annual growth in the past decade. as observed earlier, onyancha’s (2011) study of the patterns and trends in south africa’s irc between 1986 and 2005 has shown that during this period, south africa’s top african collaborator was zimbabwe at 24 spot, namibia at 26, kenya at 28, nigeria at 33 and botswana at 39. when onyancha’s findings are compared with the data in figure 4, it can be seen that in the last decade, collaboration with nigeria has overshadowed irc with other african countries. in addition, the collaboration with previously top african collaborators, such as zimbabwe, namibia and botswana, has declined. given south africa’s national strategic and policy priorities that put emphasis on expanding intra-africa research collaboration, which were discussed earlier, interventions, projects and programmes that have led to significant expansion of research collaboration between south africa and nigeria will need to be replicated within the sadc region and elsewhere on the continent. figure 4: trends in south africa’s international research collaboration with countries in africa, 2012–2021. figure 5 shows the trends in south africa’s irc with the members of the brics grouping during the 2012–2021 period. it is evident that irc with india and china has seen a steady growth, while the collaboration with brazil and russia has seen slower growth over the past decade. given the strategic priority of south africa’s membership in brics, highlighted in various policy documents discussed earlier, this growth should not come as a surprise. however, it must be noted that, despite the strategic priority given to south africa’s brics membership, irc with brazil, china, india and russia still lags behind many of south africa’s top collaborating countries from the global north. figure 5: south africa’s international research collaboration with brics countries, 2012–2021. as highlighted in the introduction, in this article the authors are interested to see whether there have been any significant changes in south africa’s irc trends and patterns since the #rhodesmustfall and #feesmustfall student protests of 2015 and 2016. this was the time when the country’s public universities experienced large-scale disruptions, protests and calls for dismantling of eurocentric domination in higher education and decolonisation of knowledge. the findings presented here show that south african universities continue to prioritise irc with the global north. there are hardly any changes over the past two decades when it comes to south africa’s top seven collaborating countries, all of which are from the global north. however, the findings show that irc with some countries in the global south and some african countries has been expanding since 2015. in particular, figure 4 highlights that collaboration with nigeria began to take off and increase significantly since 2015. collaboration with kenya has also seen an increase since 2015. similarly, figure 5 shows increases in collaboration with brics countries since 2015. while the scopus data does not provide any indication of the reasons for these increases, some improvements can be seen when it comes to collaboration with nigeria, kenya and brics countries since 2015. more research is needed to explore specific initiatives and projects that have driven these increases. comparison of regional trends and patterns in south africa’s international research collaboration, 2012–2021 in this section, the authors analyse and compare trends and patterns in south africa’s irc in terms of world regions and groupings. this includes the global research collaboration breakdown, a comparison between the global north and global south, and select comparisons between different countries, regions and groupings. the first graph in figure 6 presents the global breakdown of south africa’s irc during the past decade. europe is south africa’s largest collaborator, at 44% of all research collaboration, followed by asia pacific at 18% and north america at 15%. the collaboration with the african continent stands at 13% of south africa’s irc for the 2012–2021 period. the middle east and south america both stand at 5%. the second graph presents a breakdown of south africa’s irc between the global north and south. in this paper, the term global north refers to the united states, canada, australia, new zealand, the united kingdom, european union, israel, japan, south korea and taiwan. the term global south refers to the rest of the world. according to dados and connell (2012), the global north–south division is about the historical and contemporary socio-economic, political and ideological divides, with particular emphasis on power and geopolitical dynamics rooted in colonialism and maintained through neocolonialism and coloniality. the collaboration with the global north continues to dominate south africa’s irc and knowledge production, at 64%. however, when compared with onyancha’s (2011) finding about south africa’s irc during the 1986–2005 period, when the country’s co-authorship of scholarly research output with the united states, england and germany alone amounted to 66% of all irc by south african universities, it can be seen that the country has made small improvements in expanding research collaboration and co-authorship of scholarly output with countries outside the global north. figure 6: south africa’s international research collaboration, 2012–2021 by regions (a) and by global breakdown (b). the first graph in figure 7 presents a comparison between south africa’s irc with the european union as a whole, the united states, the united kingdom, the african continent as a whole, and the brics countries. it is evident that the collaboration with the european union dominates south africa’s irc. south african public universities also collaborate more with the united states than the entire african continent, as well as the entire brics grouping. the second graph shows the comparison of the top five south africa’s collaborating countries, all of which are from the global north, and the 15 members of the sadc. despite the close proximity of the sadc region and numerous policy and strategic documents that have called for the expansion of irc between south africa and other sadc members, it is evident that this has been neglected and sidelined by the south african public higher education sector over the past decade. figure 7: south africa’s international research collaboration, 2012–2021 – select comparisons. conclusion in this article, the authors have unpacked the past decade of south africa’s international research collaboration. using the scopus bibliometric data and the scival analytics platform, the authors have explored the irc between south african academics and researchers working at the country’s public universities and their international counterparts. the focus was on the: (1) examination of south african knowledge production trends and patterns between 2012 and 2021, (2) identification of top countries the public higher education sector collaborated with on co-authorship of academic publications, (3) examination of annual collaboration trends, and (4) examination of trends and patterns in south africa’s international co-authorship of academic publications in terms of world regions and groupings. the findings of this study highlight a significant growth in the number of countries south african public universities have collaborated with over the past two decades, from 115 countries in 2005 (onyancha 2011) to 223 countries and territories over the past decade. the authors have also shown that irc continues to grow. in 2012, irc accounted for 42.4% of south africa’s overall research output; in 2021, this figure stood at 54.1%. when it comes to the top 20 countries collaborating on knowledge production with south africa, countries from the global north dominate the collaboration space, with the united states and the united kingdom leading the collaborations. the only african country in the top 20 is nigeria. brazil, china, india, and russia are the only other countries from the global south in south africa’s top 20 collaborators for the 2012–2021 period. the analysis of the scopus data has also shown that the collaboration between south african public universities and their counterparts in the global north constitutes 64% of all co-authored scholarly output during the past decade. similarly, the comparisons of different regions and groupings have shown that south africa’s collaboration with the european union far outstrips the collaboration with the african continent or the brics countries. similar findings were presented in comparisons between different parts of the global north, the african continent and the sadc region. these trends are a continuation of the 1986–2005 trends highlighted by onyancha (2011) and indicate that the south african public higher education sector continues to prioritise engagement and collaboration with the global north while largely neglecting the african continent and the rest of the global south. however, it is important to note that the past decade has seen a steady growth of irc with nigeria and the brics countries. a comprehensive analysis of south africa’s research collaboration trends and patterns with countries around the world is important for a better understanding of higher education’s irc footprint. it is also important for understanding which parts of the world should be prioritised by universities in the expansion of research collaboration in the future. south african public universities have a responsibility to contribute to the country’s transformation from centuries of colonial oppression and decades of apartheid rule, segregation and racism. one way they can contribute to transformation is through epistemic decolonisation, which includes the expansion and strengthening of academic and research links with the african continent and the rest of the global south and collaboration with these parts of the world on knowledge creation. stronger links between african academics, researchers and institutions, in particular, would contribute to promotion of research priorities, collaborative projects and development of new knowledge that are relevant for the african continent and its people (onyancha 2021). while this has been a policy priority in the country since the end of apartheid, this study shows that, even though there are some positive developments, there is still a long way to go for south african public universities to expand and strengthen intra-africa and south–south international research collaboration. the findings confirm the arguments raised by numerous scholars (canham 2018; heleta 2018; mbembe 2016; maringe & ojo 2017; modiri 2021) that the south african academia continues to be largely eurocentric and focused on engagements and collaboration with the global north, while sidelining and neglecting the rest of the african continent and much of the global south. there is a need to move from the rhetoric about the importance of intra-africa and south–south collaboration in higher education and research and deliver on these policy recommendations and strategic priorities (heleta 2022). the dhet needs to track and analyse national and institutional irc trends and patterns in its annual research output reports, which has not been the case until now (see e.g. dhet 2021). based on this analysis, dhet can provide incentives and support to universities for expanding and strengthening partnerships and irc with the african continent and global south. future research should focus on exploring specific initiatives, interventions and projects that have driven the increase in collaboration between south african universities and universities in nigeria, kenya and brics countries over the past decade. research is also needed on whether donor funding for research impacts the choice of collaborating countries and institutions. there is a need for qualitative research on the types, nature and dynamics of international research collaboration involving south african and other scholars. other qualitative research could also explore the reasons for continued prioritisation of irc with the global north by south african scholars and public universities. it would be important to explore whether the internationalisation of higher education, as conceptualised and practiced in south africa since 1994, has contributed to prioritisation of collaboration with the global north while neglecting intra-africa and south–south collaboration. additional research is needed to unpack south africa’s irc trends and patterns in different academic disciplines, with possible inclusion of citation data in the analysis. future research should also explore south africa’s irc trends and patterns using other bibliometric databases and in particular try to include bibliometric data that is not indexed by scopus. finally, it would be valuable to explore and compare institutional irc trends and patterns in south african public higher education over the past decade. acknowledgements competing interests the authors declare that they have no financial or personal relationships that may have inappropriately influenced them in writing this article. authors’ contributions the authors have worked collaboratively and have equally contributed to the article. funding information this research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors. data availability the data used in this article is available from scopus. the authors are not permitted to redistribute the data from scopus used in the article. disclaimer the views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any affiliated agency of the authors. references african union, 2015, agenda 2063: the africa we want, african union, addis ababa. african union, 2016, continental education strategy for africa: 2016–2025, african union, addis ababa. asubiaro, t., 2019, ‘how collaboration type, publication place, funding and author’s role affect citations received by publications from africa: a bibliometric study of lis research from 1996 to 2015’, scientometrics 120(3), 1261–1287. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-019-03157-1 baas, j., schotten, m., plume, a., côté, g. & karimi, r., 2020, ‘scopus as a curated, high-quality bibliometric data source for academic research in quantitative science studies’, quantitative science studies 1(1), 377–386. https://doi.org/10.1162/qss_a_00019 beaudry, c., mouton, j. & prozesky, h., 2018, ‘lack of funding’, in c. beaudry, j. mouton & h. prozesky (eds.), the next generation of scientists in africa, pp. 71–88, african minds, cape town. https://doi.org/10.47622/978-1-928331-93-3 canham, h., 2018, ‘reviled bodies of knowledge in the south african university’, ufahamu: a journal of african studies 40(2), 3–25. https://doi.org/10.5070/f7402040940 dados, n. & connell, r, 2012, ‘the global south’, contexts 11(1), 12–13. https://doi.org/10.1177/1536504212436479 department of education, 1997, education white paper 3: a programme for the transformation of higher education, notice 1196 of 1997, department of education, pretoria. department of education, 2008, report of the ministerial committee on transformation and social cohesion and the elimination of discrimination in public higher education institutions, final report, department of education, pretoria. department of higher education and training, 2013, white paper for post-school education and training: building an expanded, effective and integrated post-school system, department of higher education and training, pretoria. department of higher education and training, 2015, research outputs policy, government gazette, no. 38552, department of higher education and training, pretoria. department of higher education and training, 2019, policy framework for internationalisation of higher education in south africa, department of higher education and training, pretoria. department of higher education and training, 2020, strategic plan 2020–2025, department of higher education and training, pretoria. department of higher education and training, 2021, report on the evaluation of the 2019 universities’ research output, department of higher education and training, pretoria. department of science and technology, 2019, white paper on science, technology and innovation, department of science and technology, pretoria. hedt-gauthier, b.l., jeufack, h.m., neufeld, n.h., alem, a., odhiambo, j., boum, y. et al., 2019, ‘stuck in the middle: a systematic review of authorship in collaborative health research in africa, 2014–2016’, bmj global health 4(5), 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjgh-2019-001853 heleta, s., 2018, ‘decolonizing knowledge in south africa: dismantling the “pedagogy of big lies”’, ufahamu: a journal of african studies 40(2), 47–65. https://doi.org/10.5070/f7402040942 heleta, s., fatyela, a. & nkala, t., 2018, ‘disrupting coloniality: student-led resistance to the oppressive status-quo in south africa’, in j. millican (ed.), universities and conflict: the role of higher education in peacebuilding and resistance, pp. 191–204, routledge, abingdon. heleta, s., 2022, ‘critical review of the policy framework for internationalisation of higher education in south africa’, journal of studies in international education 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/10283153221121395 heleta, s., 2023, ‘long road to decolonization in neoliberal and eurocentric south african higher education’, in f. maringe (ed.), colonization and epistemic injustice in higher education: precursors to decolonization, pp. 40–54, routledge, abingdon. kahn, m., 2018, ‘co-authorship as a proxy for collaboration: a cautionary tale’, science and public policy 45(1), 117–123. https://doi.org/10.1093/scipol/scx052 kwiek, m., 2021, ‘what large-scale publication and citation data tell us about international research collaboration in europe: changing national patterns in global contexts’, studies in higher education 46(12), 2629–2649. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2020.1749254 maringe, f. & ojo, e., 2017, ‘sustainable transformation in a rapidly globalising and decolonising world: african higher education on the brink’, in f. maringe & e. ojo (eds.), sustainable transformation in african higher education, pp. 25–39, sense publishers, rotterdam. mbembe, a., 2016, ‘decolonising the university: new directions’, arts & humanities in higher education 15(1), 29–45. https://doi.org/10.1177/1474022215618513 modiri, j., 2021, ‘azanian political thought and the undoing of south african knowledges’, theoria 68(3), 42–85. https://doi.org/10.3167/th.2021.6816804 mouton, j. & blanckenberg, j., 2018, ‘african science: a bibliometric analysis’, in c. beaudry, j. mouton & h. prozesky (eds.), the next generation of scientists in africa, pp. 13–25, african minds, cape town. mouton, j., prozesky, h. & lutomiah, a., 2018, ‘collaboration’, in c. beaudry, j. mouton & h. prozesky (eds.), the next generation of scientists in africa, pp. 147–173, african minds, cape town. mouton, j., basson, i., blanckenberg, j., boshoff, n., prozesky, h., redelinghuys, h. et al., 2019, the state of the south african research enterprise, dst-nrf centre of excellence in scientometrics and science, technology and innovation policy, stellenbosch university, stellenbosch. national planning commission, 2013, national development plan 2030: our future make it work, national planning commission, pretoria. ndlovu-gatsheni, s.j., 2018, ‘the dynamics of epistemological decolonisation in the 21st century: towards epistemic freedom’, strategic review for southern africa 40(1), 16–45. https://doi.org/10.35293/srsa.v40i1.268 ndlovu-gatsheni, s.j., 2021, ‘internationalisation of higher education for pluriversity: a decolonial reflection’, journal of the british academy 9(s1), 77–98. https://doi.org/10.5871/jba/009s1.077 onyancha, o.b., 2011, ‘research collaborations between south africa and other countries, 1986–2005: an informetric analysis’, african journal of library, archives and information science 21(2), 99–112. onyancha, o.b., 2021, ‘regional and international research collaboration and citation impact in selected sub-saharan african countries in the period 2000 to 2019’, global knowledge, memory and communication 70(6/7), 577–594. https://doi.org/10.1108/gkmc-04-2020-0039 pouris, a. & ho, y.s., 2014, ‘research emphasis and collaboration in africa’, scientometrics 98(3), 2169–2184. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-013-1156-8 sehoole, c., 2006, ‘internationalisation of higher education in south africa: a historical review’, perspectives in education 24(4), 1–13. vieira, e.s. & cerdeira, j., 2022, ‘the integration of african countries in international research networks’, scientometrics 127, 1995–2021. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-022-04297-7 zeleza, p.t., 2012, internationalisation in higher education: opportunities and challenges for the knowledge project in the global south, keynote address, southern african regional universities association (sarua) leadership dialogue on building the capacity of higher education to enhance regional development, maputo, mozambique, 21–22 march 2012. about the author(s) hyleen mariaye higher studies cell, mauritius institute of education, moka, mauritius michael samue school of education, university of kwazulu-natal, durban, south africa citation mariaye, h. & samuel, m., 2019, ‘erratum: education hubs and private higher education expansion in small island developing states contexts: the case of mauritius’, transformation in higher education 4(0), a62. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v4i0.62 note: doi of original article: https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v3i0.46 erratum erratum: education hubs and private higher education expansion in small island developing states contexts: the case of mauritius hyleen mariaye, michael samue published: 05 june 2019 copyright: © 2019. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. this article published in volume 3 was incorrectly categorised as a review article. the article category is hereby corrected as original research. this correction does not alter the study’s findings of significance or overall interpretation of the study results. the editor apologises for any inconvenience caused. about the author(s) ivy c.c. lai faculty of law, the university of hong kong, pok fu lam, hong kong citation lai, i.c.c., 2019, ‘erratum: global world, global mind: narratives of the university of hong kong worldwide exchange students’, transformation in higher education 4(0), a63. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v4i0.63 note: doi of original article: https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v3i0.42 erratum erratum: global world, global mind: narratives of the university of hong kong worldwide exchange students ivy c.c. lai published: 05 june 2019 copyright: © 2019. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. in the ‘how to cite’ section of this article published in volume 3, ivy c.c. lai’s initials were unintentionally misprinted as ‘l.l. lai’. the author’s correct name is ‘i.c.c. lai’. we hereby update and correct the ‘how to cite’ section as follows: lai, i.c.c., 2018, ‘global world, global mind: narratives of the university of hong kong worldwide exchange students’, transformation in higher education 3(0), a42. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v3i0.42 the publisher sincerely regrets this error and apologises for any inconvenience caused. abstract introduction democratic iterations and reciprocity as forms of transformative human engagement towards an expanded view of transformative democratic engagement through humaneness acknowledgements references about the author(s) yusef waghid faculty of education, stellenbosch university, south africa citation waghid, y., 2016, ‘transformation as an act of denudation: a response to petro du preez, shan simmonds and anné verhoef’, transformation in higher education 1(1), a3. http://dx.doi.org/10.4102/the.v1i1.3 original research transformation as an act of denudation: a response to petro du preez, shan simmonds and anné verhoef yusef waghid received: 24 may 2016; accepted: 13 aug. 2016; published: 25 oct. 2016 copyright: © 2016. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract higher education transformation in south africa, as correctly argued by petro du preez, shan simmonds and anné verhoef, should become more ‘fluid [and] open-ended’. however, even more fluidity and open-endedness might not necessarily be sufficient in enacting transformation in the higher education realm. consequently, in this article i argue in defence of a form of denudification of higher education that would impact transformation with an unrestrained openness and concealment whereby the unexpected will remain in potentiality. it is hoped that higher education transformation in south africa would become more open and credible as has been achieved hitherto. introduction petro du preez, shan simmonds and anné verhoef’s article entitled: ‘rethinking and researching transformation in higher education: a meta-study of south african trends’ is a credible analytical attempt to foreground transformation patterns that occurred in south african higher education over the past decade (2005–2015). from my reading of their insightful article, i have conjured up three main inferences: firstly, their etymological attempt to clarify quite lucidly what constitutes the notion of transformation invariably resonates with previous understandings of the notion in relation to some form of permanent conceptual change – and in this sense, their own clarification does not appear to be novel; secondly, although their analysis identifies trends in the transformation of higher education in south africa as a corollary of their reliance on the south african journal of higher education exclusively, their own attempts suffer an educational bias – which they paradoxically envisage to refute; and thirdly, their bold assertion to rethink higher education transformation along the lines of some ‘fluid and open-ended construct’ seems to remain truncated as their proffering quite correctly leaves the discourse of higher education transformation unresolved and ‘open-ended’. in this response, i envisage to extend their claim beyond a mere call for ‘open-endedness’. rather, in reference to giorgio agamben’s notion of ‘denudation’ whereby it is argued that forms of human engagement can become substantively transformative if enacted through an unconcealed disclosedness, that is, an unveiling of the self in which visibility and presence (nudity) hold sway. in other words, inasmuch as higher education should be conceived as an open-ended discourse – a view advocated by du preez, simmons and verhoef – humans ought to disclose themselves to others in order for the encounter to remain transformative. and, when such a form of transformative engagement assumes a form of denudation, the possibility is always there that human action will be enacted through an unveiling of the self that is infinitely free of secret. hopefully then, educational transformation will be more unconstrained and unrestricted by that which might be otherwise contained. democratic iterations and reciprocity as forms of transformative human engagement by way of introduction, much has been written about the notion of transformative human engagement in relation to dialogical forms of human action. firstly, seyla benhabib (2011) offers an account of deliberative engagement whereby human beings listen to one another with the aim to reflexively talk back to one another – that is, to take one another’s points of view into iterative scrutiny. in her words, ‘[b]y democratic iterations i mean complex processes of public argument, deliberation, and exchange through which universalist rights claims are contested and contextualized, invoked and revoked … in the associations of civil society’ (benhabib 2011:129). in other words, human beings do not just deliberate to allow one another an opportunity to critically respond to one another. rather, their interactions are meant to provoke one another to think and act differently – that is, to see the point of their engagements in a contested atmosphere without being remiss of treating one another with dignity. in this sense, humans are self-interpreting beings who have ‘the capacity to initiate action and opinion to be shared by others …’ (benhabib 2011:129). thus, following benhabib, transformative engagement is not merely associated with enframing people’s collective existence; it is also an enlargement of people’s moral perspectives ‘in virtue of their humanity simpliciter’ (benhabib 2011:75). secondly, amy gutmann and dennis thompson (2004:178) elucidate collective human co-existence on the basis that ‘people should be treated as free and equal citizens’. for them, transformative engagement is explicitly concerned with people seeking moral agreement when they can engage in/about public policy through deliberation, and ‘maintaining mutual respect when they cannot [reach agreement]’ (gutmann & thompson 2004:178). this kind of democratic reciprocity ‘asks citizens to try to justify their political views to one another and to treat with respect those who make good-faith efforts to engage in this mutual enterprise even when they cannot resolve their disagreements’ (gutmann & thompson 2004:179). the point is, democratic engagement (reciprocity) calls for people to equally engage with one another in an atmosphere of mutual respect even if they vehemently disagree. this kind of dignified relationship amongst humans engaged in democratic reciprocity is cultivated through an ‘open-mindedness … [and] respect for differing points of view without either endorsing them as clearly correct or rejecting them as clearly incorrect’ (gutmann & thompson 2004:185). in this way, through transformative democratic engagement, people not only retain their dignity but also the possibility for reasonable agreement and disagreement. that is, democratic reciprocity does not require moral detachment from one another. instead, democratic reciprocity would judge injustice harshly and praise just actions (gutmann & thompson 2004:186). by implication, people engaged in democratic reciprocity will not find themselves detached from one another because moral disagreement should not be a reason for excluding others from the deliberation. towards an expanded view of transformative democratic engagement through humaneness david t. hansen (2011:22–23) posits that central to any form of educational experience, notwithstanding a transformative and democratic one is a form of humaneness (referred to by benhabib, and gutmann and thompson, respectively, as dignity and respect). for hansen (2011:22), humaneness is tantamount to ‘practicing justice towards others’ in that it ‘privileges learning from others over resolving tensions to one’s personal satisfaction’. whereas benhabib, and gutmann and thompson seemingly advocate an understanding of humaneness as a democratic virtue whereby people are mutually engaged in deliberative iterations and reasonable agreements and disagreements, hansen (2011:22) elucidates humaneness as ‘a mode of work rather than a final achievement’ that involves ‘learning from others’. by the latter he means a capacity to wait and see, listen and a desire to understand the other (hansen 2011:23). in this way, humaneness implies a democratic etiquette whereby human beings are not in isolation from one another but in perpetual communication. in other words, humans do not just wait for agreement to be achieved but they engage humanely in democratic action (hansen 2011:28). and in enacting oneself humanely in relation to others, humans pursue ‘a reflective openness to the new with reflective loyalty to the known’ (hansen 2011:32) – a view that can extend the etymological take on transformation enunciated by du preez and others. my interest is in hansen’s depiction of humaneness as an enactment of democratic engagement such that it (humaneness) can cultivate a reflective openness to the new and a reflective loyalty to the known. i am attracted to democratic engagement as the cultivation of humaneness for two reasons: in the first instance, learning from others through a reflective openness to the new is a recognition that a democratic and transformative encounter can be uncertain which implies that the unexpected can happen. in other words, human relations in an uncertain world cannot always be perfectly planned, rationalised and predicted. currently in south africa, the ruling african national congress could not have anticipated or predicted that its political hegemony would be seriously challenged by members of its own party considering the role the party has played in the demise of the apartheid regime. consequently, one finds that hansen (2011:54–55) posits that ‘[d]eliberative ways of listening, speaking, waiting, reading, writing, memorizing, repeating and judging … [should be attentive to] different points of view and a more patient approach to conflicts of interests and concern’. put differently, being reflectively open to the new implies that democratic encounters should remain sensitive to humaneness; and second, being reflectively loyal to the known implies that a more lucid understanding of what is already known would invariably enhance one’s understanding of a particular situation. for instance, if it is already known that democratic encounters include rather than exclude people, then being reflectively loyal to such an encounter means that one can be open to more innovative ways of securing inclusion. thus, by being reflectively open to the new and reflectively loyal to the known, one might avoid doing harm to others in a democratic encounter – that is, one would have developed a sense of self-control which is not dismissive of what other have to say ‘thereby making possible humane ways of dwelling together’ (hansen 2011:55). however, being reflectively open to the new and reflectively loyal to the known implies other humans need to open themselves up to one in order for one to learn from them. but, for a democratic (and by implication a transformative) encounter to be mutually open, one also needs the self to open up to others. put differently, one needs to disclose oneself to others in order for the latter to openly engage with one. however, it seems as if democratic iterations and democratic reciprocity might not be sufficient to elicit more open and unconstrained forms of human (inter)action. that is, people can deliberate iteratively and engage one another reciprocally but this does not necessarily mean that they would always exhibit a humaneness towards one another. for instance, after the popular uprisings of masses of people against dictatorships on the african continent (e.g. in egypt, tunisia and libya) – referred to commonly as the arab spring – several governments that initially deliberated iteratively and reciprocally with other members of civil society became even more inhumane towards any form of public dissent. my contention is unless democratic encounters were to take the form of denudification whereby people disclosed themselves to one another equally and substantively, such encounters will remain truncated and possibly become more prejudiced towards exclusion. the point is that unless people open themselves up substantively to one another, any form of tenable inclusion might not ensue, that is, transformation might be thwarted. for instance, in contemporary south african higher education, many institutional responses to student protestations vis-à-vis the exorbitant increase in student fees have been belligerent and often dismissive of students’ legitimate concerns. it seems as if many universities in the country have already succumbed to neoliberal dictates of a globalised world economy whereby an increase in profit is deemed to be significant enough in shaping higher education. and, those students who are unable to afford higher education and contend with fees hikes are simply be ignored by university authorities. this apparent lack of regard to engage students deliberatively in a denudificated manner is simply symptomatic of a reluctance on the part of some university authorities to address legitimate student concerns in a democratically risk-full manner. i now turn to giorgio agamben for a perspective on denudation with the possibility of people engaging in democratic and transformative encounters, becoming more open and prepared to take risks. in defence of denudation: democratic and transformative engagement as an unconcealed disclosedness of the human self, agamben (2011:81) introduces the notion of nudity in relation to human action. in his words, ‘to know nudity is not to know an object but only an absence of veils, only a possibility of knowing’. in other words, nudity is a condition of ‘disclosedness’ (al-letheia), that is, ‘unconcealment’ without which knowledge would not be possible (agamben 2011:81). what follows, that unless people do not engage with nudity in democratic and transformative encounters, the possibility that they would learn from one another would be very unlikely. again, nudity or denudation is a condition of ‘pure visibility and presence’ whereby no secret is concealed (agamben 2011:81). so, for agamben (2011:84, 86), the nudity of the human body is its image of an unveiled appearance which is ‘infinitely free of secret’ – an appearance that exhibits its own vacuity and that allows the inapparent to take place. put differently, nudity or denudation ‘lets the absence of secrets be seen’, which means it expresses only a ‘letting-be-seen’ (agamben 2011:89). when nudity unveils secrets of the human self, then a point is reached in which ‘clarification is no longer possible’ because an appearance has been exhibited ‘beyond all mystery and all meaning’ (agamben 2011:89, 90). now in relation to democratic and transformative encounters, such a form of engagement is only subjected to denudation when the interaction between humans unveils what is mysterious in the sense that the covert is opened up to humans engaged in the interaction. here, the unveiling of the strange requires of humans to take risks on the basis of disclosedness and demystification. that is, risk taking increases when the mysterious is on the verge of being denudated. and, when the self experiences moments of denudation where nothing is concealed or censored, where secrets of the self have been unmasked, democratic and transformative engagement becomes open and unrestrained – that is, it is enveloped by a ‘pure appearance’ or ‘absence of secrets’ (agamben 2011:90). how else can democratic engagement be substantively open if human thought in and about particular situations is not unconcealed or unveiled? the point i am making is that only a demystified form of democratic engagement would have deepened the risks human would have taken to elicit unconstrained encounters where nothing is held back and where human thought has been made transparent and accessible to all others. and, the possibility that human action can unveil mysterious meanings that can enhance people’s interactions (and by implication their risk taking) would only contribute towards their intimacy – that is, their knowability (nudity) in sustaining unconstrained forms of democratic engagement. to take a risk is tantamount to disclosing something that would otherwise have remained concealed. so, when one takes a risk, one divulges (unveils) what would otherwise have remained veiled or held back from others. and, unveiling one’s nudity is an act of exposing what would otherwise have remained covered. hence, to take a risk implies denudifying oneself. inasmuch as risk taking is associated with disclosing oneself, so the agambenian notion of rhythm is linked to a visible presence that assigns to a nude image its ‘flows in time’, that is, its ‘movement’ (agamben 2004:99). for agamben, this movement or ‘eternal flow’ of rhythm gives to risk taking ‘a stop, an interruption in the incessant flow … [that] gives and reveals the particular status, the mode of presence proper to the work of art [nude image] or the landscape we have before our eyes’ (agamben 2004:99). agamben goes on to assert that once being ‘arrested’ by nudity means ‘both to hold back, to suspend, and to hand over, to present, to offer’ (agamben 2004:100). what follows from the aforementioned, like risk taking, rhythm ‘gives and holds back’ (agamben 2004:100). so, when a nude image presents itself to others, it gives and holds back – that is, nudity is subjected to a rhythmic movement of disclosure and retention. put differently, denudification involves a rhythmic flow of movement whereby the image presents itself to the one witnessing the image – that is, the image is disclosed or unconcealed to others. concomitantly, with the unveiling of the nude image, the witnesses to the image looks at what is discernible with moments of imperceptibility – that is, as if the nude image is at times not visible because of an interruption encountered because of what the witness is confronted with. in conclusion, inasmuch as du preez and others’ analytical effort to make higher education transformation in south africa more responsive to fluidity and open-endedness, they somehow seem to capitulate to the taken-for-granted notion that higher education transformation ought to be rethought. of course, this is correct. but then, if higher education were to become more transformative and remain in potentiality, it has to be thought of differently. it is in this regard that it might just be apposite to rethink higher education transformation vis-à-vis denudification! acknowledgements competing interests the author declares that he has no financial or personal relationships that may have inappropriately influenced him in writing this article. references agamben, g., 2004, the man without content, transl. g. albert, stanford university press, stanford, ca. agamben, g., 2011, nudities, transl. d. kishik & s. pedatella, stanford university press, stanford, ca. benhabib, s., 2011, dignity in adversity: human rights in troubled times, polity press, cambridge. gutmann, a. & thompson, d., 2004, why deliberative democracy?, princeton university press, princeton, nj. hansen, d.t., 2011, the teacher and the world: a study of cosmopolitanism as education, routledge, london. the 3-1_2018_contents.indd http://thejournal.org.za open access table of contents i original research transforming while transferring: an exploratory study of how transferability of skills is key in the transformation of higher education sandiso bazana, logan mclaren, trust kabungaidze transformation in higher education | vol 3 | a35 | 26 july 2018 original research examining factors that shape technical vocational education and training engineering students’ understanding of their career choices anthony t. sibiya, nceba nyembezi transformation in higher education | vol 3 | a33 | 07 august 2018 original research (re)inserting charity in education erik meganck transformation in higher education | vol 3 | a38 | 08 august 2018 original research embodied digital technology and transformation in higher education jean du toit, anné h. verhoef transformation in higher education | vol 3 | a52 | 23 october 2018 reviewer acknowledgement transformation in higher education | vol 3 | a60 | 28 november 2018 56 70 76 86 94 page i of i table of contents i original research a social constructionist approach to resilience for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, queer and/or questioning academics and students in south african universities jacques rothmann transformation in higher education | vol 3 | a34 | 29 january 2018 original research continuous programme renewal and critical citizenship: key items for the south african higher education curriculum agenda eli bitzer, elmarie costandius transformation in higher education | vol 3 | a37 | 18 june 2018 original research global world, global mind: narratives of the university of hong kong worldwide exchange students ivy c.c. lai transformation in higher education | vol 3 | a42 | 27 september 2018 original research blackhood as a category in contemporary discourses on black studies: an existentialist philosophical defence m. john lamola transformation in higher education | vol 3 | a55 | 03 december 2018 original research education hubs and private higher education expansion in small island developing states contexts: the case of mauritius hyleen mariaye, michael samuel transformation in higher education | vol 3 | a46 | 16 october 2018 1 9 18 36 45 vol 3 (2018) issn: 2415-0991 (print) | issn: 2519-5638 (online)transformation in higher education abstract introduction research methods and design results and discussion conclusion recommendation for future research acknowledgements references about the author(s) pavla p. mokoena department of tourism and events management, faculty of business and management sciences, cape peninsula university of technology, cape town, south africa christiaan hattingh department of tourism and events management, faculty of business and management sciences, cape peninsula university of technology, cape town, south africa citation mokoena, p.p. & hattingh, c., 2023, ‘south african tourism students’ learning preferences during covid-19 at universities of technology’, transformation in higher education 8(0), a253. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v8i0.253 original research south african tourism students’ learning preferences during covid-19 at universities of technology pavla p. mokoena, christiaan hattingh received: 06 dec. 2022; accepted: 20 mar. 2023; published: 30 june 2023 copyright: © 2023. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract between 2020 and 2021, the covid-19 pandemic forced governments, around the globe, to implement innovative initiatives to avoid a complete collapse of significant sectors. emergency remote teaching (ert) operational frameworks were developed through the council for higher education (che) to guide higher education (he) institutions’ operational procedures. considering that students at universities of technology (uots) are used to face-to-face teaching, ert may have been aversely experienced. thus, for this study, the review of tourism management students’ learning preferences during ert across three south african uots were ascertained. through means of a sequential-explanatory research design, students were asked to complete a survey and, afterwards, those students who showed interest were interviewed in focus groups. tourism management uot students did not see ert in a positive light as access to he was a major challenge for them during lockdown periods, indicating a lack of sufficient resources to properly participate in learning activities, and crucially, a lack of access to support mechanisms during ert. contribution: this study offers student perspectives of remote learning experiences. this data could assist in offering a balance between ert initiatives and learner-guided frameworks for he. this knowledge could be critical in limiting the gap in access and success for hybrid or blended tourism programmes post-covid-19. keywords: covid-19; higher education; remote learning; tourism management; students’ perceptions. introduction educational innovations whereby multi-modal teaching and learning initiatives were introduced (barton & ryan 2014:410), have over the decades migrated towards engagement driving (gilakjani, lai & hairul 2013:1362) to leverage students’ learning for the 21st century (laohajaratsang 2017:138). notwithstanding the latter, in a south african higher education (he) dispensation, the preferred teaching and learning modality is that of face-to-face learning (cleveland-innes & wilton 2018:15). as a result of the covid-19 pandemic, face-to-face learning could no longer take place, and there arose an urgent need to salvage the national academic agenda through guidelines, as imposed by the council on higher education (che) (2020:6–9). internationally, the covid-19 pandemic saw academic programmes grind to a halt, while academic operations were forced to take up an online presence (van zyl, venter & bruwer 2021:67; who 2020). the most feasible approach was for south african he institutions to adopt an emergency remote teaching (ert) approach while ‘re-developing’ existing subjects. as pointed out by coetzee et al. (2021): [a]lthough the 4ir, in and by itself, is a driving force behind the disruption facing universities, the rate at which it is set to occur has been expedited due to the covid-19 pandemic. (p. 2) debates pre-pandemic around blended and hybrid learning centred on the effectiveness of the models and the potential to accommodate different learning styles (bryan & volchenkova 2016:28), affording an opportunity for meaningful learning (robinson et al. 2015:285–286; the community of inquiry [coi] n.d.; vaughan 2010:178), and where students felt they had been afforded a safe space to participate (rix 2011:426). technology has allowed students the ability to access education beyond the confines of the classroom and fixed time-tabled periods of a school or a university day (west 2013:6–7). moursund (2005:7) outlined the uses of information and communication technology (ict) in education as a tool to assist with improving the quality of teaching and learning, as well as assessment thereof, and accountability systems: the basis of platforms critical to advancing teaching and learning. the secondary research by van zyl et al. (2021:69) argued that although the pandemic influenced extensive adoption of 4ir in uots during covid-19, there was no evidence of improved efficacy of he institutions. in the review of tourism management students’ learning preferences during remote learning, any gap during the provision of teaching practices and support mechanisms by uots is investigated. in tourism qualifications, teaching styles follow a fit-for-purpose design. as a result of the orientation of the services industry, instructional and learning design of the theoretical and vocational elements in the curriculum is critical to enhance meaningful learning. this article therefore aims to review the experiences and perspectives of students’ remote learning journeys, to determine lessons or guiding principles for blended and hybrid learning design. impacts of covid-19 on higher education on 15 march 2020, the south african government announced a national state of disaster, which saw the first lockdown of the country, in line with other countries across the world (staunton et al. 2020:2–3). the lockdowns restricted movement and assembly, which meant learning, at all levels, abruptly stopped. at a time when teaching and learning was completely face-to-face, the covid-19 pandemic fast-tracked the steady strides being made towards the inclusion of technology in teaching and learning, pivoting to purely online learning or remote learning. this created challenges for students and staff on issues of access (mhlanga 2021:16–18). the negative aspect was that the divide in technology readiness meant that countries that did not have widespread required infrastructure, like some areas in south africa, continued to be left behind, and students and learners who did not have access to technology were deprived from valuable education for months, and in certain instances for years, as some authors anticipated at the time (mpungose 2020:5–6; naidoo & cartwright 2020:12). post the hardships of the impact of the pandemic lockdowns and forced remote learning, he institutions had to take stock and critically evaluate not only resources as a tool to improving academic performance but to also investigate what impact on learning preferences could mean for the academic performance of students (dhet, sa 2020; ligami 2022; mail & guardian 2022). as the world struggles to ‘return to normal’, there is now a shift in thinking towards a ‘new normal’ with how educational systems will function going forward. basic research on learned experiences needs to be built into all planning to ensure the gap between intended outcomes and the lived experiences of students in he are fully understood. the critical issue is that blended and hybrid learning models cannot be successfully implemented on their own in the south african context. a comprehensive study of he students in south africa conducted by netanda, mamabolo and themane (2019:403–405) ranked forms of preferred university support for students; the top three forms of support being directed to financial, academic, and emotional support. these strategies require certain supportive mechanisms for university students, in a bid to respond to students’ needs for academic success (naidoo & cartwright 2020:12; ogbuanya & efuwape 2018; swartz, gachago & belford 2018:51; tan 2017:157:8; tseng & walsh 2016:11). approaches to blended and hybrid learning in tourism classes blended learning is identified as a migration from traditional face-to-face learning (cleveland-innes & wilton 2018:15) or a ‘continuum between pure face-to-face and fully online settings’ (watson 2008:5). in evaluating the success of blended and hybrid models, institutions are guided by circumstances that could necessitate implementation, availability of resources, and suitability of the blended and hybrid models. there are four main blended learning structures in he with different approaches, which are relevant to tourism programmes at uots (cleveland-innes & wilton 2018:16): blended face-to-face class: mostly physical classes where activities in the classroom move from class instruction to group activities, individual tutoring, or paper-based-self assessments. blended online class: online class setting that mixes tuition time with students’ individual or group activities to enhance learning activities. flipped classroom: learning activities are inverted. students learn concepts outside of the classroom, using online platforms, and return to the classroom to reflect on their learnt experiences. rotational method: fixed or discretionary movement of learning activities between class instruction and other activities, such as group work or online activities. the rotation is initiated at the teachers’ or lecturers’ instruction. the rotation can occur in four different formats: a rotation from one station to the next in the same classroom, laboratory rotation, the flipped classroom, and individual rotation. universities operate with the majority view of blended and/or hybrid learning being the move from ‘traditional or face-to-face or in-person’ tuition, towards ‘online or technology-enabled teaching’ without fully considering the type of mode being used to blend learning activities (cleveland-innes & wilton 2018:11). these terms are used interchangeably in educational research (graham 2013:334). blended learning is considered as the model that proposes activities that introduce the use of technology. models include activities that combine face-to-face instruction and technology-mediated instruction (saichaie 2020:96) with other blends, inverting learning activities, where students can individually participate, such as watching videos, reading resources, and learning from second-hand experiences and, in turn, bring their experiences to the classroom to reflect on (saichaie 2020:97). on the other hand, the hybrid model is described as the complete change of the face-to-face learning environment to purely online learning, within the education context (anthony, kamaludin & romli 2022:532). where blended learning indicates the augmenting of face-to-face tuition with technology, hybrid-learning leads to the reduction of face-to-face tuition and student activities to purely online activities (saichaie 2020:97). this approach is varied to the broad work-place definition of hybrid setting, which seeks to explain the bringing together of face-to-face and online environments, in order to maintain an equilibrium between online and offline learning settings. in the learning environment, the term hybrid learning is widely used to imply that learning could migrate from a teacher or lecturer focus to a more student focus, or self-reliant basis where students produce a product, perform a skill, or demonstrate their knowledge in the process of learning (bosman & schulze 2018:5). council on higher education emergency remote teaching framework the che (2020:4) report has emphasised a recovery approach as a response to covid-19 impacts. the recovery, termed ert, included systems and programmes that were put in place to continue the education agenda during strict lockdowns and noted a: … temporary shift of instructional delivery to an alternate delivery mode as a response to crises situations. ert involves the use of fully remote teaching solutions for instruction or education that would otherwise be delivered face-to-face or as blended or hybrid courses. (p. 4) as a way to assess the successes and challenges of the interventions that were put in place during the ert, an understanding of the benefits and challenges experienced by students during remote learning should shed some light on the effectiveness of, as well as impact on, remote learning plans (twesige et al. 2021:148). a study by the department of higher education and training (dhet), in south africa, reviewing the progress of remote learning, indicated challenges students had experienced with remote learning (dhet, sa 2020:50–51). the study pointed to the requirements by he for purposeful attention to the implementation of support requirements for students, in ensuring that hybrid and blended learning as a consideration for a future he strategy, should be carefully approached, so that further imbalances in the education system are mitigated. as coetzee et al. (2021:8–10) advise, he institutions must consider how students are going to be supported and empowered through adaptions to he pedagogy in the 21st century. studies in the field of remote or distance learning rely on the coi model (le roux & nagel 2018:5), as well as vygosky’s model (mosdorf, kilon & ignatowska 2010:25), for direction. for a study on learning preferences, the limitations of the models are that although the sense of community of learning is critical for online learning, student preferences do not only rely on this aspect alone. learning preferences are shaped by students’ personal attributes, and teaching and learning practices (mcghie 2012:192–193). pre-2020, studies that evaluated blended learning focused more on practice and student satisfaction than preferences (tseng & walsh 2016:46), as well as successes of blended and/or hybrid learning implemented for courses (harahap et al. 2019:524). some studies reported on the novelty of teaching practice, the limitations of assessing student preferences of blended and hybrid models being used in courses, and support mechanisms offered by universities for blended learning (swartz et al. 2018; tekane, pilcher & potgieter 2020). a study by jugmohan (2010:35–39) pointed to a mismatch between tourism students’ expectations of their learning experience, curriculum designers regarding suitable tourism students, and tourism employers regarding work-ready graduates. this article also considered factors highlighted by mcghie (2012) that have an impact on the progress of first year students at universities in south africa, academic factors, social factors, and institutional factors. there is a need for the body of knowledge on blended and hybrid learning to continually include the student voice, in terms of experiences of the various models and classes, or blends being implemented, in various academic fields. this in an effort to get closer to discovering a model that benefits both learning and teaching (costa et al. 2019:398; dlamini, bayaga & moyo 2021:35) in the context of developing economies. most importantly, there is a need to unearth possible unrealised benefits of hybrid models that are disrupting the traditional teaching-learning, and offering better teaching practices to accommodate students who might not have benefited from traditional teaching modes (celestino & yamamoto 2020:4). research methods and design this study followed a sequential-explanatory design as part of a bigger study that conducted a census enquiry of 260 tourism management students at three uots in south africa, the cape peninsula university of technology (cput), central university of technology (cut), and tshwane university of technology (tut) in south africa, concluded online, related to investigating student perspectives of their learning preferences and experiences during remote learning. the mixed methodology research was selected to allow for the acquisition of a more complete picture of the results. while the quantitative data identified the student learning preferences and learning experiences during remote learning, the qualitative data provided a deeper analysis and understanding of these aspects (wilson-strydom 2012:134). a multiple measurement was adopted from studies by mkonto (2015) regarding student learning preferences and training dhet (sa 2020), to assess tourism students’ academic experiences during hybrid and blended learning. the enquiry would assist to uncover explanations of observed phenomenon (creswell 2014:16; wilson-strydom 2012:134) to academic practice and learning preferences. the questionnaire and interview schedule testing and piloting were conducted with the assistance of the official statistician at cput. all data collection was completed online through selected tourism contact staff at the participating institutions, identified staff at participating uots assisted to disseminate the study survey link, and invitations for focus groups to the tourism management students. the first phase of data collection was quantitative surveys, collected on the lime survey tool, which for purely remote online surveys allowed for the added flexibility for study participants to complete a survey in two settings should they so wish. the second phase of data collection was qualitative focus group interviews, conducted after invitations for voluntary participation were shared with participating institutions. for this second phase, an invitation was sent to participating uots, for interested parties to communicate directly with the researcher to participate in the focus group interviews. student learning style preferences were measured using the vark learning model developed by niel felming in 1998 (alkhasawneh 2013:1546) and advanced in 2006 for in-classroom face-to-face activities, and kolbs 1984 learning style inventory (lsi) (hawk & shah 2007:2), to assess remote learning activities of students. the quantitative analysis was conducted with the statistical package for the social sciences (spss) version 28. chi-square tests were conducted to explore differences between groups of data from the various institutions (kothari 2004:148; wilson-strydom 2012:147). the atlas.ti 28 analysis tool was used to conduct a thematic analysis of the focus group transcripts. deductive and inductive coding was applied in the analysis process, as predetermined codes from the drafting of the interview schedules were already designed prior to analysis (kenaphoom 2021:660), while certain elements of data that emerged from the interviews are also included in the data. ethical considerations ethical clearance to conduct this study was obtained from the cput research ethics committee (no. 2021_fbmsrec 050). results and discussion effective designs of hybrid and blended learning models for tourism programmes were informed by experiences of uot students’ learning during a hybrid learning setting. study participants were 71.26% female and 28.74% male. age distribution was n = 138 (53%) 21–25, n = 95 (37%) 18–20, n = 21 (8%) 26–30, and 1% (n = 3), respectively, for the under 18 and over 30 years age groups. most participants were first year students (31%), followed by third year (30%), second year (18%), extended curriculum programme (ecp) (16%), and fourth year (5%) tourism management students. extended curriculum programme is an added academic student support initiative, designed to split the amount of subjects for first year entry students over a 2 year period. the programme was introduced in he to improve student throughput. preferred learning styles to investigate students’ preferred learning styles, a likert scale of opinion questions was included in this section of the survey. the results were compared by gender and indicated no relational influences. the chi-square value was above 0.05 (p = > 0.05), thus indicating no relationship between student learning preferences and gender. the data indicated a preference for the ‘read and write’ learning style, with negative feedback of the auditory learning style. students indicated a preference for making their own notes (49.79% = agree and 30.21% = strongly agree) while 48.09% agreed to the statement that they try and find additional information, and read to understand the subject matter. with regard to study groups, 48.31% of students disagreed that they study with classmates in groups, which is in line with the preference to study alone shown in table 1. table 1: students’ learning style preferences. an optional question with an open-ended choice was also asked to reference the learning style preferences, shown in table 2, where a total of n = 209 responses were captured for this question. table 2 reveals a preference for a kinaesthetic learning style (94, n = 45%), where students prefer to actively answer mock questions to learn concepts (as revealed by mlambo 2011:82). the learning style is followed closely by the read and write learning style (70, n = 33.5%) as students indicated a preference for reading ‘content to be learnt’, which is in line with the preference for reading data captured, as shown in table 1. six ‘other’ responses (2.9%) indicated in the open-ended questions were an orientation towards a combination of styles, and a preference for a read and write learning preference. students who preferred the auditory learning style numbered 39 (n = 18.7%). no statements directing to a preference for visual learning were captured in the responses. table 2: statements of preferred learning styles. an assumption can be drawn from the data presented to a preference for the reading and writing learning style by tourism management students, with kinaesthetic preferences as well, for a preference to study alone. compared with other studies (e.g. mkonto 2015) using the model to assess student learning preferences in sa, the study by mkonto (2015) of students across faculties indicated a preference for a practical hands-on learning (kinaesthetic) style. a study on secondary school students conducted by bosman and schulze (2018:5) pointed to a hands-on active approach to learning, with students preferring to study alone more than in groups. the latter study assessed performances and reported higher performances in learners who opted for the kinaesthetic and read and/or write learning styles. preferences of tourism students regarding the use of academic support services the articulation rates of uot students is a dhet imperative, which has allowed for the implementation of innovative programmes to bolster student success at uots (van zyl 2017:19). the use of tutors in academic programmes was one of the imperatives. a review of the results in table 3 on the use of academic support services indicates an interesting observation, where most surveyed students did not use available tutors, with 26.81% of students disagreeing with the statement, while 31.91% were neutral on the matter of using tutors. this result is similar to the study by massingham and herrington (2006:86). allowing for this analysis, students agreed that they would benefit from a tutor who spoke their home language, with 37.54% agreeing and 22.13% strongly agreeing with the sentiment. further interesting results revealed evidence that gender could be a factor when the preference to consult the services of a tutor who speaks a similar home language is concerned, as the chi-square p-value was less than 0.05 (p = 0.038). female students were more inclined to use tutor services by persons who spoke their home language as learning in their mother tongue was perceived to be easier. a study by tekane et al. (2020:8–9) revealed that preference for tutorials was based on the chance for students to ‘practice, get assistance and validate’, which is a support mechanism that is well suited to the kinaesthetic learning preference as it is an active learning activity. table 3: students’ preferences regarding academic support services. contradicting responses were, however, recorded in table 3 where, although students indicated that they would benefit from a tutor who spoke their home language, they disagreed with the statement that they translate their notes into their home language (30.21%) and 24.68% were neutral to the statement. this is an indication that the language of instruction at uots in sa is considered appropriate by students. teaching practices versus learning styles in relation to hybrid and blended learning a mismatch between teaching and learning styles is highlighted as a major issue in academia (akbarzadeh & fatemipour 2014:141; bosman & schulze 2018:5; felder 1988:674; widaningrum & ho 2015:89). a study by liang (2021:8) presented evidence that teaching style has an impact on learning. the results, presented in figure 1, could indicate further confirmation of this view, as results per participating university indicated that tourism students agree (cut = 37.5%; cput = 43.8%; tut = 43.8%) and strongly agree (cput = 24.1%; tut = 35.9%; cut = 53.1%) that lecturer’s teaching styles impacted their learning. figure 1: impact of lecturer teaching style on learning. preferences related to on-campus class attendance based on the indication that teaching practices do impact learning, as depicted in figure 1, follow-up questions were asked about face-to-face class attendance. the first question (table 4) focused on preferences for face-to-face class attendance. the issue of a lack of attendance focused on reasons (chipchase et al. 2017:36), whereas a study by visser and van zyl (2016:343) suggested that race could also be a consideration. when the tourism students in this study were asked if they attend 90% of their classes, 80% of a total of n = 211 students who answered this question, indicated ‘yes’, with only 20% indicating ‘no’, and this result is in line with a study by kinlaw, dunlap and d’angelo (2012:169) that students do not unjustly decide not to attend classes. table 4: students’ preferences related to face-to-face class attendance. in contrast, the students indicated that there are some lecturers’ classes they prefer not to attend, according to 80% of n = 220 responses, thus affirming the argument that gaps between student learning preferences and lecturer teaching practices have a negative impact on learning (deale 2019: 4–5; wadesango & machingambi 2011:94). other discussions on factors impacting class attendance have focused on investigations attempting to combat low attendance of face-to-face classes (karabulut-ilgu et al. 2018:404; kinlaw et al. 2012:170), to arguments that students’ learning also evolves to preferences not restricted to university walls (murphy et al. 2004:865). to determine a broader picture of the reasons students have for missing lectures, the results presented in table 4 suggest that preference for class attendance on campus cannot be discounted. feedback to questions on whether face-to-face classes were deemed ‘not beneficial’, 92% of n = 152 students who answered this question indicated ‘no’. when asked if their reasons for non-attendance were based on ‘just not feeling like going to class’, 89% of the respondents (n = 159) indicated ‘no’. therefore, the interactive opportunities face-to-face classes offer cannot be discounted (mshayisa 2022:4). on assessment of actions students preferred to take when they missed a face-to-face class, evidence suggests more students prefer to work with their peers than to contact their lecturer directly. of the responses to this question, n = 174, 91% asked friends for updates and notes if they missed class, while 76% (n = 144) did not follow up with friends but just attended the next class. of the students who indicated not following up on work carried out if they missed a class, 24% noticed not taking any action and just attending the following session, which suggests that class preparation is critical for the majority of tourism students. although this is a good indication, fewer students are inclined to ask their lecturer directly for assistance if they missed a class (44%, n = 161). the assessment of results revealed in table 4 raised interesting observations. since the start of the covid-19 pandemic in march 2020, and with the continued adjustment of lockdown levels, as well as the lifting of the national state of disaster in sa on 05 april 2022 (department of health, sa 2022), uots have not rushed the decision to revert to full face-to-face campus classes. a total of n = 99 participants who chose the option ‘not applicable’, have only attended online classes since the start of the pandemic in 2020, until the period data were collected for this study (between 29 march and 30 may 2022), and continue to attend remotely (table 4). as covid-19 was a huge disrupter around the world, it could be a view that south african he institutions are already considering adaptions to the design of tuition for the future. preferences related to remote learning table 5 presents the results of n = 145 students who responded to questions on preferences of online classes, relating to forms of communication, and the type of online class preferred. formal and informal platforms for learning, considered synchronous and asynchronous (beldarrain 2006:140; martin & bolliger 2018:208), are important aspects of ‘remoteness’ in creating wider access to the learning environment (dhet, sa 2020:7). table 5: learning style preferences related to remote learning (%) (n = 145). questions on the online learning preference were adopted from kolb’s learning cycle, which focuses on a quadrant of elements explained as ‘divergers’ who are good at seeing things from different perspectives, and work well with people; ‘assimilators’ who prefer inductive reasoning, and prefer to work with information and ideas; ‘convergers’ have a strong practical orientation, are generally deductive in their thinking, and tend to be unemotional; and ‘accommodators’ who can solve problems intuitively, they like doing things impulsively (graham 2013:18; hawk & shah 2007:4). the overall assessment of participants was based on ranking questions by highest scores. the results shown in table 5 regarding the type of online classes considered best during remote learning present a preference for interaction in class with online sessions that afforded students high participation. this outcome is similar to a study conducted by mshayisa (2022:10) that indicated collaborative classes improved student confidence. survey questions were posed using a 5-point likert scale, with scores ranging from 1 = least preferred to 5 = most preferred. the not applicable option was also included in the scale to accommodate students where some of the options were not applicable to them. the highest-scored question relating to the best online class was the class where the lecturer offered opportunities for students to participate in the online class and scored the highest (44.8% = most preferred and 44.1% preferred) class. the second highest score was for a class where the lecturer used powerpoint visuals (46.2% = preferred and 28.3% most preferred), while the class that offered the opportunity to ask questions came in third with a score of 53.1%. interestingly, the class where the lecturer opted to have their camera on during online lectures was scored neutral (36.6%), and less preferred at 20%, with 16.6% least preferred (table 5). the next score summarised in table 5 was the forms of synchronous and asynchronous communicating tools during remote learning and to assess student preferences. again, in this assessment, the overall rating was based on ranking questions by the highest scores. the results shown in table 5 indicate towards a preference for formal, or synchronous forms of communication during remote learning. preferences for communication to be sent via the learner management system (lms) scored the highest with 42.5% preferred and 30.8% strongly preferred responses. this was followed by the preference for communication to be performed through the class whatsapp group (38.4% = preferred and 17.1% = most preferred), with direct e-mails with the lecturer scoring the third highest with 30.1% preferred and 19.9% most preferred responses. preference for information and contacting the lecturer directly on whatsapp scored lower with students, which is in line with the martin and bolliger’s (2018:216) and saidi et al. (2021:960) studies, indicating that regarding formal tuition, students were inclined to lean towards formal structures of communication such as the lms and e-mails from the lecturer, than asynchronous platforms, with group coordinating activities more effective on these platforms (mpungose 2020:930). as mshayisa (2022:10) also found, the more informal platforms in blended lessons were preferred for group collaborative work than formal instruction and communication. studies on this aspect mostly report on the design of blended classes (cleveland-innes & wilton 2018:21), fit for purpose (pechenkina & aeschliman 2020:34), limitations with access (readlab 2022:23), with limited attention to preferences in the learning environment (aheto & cronje 2018:97), where this data could be critical. the next enquiry into student learning preferences relating to remote classes was the question regarding what actions students took when they missed online classes. issues of practices that uots used as standards in academia, such as attendance requirements (barefoot 2004:11; lesiko-sedumo 2010), timetabling for academic programmes, impacts of timetabling on student attendance levels (larabi-marie-sainte et al. 2021:2), and external factors that affected attendance levels when compounded with inflexible timetables, were considered (kelly 2012:18, 28–29). the introduction of technology in education has been considered to offer a level of flexibility for students (gosper et al. 2010:251) that has called to question the need for stringent attendance rules for online classes (o’callaghan et al. 2017:405). student remote learning preferences scored high in studies by gosper et al. (2010:255) and pechenkina and aeschliman (2020:33). this preference is in direct contrast with requirements for live remote class attendance. to probe this preference, students were asked to respond to actions they took when online classes were missed. the answer that scored highest on this question leaned towards a preference for working at ‘my’ own pace (87.8% = cput; 61.1% = cut; 64.4% = tut– figure 2). a small number of students preferred to speak to classmates, to find out what was done in class (27.8% = cut; 17.8% = tut; 8.5% = cput). figure 2: action taken after missing an online class. remote versus face-to-face learning in a study conducted by kinlaw et al. (2012:168), assumptions were made that online classes were not as well attended when compared with face-to-face classes. the preferences for online and face-to-face classes were investigated in this study, to determine if tourism students prefer one form over the other. cross-tabulated data in table 6 indicate some relationship to the preference for attendance on campus or remote attendance per uot, as the p-value of 0.047, which is less than 0.05 (p = < 0.05), was observed. for the question on the preference for attendance on campus, the chi-square test was conducted with a p = < 0.05, indicating significance of x2 (10, n = 115) = 23.27 (p = 0.0098). this result indicated a highly significant association between variables of student preferences to attend class on campus based on the university of study. table 6: face-to-face class attendance versus online class attendance (%) (n = 115). comparisons of results indicated the following: cape peninsula university of technology results indicated a negative sentiment towards a remote class preference, with 36.6% disagreeing and 20.7% strongly disagreeing with the statements. comparatively, preference for on-campus attendance reveals that 29.3% of students agreed with the preference for on-campus classes, while 20.7% disagreed. the results indicated a slight preference for on-campus classes, compared with online classes. central university of technology data presented a higher significant preference for online class attendance with 27.8% strongly agreeing, while 22.2% were neutral to a preference for online class preference. comparatively, data on preference for campus classes returned significantly higher negative responses with 38.9% strongly disagreeing and 22.2% disagreeing responses, although a positive response of 27.8% was recorded. this data indicated a significantly negative preference towards campus classes, with a high preference for online classes by cut students. tshwane university of technology results returned a more neutral stance, without a clear preference for online or on-campus classes, compared with the cut and cput responses. tshwane university of technology students were neutral, with 30.4% neutral responses, 26.1% disagree and 23.9% agree responses recorded on the online preference question. for the on-campus classes, responses recorded were 39.1% neutral, with 17.4%, respectively, for agree and disagree. these results could mean a preference for a balanced blend of online and face-to-face classes (le roux & nagel 2018:4) or an undecided position on which options are most preferred (pechenkina & aeschliman 2020:32). the results recorded in table 6 further illustrate students’ preferences relating to online class attendance. universities of technology two students were the cohort that leaned most towards a preference for remote class format shown in table 6, and these students were also not necessarily in favour of attending live online classes, but preferred having access to class recordings, as 61.1% of students strongly agreed that they preferred to listen to class recordings. in the following discussion, to be able to draw conclusions, the chi-square test results for this question were less than 0.01 (p = < 0.01), indicating a strong significance of x2 (10, n = 115) = 29.27, p = 0.0011, between the preference for attending online classes and accessing remote class recordings. designing the perfect university experience one question of the focus group interviews was designed for respondents to curate their best university experience: the question was asked, ‘if you could design the perfect university student experience from an academic point of view, what would it look like’? the results, presented in summary format, indicated three factors critical for the consideration of the perfect university experience for students. these revealed factor responses ranged from a blended class approach with some of the blends indicating a preference for face-to-face, consultations or active learning scenarios tuition (factor 1), aid for students with regard to access (factor 2), and a preference for qualification aligned blends (factor 3). responses from two participating uots were received. following the disruption of the cput focus group interviews because of electricity blackouts, responses were further submitted via e-mail. a total of n = 8 participants were coded according to university of participation. factor 1: blended and/or hybrid approach, with a preference for face-to-face tuition: throughout the interview process respondents had indicated a requirement for classes that offered personal or social connections that face-to-face classes offered. in answering the question about the design of the ‘perfect’ university experience, respondents further cemented the notion that, although blended and/or hybrid tuition could be considered as a future mode of teaching and learning, there are benefits for students: ‘… face-to-face that takes the crown a reason behind me saying that it’s because it gives me more academically, socially, you know, practically and everything. so online just gives me, actually just gives me one benefit that i can attend and be able to actually see the recording later, but the benefits of face-to-face for me are so much, i’m very often extroverted person. so i, i believe in seeing people … so i believe actually also in engaging.’ (5:81, 252 in tut focus group interview) ‘i am, i’m a busy person, but i’m busy with nothing … so me sitting on a table and like listening to a lecture, it’s kind of like, not for me. so i would be like, okay, put the laptop on speaker and then continue doing whatever i was doing before i attended the class. but when i’m in a contact class, i feel like now we are talking.’ (5:84, 259 in tut focus group interview) factor 2: aid for students regarding access: responses from the focus group interviews indicated three areas students viewed as critical areas of assistance. the first identified type of aid was career guidance, with the respondent indicating that: ‘… what that means for universities is that there is an imperative need to provide students with aid and advice concerning what they want out of life. one of the simplest ways to do this is to give them career advice.’ (2:15, 36 in prom_cput) this finding compares with the survey results where students were asked if tourism management was their first-choice qualification, revealing interesting data on how some students’ first course choice qualifications included nursing, education, paralegal studies, and policing. career guidance as an intervention mostly actioned in the former years of schooling could be an indication that a gap exists with regard to the knowledge students possess about career choices, even at the university level. the other two forms of aid identified were assistance with study materials such as printing and study books, assistance with data for online connectivity, as well as transport for access to campus: ‘give some services free, such as textbooks, printing, photocopying bites, have transport allowances for the needy students that are off campus but all this in a monitored manner for misuse.’ (3:14, 17 in sipo, cput) ‘i would design a school that have (sic) free transport for everyone and free internet.’ (4:13, 1 in tan, cput) factor 3: tourism curriculum design for aligned blends: the design of the covid-19 response plan for academic institutions revealed a bias towards face-to-face teaching during the lockdowns, preferred to what was considered ‘lab’ subjects, clearly indicating that there were subjects, which could not be taught remotely because of complex requirements, for example, experimentation or development. as a consideration tourism management curriculum designers could consider subjects not suitable for online learning for the qualification when hybrid and/or blended models are put in place at uots: ‘… there are just some modules that we can’t do online. you know, those modules of calculations, we actually got a chance to do financial accounting. as, a module, we have tourism practice, which includes calculation, costing sheets, your accounting equation tables.’ (5:91, 282 in tut focus group interview) students’ learning preferences revealed a more active learning approach, with kinaesthetic learning preferences scoring high for both face-to-face and online live classes, while remote learning practices pointed to a more self-focused, flexible approach, with the converger learning style being predominant. a study by mkonto (2015:219–220) at a south african uot indicated similar results of engineering and health and science students who preferred kinaesthetic in the classroom, while responses pointed to a preference for ‘diverger’ learning as respondents indicated that they conducted research on new content before either attending class or discussing elements they did not understand with peers, similar to findings by graham (2013:18) and smith-labrash (2010:35). conclusion emergency remote teaching policies in responding to disruptions to academic activities in he institutions provided a solid framework in ensuring that teaching and learning for most institutions in sa progressed with a level of success. the challenge that is revealed in the study is that those students who were able to fully participate in online learning were guaranteed success. what was evident from literature and empirical data was that substantial investments were placed at the helm of making the ert project a success, and yielded benefits as widening access for those students who had limited access to resources. another critical outcome is that in preparing for ert, all initiatives were considered from a strategic university level, and not particularly at the teaching and learning level. at the classroom level, interruptions to education provided an opportunity to assess practices that work for students’ academic success at a larger scale. based on the three factors identified, namely, students’ preferences for face-to-face tuition, requirements of support for academic success, and the need for tourism aligned hybrid modelling (curriculum design), students did appear to prefer that hybrid and blended learning be a significant consideration to the designing of a perfect university experience. there was an indication that while flexibility of the approach to teaching was preferred, face-to-face classes should play a crucial role in the blends. respondents also highlighted issues that could hinder access to academic progress, including limitations with transport, internet data, books, and indicated a requirement for continued academic support, such as tutors. the state of readiness for remote learning at the participating institutions, regarding student orientation, academic training, and level of blended and/or hybrid learning in teaching practice could have had an impact on student experiences. the future of hybrid and blended design should be based on a balance of ert initiatives, as well as a learner-focused framework, in order to limit the gap in access and success in he. recommendation for future research a structured design for hybrid and/or blended learning for tourism programmes at uots in sa is required in guiding pedagogic practice. further research on learning preferences in hybrid and blended learning environments is required in the context of sa, to inform most suitable programme delivery designs, in ensuring students’ academic success. future studies could propose a framework of guiding principles for the design of a structured hybrid or blended teaching and learning models, for tourism programmes at uots. the evaluation of impacts on students who were technologically challenged to participate in remote learning could be a recommendation for future research. this aspect was outside the scope of this study; however, it could offer insights into issues of access to remote learning. acknowledgements the authors would like to thank prof. john spencer for his guidance with the larger study that was adopted in the development of this article. competing interests the authors have declared that no competing interest exists. authors’ contributions p.m. completed the empirical study and wrote the manuscript. c.h. advised as co-author on the integrity of the article. funding information funding for the larger study was supported with the department of higher education and training (dhet), university capacity development grant (ucdg: 2021–2023), through the improvement of qualifications programme (iqp). data availability data presented in this study is available on request from the corresponding author. disclaimer the views expressed in the submitted article are of the authors own and not an official position of the institution or funder. participant attrition was a major challenge in the study. the mixed approach in this study improved external validity of the results, although the case-based data may pose a challenge to the generalisability of the results to other settings. references aheto, s.p.k. & cronje, j., 2018, ‘digital device ownership and learning environment preferences of students in south africa and ghana’, turkish online journal of distance education 19(3), 93–111. https://doi.org/10.17718/tojde.445093 akbarzadeh, m. & fatemipour, h, 2014, ‘examining the match or mismatch between teaching style preferences and upper-intermediate efl learners’ learning style preferences’. procedia social and behavioral sciences, 98, 137–142. alkhasawneh, e., 2013, ‘using vark to assess changes in learning preferences of nursing students at a public university in jordan: implications for teaching’, nurse education today 33(12), 1546–1549. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nedt.2012.12.017 anthony, b., kamaludin, a. & romli, a., 2022, ‘blended learning adoption and implementation in higher education: a theoretical and systematic review’, technology, knowledge and learnings 27, 531–578. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10758-020-09477-z barefoot, b.o., 2004, ‘higher education’s revolving door: confronting the problem of student drop out in us colleges and universities’, international journal of phytoremediation 19(1), 9–18. barton, g. & ryan, m., 2014, ‘multimodal approaches to reflective teaching and assessment in higher education’, higher education research and development 33(3), 409–424. https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2013.841650 beldarrain, y., 2006, ‘distance education trends: integrating new technologies to foster student interaction and collaboration’, distance education 27(2), 139–153. bosman, a. & schulze, s., 2018, ‘learning style preferences and mathematics achievement of secondary school learners’, south african journal of education 38(1), 1–8. https://doi.org/10.15700/saje.v38n1a1440 bryan, a. & volchenkova, k., 2016, ‘blended learning: definition, models, implications for higher education’, bulletin of the south ural state university series ‘education. education sciences’ 8(2), 24–30. https://doi.org/10.14529/ped160204 celestino, e. & yamamoto, i., 2020, ‘a framework proposal for blended type discipline creation’, in l. alves, l. junqueira & r. padula (eds.), learning management: an analytical approach for teaching methodologies associated with cognitive skills, pp. 1–17, igi global, hershey, pa. chipchase, l., davidson, m., blackstock, f., bye, r., colthier, p., krupp, n. et al., 2017, ‘conceptualising and measuring student disengagement in higher education: a synthesis of the literature’, international journal of higher education 6(2), 31. https://doi.org/10.5430/ijhe.v6n2p31 cleveland-innes, m. & wilton, d., 2018, guide to blended learning, commonwealth of learning, burnaby. coetzee, j., neneh, b., stemmet, k., lamprecht, j., motsitsi, c. & sereeco, w., 2021, ‘south african universities in a time of increasing disruption’, south african journal of economic and management sciences 24(1), 1–12. https://doi.org/10.4102/sajems.v24i1.3739 costa, c., hammond, m. & younie, s., 2019, ‘theorising technology in education: an introduction’, technology, pedagogy and education 28(4), 395–399. https://doi.org/10.1080/1475939x.2019.1660089. council on higher education (che), 2020, quality assurance guidelines for emergency remote teaching and learning and assessment during the covid-19 pandemic in 2020, pp. 1–29, pretoria, viewed 02 february 2022, from https://heltasa.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/che-quality-assurance-guide.pdf. creswell, j., 2014, research design: qualitative, quantitative and mixed methods approaches, 4th edn., sage publications, thousand oaks, ca. deale, c.s., 2019, ‘learning preferences instead of learning styles: a case study of hospitality management students’ perceptions of how they learn best and implications for teaching and learning’, international journal for the scholarship of teaching and learning 13(2), 1–7. https://doi.org/10.20429/ijsotl.2019.130211 department of health, south africa (doe), 2022, minister joe phaahla: repeal of regulations regarding covid-19 pandemic and monkey-pox, viewed 16 august 2022, from https://www.gov.za/speeches/statement-minister-phaahla-repeal-regulations-covid. department of higher education and training, south africa (dhet, sa), 2020, students’ access to and use of learning materials: survey report 2020, government printers, pretoria. dlamini, s., bayaga, a. & moyo, g., 2021, ‘imperatives of situating teacher and higher education in the context of the fourth inductrial revolution’, in f. maringe (ed.), higher education in the melting pot: emerging discourse of the 4ir and decolonisation, pp. 31–44, aosis publishing, durbanville. felder, r., 1988, ‘learning and teaching styles in engineering education’, engineering education 78(7), 674–681. gilakjani, a., lai, m. & hairul, n.i., 2013, ‘teachers’ use of technology and constructivism’, international journal of modern education and computer science 5(4), 49–63. https://doi.org/10.5815/ijmecs.2013.04.07 gosper, m., mcneill, m., phillips, r., preston, g., woo, k. & green, d., 2010, ‘web-based lecture technologies and learning and teaching: a study of change in four australian universities’, alt-j: research in learning technology 18(3), 251–263. https://doi.org/10.1080/09687769.2010.529111 graham, c.r., 2013, ‘emerging practice and research in blended learning’, in m. moore (ed.), handbook of distance education, pp. 330–350, routledge, new york, ny. harahap, f., nasution, n.e.a. & manurung, b., 2019, ‘the effect of blended learning on student’s learning achievement and science process skills in plant tissue culture course’, international journal of instruction 12(1), 521–538. https://doi.org/10.29333/iji.2019.12134a hawk, t.f. & shah, a.j., 2007, ‘using learning style instruments to enhance student learning’, decision sciences journal of innovative education 5(1), 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-4609.2007.00125.x jugmohan, s., 2010, ‘curriculum responsiveness in tourism programmes’, the journal of independent teaching and learning 5, 34–41. karabulut-ilgu, a., jaramillo cherrez, n. & jahren, c.t., 2018, ‘a systematic review of research on the flipped learning method in engineering education’, british journal of educational technology 49(3), 398–411. kelly, g.e., 2012, ‘lecture attendance rates at university and related factors’, journal of further and higher education 36(1), 17–40. https://doi.org/10.1080/0309877x.2011.596196 kenaphoom, s., 2021, ‘introduction to research philosophy’, journal of anthropological and archaeological sciences 5(4), 657–656. kinlaw, c.r., dunlap, l.l. & d’angelo, j.a., 2012, ‘relations between faculty use of online academic resources and student class attendance’, computers and education 59(2), 167–172. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2011.12.028 kothari, c., 2004, ‘research methodology methods and techniques’, 2nd edn., new age international limited, new delhi. laohajaratsang, t., 2017, ‘a case study of how the technological infrastructure of chiang mai university supports blended learning practices’, in l. ping & l. wang (eds.), blended learning for quality higher education: selected case studies on implementation from asia-pacific, pp. 127–152, viewed 02 february 2022, from https://scholarsbank.uoregon.edu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/1794/3181/ictbook.pdf?sequence=1&isallowed=y. larabi-marie-sainte, s., jan, r., al-matouq, a. & alabduhadi, s., 2021, ‘the impact of timetable on student’s absences and performance’, plos one 16(6), 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0253256 le roux, i. & nagel, l., 2018, ‘seeking the best blend for deep learning in a flipped classroom – viewing student perceptions through the community of inquiry lens’, international journal of educational technology in higher education 15(1), 1–28. https://doi.org/10.1186/s41239-018-0098-x lesiko-sedumo, n., 2010, ‘telepresence teaching: implementation issues in universities and other insitutes of higher learning’, in s. soomro (ed.), new achievements in technology and development, in tech, viewed 21 september 2022, from file:///e:/2019/registered_phd%202019/references/intechweb.pdf. liang, r., 2021, ‘examining the factors of experiential learning and teaching style: a case study of a hospitality and tourism program’, journal of hospitality, leisure, sport and tourism education 29(2), 100332. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhlste.2021.100332 ligami, c., 2022, ‘poor planning for online learning created disparities’, university world news, viewed 05 may 2022, from https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20220125094726824. mail & guardian, 2022, special report: hybrid learning, viewed 29 april 2022, from https://mg.co.za/special-reports/2022-04-29-hybrid-learning/. martin, f. & bolliger, d.u., 2018, ‘engagement matters: student perceptions on the importance of engagement strategies in the online learning environment’, online learning journal 22(1), 205–222. https://doi.org/10.24059/olj.v22i1.1092 massingham, p. & herrington, t., 2006, ‘does attendance matter? an examination of student attitudes, participation, performance and attendance’, journal of university teaching and learning practice 3(2), 20–42. https://doi.org/10.53761/1.3.2.3 mcghie, v., 2012, ‘factors impacting on first-year students’ academic progress at a south african university’, unpublished dissertation, department of curriculum studies, faculty of education, stellenbosch university. mhlanga, d., 2021, ‘the fourth industrial rrevolution and covid-19 pandemic in south africa: the opportunities and challenges of introducing blended learning in education’, journal of african education 2(2), 15–42. https://doi.org/10.31920/2633-2930/2021/v2n2a1 mkonto, n., 2015, ‘students’ learning preferences’, journal of studies in education 5(3), 212–235. mlambo, v., 2011, ‘an analysis of some factors affecting student academic performance in an introductory biochemistry course at the university of the west indies’, caribbean teaching scholar 1(2), 79–92. mosdorf, r., kilon, j. & ignatowska, b., 2010, ‘dynamic analysis of activity of e-learning system users’, in m. buzzi (ed.), e-learning, pp. 79–107, in-tech org, vukovar. moursund, d., 2005, introduction to information and communication technology in education, pp. 1–121, university of oregon, viewed 02 february 2022, from https://scholarsbank.uoregon.edu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/1794/3181/ictbook.pdf?sequence=1&isallowed=y. mpungose, c., 2020, ‘is moodle or whatsapp the preferred e-learning platform at a south african university? first-year students’ experiences’, education and information technologies 25(2), 927–941. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-019-10005-5 mshayisa, v., 2022, ‘students’ perceptions of blended learning and collaborative learning in food science and technology: a case study of cput’, international journal of food studies 11(1), 1–18. https://doi.org/10.7455/ijfs/11.1.2022.a1 murphy, r., gray, s., straja, s. & bogert, m., 2004, ‘student learning preferences and teaching implications’, journal of dental education 68(8), 859–866. https://doi.org/10.1002/j.0022-0337.2004.68.8.tb03835.x naidoo, p. & cartwright, d., 2020, ‘where to from here? contemplating the impact of covid-19 on south african students and student counseling services in higher education’, journal of college student psychotherapy 36(4), 355–369. https://doi.org/10.1080/87568225.2020.1842279 netanda, r.s., mamabolo, j. & themane, m., 2019, ‘do or die: student support interventions for the survival of distance education institutions in a competitive higher education system’, studies in higher education 44(2), 397–414. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2017.1378632 o’callaghan, f.v., neumann, d.l., jones, l. & creed, p.a., 2017, ‘the use of lecture recordings in higher education: a review of institutional, student, and lecturer issues’, education and information technologies 22(1), 399–415. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-015-9451-z ogbuanya, t.c. & efuwape, b.m., 2018, ‘technology-aided learning environment: an investigation into electrical/electronics students’ instructional preferences, attitude and approaches to learning’, south african journal of education, suppl. 38 ser. 2, s1–s16. pechenkina, e. & aeschliman, c., 2020, ‘what do students want? making sense of student preferences in technology-enhanced learning’, contemporary educational technology 8(1), 26–39. https://doi.org/10.30935/cedtech/6185 readlab, 2022, report on the digital readiness and on the use of visual methods in higher education in hungary, uk, greece, italy, sweden and south africa, pp. 1–41, futur (e) ability, viewed 10 june 2022, from https://read-lab.eu/report-on-the-digital-readiness-and-on-the-use-of-visual-methods-in-higher-education-in-hungary-uk-greece-italy-sweden-and-south-africa/. rix, r., 2011, ‘blended learning: perspectives on mixing online and offline communities of enquiry’, e-learning and digital media 8(4), 423–433. robinson, l., behi, o., hons, b.a., corcoran, a., cowley, v., cullinane, j. et al., 2015, ‘evaluation of whatsapp for promoting social presence in a first year undergraduate radiography problem-based learning group’, journal of medical imaging and radiation sciences 46(3), 280–286. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jmir.2015.06.007 saichaie, k., 2020, ‘blended, flipped, and hybrid learning: definitions, developments, and directions’, new directions for teaching and learning 2020(164), 95–104. https://doi.org/10.1002/tl.20428 saidi, r.m., sharip, a.a., abd rahim, n.z., zulkifli, z.a. & md zain, s.m., 2021, ‘evaluating students’ preferences of open and distance learning (odl) tools’, procedia computer science 179(4), 955–961. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.procs.2021.01.085 smith-labrash, s. 2010. ‘influence of learning styles, gender, self-rated computer experience, and age on preference for computer assisted learning versus traditional learning’, published master’s theses, student works, northern michigan university, east lansing. staunton, c., swanepoel, c. & labuschaigne, m., 2020, ‘between a rock and a hard place: covid-19 and south africa’s response’, journal of law and the biosciences 7(1), 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1093/jlb/lsaa052 swartz, b.c., gachago, d. & belford, c., 2018, ‘to care or not to care – reflections on the ethics of blended learning in times of disruption’, south african journal of higher education 32(6), 49–64. https://doi.org/10.20853/32-6-2659 tan, d., 2017, ‘leading and supporting blended learning: a case study of the center forexcellence for learning and teaching at nanyamg technological univiersity’, in l. ping & l. wang (eds.), blended learning for quality higher education: selected case studies on implementation from asia-pacific, pp. 154–186, united nations educational, scientific and cultural organisation (unesco), bankok. tekane, r., pilcher, l.a. & potgieter, m., 2020, ‘blended learning in a second year organic chemistry class: students’ perceptions and preferences of the learning support’, chemistry education research and practice 21(1), 24–36. https://doi.org/10.1039/c9rp00099b the community of inquiry, n.d., about the framework: an introduction to the community of inquiry, athahasca university, viewed 06 may 2022, from http://www.thecommunityofinquiry.org/coi. tseng, h. & walsh, e., 2016, ‘blended versus traditional course delivery: comparing students’ motivation, learning outcomes, and preferences’, quarterly review of distance education 17(1), 43–52. twesige, d., gasheja, f., isae misago, k. & muvunyi, e., 2021, ‘covid-19’s impact on the student learning process in rwandan higher education institutions’, international journal of african higher education 8(3), 144–160. https://doi.org/10.6017/ijahe.v8i3.14167 van zyl, a., 2017, the first year experience in higher education in south africa: a good practices guide, the fundani centre for higher education and training, cape peninsula university of technology, cape town, viewed 16 may 2022, from https://heltasa.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/tdg-fye-good-practices-guide-24-5-5-17-final-2.pdf. van zyl, e., venter, t. & bruwer, j.p., 2021, ‘the catalysed use of fourth industrial revolution interventions in south african higher education institutions, due to covid-19, and its influenceson efficacy’, expert journal of business and management 9(1), 64–73. vaughan, n.d., 2010, ‘a blended community of inquiry approach: linking student engagement and course redesign’, the internet and higher education 13(1–2), 60–65. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.iheduc.2009.10.007. visser, h. & van zyl, d., 2016, ‘assessment of academic readiness to achieve student success and retention’, south african journal of higher education 27(2), 330–352. https://doi.org/10.20853/27-2-249 wadesango, n. & machingambi, s., 2011, ‘causes and structural effects of student absenteeism: a case study of three south african universities’, journal of social sciences, 26(2), 89–97. watson, j., 2008, blended learning: the convergence of online and face-to-face education, north american council of online learning (nacol), tallahasse, fl. west, d., 2013, mobile learning transforming education – engaging, pp. 1–17, center for technology innovation, brookings, sd. widaningrum, d.l. & ho, h.c., 2015, ‘felder-silverman learning style model and the relationship with academic performance’, anima indonesian psychological journal 30(2), 88–100. wilson-strydom, m., 2012, ‘a framework for facilitating the transition from school to university in south africa: a capabilities approach’, unpublished doctoral thesis, school of higher education studies, faculty of education, university of the free state, bloemfontein. world health organisation (who), 2020, a second covid-19 case is confirmed in africa, world health organisation, viewed 03 february 2022, from https://www.afro.who.int/news/second-covid-19-case-confirmed-africa. http://thejournal.org.za open access page 1 of 1 reviewer acknowledgement the editorial team of transformation in higher education recognises the value and importance of the peer reviewer in the overall publication process – not only in shaping the individual manuscript, but also in shaping the credibility and reputation of our journal. we are committed to the timely publication of all original, innovative contributions submitted for publication. as such, the identification and selection of reviewers who have expertise and interest in the topics appropriate to each manuscript are essential elements in ensuring a timely, productive peer review process. we would like to take this opportunity to thank all reviewers who participated in shaping this volume of transformation in higher education. we appreciate the time taken to perform your review(s) successfully. in an effort to facilitate the selection of appropriate peer reviewers for transformation in higher education, we ask that you take a moment to update your electronic portfolio on https:// thejournal.org.za for our files, allowing us better access to your areas of interest and expertise, in order to match reviewers with submitted manuscripts. if you would like to become a reviewer, please visit the journal website and register as a reviewer. to access your details on the website, you will need to follow these steps: 1. log into the online journal at https:// thejournal. org.za 2. in your ‘user home’ [https://thejournal.org.za/ index.php/the/user] select ‘edit my profile’ under the heading ‘my account’ and insert all relevant details, bio statement and reviewing interest(s). 3. it is good practice as a reviewer to update your personal details regularly to ensure contact with you throughout your professional term as reviewer to transformation in higher education. please do not hesitate to contact us if you require assistance in performing this task. publisher: publishing@aosis.co.za tel: +27 21 975 2602 tel: 086 1000 381 anne becker anja visser anné h. verhoef anthony brown berte van wyk charmaine williamson christo lombaard donnavan j.d. kruger ida sabelis janet jarvis jean du toit jessica pool m. john lamola liam gearon louise postma moeketsi e. dlamini petro du preez pierre de villiers rose munisi shan simmonds thomas schlag acknowledgement to reviewers http://thejournal.org.za https://thejournal.org.za https://thejournal.org.za https://thejournal.org.za https://thejournal.org.za https://thejournal.org.za/index.php/the/user https://thejournal.org.za/index.php/the/user mailto:publishing@aosis.co.za abstract transform transformation in higher education meta-study research transformation through curriculum transformation through structures transformation through redressing equity transformation through access community engagement teaching-learning policy imperatives conclusion acknowledgements references about the author(s) petro du preez faculty of education, school for education studies, north-west university, potchefstroom campus, south africa shan simmonds faculty of education, school for education studies, north-west university, potchefstroom campus, south africa anné h. verhoef faculty of arts, north-west university, potchefstroom campus, south africa citation du preez, p., simmonds, s. & verhoef, a.h., 2016, ‘rethinking and researching transformation in higher education: a meta-study of south african trends’, transformation in higher education 1(1), a2. http://dx.doi.org/10.4102/the.v1i1.2 original research rethinking and researching transformation in higher education: a meta-study of south african trends petro du preez, shan simmonds, anné h. verhoef received: 07 may 2016; accepted: 29 aug. 2016; published: 29 sept. 2016 copyright: © 2016. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract transformation is often loosely defined. we argue that the reason for this is its inherent complexity. paradoxically, its lack of definition is an asset, which provides an opportunity to rethink and research transformation in higher education, rather than an urgent problem to be solved. in this article, the possibilities for researching and rethinking transformation are based on an exploration of transformation in higher education and the policy directives that influenced its development in south africa. a meta-study was used to determine the national publishing trends in the south african journal of higher education and the way transformation in higher education is situated in some of the articles in this journal. the population of the study comprised 1050 articles published between 2005 and 2015 in the south african journal of higher education. these were analysed to determine the broad national publishing trends. thereafter, an in-depth analysis was conducted on 30 of these articles to determine the approach to transformation in higher education and the context in which it was discussed. based on the findings of the analysis, we recommend future directions for rethinking and researching transformation in higher education. transform transformation is often described as a complex, open-ended concept (venter & tolmie 2012:1) and even dismissed as ‘so vague and indistinct that it is basically an unusable term’ (venter 2015:175). the etymology of the word is derived from the old french or late latin transformation (noun). its root is the latin verb transformare. the prefix trans meaning ‘across’, ‘beyond’, ‘above’, or ‘bridging’ is combined with formare meaning ‘to form’. in the 1590s, the concept of transformation was used to mean ‘undergoing a change in form’. to transform is thus to cause or undergo a change in form, nature, or appearance. transformation can refer to processes of change in physics (a change of one element into another), mathematics (conversion of one figure into another of a similar value), linguistics (conversion of one syntactic form into another), biology (alteration of a cell), personality (change in character or appearance) and politics (ideologically driven change). the greek term for transformation, metaschimatismos, emphasises a change in form, but includes the idea of ‘remodelling, modification, and restructuring’. the noun ‘transformation’ is indeed complex and open-ended, but its core meaning is ‘to undergo and/or cause a change of form’. the concept ‘transform’ is essentially about change and evolution. it cannot be associated with rigidity because it implies constant remodelling, modification and restructuring of some sort. this adaptation could be an internal or an external process (malabou 2008:5). when something is transformed, it could imply that it received (and internalised) its form from an outside force. however, to transform means that form is given to something external. but, crossing or bridging form through change and evolution could also be the result of the annihilation of form, that is, the destruction of form (malabou 2008:5). malabou (2012) writes that: [n]o one thinks spontaneously about a plastic art of destruction. yet destruction too is formative. a smashed-up face is still a face, a stump a limb, a traumatized psyche remains a psyche. destruction has its own sculpting tools. (p. 4) this destruction that makes crossing or bridging form possible could be seen as ‘… a threatening detour that opens up another pathway, one that is unexpected, unpredictable, dark’ (malabou 2012:6). the concept ‘transform’, therefore, with its inherent ability to take form, give form and annihilate form presents infinite possibilities for crossing or bridging form (malabou 2012:10). seen in this way, the concept ‘transform’ is therefore not the result of external forces but is, in fact, programmed by the concept (transform) itself. in other words, the fuzziness of ‘transform’ reflects the inherent complexity of the concept. rather than regarding the elusiveness of a definition as an urgent problem to be solved, it should be seen as providing a catalyst for rethinking and researching transformation in higher education. transformation in higher education a brief review of the literature on the history of the transformation of higher education in south africa indicates that attempts to understand or research this notion can be categorised into three main discourses. the first is the structural discourse which is concerned with the transition to a democratic society. the issue of equality and efficiency of the higher education system is primary in this view of transformation. the education white paper 3 of 1997 is the main impetus for this type of transformation. the second discourse is related to ideology. this involves broader and deeper understanding of transformation which developed mainly as a result of the 2008 report of the department of higher education. this report is based on the work of the ministerial committee on transformation and social cohesion and the elimination of discrimination in public higher education institutions (mcthe). the third discourse on understanding and researching transformation is more comprehensive than the south african primary (and sometimes limited) discourse on transformation as redress of inequality (structural) and reaction to racism after apartheid (ideological). this third discourse includes various aspects concerned with transformation in south africa (e.g. epistemology, curriculum, accessibility, equality, institutional and management structures, teaching and learning); however, it emphasises that transformation of higher education in south africa has to be seen in the context of internationalisation. internationalisation provokes a wide range of insights to transformation and remains an enormous factor to recognise in the ongoing debate on transformation of higher education in south africa. the decision to include internationalisation as a key factor in transformation in higher education should not be seen as dismissing the importance of giving due account to the unique focus and history of transformation in south africa. as fourie (1999:275) argues, the phenomenon of global transformation of higher education is ‘an undeniable fact’. south africa has to take account of ‘the rapid transformation [higher education has undergone] throughout the world … and [the likelihood that it is] in a period of unprecedented change’ (green & hayward 1997:3). similarly, hagstrom and steen (1995:15) argue that the world is going through such major changes that we may be talking about a ‘new epoch’. south africa is inevitably affected by global economic, political, intellectual, technological and religious developments. the emergence of what is sometimes termed ‘the new knowledge society’ calls for a re-evaluation of the university system. for venter (2015:176), the implication is that ‘[k]nowledge transmission and production should be pursued in dialogue with [these] global contexts’. in brief, internationalisation is not only the broader context of higher education but also one of the directions that transformation of higher education must take. the unique history of transformation in higher education in south africa is pinpointed by venter (2015:176): ‘in south africa’s higher education, transformation has a clear primary reference: apartheid’. before 1994, there had been demands for internal change in south african higher education, particularly by student organisations such as the south african students congress (sasco), the pan-african students’ organisation (paso) and from staff associations such as the union of democratic university staff association (udusa) (fourie 1999:278). however, it was only after south africa’s formal transition to democracy in 1994 that there was real impetus for change to a more open, relevant and non-discriminating higher education system. two key policy documents were the education white paper 3 (south africa, department of education 1997) and the national plan for higher education (south africa, department of education 2001). the latter outlined the framework and mechanisms for implementing and realising the policy and goals of the white paper. the white paper (south africa, department of education 1997:2) states that transformation of the higher education system should ‘reflect the changes that are taking place in our society’. these changes can be summarised as the attempt to redress inequalities of the past as follows: accordingly, [t]he higher education system must be transformed to redress past inequalities, to serve a new social order, to meet pressing national needs and to respond to new realities and opportunities’ and ‘the framework for change, that is, the higher education system must be planned, governed and funded as a single national co-ordinated system. this will enable us to overcome the fragmentation, inequality and inefficiency which are the legacy of the past … (south africa, department of education 1997:2) transformation of higher education is seen as ‘part of the broader process of south africa’s political, social and economic transition, which includes political democratisation, economic reconstruction and development, and redistributive social policies aimed at equity’ and ‘a necessity, not an option’, in the south african context (south africa, department of education 1997:29). although there was a proper emphasis on equality, efficiency and structural changes in the white paper, the transformation related to racism was not addressed until the 2008 mcthe report. the mcthe was set up after a racist incident at the university of the free state (the so-called reitz-sage). its report differs from the white paper in that it does not limit attention to transformation in higher education to narrow ‘institutional compliance’ (structural, efficiency and equality), but broadens transformation to address all aspects of university life. according to francis and hemson (2010:876), one ‘implication is that we need research that explores discrimination with a view to interrogating the whole system of higher education’. the mcthe report (south africa, department of education 2008:11) clearly says: ‘… the transformation agenda includes the necessity to examine the underlying assumptions and practices that underpin the academic and intellectual projects pertaining to learning, teaching and research’. the definition of transformation of higher education in the south african context was largely framed by these two reports. the white paper (1997) emphasised transformation of higher education in terms of sociological relationships, structural changes, efficiency, mergers of institutions, the forming of one national higher education system and institutional compliance in terms of redressing inequality (accessibility, equality of race and gender, demographical representation of staff and students of society). this kind of transformation can be summarised as ‘structural transformation’ (soudien 2010:882). examples of research in this regard include fourie’s (1999), ‘institutional transformation at south african universities: implications for academic staff’, bitzer and bezuidenhout’s (2001), ‘transformation’ as a problematic concept in the realm of higher education in south africa’, waghid’s (2002) ‘knowledge production and higher education transformation in south africa: towards reflexivity in university teaching, research and community service’, and van wyk’s (2005) ‘performativity in higher education transformation in south africa’. fourie (1999) focuses particularly on institutional transformation through democratising the governance structures of institutions and the implications of the process for academic staff. her article also addresses broader aspects of transformation (e.g. internationalisation) and seeks a deeper understanding of transformation that will be discussed later. bitzer and bezuidenhout (2001:39) emphasise that transformation should be seen as ‘the opportunity to realise the vision of quality education for all who are capable thereof at our institutions’. waghid (2002:457) asks how ‘the emergent shift in knowledge production can transform higher education in south africa to the extent that it becomes socially more relevant’ and emphasises the importance of community service by universities. transformation is not understood here as a goal in itself, but to improve and create a more just and more equitable society (waghid 2002:458). van wyk (2005) warns of the likely sham that could result if ‘structural transformation’ is reduced to its narrow sense (e.g. performativity or efficiency). he argues for ‘deep transformation’, which takes into account african notions of ubuntu and community, such as forgiveness, recognition, humanness, respect and politeness (van wyk 2005:17). this emphasis on human dignity is closely linked to the second discourse, and broader and deeper understanding of transformation of higher education. the mcthe report (2008) marks a shift from research on structural transformation to a broader ideological discourse of transformation. soudien (2010:876) states that this ideological discourse addresses beliefs and assumptions about transformation of higher education. this discourse explores discrimination and racism in great detail. transformation of higher education includes the following issues: epistemological change; discrimination and exclusions in terms of religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation, class and language; africanisation or decolonisation of the curriculum; beliefs, attitudes, values and commitments of the whole system; power; diversity; and intellectual justice. the shift to this ideological discourse on transformation of higher education is evident in research such as the collection of essays compiled by venter and tolmie, ‘transforming theological knowledge: essay on theology and the university after apartheid’ (2012), and in the special issue on transformation in the south african journal of higher education (2010). in venter and tolmie’s (2012:2) book, various authors grapple with epistemological transformation and argue that ‘deep conversations about the nature purpose and politics of transformation have been neglected’. the south african journal of higher education’s special issue examines the underlying assumptions and practices which underpin higher education in south africa (francis & hemson 2010:875). soudien, for example, argues that ‘racism continues to be deeply present within the system, structurally and ideologically’ (2010:893) and that universities ‘harbour, nurture and reproduce particular notions of society, the institution, the self and the other’ (2010:890). to develop a deep understanding of the ideological phenomenon of racism in higher education – which is malleable and fluid – is part of the nature and challenge of transformation of higher education. taking account of the three main discourses that scholars employ in engaging with transformation in higher education, this article asks the following question: ‘what are the possible future directions of rethinking and researching transformation in higher education?’ next, how the empirical research unfolded is discussed. meta-study research there has been an increasing trend towards meta-designs (e.g. meta-analysis, meta-sociology, meta-ethnography, meta-synthesis and meta-studies) in social sciences since the 1970s. in the health sciences, meta-designs have been widely used to incorporate the wide array of knowledge developed through research and thus strengthen the validity and reliability needed for trustworthy, practical application (paterson et al. 2001; pope, mays & popay 2007). the rise of the knowledge economy too has created a need for research to be synthesised and packaged in less relativist ways so that more trustworthy generalisations can be made (pope et al. 2007:3). the criticism that researchers constantly reinvent the wheel when conducting research instead of capitalising on existing research has highlighted the need for meta-designs (paterson et al. 2001:4). more recently, education research has also acknowledged the value of meta-study research (du preez & simmonds 2014; simmonds & du preez 2014). paterson et al. (2001:1) define a meta-study as ‘a research approach involving analysis of the theory, methods, and findings of qualitative research and the synthesis of these insights into new ways of thinking about phenomena’. a meta-study is dynamic, iterative and can engage with diverse evidence types and therefore requires tailored methods and approaches based on the review questions posed (dixon-woods et al. 2005:49; pope et al. 2007:12). although meta-studies will differ from each other, an important starting point for designing and conducting a meta-study includes the following questions (paterson et al. 2001; pope et al. 2007): what is the purpose of the meta-study? is it to contribute to knowledge development in the field, or for policy decision-making processes? is it to synthesise findings, or to determine trends in a particular cluster of studies? what needs to be analysed and synthesised through the meta-study, and why? is it the topics, theories, methods and findings? what is anticipated through the meta-study? the purpose of our meta-study was to contribute to knowledge development by identifying trends in the articles published in the journal, south african journal of higher education. this journal’s aim is to provide institutions of higher education and professional readers with scholarly information on major innovations in higher education, research projects and trends. we were not interested in aggregating the actual findings in the articles or in comparing the articles (pope et al. 2007:16). in this sense, we were concerned with interpreting these articles within the context of our two review questions (pope et al. 2007:17): (1) what are the national publishing trends in the south african journal of higher education? (2) based on a refined selection of articles published in the south african journal of higher education, how and in what contexts is transformation in higher education discussed? drawing on the groundwork laid by paterson et al. (2001) and pope et al. (2007), we developed our own process of conducting meta-studies. figure 1 schematically represents this process. figure 1: a schematic representation of the critical meta-study process. level 1: design and organisation our meta-study began with formulating the two exploratory review questions stated above to enable us to take account of all the complicated dimensions of the problem. we then developed working procedures to establish initial inclusion and exclusion criteria so that sampling could be done and the corpus of documents (articles) could be selected. this is extremely important for the reliability and trustworthiness of inferences made towards the end of a meta-study (pope et al. 2007). these particular articles were the focus because they were published by the south african journal of higher education between 2005 and 2015 and provide an indication of the national publishing trends in higher education over the past 11 years. the south african journal of higher education’s website, which we accessed via the sabinet data base on our university library website, was used as sample frame to retrieve the articles. a population of n = 1050 articles in portable document format (pdf) format (excluding tributes, calls for papers and certain editorials) was analysed. level 2: identifying national publishing trends in higher education a descriptive analysis was performed of the entire population of articles (n = 1050). this involved analysing the titles and abstracts of each article to determine the higher education topic put forward. initially, articles were categorised into the three broad strategic priorities subscribed to by most south african higher education institutions: teaching-learning, research and community engagement. however, because of the scope of topics covered by the articles, three additional categories emerged: higher education as context, vocational education and miscellaneous (outside the higher education context). table 1 demonstrates these trends and their subtrends. table 1: a breakdown of the population and emerging trends. from the findings, it is evident that national publishing trends in higher education from most to least prominent are higher education as context, teaching-learning, research, miscellaneous (outside the higher education context), community engagement and vocational education. level 3: analysing the national publishing trend – transformation in higher education level 3 required further refinement of criteria used to include or exclude articles that explicitly used the word ‘transformation’ in their title. of the population (n = 1050), a sample of n = 30 articles (3%) used ‘transformation’, ‘transformational’, ‘transformative’ or ‘transforming’ in their titles. this sample (3%) featured as a subtrend in higher education as context in level 2. in-depth analysis of the discourse of the entire articles in this sample was undertaken to determine precisely how and in what contexts transformation in higher education was discussed. four main patterns emerged in the findings: transformation through curriculum, transformation through structures, transformation through redressing equity and transformation through access. transformation through curriculum in the sample, 12 articles positioned transformation in the higher education curriculum. in this instance, curriculum pertained to teaching-learning dimensions such as learning theories, teaching strategies, teaching-learning quality measures, as well as the integration of technology. the articles in this pattern also engaged with curriculum in reform in the sense that a curriculum is flexible and constantly evolving in the higher education landscape. aspects such as the professional development of academics and student experiences were also discoursed as key ways in which curricular reforms are received or challenged. in addition, particular programmes, such as teacher education, were used to argue for transformation through curriculum. transformation through structures nine of the articles in the sample, the next biggest group, related transformation to structures in higher education. in these articles, there were three key aspects. the first aspect concerned ideas, practices and the role of structure in nation-building. the second aspect pertained to broader national trends such as higher education policy evaluation and reform, as well as the government policies and legislation on transformation that inform and shape the higher education landscape in south africa. the third aspect is related to the structures within institutions that influence transformation. these structures are institutional culture underpinned by hegemonic forces shaping institutional transformation (with whom, for whom and by whom), the management and leadership of an institution as sceptics or advocates for transformation, transformation emanating from institutional mergers and the effects of academic staff performativity. transformation through redressing equity six of the articles in the sample viewed transformation as redressing equity in higher education and discussed the way national equity debates inform it. the notion of equity in terms of race featured most strongly. race as a national priority in government policy, the critical engagement of the concept ‘race’ and how these arguments could inform institutional transformation as well as reimagining future academic institutions, featured. these articles viewed equity redress as embedded in race, gender and class. these articles referred specifically to the inclusion and exclusion of academic staff within institutions, including recruitment policies. transformation was thus viewed as occurring through employment equity, the reconfiguration of power structures and alternative ways of conceptualising the diversity profiles of the staff of an institution. transformation through access three of the articles, the smallest group in the sample, argued that access is a prerequisite for successful transformation in higher education. framed as access for success or access to enable the transformation agenda, these articles contend that access is shaped by contextual and personal forces. in these arguments, specific reference was made to the access of black women academics as well as the access of students who are underprepared for tertiary education. these students bring with them linguistic barriers and literacy challenges (reading and writing). the patterns that emerged from the level 3 in-depth analysis can be regarded as four faces or dimensions of transformation in higher education. these served as critical points for theoretical engagement aimed at identifying possible future directions for rethinking and researching transformation in higher education should take. level 4: patterns emerging from levels 2 and 3 analysis in the following, we discuss three main patterns that emerged from levels 2 and 3 analysis: community engagement, teaching-learning and policy imperatives. community engagement a small minority of 20 published articles concerned themselves with community engagement as a national priority (level 2). it should be noted that community engagement did not feature at all in the analysis of published articles on transformation in higher education (level 3). this was a significant finding given the emphasis community engagement enjoys, along with teaching-learning and research, in higher education (south africa, department of education 1997). overall, the main findings indicate that the emphasis falls on teaching-learning. teaching-learning the subtrend technology featured prominently (48 published articles) in the national trend in teaching-learning. the subtrend that featured least well included articles published on teaching-learning support materials (five articles). the reason for this could be the shift in higher education institutions’ visions towards elearning platforms and including approaches such as self-directed learning and blended learning technology in teaching-learning. policy imperatives many of the findings were related to policy matters. this could directly and indirectly be linked to the initial policy changes suggested through the white paper of 1997, followed by the report of the mcthe of 2008. policy changes that concerned curriculum and programme matters, access for success as well as institutional culture and management featured strongly. these are elaborated here. sixty-three articles dealt with issues related to curriculum and programme matters. this could be understood in light of the education white paper of 1997 that proposed ongoing national curriculum and programme audits for accreditation purposes be conducted in higher education institutions. this led to a greater interest in research on curriculum and programme issues. the focus on epistemological transformation proposed in the report of the mcthe (2008) encouraged research on curriculum epistemology. these developments also included a shift towards research about the epistemological access through curricula in terms of africanisation and indigenous african knowledge systems. another pertinent finding relates to access for success. the access for success pattern broadened access from a focus on providing admission to higher education institutions to a focus on redressing inequality. access for success focuses not merely on giving students access to institutions and providing opportunities for staff, but also on offering support in all aspects of academia to increase the possibility of success. it is therefore no surprise that 50 articles were published on matters related to academic success, performance and failure and 15 articles focused on (black) women academics. equity of race, gender and class frequently featured in articles that elaborated on issues pertaining to redress. this was done not only in the context of structural transformation, which often focuses on providing access for the previously disadvantaged, especially in the context of ideological transformation. the 1997 white paper and the 2008 mcthe report recommended an increase in the number of postgraduate degrees (particularly that a greater percentage of academic staff members hold a doctoral degree). we found 89 articles that addressed the topic of postgraduate studies. a further policy imperative was transformation of institutional culture and management approaches. this is closely related to the 1997 white paper that urged structural change in the culture and management styles of higher education institutions so that they too could become part of the broader process of political, social and economic transition in south africa. seventy-three articles provided evidence of the constant emphasis on institutional culture and management approaches in higher education contexts. based on the patterns that emerged from levels 2 and 3 analyses, it became evident that the national publishing trends gave close attention to the structural and ideological dimensions shaping transformation. however, greater attention needs to be given to what this article has termed the third discourse shaping transformation, nationally and internationally. conclusion future directions the articles on transformation published in the south african journal of higher education mainly reflect national policy trends. this has been demonstrated when we identified national publishing trends in higher education (level 2) and when we analysed the national publishing trends concerning transformation in higher education (level 3). what we deem crucial for future research in higher education are the following: firstly, we recommend greater attention be given to the internationalisation debates informing the higher education context in order to broaden the discourse on transformation and encourage the rethinking thereof. the meta-study revealed that little research has been conducted about the internationalisation discourse in the south african context, despite the fact that our literature review gives evidence of the increasing attention placed on internationalisation discourses and transformation in higher education internationally. secondly, scholarship on rethinking and researching transformation in higher education should extend beyond education. at present, articles published in the south african journal of higher education emanate almost exclusively from the field of education, despite the fact that the journal’s scope calls for interdisciplinary contributions. this finding is probably the result of the fact that the journal has historically been classified in the education realm. finally, transformation could be approached as a fluid, open-ended construct that is inherently complex. this complexity should be embraced when rethinking and researching transformation in higher education. one way in which this fluidity, open-endedness and inherent complexity could be conceptualised is by researching and rethinking the dynamic internal and external forces that lead to higher education receiving form, giving form and annihilating form (malabou 2008; 2012). such research might elicit divergent outcomes and shed light on whether the fluid, open-ended nature of transformation is in fact positive or detrimental to higher education. with these initial ideas in mind, we anticipate that future research about transformation in higher education will pursue some of the findings and shortcomings identified in this article. acknowledgements competing interests the authors declare that they have no financial or personal relationships which may have inappropriately influenced them in writing this article. authors’ contributions p.d.p., s.s. and a.h.v. contributed equally to the research and writing of this article. references bitzer, e.m. & bezuidenhout, s.m., 2001, ‘“transformation” as a problematic concept in the realm of higher education in south africa’, journal for humanities 41(1), 33–40. dixon-woods, m., agarwal, s., jones, d., young, b. & sutton, a., 2005, ‘synthesising qualitative and quantitative evidence: a review of possible methods’, journal of health services research & policy 10(1), 45–53. http://dx.doi.org/10.1258/1355819052801804 du preez, p. & simmonds, s., 2014, ‘curriculum, curriculum development, curriculum studies? problematising theoretical ambiguities in doctoral theses in the education field’, south african journal of education 34(2), 1–14. http://dx.doi.org/10.15700/201412071140 fourie, m., 1999, ‘institutional transformation at south african universities: implications for academic staff’, higher education 38, 275–290. http://dx.doi.org/10.1023/a:1003768229291 francis, d. & hemson, c., 2010, ‘initiating debate: south african journal of higher education issue on transformation’, south african journal of higher education 24(6), 875–880. green, m.f. & hayward, f.m., 1997, transforming higher education: views from leaders around the world, phoenix, oryx press. hagstrom, s. & steen, a., 1995, ‘the changing role of the university’, keynote speech presented at the joint colloquium on the university in africa in the 1990s and beyond, national university of lesotho, roma, lesotho, january 16–20, 1995, viewed from https://searchworks.stanford.edu/view/5093509 malabou, c., 2008, what should we do with our brain?, fordham university press, new york. malabou, c., 2012, the ontology of the accident: an essay on destructive plasticity, polity press, cambridge. paterson, b., thorne, s., canam, c. & jillings, c., 2001, meta-study of qualitative health research: a practical guide to meta-analysis and meta-synthesis, sage, thousand oaks, ca. pope, c., mays, n. & popay, j., 2007, synthesizing qualitative and quantitative health evidence: a guide to methods, open university press, maidenhead. simmonds, s. & du preez, p., 2014, ‘the centrality of the research question for locating phd studies in the global knowledge society’, south african journal of higher education 28(5), 1606–1623. soudien, c., 2010, ‘grasping the nettle? south african higher education and its transformative imperatives’, south african journal of higher education 24(5), 881–896. south africa, department of education, 1997, education white paper 3: a programme for the transformation of higher education, government gazette, vol. 390, no. 18515, government printers, pretoria. south africa, department of education, 2001, national plan for higher education (nphe), department of education, pretoria. south africa, department of education, 2008, the report of the ministerial committee into transformation in higher education (mcthe), department of education, pretoria. van wyk, b., 2005, ‘performativity in higher education transformation in south africa’, south african journal of higher education 19(1), 5–19. venter, r., 2015, ‘transformation, theology and the public university in south africa’, acta theologica 35(2), 173–203. venter, r. & tolmie, f., 2012, transforming theological knowledge: essay on theology and the university after apartheid, sun press, bloemfontein. waghid, y., 2002, ‘knowledge production and higher education transformation in south africa: towards reflexivity in university teaching, research and community service’, higher education 43, 457–488. http://dx.doi.org/10.1023/a:1015211718131 abstract introduction problem statement theoretical framework methodological design discussion on research findings recommendations conclusion acknowledgements references about the author(s) anthony t. sibiya centre for integrated post school education, nelson mandela university, south africa nceba nyembezi hiv & aids research unit, nelson mandela university, south africa citation sibiya, a.t. & nyembezi, n., 2018, ‘examining factors that shape technical vocational education and training engineering students’ understanding of their career choices’, transformation in higher education 3(0), a33. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v3i0.33 original research examining factors that shape technical vocational education and training engineering students’ understanding of their career choices anthony t. sibiya, nceba nyembezi received: 20 nov. 2017; accepted: 12 june 2018; published: 07 aug. 2018 copyright: © 2018. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract background: this article seeks to examine factors that shape technical vocational education and training (tvet) engineering students’ understanding of their future career choices. moreover, given the promising and ambitious vision for growth in both tvet and higher education institutions (heis), as envisaged by the policy framework, white paper on post school education and training (pset) aimed at addressing the challenges, amongst others, of youth unemployment. objectives: the objective of this article is to ascertain factors that inform students’ understanding of their future career prospects. methods: in this research, qualitative self-administered, open-ended questionnaires were employed as a data collection tool to gather facts about students’ beliefs, feelings and experiences regarding certain engineering programmes and services offered at tvet colleges. consequently, purposive sampling was utilised to sample 113 engineering participants who voluntarily completed the questionnaires, which were organised to gather the required data. results: the findings of the study point to divergent views, where some students felt very strongly that tvet engineering qualification leads to full employment because of the demand for this skill, while other students argued that the high rate of unemployment in south africa is so deep such that even graduates irrespective of qualification are not guaranteed employment in south africa. conclusion: consequently, the researchers believe that the tvet’s learning programmes should be repositioned to articulate as a poor response to poor schooling in relation to labour market, amongst others, to ease school leavers into jobs or self-employment under conditions of widespread youth unemployment. introduction south africa currently is grappling with serious socio-economic challenges of poverty, inequality and high rates of unemployment. this is in the context of the recently reported 2.8 million of the 6.8 million 18–24-year olds in south africa who are classified as ‘not in education, employment or training’ (hereafter neet) (department of higher education and training 2012). young people in general, particularly graduates, are therefore increasingly without work in south africa, and the researcher argues that it appears to be no guarantee of employment after gaining a qualification, even for those with qualifications within the scarce skills categories of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (stem). consequently, the research was conducted to examine the technical and vocational education and training (tvet) engineering students’ understanding of their future career prospects. it concerned the researcher that the problem of unemployment amongst the youth was growing unabated and besides being a subject of many vigorous debates in south africa. again, the statistics of south africa (2016) affirmed the issue of unemployment when released a quarterly report stating that unemployment in the country was 26.7%, and the report came after the lager national skills development strategy iii was identified and emphasised as a key educational and skills development response in solving unemployment crisis facing the youth for instance. in the discourse on skills and unemployment, young people are being blamed for their unemployment; an article by sharp (2012) is a case in point, where he argues that the central description in this regard is that young people are simply making poor career choices and therefore are responsible for their inability to access gainful employment. again, bhorat (2012) concurs and further argues that young people find it hard to access the world of work to secure work-based skills and experience, and government policy intervention such as youth wage subsidy is not much of assistance. problem statement the problem of youth and graduate unemployment has been identified in various research reports including the national treasury report (2011), which suggest that there were about 3 million unemployed youth in south africa. this report corresponds with the dhet report on youth unemployment cited above and adds that more than 600 000 graduates with post-matric qualifications were unemployed (bhorat 2012). as the researcher argued above, the frequent narrative is that young people, because of their poor career choices, are partly responsible for their unemployment status, and because of their laziness in some instances, some educational pundits blame the inadequate career exhibitions as the reason why young people often choose careers that lack industry relevance (bhorat 2012). in this instance, baatjes, baduza and sibiya (2014) argue that the problem of youth unemployment is framed within competing discourses of a skills crisis versus a job crisis. they argue that many scholars have perceived the skills mismatch and lack of graduate preparedness as the dominant discourse, which also links poor choices made by students to unemployment. yet, at the same time, young people and students, in particular, are falling into the gaps, facing long-term (if not permanent) unemployment. consequently, as baatjes et al. explains, tvet sector faces the largest deficit and requires the greatest intervention. the department of higher education through the white paper for post school education and training (pset 2014) aims to expand the tvet sector in terms of enrolment and further ensures that seta plays a facilitating role to ensure greater partnership and collaboration between tvets and industries. this is a response to the growing needs of vocational skills; thus, unemployment facing the country explains the department. however, baatjes et al. (2014) argue that the escalating interest in vocational education has mainly been driven, amongst others, by the marginal status of vocational training, and in the last decade, the importance of vocational education has come into sharper focus because of radical changes in the global economic system. as such, changes have been combined with rapid scientific and technological innovation and transfer, which are premised on the demand for new ways of preparing young people for the labour market (baatjes et al. 2014). they further contend that the role of vocational education has been regarded as a primary source in increasing the supply side of human capital for the economy, as well as addressing the increasing unemployment amongst the youth. having explained the problem, the question that lingers in the researchers is: to what extent, if any, do tvet college engineering students believe they will be employable after completing their engineering qualifications, considering high rates of unemployment in south africa? research sub-question: what are the factors that shape students’ career choices and how could these factors be examined or be interpreted to fully respond to the unemployment question? what informs students understanding of their future career prospects? theoretical framework the study adopted human capital theory as a theoretical lens through which the study is embedded. the human capital theory has influenced and shaped education and training systems across the globe. consequently, the vocational education and training programmes in the south african context encourage or are rather inspired by human capital approach to human progress and development. through this theory, investment in the education of individuals is regarded as the solution to all the structural problems of the economy and the labour market (baptiste 2001). furthermore, the proponents of human capital theory argue that this concept of human capital originally refers to knowledge, attitudes and skills primarily developed and valued for productivity in the economy (baptiste 2001). he further explains this notion that education is the most important single determinant of economic growth, which was initially advanced through the work of the human capital theorists gary becker and theodor schultz in the 1960s and 1970s (baptiste, 2001). again, according to him, becker and schultz believed that well-educated persons are more productive and are likely to get well-paying jobs (baptiste 2001). in this instance, the researcher’s employ of human capital theory has been selected as the theoretical framework, because the current vocational education and training and its application in south africa advances the failed approach to human development. the defining feature of economic debates in recent decades is the importance to which neo-classical economics have attached human capital as a determining factor of economic success and competitive advantage (brown, green & lauder 2000). they further explain that it is a naïve argument that education is the most important and only single determinant of economic growth, which was initially advanced through the work of the human capital theorists gary becker and theodor schultz in the 1960s and early 1970s (brown et al. 2000). again, for them these theorists have reduced human behaviour to calculation rationality, wherein human beings are seen as purposeful and goal-oriented individuals who will, with no option, invest in the education in order to maximise their employment status (brown et al. 2000). as consequence, brown (1999) argues that human capital theory, which brought about new economies that needed highly skilled and qualified personnel, has thus proven to be a failure in relation to human development. accordingly, motala and treat (2014) also support this critique, as they argue very strongly that the assumption that markets satisfy the pre-existing desires of consumers completely ignores the obvious ways in which markets manufacture needs and desires as opposed to merely responding to them. for motala and treat, this proposition has since been severely criticised in a growing body of research, and the limitations of human capital theory have become even more obvious because of the global economic crises. the growing critique of this narrowly conceived notion of education in relation to social human development has been exposed for what it is, not only with an advanced and well-grounded argument against it and its failures, but decry human beings being regarded on the same plane as machines or technological advancements. human capital theorists construe social inequalities not as injustice or the results of exploitation and oppression, but rather as the natural and inevitable outcomes of a competitive, free market (baptiste 2001). to them, free markets are the most legitimate social institutions; that is, they are the only institutions that can adequately and justly govern, regulate and explain human behaviours and achievements and the definition of human capital as knowledge, attitude and skills that are developed and valued primarily for economically productive potential (baptiste 2001). for human capital theory, investment in education accounts for economic growth; the rationale here is for education regarded as investment in human beings no different from investment in land or machines as they all represent enhancement of an economy (ashton, brown & lauder 2012). thus, this human capital theory model advances the following: education should be regarded as a private good that is a tradable commodity in the market place for money and status. private return on human capital investment (education) provides an incentive to progress to further education. further education should be oriented towards the labour market (supply and demand). more education can be translated into higher productivity, which results in higher earnings. in this instance, motala and vally (2014) point out that despite a body of knowledge critiquing human capital theory, it remains central to skills formation policies in most countries. in this regard, the researcher argues for a need for alternatives instead of a continuous and uncritical adoption of human capital theory prescripts in our education for development. there has to be this new alternative to education given the wide-ranging critique of human capital theory including its one-dimensional view of human beings; narrow understanding of skills and labour; its exacerbation of social inequalities; the development of ‘underdevelopment’; blaming of the victims; and the privatisation of social problems (baptiste 2001). methodological design the methodological approach used in conducting the study was a qualitative method. the researcher used a qualitative approach as a relevant method in this study as participants were given the opportunity to explain their thinking and perceptions around vocational education in relation to the labour market. this approach was carefully chosen as it aims for the depth of understanding rather than the quantity of understanding (henning 2004). again, explaining qualitative methodology, ferguson (1993) describes qualitative research as a set of methods for conducting research and as a set of beliefs about our knowledge of the world. the researcher used a tvet college as a case study, situated in the interpretivist paradigm, to seek an understanding and to explore factors that shape students’ understanding of their future career prospects, while yin (2009) defines a case study as an empirical research inquiry that explores the existing phenomenon within its real-life context, especially when boundaries between phenomenon and context are not clearly articulated. as stated in the abstract, a sample of 113 students participated in the study by completing self-administered, open-ended questionnaires. the selection of participants was based on non-probability sampling, in order to easily analyse the data the researcher made use of open coding. when describing the method of data analysis, henning (2004) describes it as a process, wherein data are thoroughly divided into categories to ascertain similarities or contrasts. it is these categories as they are divided that are called themes (neuman 2006). this process of dividing data or clustering them according to similarities and differences was useful and helped with the interpretation of data. furthermore, the clustered themes also gave a detailed description of the matter under investigation and the thinking of the students thereof. discussion on research findings the previous section explains in detail the methodology and design of the study. this part will discuss research findings. suffice to say, the main findings of the research have been clustered in themes, which are further supported by few direct quotations from the student responses. educational aspirations for instance, some responses from students were as follows: ‘i wanted to further my studies and obtain a degree/diploma so that i can more qualified’. (participant 11, male, 24 years old) ‘my hopes and dreams were to further my studies at the university, and do electrical engineering, to fulfil my dreams because my goals were to see myself successful, become an engineer’. (participant 18, female, 21 years old) ‘i wanted to study further to pursue my dreams; to learn more and be a graduate one day, to have a bright future and fulfil my dreams to become an engineer’. (participant 26, female, 24 years old) these are but few examples to illustrate the educational aspiration theme. the findings suggest that participants’ educational aspirations while at school were to study further after finishing high school and then obtain employment. this educational desire for employment is entrenched from human capital theory, which argues that investment in the education of individuals is the solution to all the structural problems of the economy and the labour market (baatjes 2005). the findings however, affirm this narrow argument advanced by proponents of human capital theory that knowledge, attitude and skills, are valued for economic productive potential, meaning without these (knowledge, skills and attitude), chance of being economic productive are very low (baptiste, 2001). this approach to education and human development is narrow as it fails to define skills formation as the development of the social capacity for learning, innovation and productivity (brown 1999). on the contrary, marsh (2011) argues that education bears too much of the burden of our hopes for economic justice and that we ask education to accomplish things it cannot accomplish. he further argues that the appeal for education has displaced the debate about social class and economic power that progressive forces need to have if we are to understand the causes of and the cure for sustained poverty and increasing inequality. to start a debate, he argues that one needs to dismiss the belief that all or even most of our economic problems can be solved in a classroom (marsh 2011) as this debate is being propagated by human capital theorists, who narrowly argue that education is about individual investment for personal development and success. the findings further speak to factors that shape their career choices, which amongst others is poverty and a high level of unemployment, which, combined, leads to personal ambitions cantered on personal skills. personal skills required examples of the response are as follows: ‘hard work is required and a positive attitude so that the person will not only work in the company but help it grow’. (participant 45, male, 24 years old) one student said: ‘companies require someone who is determined to work and employees who are always on time at work’. (participant 48, female, 26 years old) in addition, another student felt strongly that firms require ‘people who are good in time management and teamwork’. (participant 54, female, 23 years old) students strongly believe that personal skills such as positive attitude, interpersonal skills, teamwork and time management, are necessary, and in some instances, personal skills such as positive attitude, interpersonal skills, hard work and dedication. however, they further argue that no one with required qualification should be denied access to employment, based on a lack of soft skills. in this regard, lauglo and lillis (1988) argue very strongly that vocational training should be about easing school leavers (neets) into practical jobs or training for self-sustenance or employment, especially under the conditions of widespread and worldwide unemployment of young people (lauglo & lillis 1988). however, the study findings entrench the view held by rasool and botha (2011) that there is a widely accepted definition of skills shortage or at least how government should respond to it. the nature, scale and severity of skills shortages are therefore often miscalculated, misunderstood and misused which results in poor public policies, with their associated high levels of wastage. as a result, the reliability and validity of the labour market data is of concern (rasool & botha 2011). the responses of students seem to suggest that qualification and skill are the same thing and that these should be adequate for an individual to be absorbed into the job market. soft skills such as being hardworking, confidence, teamwork, honesty, determination and commitment cannot be a barrier to employment, as they are not taught in educational institutions. therefore, although such soft skills are important, they should be a secondary consideration in employment with the primary factors being qualification (which at times is used interchangeably with ‘skill’). the findings seem to concur with lauglo and lillis (1998) when they explain that the term ‘vocationalisation’ was meant curriculum change in a practical or vocational direction. they further argue that this is an old recurring policy theme in many countries around the world. these old but recurring policies are mainly a political response to poor articulation of schooling within the world of work (the labour market). it therefore makes sense that, as kraak and hall (1999) state, the tvet sector in south africa does indeed face a multitude of complex problems. tvet systems across the globe are fundamentally shaped by the effectiveness of their articulation with the world of work as well as by the extent to which they grant meaningful access to further and higher learning. they further argue that in south africa, this has not been the case, and as a result, the tvet system in south africa has failed both to articulate itself to the world of work and to further higher learning (kraak & hall 1999). for them, this failure within the system in relation to the quality and relevance of tvet programmes leads to inadequate preparation for higher learning and articulation of the path to the world of work (kraak & hall 1999). again, in this instance, baatjes et al. (2014) concur and further explain that in its current form the tvet sector has failed to link young learners to real employment prospects. it has also failed to provide a meaningful learning pathway for employed adult workers to return to formal study to improve their overall skills and competencies. increasing joblessness and underemployment amongst graduates is now being explained as a failure of curriculum models, including the lack of proper work-based learning or work-integrated tools as these fail to provide the essential skills required by the labour market (baatjes et al. 2014). one can therefore conclude, based on these findings and discussion, that there is no linear relationship between vocational education and training and the labour market. suffice to say, having an education does not automatically lead to employment, as it is not that simple. employment opportunities in south africa again, here are some of the responses taken directly from the questionnaires regarding job opportunities in south africa. these findings are a direct response to the question: in your opinion, what is the primary reason for youth unemployment in south africa? one student responded that ‘there is job scarcity and many people in south africa and some are uneducated due to money problems which prevent them from studying further’. and others responded that ‘graduates are the ones who are unemployed here in south africa; those who are successful don’t have qualifications whilst graduates are unemployed’. in addition, one student responded that ‘ the value of the rand isn’t powerful so work opportunities are scarce’. in this regard, students blame the state for its inability to create conducive environment for job creation. young people are also required to have experience they do not have, so experience is also a barrier to any job opportunities that may be available in the market. one student asked in response to a questionnaire: how do you expect graduates to have experience when they leave colleges or universities. they argued though that for them the primary reason for unemployment is that jobs are scarce regardless of one’s educational status. furthermore, students argue that college education is not recognised in the labour market, as it seems there is no value in vocational training in south africa. unemployment remains one of the major societal and macro-economic problems facing south africa today and as such needs a holistic approach to youth development (baatjes et al. 2014). as a result of this problem of jobs, one major policy should ensure that the youth do not lose touch with the labour market (baatjes et al. 2014). again, the student’s response legitimised the national treasury report (2011) which stated that over 30% of 18–24-year olds with tertiary education, which include university degrees, university of technology diplomas and college certificates were unemployed. educational pundits such as allais and nathan (2014) argue that the south african economy has experienced what has been commonly referred to as jobless growth with capital, rather than labour-intensive forms of economic growth being the order of the day (allais & nathan 2014). however, employers do not seem to agree with a view that unemployment is because of job scarcity; instead, they argue to the contrary and say there is a mismatch of skills. for instance, belt, campbell and gilles (2010) argue that a mismatch of skills in the labour market happens when employers are unable to, or have difficulty in employing people they need because they are not readily available in sufficient numbers with the required skills (belt et al. 2010). students are vehemently opposed to this dominant narrative of a mismatch of skills as purported by many including business in the discourse of skills and employment. contrary to the popular narrative of skills shortage or mismatch as the reason for unemployment in the public domain, students seem to argue that lack of experience is the reason why young people are unemployed. this argument is further supported by prinsloo (2011) who contends that graduates in the fields of engineering and science, mainly from south africa’s further education and training colleges (now tvet), are given the knowledge and some practical training by institutions, but then left without any work experience, and ultimately, unemployment. the lack of employment or job opportunities for young people, particularly graduates from student’s perspective, appears to be in opposition to the dominant view, which is lack of skills or skills mismatch. student’s perspective affirms brown’s (1999) argument that the challenge of unemployment and poverty as a global phenomenon is understood differently within different national contexts. furthermore, brown (1999) argues that seeing the economy as analytically distinct from its social, cultural and political dimensions is neo-classical in approach and impedes the understanding of skills requirements. this neo-classical approach in seeing the economy as distinct from its social and cultural dimensions is critical for the mainstream economic analysis because it ignores the fact that individual actions are embedded in a social context and that norms, interpersonal trust, social networks and social organisation are functions not only of society but also of the economy. recommendations there should be more research conducted to explore the relevance of the curriculum content of tvet programmes in relation to needs of society and economy. the researcher in this regard suggests that there ought to be a study that explores the experiences of neets group on vocational education programmes. the college sector has to sharpen, equip and strengthen its research capacity; and remove outdated materials and machines, which are no longer relevant in modern day technology advancement. the democratic state has a responsibility to ensure that vocational education protects democratic ideals while still preparing students for future career challenges, beyond meeting narrow business-only needs. a morally appropriate model for vocational education is found within a comprehensive democratic approach rather than what is currently available at the present moment and which are narrowly conceived as skills-based programmes. it is the researcher’s further suggestion that vocational education and training should be improved to better serve and equip individuals with knowledge and skills necessary to survive in their daily lives and further be context based. in addition, the researcher argues that vocational skills programmes must speak to people’s rural context and should support their way of life. the white paper on post school education and training should directly guide the education department and other institutions towards building a developmental state with a vibrant democracy and flourishing economy. furthermore, both heis and tvets should collaboratively develop a responsive and context based curriculum that addresses the needs of the society. this should be the case because the researcher argues that a market-inspired curriculum, which targeted a particular segment to respond to market needs, have proven to be disastrous, as it produced social inequalities and exclusion. again, a market-led curriculum, instead of responding to social issues, it manufactures them. lastly, the department of higher education should rather facilitate a discussion that begins to re-orientate vocational education in south africa and furnish young people with the knowledge and skills they need in life as well as to contribute to societal development. conclusion the study examined factors that shape tvet engineering students’ understanding of their career choices. it further sampled 113 participants who were doing their final year of engineering-related qualifications, and data analysis was performed through thematic categorisation. the analysis and discussion revealed divergent views shared by the participants, regarding unemployment especially of tvet graduates. some strongly felt that a tvet qualification, especially engineering, leads to full employment because of its demand and that tvet normally assists students through placement unit, making it easier to get a job. while other argued that whatever qualifications one hold, the world of work is not ready for them, because of a lack of experience. they described this as an unfair expectation from graduates, as they cannot get it without being properly monitored and trained by the very same industry that hopes to absorb them in the near future. for them, the real reasons for the high level of unemployment are because of scarcity of jobs and because the economy fails to produce enough jobs, not skills shortage as often articulated in the media. unemployment in south africa is very high amongst the youth, and the most distressing aspect is the extent to which it has grown in the democratic era. its rise affects not only the neet group but also those who have interfaced with education institutions such as universities and tvet colleges; graduates are affected by this social condition simply because there are no jobs readily available. acknowledgements the centre for integrated post schooling education and training, (nelson mandela university), carried out the costs of professional editors, who were responsible to check spelling, grammatical errors in the article. competing interests the authors declare that they have no financial or personal relationships, which may have inappropriately influenced them in writing this article. authors’ contributions a.t.s., the first author was responsible for the overall research in terms of data collection, data presentation and analysis while n.n. during this phase of the research was responsible for overall supervision and guidance. a.t.s. wrote the article extensively and n.n. was responsible for an overall conceptualisation of the article and technical issues related checking whether there is inclusion of theoretical framework, and whether methodology is well explained and justified. references allais, s. & nathan, o., 2014, ‘what jobs? skills? what skills? an overview of studies examining relationships between education and training and labour’, in s. vally & e. motala (eds.), education, economy, and society, pp. 103–124, unisa press, pretoria. ashton, d., brown, p. & lauder, a., 2012, the global auction: the broken promises of education, jobs, and incomes, oxford university press, oxford. baatjes, i., 2005, ‘neoliberal fatalism and the corporatisation of higher education in south africa, education as market fantasy or education as a public good’, in s.a. vally (ed.), quarterly review of education and training 12(1), 25–33. baatjes, i., baduza, u. & sibiya, a.t., 2014, ‘building a transformative pedagogy in vocational education in south africa, pp. 81-102, in s.a. vally (ed.), education, society and economy, unisa press, pretoria. baptiste, i., 2001, ‘educating lone wolves: pedagogical implications of human capital theory’, adult education quarterly 3(55), 184–201. https://doi.org/10.1177/​074171360105100302 belt, v., campbell, m. & giles, l., 2010, skills for jobs: today and tomorrow the national strategic skills audi for england, the evidence report, vol. 2, uk commission for employment and skills, uk. bhorat, h., 2012, young, jobless and desperatedegree with no guarantees, viewed 21 october 2013, from http://www.citypress.co.za/news/young-jobless-and-desperate-​degrees-with-no-guarantees-20120616/ brown, p., 1999, ‘globalization and the political economy of high skills’, journal of education and work 13(12), 233–251. brown, p., green, & lauder, h., 2000, high skills: globalization, competitiveness and skill formation, oxford university press, new york. department of higher education and training, 2012, green paper of post-school education and training, dhet, pretoria. department of higher education and training, 2014, building an expanded, effective and integrated post-school system: a white paper on post school education and training, dhet. pretoria. ferguson, d., 1993, ‘something a little out of the ordinary: reflections on becoming an interpretivist researcher in special education’, sage journal of remedial and special education 4(14), 35–43. https://doi.org/10.1177/074193259301400408 henning, e., 2004, finding your way in qualitative research, van schaik, pretoria. kraak, a. & hall, g., 1999, transforming further education and training in south africa: volume one qualitative findings and analysis, hsrc, pretoria. lauglo, j. & lillis, k., 1988, vocationalizing education an international perspective, pergamon press, london. marsh, j., 2011, class dismissed: why we cannot teach or learn our way out of inequality, monthly review press, new york. motala, e. & treat, j., 2014, education and jobs don’t add up: market driven skills policies limit potential of social development, viewed 17 july 2014, from http://mg.co.za/article/2013-01-29-education-and-jobs-dont-add-up national treasury, 2011, confronting youth unemployment: policy options for south africa, national treasury, pretoria. neuman, w., 2006, social research methods qualitative and quantitative approaches, pearson education inc, whitewater. prinsloo, l., 2011, lack of work experience leaves graduates unemployed, viewed 23 july 2016, from http://www.engineeringnews.co.za/article/lack-of-work-experience-​leave-graduates-unemployed-2011-05-20 rasool, f. & botha, c.j., 2011, ‘the nature, extent and effect of skills shortages on skills migration in south africa’, sa journal of human resource management 1(9), 287. https://doi.org/10.4102/sajhrm.v9i1.287 stats-sa, 2016, statistics south africa: quarterly labour force survey 2, viewed 18 august 2016, from www.statssa.gov.za//publications//po211//po2111tsquater2016.pdf sharp, l., 2012, young, jobless and esperate – degrees with no guarantees, viewed 16 june 2016, from http:www.citypress.co.za/news/young-jobless-and-desperate-degrees-with-no-guarantees yin, r., 2009, ‘case study research design and methods’, canadian journal of action research 14(1), 69–71. abstract introduction research objectives methodological lens conclusion and recommendation acknowledgements references about the author(s) bunmi i. omodan department of continuing and adult professional teacher development (captd), faculty of education, walter sisulu university, butterworth, south africa citation omodan, b.i., 2023, ‘addressing the underside of student unrest in south african universities using collegial leadership as approach’, transformation in higher education 8(0), a273. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v8i0.273 review article addressing the underside of student unrest in south african universities using collegial leadership as approach bunmi i. omodan received: 25 jan. 2023; accepted: 07 apr. 2023; published: 14 july 2023 copyright: © 2023. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract universities in south africa are confronted with student unrest, which has hindered the effective university education process. they have faced various shortages of academic activities and teaching and learning because of protests and subsequent management responses that culminated in the closures of universities at most times. student unrest has made it difficult to actualise the set predetermined goals and objectives of the university. these challenges have severally been linked to problems with tuition fees, financial support for students, adequate and conducive hostel accommodation, student socio-economic background and university management styles. among the management styles, according to the literature and observation, is the decision-making process where the issues concerning students are decided upon. this study explores the potential of the collegial leadership approach to enhance the university decision-making process towards alleviating student unrest in universities. this study is located within a transformative paradigm to transform social unrest in the university system. conceptual analysis was employed to make sense of the adopted approach as a veritable tool for managing the power differential between the students and the university management. the study found that collaboration and teamwork, consensus building and organisational relationships are the dimensions of managing student unrest in universities. the recommendation is that collaborative management style, teamwork, consensus building and organisational relationships are encouraged in the university management process. contribution: this article seeks to contribute to the higher education management system by providing a collegial leadership model. as an integral part of the university system, this model addresses student unrest and improves transformative prospects for the institution. by exploring new ways of managing internal conflict resolution, change is fostered, and improved conditions are cultivated. in this way, it directly responds to the journal’s focus on the transformation of higher education, making it an essential read for scholars and practitioners specialising in this field. keywords: power differentials; student unrest; decision-making process; university management; collegial leadership. introduction student unrest is a disruptive and often violent act committed by students against universities or colleges in order to force a change. this type of unrest usually arises out of frustration with the administration or faculty. student unrest activities include: protests, strikes, riots and occupations. in recent years, student unrest has become an increasingly worrisome phenomenon in south africa, with several universities being forced to close their doors because of student protests (maringira & gukurume 2016; oxlund 2016). this type of unrest disrupts the education of those involved and puts the safety of both students and staff at risk (maringira & gukurume 2021; mavunga 2019). this makes student unrest a scary reality in many universities across south africa. the root causes of this unrest are complex and varied, but they often include frustration with inadequate resources, poor living conditions, a lack of institutional support, funding support and limited accommodation of student voices in the management process (aluede et al. 2005; amutabi 2002; iwara, kilonzo & iwara 2018; muswede 2017; rhoads 1998). this issue has been extensively researched, and there is clear evidence that it is a real and pressing concern to prove its existence not just in south african institutions but also in other african institutions (balsvik 1998; czerniewicz, trotter & haupt 2019; heffernan 2015; hove & dube 2022; nkinyangi 1991). unfortunately, it does not seem to be going away anytime soon as it continues unabated. south africa has a long history of violence, even predating the apartheid regime. the country’s experience with discrimination and oppression has led to a sense of powerlessness among many citizens (maylam 2017; modiri 2012). in 2012, the south african national violence confirmed that south africa was the most violent society in the world (burton & leoschut 2013). this may have sparked student unrest on campuses, as students come from all walks of life and are used to hostile ways of seeking justice. this is not to argue that the causes of student unrest are dependent on the socio-economic or socio-cultural background of the students, but the argument is to say that it may have led to the constant violent ways of agitation by south african students. to support this, the assertion echoed by cornell et al. (2022) and steinberg (2018) is that violence is rampant in communities. for example, political conflict, police brutality and financial exclusion of some university students are replicated in the university environment. that is, students, based on their experience, believe that university management is powerful and is in the position of power to attend to their needs. here, students see themselves as powerless and marginalised and therefore need to raise their voices in violent ways. student unrest is a continuous issue on most south african campuses, and it has been fuelled by different factors. these factors include a hike in tuition fees, lack of financial support for students, inadequate and unconducive hostel accommodation, socio-economic background of the students and university management styles (aluede et al. 2005; calitz & fourie 2016; cini 2019; greeff et al. 2021; kulati 2003; lawton-misra 2019). tuition fees have been escalating over the past few years, and this has made it difficult for students from poor socio-economic backgrounds to afford university education. in addition, universities have been struggling to provide adequate financial support for students, resulting in many students having to work part-time jobs in order to make ends meet. this has left them feeling exhausted and unable to focus on their studies. furthermore, the quality of hostel accommodation has been declining, and many students have had to live in cramped and unsafe conditions (wanie et al. 2017). in addition, university management styles have often been viewed as autocratic and unresponsive to student concerns, which has led to frustration and resentment among many students (moodley 2019). one can say that there is a lack of or limited inclusive decision-making system in managing the university and its social occurrences. a lack of inclusive decision-making makes students feel deprived of being listened to by the institution’s leadership and management. consequently, these factors have all contributed to student unrest in south african communities, but this study is more interested in the lack or absence of inclusive decision-making as one of the major causes of student unrest in universities. the finding of carey (2013) confirms that university management in the united kingdom is not inclusive enough to accommodate collaborative management, where students and their leaders have a say in the management process. to support this, garwe (2017) showed that student voices were not heard and this resulted in student protests on campuses. on another note, the lack of inclusive decision-making among the university stakeholders has created a wider disparity in the relationships that exist between students and university management (gamede 2021), hence creating undue power deferential where the university authorities assumed the position of power over the students and the students also banked on the use of protest and violence to dismantle the assumed powerfulness of the university authorities. it is, therefore, imperative that university stakeholders engage in inclusive decision-making to create relationships of mutuality and respect. when one group assumes a position of power over another, it creates feelings of resentment and frustration that can lead to conflict. inclusive decision-making ensures that all voices are heard and considered and that everyone feels a sense of ownership over the decisions that are made. this leads to a greater need for a collegial leadership model to ensure peaceful university operations that will ultimately lead to a positive and productive learning environment. then the question such as ‘how a collegial leadership model can be positioned as a tool to ensure an inclusive management style to reduce student unrest’ was answered. research objectives based on the above question and problem, the following research objectives were raised to guide the study. that is, the study explores: the assumptions of the collegial leadership approach towards managing student unrest in universities. the link between the assumptions of collegial leadership approach and management of students’ unrest in universities. methodological lens the transformative paradigm is a worldview concept that emphasises change and transformation (mertens 2007, 2016). it is based on the belief that social problems are caused by unequal power relationships (mertens 2010). this paradigm aims to empower those facing social problems by helping them understand and change the power dynamics that are causing the problem. therefore, the study is located within a transformative paradigm that aims to bring about social change by challenging and changing the existing power differentials between students and university authorities. the paradigm shift is based on the realisation that most social problems are caused by unequal power relations. in a traditional research paradigm, the researcher is seen as an objective observer who is detached from the people being studied. this detached researcher does not challenge the existing power relations but instead reports on what they observe. on the other hand, the transformative paradigm sees the researcher as an agent of change who works with the people facing the problem to challenge and change the existing power structures (nyahodza 2019). the researcher in this study galvanises knowledge and expertise to provide solutions capable of bridging the gap between the university stakeholders, students and university authorities towards transformational social change within the university system. the collegial leadership model theory in this study stands as data. this theory was positioned to be analysed as a veritable tool for the effective management of student unrest in the university. the author employed concept analysis to make sense of the theory as a method of data analysis to allow intellectual argument towards meaning making. a concept analysis is an examination of a particular concept, which can be anything from a concrete object to an abstract idea (laurence & margolis 2003). the purpose of a concept analysis is to clarify the definition of the concept and to explore its implications (najafi et al. 2021). the researcher used analytical tools such as definitions, logical induction and deductions and argument within the existing literature. this well-conducted analysis provides valuable insights into how the collegial leadership approach can help to ensure an inclusive decision-making management style in universities. this study was taken from a larger project ethically approved by the walter sisulu university, south africa ethics committee, with ethical approval number fedrec 03-11-21. presentation of collegial leadership theory the term ‘collegial leadership’ was first coined in the early 1970s by educational theorists and researchers who were seeking to create an alternative to the traditional and hierarchical model of leadership (turner 1998). in contrast to the top-down approach of the traditional model, collegial leadership is based on the belief that all members of an organisation are equally capable of leading and that collective decision-making is more effective than relying on a single leader (singh 2013; singh, manser & mestry 2007). while the concept of collegial leadership has been around for several decades, it has only recently begun to gain mainstream attention. there has been a growing movement among educators and administrators in recent years to adopt a more collaborative, decentralised approach to leadership (fahmi et al. 2016; ibrahim, akanbang & laube 2020). this shift is largely because of the recognition that collegial leadership can promote creativity, innovation, collective decision-making and problem solving (bezzina 2000; timperley & robinson 1998; wijngaarden, hitters & bhansing 2020). collegial leadership theory posits that effective leaders are those who can build strong relationships with their colleagues (hoy, smith & sweetland 2002). these relationships are based on trust, respect and mutual cooperation, and they allow leaders to effectively leverage the skills and expertise of their team members (williams 2015). that is, the theory emphasises the importance of leaders working together with their colleagues rather than trying to exert their authority over them. in a collegial leadership environment, decisions are made through consensus-building and open dialogue, and both leaders and followers are committed to the success of the team (ghamrawi 2010). this type of leadership has been shown to be especially effective in situations where creativity and innovation are valued. by encouraging collaboration and nurturing a spirit of camaraderie and trust, collegial leaders create an atmosphere where new ideas can flourish (unsworth & parker 2003), boosting morale, improving performance and ensuring positive behaviours. this approach is based on the belief that collective wisdom is greater than individual intelligence, and those diverse perspectives can lead to more creative and effective solutions. one of the benefits of collegial leadership is that it allows leaders to leverage the strengths of their team members (bovbjerg 2006; charner-laird et al. 2016). by working together, leaders can identify and capitalise on each team member’s unique talents and expertise, which leads to more efficient and effective decision-making and a deeper understanding of complex problems (yu et al. 2010). in response to this trend, some experts have proposed the implementation of a collegial leadership model at universities. this approach would involve giving more power to subordinates, who would then make decisions through a process of collective deliberation. the hope is that it would lead to a more democratic and responsive form of management, which would be better equipped to deal with organisational conflict, including student unrest. while it is still unclear whether this model would be effective in practice, it represents an intriguing response to the challenges posed by campus protests. when applied to the context of universities, this theory suggests that university leaders should involve students in decision-making processes to foster greater ownership and buy-in for university policies. this approach is likely to result in improved management of student unrest, as students will feel more invested in the decisions made about their university experience. additionally, by adopting a collegial leadership style, university leaders can build relationships of trust and mutual respect with students, which will also help to defuse tension and conflict. assumptions of collegial leadership theory having conceptualised the collegial leadership theory, one can argue that it processes some unique assumptions that stand as its principles. they are collaboration and teamwork, consensus building and organisational relationships. these assumptions are discussed below. collaboration and teamwork from the theoretical presentation above, one can argue that one of the major assumptions of collegial leadership theory is collaboration. the theory promotes collaboration among the people, colleagues and all organisational stakeholders (bolden, petrov & gosling 2008; singh 2005). this means that the theory promotes working together among colleagues and all organisational stakeholders who are responsible for actualising the organisation’s predetermined goals. the theory believes that by working together, everyone can benefit with adequate consideration of the mutual ways of doing things. for example, by collaborating, colleagues can share ideas and resources which can lead to better outcomes for the organisation. furthermore, all stakeholders can have a say in decision-making which can help ensure that the organisation meets their needs. ultimately, collegial leadership theory provides a framework for cooperation that can improve the effectiveness of an organisation (shrifian 2011). additionally, according to collegial leadership theory, teamwork is essential for an organisation to succeed with an argument that all stakeholders, including management, employees and shareholders, should work together collaboratively. doing so, they can pool their knowledge and resources to achieve common goals. consensus building based on the above presentation, one of the major assumptions of collegial leadership theory is consensus building, most peculiar to conflict management. collegial leadership theory emphasises the importance of developing consensus among team members to make effective decisions. this approach is based on the belief that collective decision-making is more likely to result in successful outcomes than unilateral decision-making (bates 2014). when team members are able to share their perspectives and reach an agreement on a course of action, they are more likely to be committed to implementing that plan and achieving the desired results. additionally, collegial leadership theory suggests that conflict should be managed in a way that leads to consensus rather than confrontation (mausethagen, prøitz & skedsmo 2019). by encouraging team members to discuss their differences and reach an agreement, collegial leaders can help minimise conflict and promote cooperation. organisational relationships organisational relationships are one of the major assumptions of collegial leadership theory based on the above theoretical analysis. this theory values the deliberate creation of mutual and professional relationships among the stakeholders in organisations (singh 2013). collegial leadership places a high value on organisational relationships, assuming that mutual and professional relationships among the stakeholders in organisations are deliberately created. these relationships are thought to improve communication and cooperation among members of the organisation. they also provide a supportive network that can help individuals reach their full potential. in addition, collegial relationships are believed to foster creativity and innovation (mathisen 2011). encouraging the free exchange of ideas provides a fertile ground for new solutions to emerge. ultimately, the goal of collegial leadership theory is to create an environment in which all members of the organisation can thrive. the links between the assumptions and management of student unrest this section discusses and argues how collegial leadership theory could be positioned to address the issue of student unrest in the university system. these are discussed under the following sub-headings: collaboration and teamwork and management of student unrest, consensus building and management of student unrest, organisational relationships and management of student unrest. collaboration and teamwork, and management of student unrest as universities become increasingly diverse and globalised, the need for effective collaboration and teamwork among students, faculty and staff has never been greater. at the same time, the number of incidents of student unrest on campuses around the world is on the rise. while the relationship between collaboration and teamwork and the management of student unrest in universities has been widely studied, there is still much to learn. however, the literature does confirm that there is a connection between these two areas. for example, many studies have shown that collaborative approaches to managing student unrest are more effective than traditional hierarchical models (omodan, dube & tsotetsi 2018). this is likely because collaboration encourages dialogue and understanding, while hierarchy often leads to frustration and resentment. furthermore, team-based approaches have also been shown to be more successful in managing human capital (govender 2011). this is likely because teams are better able to identify and address the root causes of dissatisfaction. thus, collaboration and teamwork are essential for effectively managing university student unrest. therefore, to effectively manage student unrest, universities must first foster a culture of collaboration and teamwork in the university system. by promoting open communication and mutual respect among all university community members, universities can create an environment in which students feel free to express their views without fear of retribution. additionally, universities must provide training and resources to help students learn how to work together effectively in teams. by investing in collaboration and teamwork, universities can help prevent student unrest and create a more positive learning environment for all. consensus building and management of student unrest in any educational institution, be it an elementary school, a high school or a university, one of the most important functions of the administration is to ensure the safety of the students. this becomes even more important when there is unrest among the student body. student unrest can manifest itself in many forms, from protests and sit-ins to threats and violence. in such cases, it is essential for the administration to come up with a strategy for consensus building and to manage the unrest. this often involves creating a dialogue between the administration and the student body to understand the students’ grievances and find a resolution that is acceptable to both parties. in some cases, outside mediators may also need to be brought in to help facilitate the process (liu et al. 2021). the goal is to prevent the situation from spiralling out of control and to maintain a safe and orderly environment for all students. this is expedient because it is widely accepted that there is a relationship between consensus building and the management of conflict (donais 2012), including student unrest in universities. this view is supported by a number of studies, which have shown that organisations that are successful in managing conflicts make use of consensus-building techniques (donais 2012; macdonald et al. 2009; susskind, mckearnen & thomas-lamar 1999). for example, one study found that universities that make use of student input when making decisions about university policy are more likely to be successful in managing student unrest (aluede et al. 2005). this is because students feel that their concerns are being listened to and taken into account, and as a result, they are less likely to take part in disruptive behaviour. in addition, universities that encourage dialogue between students and staff are more likely to successfully manage student unrest (onivehu 2021). this is because students feel that they have a voice in the decision-making process, and as a result, they are less likely to resort to violence or other forms of disruptive behaviour. these arguments suggest that there is a strong relationship between consensus building and the management of student unrest in universities. organisational relationships and management of student unrest in any organisation, there is always some relationship that management requires to maintain order and prevent chaos. this is especially true in an educational setting, where students of all ages and backgrounds must interact on a daily basis. however, by proactively establishing and maintaining positive relationships with students, university authorities can help to prevent or defuse these situations before they escalate. in addition, established relationships based on rules and procedures for handling conflict can also help to keep student unrest from spinning out of control. being mindful of the potential for conflict and taking steps to address it proactively creates a calm and orderly learning environment for all students. to further confirm the argument, the finding of sebake (2019) suggests that there is a positive relationship between collegial relationships and the management of student unrest. specifically, when university management has strong collegial relationships with other stakeholders, including students, they are more likely to be responsive to student concerns and to take proactive measures to prevent and address student unrest. in addition, collegial relationships among university stakeholders result in increased communication and cooperation, which can help to resolve disputes before they escalate into full-blown crises (birya 2020). moreover, this kind of relationship provides a sense of shared purpose and community that can help reduce the stress and anxiety students feel during periods of turbulence. ultimately, chemutai, onkware and iteyo (2020) confirm that there is a clear link between organisational relationships and the effective management of student unrest in universities. conclusion and recommendation the study found that the collegial leadership model can be positioned as a tool to ensure an inclusive management style to reduce student unrest in universities. the study indicated that collaboration and teamwork, consensus building and organisational relationships are the dimensions in which students could be adequately included in the process of making effective management decisions towards managing student unrest in universities. therefore, the collegial leadership approach is likely to effectively reduce student unrest by ensuring that students are included in the decision-making process. this inclusion allows for a reduction in the feeling of disenfranchisement and isolation that often leads to unrest. that is, the study’s major argument showed a close relationship between management style and social unrest in the university system. hence, collaborative management style teamwork, consensus building and organisational relationships are effective in mitigating social unrest in the university system. the study recommends that university management and authorities should ensure collaborative management style teamwork, consensus building and organisational relationship in their management process to mitigate social unrest in the university system towards peace and tranquillity. lastly, the recombination may not be effective in all situations, hence the limitation of this study. therefore, further studies could be conducted to empirically test the recommendations’ effectiveness. acknowledgements competing interests the author declares that they have no financial or personal relationships that may have inappropriately influenced them in writing this article. author’s contributions b.i.o is the sole author of this article. ethical considerations ethical clearance to conduct this study was obtained from the walter sisulu university faculty of education research ethics committee (no. berec 01-09-21). funding information this research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors. data availability data sharing is not applicable to this article as no new data were created or analysed in this study. disclaimer the views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any affiliated agency of the author. references aluede, o., jimoh, b., agwinede, b.o., & omoregie, e.o., 2005, ‘student unrest in nigerian universities: looking back and forward’, journal of social sciences 10(1), 17–22. https://doi.org/10.1080/09718923.2005.11892454 amutabi, m.n., 2002, ‘crisis and student protest in universities in kenya: examining the role of students in national leadership and the democratisation process’, african studies review 45(2), 157–177. https://doi.org/10.17159/2223-0386/2017/n17a3 balsvik, r.r., 1998, ‘student protest – university and state in africa 1960–1995’, in forum for development studies, vol. 25, pp. 301–325, taylor & francis group. bates, s.b., 2014, ‘committee effectiveness in higher education: the strengths and weaknesses of group decision making’, research in higher education journal 25, 1–9. bezzina, c., 2000, ‘educational leadership for twenty-first century malta: breaking the bonds of dependency’, international journal of educational management 14(7), 299–307. https://doi.org/10.1108/09513540010378950 birya, g.d., 2020, ‘the role of communication in crisis management in institutions of higher learning in kenya: a case of daystar university student unrest’, doctoral dissertation, daystar university, school of communication. bolden, r., petrov, g. & gosling, j., 2008, developing collective leadership in higher education, leadership foundation for higher education, exeter. bovbjerg, k.m., 2006, ‘teams and collegiality in educational culture’, european educational research journal 5(3–4), 244–253. https://doi.org/10.2304%2feerj.2006.5.3.244 burton, p. & leoschut, l., 2013, school violence in south africa. results of the 2012 national school violence study, centre for justice and crime prevention, monograph series, 12. cape town. calitz, e. & fourie, j., 2016, ‘the historically high cost of tertiary education in south africa’, politikon 43(1), 149–154. https://doi.org/10.1080/02589346.2016.1155790 carey, p., 2013, ‘student engagement: stakeholder perspectives on course representation in university governance’, studies in higher education 38(9), 1290–1304. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2011.621022 charner-laird, m., szczesiul, s., kirkpatrick, c.l., watson, d. & gordon, p., 2016, ‘from collegial support to critical dialogue: including new teachers’ voices in collaborative work’, professional educator 40(2), 1–7. chemutai, b., onkware, k. & iteyo, c., 2020, ‘nature of student unrest in secondary schools in kericho county kenya’, the international journal of social sciences and humanities invention 7(11), 6293–6307. cini, l., 2019, ‘disrupting the neoliberal university in south africa: the #feesmustfall movement in 2015’, current sociology 67(7), 942–959. https://doi.org/10.1177%2f0011392119865766 cornell, j., malherbe, n., seedat, m. & suffla, s., 2022, ‘discourses of gender and political violence in south africa’, social politics: international studies in gender, state & society 29(1), 309–332. https://doi.org/10.1093/sp/jxab005 czerniewicz, l., trotter, h. & haupt, g., 2019, ‘online teaching in response to student protests and campus shutdowns: academics’ perspectives’, international journal of educational technology in higher education 16(1), 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1186/s41239-019-0170-1 donais, t., 2012, peacebuilding and local ownership: post-conflict consensus-building, routledge, london & new york. fahmi, f.z., prawira, m.i., hudalah, d. & firman, t., 2016, ‘leadership and collaborative planning: the case of surakarta, indonesia’, planning theory 15(3), 294–315. https://doi.org/10.1177%2f1473095215584655 gamede, n.w., 2021, ‘factors that influence social protests and their effect on peace and stability in africa’, in international conference on public administration and development alternatives (ipada), ipada conference, thohoyandou, october 6–8, 2021, pp. 131–141. garwe, e.c., 2017, ‘student voice: embracing student activism as a quality improvement tool in higher education’, in s.l. renes (ed.), global voices in higher education, p. 189, intechopen, croatia. ghamrawi, n., 2010, ‘no teacher left behind: subject leadership that promotes teacher leadership’, educational management administration & leadership 38(3), 304–320. https://doi.org/10.1177%2f1741143209359713 govender, p., 2011, ‘a team-based approach to leading and managing a rural primary school’, doctoral dissertation, university of kwazulu-natal. greeff, m., mostert, k., kahl, c. & jonker, c., 2021, ‘the #feesmustfall protests in south africa: exploring first-year students’ experiences at a peri-urban university campus’, south african journal of higher education 35(4), 78–103. https://doi.org/10.20853/35-4-4219 heffernan, a., 2015, ‘black consciousness’s lost leader: abraham tiro, the university of the north, and the seeds of south africa’s student movement in the 1970s’, journal of southern african studies 41(1), 173–186. https://doi.org/10.1080/03057070.2015.991575 hove, b. & dube, b., 2022, ‘what now for the zimbabwean student demonstrator? online activism and its challenges for university students in a covid-19 lockdown’, international journal of higher education 11(2), 100–108. https://doi.org/10.5430/ijhe.v11n2p hoy, w.k., smith, p.a. & sweetland, s.r., 2002, ‘the development of the organisational climate index for high schools: its measure and relationship to faculty trust’, the high school journal 86(2), 38–49. https://www.jstor.org/stable/40364336 ibrahim, a.s., akanbang, b.a.a. & laube, w., 2020, ‘sustaining decentralised collaborative governance arrangements in africa: a case study of land management committees in the upper west region, ghana’, geojournal 87, 641–660. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10708-020-10276-3 iwara, i., kilonzo, b.m. & iwara, v.o., 2018, ‘university of venda and university of zululand: a critique of the post 2017 student riots’, african journal of gender, society & development 121–137. https://doi.org/10.31920/2050-4284/2018/s1n1a7 kulati, t., 2003, ‘from protest to challenge: leadership and higher education change in south africa’, tertiary education & management 9(1), 13–27. https://doi.org/10.1080/13583883.2003.9967090 laurence, s. & margolis, e., 2003, ‘concepts and conceptual analysis’, philosophy and phenomenological research 67(2), 253–282. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1933-1592.2003.tb00290.x lawton-misra, n., 2019, crisis leadership at south african universities: an exploration of the effectiveness of the strategies and responses of university leadership teams to the #feesmustfall (#fmf) protests at south african universities in 2015 and 2016, viewed 05 january 2023, from https://etd.uwc.ac.za/handle/11394/7096 liu, l.a., friedman, r., barry, b., gelfand, m.j. & zhang, z.x., 2012, ‘the dynamics of consensus building in intracultural and intercultural negotiations’, administrative science quarterly 57(2), 269–304. https://doi.org/10.1177%2f0001839212453456 macdonald, s., myers, d., smith, s.n., johnston, c., hernandez llosas, m.i., loh, l. et al., 2009, consensus building, negotiaton, and conflict resolution for heritage place management, the getty conservation institute, los angeles. maringira, g. & gukurume, s., 2016, ‘being black’ in #feesmustfall and # freedecolonisededucation: student protests at the university of the western cape’, an analysis of the #feesmustfall movement at south african universities, 35–48, viewed 25 january 2023, from https://csvr.org.za/pdf/an-analysis-of-the-feesmustfall-movement-at-south-african-universities.pdf#page=35. maringira, g. & gukurume, s., 2021, ‘politics, (re)possession and resurgence of student protests in south african universities’, politikon 48(3), 486–505. https://doi.org/10.1080/02589346.2021.1952738 mathisen, g.e., 2011, ‘organisational antecedents of creative self-efficacy’, creativity and innovation management 20(3), 185–195. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8691.2011.00606.x mausethagen, s., prøitz, t.s. & skedsmo, g., 2019, ‘school leadership in data use practices: collegial and consensus-oriented’, educational research 61(1), 70–86. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131881.2018.1561201 mavunga, g., 2019, ‘#feesmustfall protests in south africa: a critical realist analysis of selected newspaper articles’, journal of student affairs in africa 7(1), 81–99. https://doi.org/10.24085/jsaa.v9i2 maylam, p., 2017, south africa’s racial past: the history and historiography of racism, segregation, and apartheid, routledge, london. mertens, d.m., 2007, ‘transformative paradigm: mixed methods and social justice’, journal of mixed methods research 1(3), 212–225. https://doi.org/10.1177%2f1558689807302811 mertens, d.m., 2010, ‘transformative mixed methods research’, qualitative inquiry 16(6), 469–474. https://doi.org/10.1177%2f1077800410364612 mertens, d.m., 2016, ‘advancing social change in south africa through transformative research’, south african review of sociology 47(1), 5–17. https://doi.org/10.1080/21528586.2015.1131622 modiri, j., 2012, ‘the colour of law, power and knowledge: introducing critical race theory in (post-)apartheid south africa’, south african journal on human rights 28(3), 405–436. https://doi.org/10.1080/19962126.2012.11865054 moodley, a., 2019, ‘leadership in a time of crisis: a case of public receptiveness in south africa’, journal of public administration 54(4), 582–596. https://hdl.handle.net/10520/ejc-1bc9d650c9 muswede, t., 2017, ‘colonial legacies and the decolonisation discourse in post-apartheid south africa – a reflective analysis of student activism in higher education’, african journal of public affairs 9(5), 200–210. https://hdl.handle.net/10520/ejc-6a114147f najafi, f., cheraghi, m., pashaeipour, s. & ghane, g., 2021, ‘clarifying the concept of the four-season symphony (i sea) in nursing practice: a wilson’s approach to concept analysis’, nursing forum 56(3), 724–733. https://doi.org/10.1111/nuf.12572 nkinyangi, j.a., 1991, ‘student protests in sub-saharan africa’, higher education 22(2), 157–173. https://doi.org/10.1007/bf00137474 nyahodza, l., 2019, positioning open access in a transformative paradigm, uct-open, cape town. omodan, b.i., dube, b. & tsotetsi, c.t., 2018, ‘collaborative governance and crisis management in nigerian universities: an exploration of students’ activism’, in m.m. dichaba & m.a.o. sotayo (eds.), rethinking teaching and learning in the 21st century, pp. 48–68, african academic research forum, pretoria. onivehu, a.o., 2021, ‘causes, consequences and control of student protests’, sociální pedagogika | social education 9(1), 8–21. https://doi.org/10.7441/soced.2021.09.01.01 oxlund, b., 2016, ‘#everythingmustfall: the use of social media and violent protests in the current wave of student riots in south africa’, anthropology now 8(2), 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1080/19428200.2016.1202574 rhoads, r.a., 1998, ‘student protest and multicultural reform: making sense of campus unrest in the 1990s’, the journal of higher education 69(6), 621–646. https://doi.org/10.1080/00221546.1998.11780745 sebake, b.k., 2019, ‘managing higher education in the post fees must fall: is the centre still holding?’, in international conference on public administration and development alternative (ipada), ipada conference, johannesburg, october 6–8, 2021, pp. 131–141. shrifian, l., 2011, ‘collegial management to improve the effectiveness of managers, organisational behavior in educational institutions’, procedia-social and behavioral sciences 29, 1169–1178. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2011.11.351 singh, p., 2005, ‘use of the collegial leadership model of emancipation to transform traditional management practices in secondary schools’, south african journal of education 25(1), 11–18. singh, p., 2013, ‘transforming traditional bureaucratic management practices by employing the collegial leadership model of emancipation’, international business & economics research journal (iber) 12(8), 953–968. https://doi.org/10.19030/iber.v12i8.7991 singh, p., manser, p. & mestry, r., 2007, ‘importance of emotional intelligence in conceptualising collegial leadership in education’, south african journal of education 27(3), 541–563. steinberg, j., 2018, ‘xenophobia and collective violence in south africa: a note of skepticism about the scapegoat’, african studies review 61(3), 119–134. https://doi.org/10.1017/asr.2018.56 susskind, l.e., mckearnen, s. & thomas-lamar, j., 1999, the consensus building handbook: a comprehensive guide to reaching agreement, sage, london. timperley, h.s. & robinson, v.m., 1998, ‘collegiality in schools: its nature and implications for problem solving’, educational administration quarterly 34(1_suppl), 608–629. https://doi.org/10.1177%2f0013161x980341003 turner, s.a., 1998, a study of leadership theories from 1970 to 1999 and their implications for educational leadership practice, brigham young university, michigan. unsworth, k. & parker, s.k., 2003, ‘promoting a proactive and innovative workforce for the new workplace’, in d. holman, t.d. wall, c.w. clegg, p. sparrow & a. howard (eds.), the new workplace: a guide to the human impact of modern working practices, john wiley & sons, chichester. wanie, c.m., oben, e.e., molombe, j.m. & tassah, i.t., 2017, ‘youth advocacy for efficient hostel management and affordable university students’ housing in buea, cameroon’, international journal of housing markets and analysis 10(1), 81–111. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijhma-01-2016-0012 wijngaarden, y., hitters, e. & bhansing, p.v., 2020, ‘cultivating fertile learning grounds: collegiality, tacit knowledge and innovation in creative co-working spaces’, geoforum 109, 86–94. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2020.01.005 williams, m.m., 2015, ‘effects of collegial principal leadership and trust on collaboration and teacher role stress’, doctoral dissertation, university of alabama libraries. yu, h., shen, z., miao, c., leung, c., chen, y., fauvel, s. et al., 2017, ‘a dataset of human decision-making in teamwork management’, scientific data 4(1), 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1038/sdata.2016.127 http://thejournal.org.za open access page 1 of 1 reviewer acknowledgement acknowledgement to reviewers in an effort to facilitate the selection of appropriate peer reviewers for transformation in higher education, we ask that you take a moment to update your electronic portfolio on https://thejournal.org. za for our files, allowing us better access to your areas of interest and expertise, in order to match reviewers with submitted manuscripts. if you would like to become a reviewer, please visit the journal website and register as a reviewer. to access your details on the website, you will need to follow these steps: 1. log into the online journal at https:// thejournal.org.za 2. in your ‘user home’ [https://thejournal.org. za/index.php/the/user] select ‘edit my profile’ under the heading ‘my account’ and insert all relevant details, bio statement and reviewing interest(s). 3. it is good practice as a reviewer to update your personal details regularly to ensure contact with you throughout your professional term as reviewer to transformation in higher education. please do not hesitate to contact us if you require assistance in performing this task. publisher: publishing@aosis.co.za tel: +27 21 975 2602 tel: 086 1000 381 the editorial team of transformation in higher education recognises the value and importance of the peer reviewer in the overall publication process – not only in shaping the individual manuscript, but also in shaping the credibility and reputation of our journal. we are committed to the timely publication of all original, innovative contributions submitted for publication. as such, the identification and selection of reviewers who have expertise and interest in the topics appropriate to each manuscript are essential elements in ensuring a timely, productive peer review process. we would like to take this opportunity to thank all reviewers who participated in shaping this volume of transformation in higher education. we appreciate the time taken to perform your review(s) successfully. anja visser anne becker charl wolhuter chris reddy chrissie boughey ida sabelis jean du toit jessica pool johan strijdom joseph hungwe juliet perumal karlien smit kirstin wilmot louise du toit lesley le grange liam gearon suriamurthee maistry savo heleta shan simmonds takalani mashau http://thejournal.org.za� https://thejournal.org.za� https://thejournal.org.za� https://thejournal.org.za� https://thejournal.org.za� https://thejournal.org.za/index.php/the/user https://thejournal.org.za/index.php/the/user mailto:publishing@aosis.co.za the 4-1_2019_contents.indd http://thejournal.org.za open access table of contents i original research foucault and the origins of the disciplined subject: post-subjectivity as a condition for transformation in education martina l. mabille transformation in higher education | vol 4 | a72 | 18 november 2019 original research research in curriculum studies: reflections on nomadic thought for advancing the field shan simmonds, lesley le grange transformation in higher education | vol 4 | a76 | 21 november 2019 original research a sociological exploration of the need for safe spaces for lesbian and gay students on a south african university campus tshanduko tshilongo, jacques rothmann transformation in higher education | vol 4 | a77 | 28 november 2019 original research bruno latour and the myth of autonomous academic discipline: rethinking education in the light of various modes of existence colby dickinson transformation in higher education | vol 4 | a75 | 11 december 2019 correction erratum: education hubs and private higher education expansion in small island developing states contexts: the case of mauritius hyleen mariaye, michael samuel transformation in higher education | vol 4 | a62 | 05 june 2019 correction erratum: global world, global mind: narratives of the university of hong kong worldwide exchange students ivy c.c. lai transformation in higher education | vol 4 | a63 | 05 june 2019 reviewer acknowledgement transformation in higher education | vol 4 | a80 | 11 december 2019 64 71 80 92 99 100 101 page i of i table of contents i original research acquisition of pedagogical knowledge by instructors of veterinary medicine jacob m. shivley transformation in higher education | vol 4 | a54 | 27 february 2019 original research a black woman’s perspective on understanding transformation and diversity in south african higher education juliet ramohai transformation in higher education | vol 4 | a58 | 26 march 2019 original research teacher training for religious education: engaging academics through the dialogical self theory cok bakker, ina ter avest transformation in higher education | vol 4 | a50 | 28 march 2019 original research applying ayittey’s indigenous african institutions to generate epistemic plurality in the curriculum oscar o. eybers transformation in higher education | vol 4 | a68 | 24 june 2019 original research decolonising the higher education curriculum: an analysis of african intellectual readiness to break the chains of a colonial caged mentality jabulani nyoni transformation in higher education | vol 4 | a69 | 26 june 2019 original research securitisation theory and the securitised university: europe and the nascent colonisation of global intellectual capital liam f. gearon transformation in higher education | vol 4 | a70 | 26 june 2019 original research exploring shame and pedagogies of discomfort in critical citizenship education elmarie costandius, neeske alexander transformation in higher education | vol 4 | a73 | 30 september 2019 1 10 20 29 35 45 56 vol 4 (2019) issn: 2415-0991 (print) | issn: 2519-5638 (online)transformation in higher education abstract introduction contextualising ‘homosexualities’ in academic contexts conceptualising ‘resilience’: from an ecological to a constructionist approach enacting the social constructionist model as a source for ‘hidden (or subversive) resilience’ for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, queer and/or questioning academics and students implications and concluding remarks acknowledgements references footnotes about the author(s) jacques rothmann department of sociology, faculty of humanities, north-west university, south africa citation rothmann, j., 2018, ‘a social constructionist approach to resilience for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, queer and/or questioning academics and students in south african universities’, transformation in higher education 3(0), a34. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v3i0.34 original research a social constructionist approach to resilience for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, queer and/or questioning academics and students in south african universities jacques rothmann received: 22 nov. 2017; accepted: 14 dec. 2017; published: 29 jan. 2018 copyright: © 2018. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract this article provides a theoretical contemplation on how reciprocation of an assimilationist, liberationist and/or transgressive approach by lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, queer and/or questioning (lgbtiq+) individuals on university campuses may encourage transformation initiatives in south african universities. the author ascribe to the contributions of previous research studies on a social constructionist approach to resilience to debate how individuals potentially navigate the disparity between sexual structure and agency within their ideological and physical construction and enactment of their academic and student persona. a theoretical basis is provided for the influence of social resilience to emphasise the localised, intersectional and plural experiences of lgbtiq+ individuals as opposed to a monolithic and universal ‘either/or’ account of their being solely docile victims or free agents in a heteronormative context. introduction cahill (2011:135) notes that sexual difference should not be viewed ‘…as a threat to be negotiated or a problem to be solved, but rather as the … condition for the … interactions through which the self develops’. this emphasises and contextualises the discussion that follows. individuals internalise (whether implicitly or explicitly) and become stratified in the hierarchical gendered and sexual societal arrangements (schippers 2016), depending on the culture which informs the gender and sexual order in a particular context. much of the focus on homosexuality in a south african context emphasises the dualism between constitutional protection of supposed sexual minorities and the actual experiences of acceptance (at best) and homophobia (at worst) in civil society (bhana 2012; de vos 2015; wells & polders 2006). this disjuncture is mainly associated with the supposed ‘un-african’ label assigned to the secular import of the medicalised category of homosexuality (francis & brown 2017), the prevailing centrality of patriarchy and heteronormativity in south africa (matthyse 2017) and the denial associated with the presence of gender and sexually diverse individuals in institutions (such as schools and universities) (francis 2017a, 2017b). heteronormativity as such may influence access to resources and interactions by sexual minorities (kitzinger 2005), an arrangement favouring the construction and reinforcement of a heterosexual and/or homosexual binary logic, whereby ‘…institutionalised normative heterosexuality regulates those kept within its boundaries as well as marginalising and sanctioning those outside them’ (jackson 2006:105). this may create uncritical assumptions about heterosexuality as the norm, while rendering other forms of sexual identity as supposed subordinate ‘others’ (rothmann & simmonds 2015) which potentially manifests in exclusion or even heterosexist and patriarchal violence (bhana 2014; msibi 2009). i wish to theoretically engage the plausiblity of how self-identified lgbtiq+1 people may attempt to ‘grow into resilience’ (grace 2015) in order to reclaim their gendered and sexual identity as non-subordinated ‘other’ (tong 2008) through an increased reflexive focus on the ‘queering’ of a supposed heteronormative academic context. in attempting this, one should avoid opting for an ‘either/or’ approach which favours a binary logic (i.e. assimilation vs. liberationism or assimilation and/or liberationism vs. social constructionism). in ascribing to the underlying principles associated with these paradigms, one could posit initiatives and recommendations in favour of lgbtiq+ people to access sources of social resilience and particular protective factors to transcend a view of south african universities as solely heteronormative and patriarchal spaces (francis 2017b; ungar 2004a, 2004b; van den berg 2016). by focusing on the theoretical contributions of scholars to social resilience, i consider whether these academics and students may be required to temporarily return to (or assimilate into) an initially homogeneous ethnic identity configuration as part of what could be considered as communal ‘homosexual spaces’ on campus to transcend their risk factors on their respective campuses through hidden resilience. in identifying with similar others, these individuals may, through a temporary or longitudinal assimilation, be granted the agency also to originate, formulate and redefine their own definitions of adversity, subjugation and/or resilience within this context and identity configuration along liberationist lines (fineman 2014; van den berg 2016) to refute only having at-risk labels imposed on them by, among others, previous studies that may have (inadvertently) stigmatised sexual minorities as only passive and vulnerable within a heteronormative context. drawing on my own work (rothmann 2012, 2017) and that of francis (2017b), grace (2006, 2017), plummer (2003, 2011, 2015) and van den berg (2016), among others, i wish to foreground how lgbtiq+ academics and students, through acknowledging homogeneity (based on an assimilationist view), could inadvertently encourage an emphasis on heterogeneity, intersectionality and a critique of heteronormativity, as it relates to their unique expierences on south african university campuses. thus, grace (2017) argues that one may consequently be able to enage with both the repressive and enabling factors characterising the everyday lives of such individuals. this may encourage underlining the: …complexities of [their] ways of being, belonging and acting in the world; interrogating normative understandings of sexuality and gender … bringing heterosexist … and homo/bi/transphobic actions and language into question; and accounting for intersecting relational and cultural intricacies. (p. 46) epprecht (2005), msibi (2013) and reid (2013) declare that we must move beyond an uncritical adoption of western views on sexuality, as the use of terms such as ‘gay’, ‘lesbian’ and ‘queer’ in a south african context has resulted in localised and contextually specific meanings for its users. in transending, what halberstam (2005) terms ‘perverse presentism’, the constituents of universities (staff, students and management) may be able to address the concerns, challenges and unique experiences of sexual minorities to fully encourage a transformative context for all its sexual actors. contextualising ‘homosexualities’ in academic contexts2 much has been written internationally on the lived experiences of self-identified gay and lesbian academics and students in higher education. on students, foci ranged from examples of homophobia directed towards them (chang 2005; fox & ore 2010; sears 2009) and its implications, including increased levels of substance abuse and suicide (cox et al. 2011; rankin et al. 2010), to studies exploring the possibilities of potential interventions on behalf of the gay and/or lesbian students through safe spaces (alvarez & schneider 2008; beemyn & rankin 2016; evans 2002). studies on academics have contemplated the role of positive affirmations associated with openly gay and lesbian academics who could serve as credible sources on gender and sexual diversity (grace 2006; lambert et al. 2006); however, research has also commented on how academics, owing to fear of the implications of institutional homophobia, may remain closeted to safeguard their personal and professional selves (dolan 1998; slagle 2007). south african research yielded significant insights into the life-worlds of sexual minority learners in primary and secondary schools relating to experiences of homophobia (butler et al. 2003; francis 2017a, 2017b; francis & reygan 2016; kowen & davis 2006; mcarthur 2015; msibi 2012; reygan & francis 2015) and the teaching and learning of themes on gender and sexual diversity (francis 2017a, 2017b; richardson 2004, 2008). similar studies in higher education contexts have centred on the perceptions of and/or attitudes to homosexual students (de wet, rothmann & simmonds 2016; johnson 2014; msibi 2015; rothmann & simmonds 2015); prejudice directed at these students on university campuses (jagessar & msibi 2015; matthyse 2017); and the influence of subtle heterosexism or sources of resilience associated with gay male academics and students (rothmann 2016, 2017). jagessar and msibi’s (2015) work provides an insider’s perspective of lgb3 students’ experiences of homophobia in university residences in kwazulu-natal. according to them, such an exploration ‘…is particularly important given the perceived positioning of universities as liberal spaces where diversity is tolerated, if not celebrated’ (jagessar & msibi 2015:64). their findings emphasise how heterosexist policing exacerbate the prevalence of homophobic violence in residencies where sexual minorities deviate from heteronormative principles. this, as noted by jagessar and msibi (2015), accordingly recalls atkinson and de palma’s (2009:18) argument that individuals continuously reinforce heterosexism ‘…through discourse’. similar findings resulted from two studies on the attitudes of pre-service teachers at south african universities (de wet et al. 2016; rothmann & simmonds 2015), indicating how the participants exuded a heterosexist bias which rendered gay and lesbian issues and individuals as less significant in relation to heterosexuality and their heterosexual counterparts, respectively. matthyse (2017) contends that, regardless of the inclusion of sexual orientation as one focal point in the 1997 white paper on higher education, around which safer campus contexts needed to be created, the current white paper for post-school education and training (2014) has remained ‘…silent about the homophobia and transphobia which plagues south africa and its institutions of higher learning’ which recalls balfour’s (2016) and msibi’s (2013) argument that the transformational foci in higher education mainly emphasise the importance of race and sex, to the exclusion of or conflation with sexual orientation as it relates to calls for ‘equality’ (matthyse 2017; tucker 2010). notwithstanding these challenges and the necessity to conduct research to identify and redress the homophobia sexual minority academics and students face, francis (2017b:14) believes that more should be done to emphasise the role of resilience and resistance by these individuals for, as he enquires, ‘are we to believe, based on the south african literature, that there is nothing good or positive about being lgbt in schools [or, one could add, universities]?’. conceptualising ‘resilience’: from an ecological to a constructionist approach initial studies on resilience, during the 1960s and 1970s, were informed by the work of proponents of developmental psychopathology. these studies centred on identifying ‘…patterns of positive adaptation during or following significant adversity or risk’ (masten et al. 2009:118) associated with a ‘…reduced vulnerability to environmental risk experiences’ (rutter 2006:2). scholars regarded it necessary to understand the reasons why some individuals were typified as resilient, regardless of their struggles, as this could yield further findings to inform improved intervention and policy formulation for others facing similar adversities in a less resilient way (masten 2001; rutter 1979). these initial studies argued that to be regarded as resilient, two premises must be considered. firstly, the fact that those typified as resilient are ‘doing okay’ in relation to others, based on the social (and arguably sexual) expectations in a particular context. secondly, those social (and sexual) subjects who may be facing adversity could be inhibited in realising positive outcomes (masten et al. 2009). the ecological model resulted in reaction to developmental psychology. bronfrenbrenner (1993) advocated an emphasis on the lived experiences of social actors, proposing that an individual’s development, from its early stages and throughout his and/or her life course, depended on increasingly complex reciprocal interactional processes (i.e. proximal processes) between the individual and the surrounding persons, objects and symbols in society. the form, power and content of these processes varied, according to him, based on the particular environment in which these interactions occurred. he believed that the proximal processes manifested more positive results impacting those circumstances where individuals found themselves in advantaged versus disadvantaged contexts (e.g. social stability, inclusion and support). resilience as such was understood as representing positive behaviour, life satisfaction, greater self-esteem and self-confidence, happiness and the absence of undesirable behaviour (including mental illness or emotional distress, among others) (grace 2015). by ‘growing into resilience’, grace (2015) argues that an ecological process affords an increase in the ‘…capacities and abilities’ of persons to deal with their everyday adversities. informed by positivist paradigms that emphasise causal linkages and the predetermination of the health outcomes and status of individuals, ungar (2004a:345) argues that ‘…proponents of an ecological model must necessarily choose arbitrary distinctions of what are to be accepted as evidences of healthy functioning’. irrespective of the impressive contributions of this model, ungar argues in favour of an additional emphasis on a constructionist approach to resilience. this, according to him, re-centres the point that the ecological model on its own may be unable to fully articulate the ‘…plurality of meanings individuals negotiate in their self-constructions as resilient’ and may, by implication, not address the ambiguity associated with defining resilience as a social construct (rutter 2007). aligned with this argument, recent studies on the process underline the necessity to consider the heterogeneity in people’s experiences in terms of their resilience, particularly with regard to intersectionality across different cultures (grace 2015; matthyse 2017; ungar 2004a, 2004b, 2011). grace (2015:27), ascribing to this view, defines resilience as ‘…a multidimensional, non-linear, and fluid construct, [a] process…about capacity building, successful adaptation, and sustained competence in the face of stressors and risk taking; it involves building assets and mobilizing strategies to enhance signs of thriving’ in individuals’ everyday lives. the plurality of ways in which lgbtiq+ individuals may access these sources of social resilience on university campuses is now contemplated. enacting the social constructionist model as a source for ‘hidden (or subversive) resilience’ for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, queer and/or questioning academics and students much of a constructionist approach is likened to a postmodern or post-structuralist ontological basis, positing resilience as the ‘…outcome from negotiations between individuals and their environments for the resources to define themselves as healthy amidst conditions collectively viewed as adverse’ (ungar 2004a:342). risk and adaptive factors are considered as ‘…chaotic, complex, relative, and contextual’. this allows an opportunity to view resilience such as to better comprehend how supposed vulnerable groups may ‘…discover and nurture resilience in ways often invisible’ (ungar 2004a:345) to others (i.e. through hidden resilience). although such an approach may complement an ecological focus, the proponents of constructionism critique the latter approach for not foregrounding the subjective nature of how, by whom or as what resilience is defined. consider ungar’s (2004a, 2004b) emphasis on the work of kaplan (1999) in this regard. kaplan argues that a limitation of the concept of resilience centres on the fact ‘…that it is tied to the normative judgments relating to particular outcomes’, continuing: …it is possible that the socially defined desirable outcome may be subjectively defined as undesirable, while the socially defined undesirable outcome may be subjectively defined as desirable. from the subjective point of view, the individual may be manifesting resilience, while from the social point of view the individual may be manifesting vulnerability. (kaplan 1999:31–32) supporting this definition raises two implications. firstly, the importance of the relativistic nature of resilience based on the sexual actor’s agency, and secondly, the permeable nature of a supposed rigid boundary and/or static binary logic (e.g. homosexuality vs. heterosexuality, an assimilationist vs. social constructionist paradigm), whether geographical and/or structural or ideological. pertaining to the first point on agency, one should avoid an exclusive focus on pre-determined or arbitrary understandings of resilience. ungar (2004b:79) therefore implores understanding the ‘discursive empowerment’ by the sexual actor, serving as a ‘…protective mechanism mediating risk factors, leading to self-definitions’ of resilience by these marginalised groups. to ungar (2004b:81), the process of resilience is the ‘…outcome of negotiations between individuals and their environments to maintain a self-definition as healthy’ amid the surrounding hegemonic discourse. this relates to the significance of the reciprocal interaction between the individual and his or her social context; thus, one should necessarily override existing medicalised definitions of health and acknowledge the narratives of individuals regarding their preferred demarcation of ‘problem behaviours’ and success factors (ungar 2004a:355). this may provide groups considered ‘vulnerable’ and ‘marginal’ (e.g. lgbtiq+ academics and students) the inter-subjective agency to express their personal narratives which may posit them as happy and healthy (watson & dispenza 2015). this notion underscores msibi’s (2012:518) critique of an exclusive focus on the negative experiences of ‘queer learners’, as such a view that may reinforce the idea that they are always powerless victims of heterosexism. drawing on a 2013 article by michael schulman in the new york times on gender and sexual diversity among american students, fineman (2014:308) argues that these students create novel terminologies and categorisations of sexual and gender expression which, according to her, is an ‘…exciting example of how human beings can intentionally create nurturing social spaces in which to foster community and a sense of belonging’, amid inherently diverse, fluid and plural understandings and enactment of these ‘identities’. in his study on ‘troubling’ heteronormative curricula in south african schools, francis (2017b) provides an example of such agency by a gay learner. by acknowledging the centrality of heterosexist rhetoric, the learner, in a queerly subversive way, transgressed its demeaning effects through mocking those teachers who sought to belittle him in their classrooms. he recalled mimicking the ‘ultra-alpha male’ masculine walk of his homophobic teacher. he likened the teacher to ‘the hulk – but not like an incredibly good hulk that fights bad guys. an ugly hulk. a fat, evil, ugly hulk’ (francis 2017b:104). in commenting on this, francis provides an insightful example of how lgb learners are able to use their agency to critique the centrality of heteronormativity, rather than merely passively assimilating into a heterosexist context as victims of homophobia (rothmann & simmonds 2015). similar examples also emerge in the attempts of self-identified homosexual academics to challenge heterosexist rhetoric and internalised homophobia, including grace’s (2006) emphasis on ‘writing the queer self’, grace and benson’s (2000) ‘autobiographical queer-life narrative’, maxey’s (1999) ‘critical reflexivity’, petrovic’s (2002) ‘radicalization of liberalism’, rothmann’s (2016) reference to a ‘deprofessionalisation’ of the gay male academic identity and warren’s (1974) recommendation to engage in a ‘reflective subjectivity’. thus, lgbtiq+ individuals access rutter’s (2007) ‘steeling effects’ through ‘reflexiveness’ to proactively construct their inter-subjective academic performance as the source for resilience and thriving through implicitly and explicitly critiquing heterosexism, rather than solely expierencing vulnerability and subjugation in the face of heteronormativity. these attempts echo kumashiro’s (2002) call in favour of anti-oppressive education pedagogies and policies,4 advocating an education approach which critiques the ‘othering’ of sexual minorities and promoting the transformation of existing hegemonic structures in education. although laudable, he acknowledges that such an approach may potentially further essentialise and homogenise the experiences of sexual minorities and not necessarily result in proactive action by those who have been sensitised (kumashiro 2002; msibi 2015). as such, although essential to create an awareness of the limitations associated with heteronormativity (francis & brown 2017), one needs to move beyond an exclusive, restrictive view. to consider the likelihood for social resilience, university policy-makers, as noted, should acknowledge the uniquely fluid, plural and diverse nature of the supposed static category of ‘the homosexual’ (foucault 1978) in an african and south african setting. this could elucidate the inherent heterogeneity of homosexual identities and practices. although it is crucial to identify and challenge heterosexist and patriarchal inclinations, lewis (2011:209) observes that researchers should ‘…extricate african sexuality from binaries that define heterosexuality as normatively african and homosexuality as deviant and western’ (msibi 2013). the supposed ‘un-african’ nature and non-existence of homosexual practices on the african continent have been refuted by several studies that document the existence of same-sex practices as part of the african culture for centuries (dlamini 2006; mutua 2011). consider, for example, epprecht’s (2005:142) critique of this invisibility of homosexuality. he argues that ‘…the history and current struggles of lgbti people in africa only remain hidden to those who actively desire not to see them’. in keeping with this point, dlamini (2006:131) notes that colonialism did not necessarily introduce the perceived ‘secular’ and ‘un-african’ vice of homosexuality to africa, but rather its christian condemnation thereof. one could thereby challenge reinforcing ‘bitter knowledge’ which, according to msibi (2016:28), propounds prejudicial and stereotypical views of homosexuality. aligned with the social constructionist view of resilience, msibi (2015:392) acknowledges kumashiro’s (2002) argument to combine the various approaches to encourage social change in favour of the position of sexual minorities in education since ‘…oppression is multi-layered, multiple and situated’. a monolithic view of a sexual subject’s agency as only affording him and/or her social resilience should thus be avoided, given the diverse experiences that may result from enacting one’s sexual orientation to potentially master one’s resilience (jagessar & msibi 2015). resnick (2000), for example, poses the following question: ‘…to what extent and under what circumstances can protective factors be transplanted into the lives of … people who have been socialized in a stressful climate of uncertainty and fear?’. always consider, as argued by grace (2015), the ‘…specific issues, challenges, or opportunities … such as success in negotiating relationships’ with others. jagessar and msibi’s (2015:71) argument that the lgb residency students who participated in their study may internalise, normalise and even trivialise the heteronormative and homophobic institutional culture insofar as they justify the context as ‘…not [being] all that bad’. if viewed solely as agents, homosexual academics and students may be posited as the ‘…lone-hero[es]…overcoming [adversity] despite all odds’, thus negating any emphasis on how collective action and/or structural inequality exacerbates heteronormative discrimination towards sexual minorities. because of this, heterosexism may be reduced to an individual level (and how the ‘lone’ person redresses its effects), thus ignoring the role of specific institutions that codify racism, sexism and heterosexism in the overall campus culture, curriculum and discourse through unquestioned marginalisation and stigmatisation (fineman 2014; francis 2017b; msibi 2012, 2013). pertaining to the permeability of geographical, structural and/or ideological spaces, much has been written on the beneficial effects the creation of unique gay and lesbian subcultures or ‘safe spaces’ have for lesbian and gay individuals (evans 2002). others, however, have chronicled its role in possibly intensifying the minoritisation or homogenisation of sexual dissidents (binnie & skeggs 2004), the exacerbation of the binary between the heterosexual and homosexual communities (rink 2013) or the fallacious ideology of assured safety outside such communal spaces (fox & ore 2010). parallel to this thought, ghaziani (2015), writing from an american perspective, attributes the changing social and political ideologies concerning the acceptance, accommodation and legal protections afforded to sexual minorities as a central reason why mainstream culture (which could include the university’s campus culture in general) may also become an overarching ‘inclusive ghetto’ for all sexual actors, thus negating the necessity for separate and exclusive homosexual settings. notwithstanding these arguments, recent scholarship on resilience implores an increased emphasis on the social context of vulnerable groups to understand their own unique indicators of resilient behaviour (boyden & mann 2005; reygan & francis 2015; ungar et al. 2007). the work of ungar et al. (2007:288) indicates that resilience cannot be understood as solely an individual’s capacity to overcome adversity but also as the ‘…capacity of the individual’s environment to provide access to health enhancing resources in culturally relevant ways’. this thought echoes similar contributions of theorists on gender and sexuality studies (francis 2017b; plummer 2003, 2015). the inherent diversity associated with homosexual identities may likely counter the subjugation which homogenisation may present in, for example, a supposed ‘safe space’ for students (e.g. joining lgbtiq+ student organisations) and academics (e.g. subject departments with mainly gay and lesbian staff or attempts at ‘passing’ as heterosexual) (rothmann 2016, 2017). lgbtiq+ individuals may thus access their agentic capacity to identify, choose and continuously reconstruct and deconstruct varied forms of their particular sexual orientation (e.g. lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, queer or questioning) (van den berg 2016) through a democratisation of both the physical and/or structural and ideological heteronormative habitus they occupy. gorman-murray’s (2006:57) research on how australian gay men ‘…fluidly use’ their interactive capabilities to import their public gay sensibility into their homes, applies here. the study comments on the reciprocal interplay between establishing a communal context of belonging for gay men (e.g. in bars, clubs or safe spaces such as academic courses and/or academic and student organisations), whereby their identification with others (whether homogeneous or heterogeneous in terms of their gender and sexual identity) facilitate ‘…connections with others’ and create ‘…personal happiness and self-acceptance’ (gorman-murray 2006:60) in their personal lives, especially as it relates to secondary socialisation and democratisation of their sexuality. emphasising the importance of intersectionality related to south african ‘homosexualities’ may provide a platform for academics and students to voice their experiences based on their varied racial, ethnic and gender identities. this, according to francis (2017b:100), is imperative, because ‘…sexuality is never experienced in isolation from the whole subject’. he advocates a ‘…need to shift focus to consider the interplay and disruptions that inform how … intersections have shaped [sexual subjects’] life histories and identities’ (francis 2017b:102). this argument recalls simon’s (1996:43–44) reference to how the construction of one’s agentic personal sexual identity through intrapsychic scripting may be informed by your interpersonal interactions with others based on what is permitted within the larger cultural (e.g. heteronormative societal context) scenario. by thus temporarily assimilating into an ethnic characterisation of homosexual homogeneity in external communal settings, these academics and students may access their agency and challenge critics on attaching a victimised label to them through the latter’s supposed assimilation into what might be considered a heteronormative context, by becoming aware of their shared experiences, yet diverse inter-subjective life-worlds (filiault & drummond 2008; fineman 2014; van den berg 2016). i thus recall previous arguments that sexual diversity may only be acknowledged within an open, contestable and heterogeneous figuration of identity categories, rather than a complete negation of gender and sexual categorisation (cf. plummer 2003; rothmann 2012; weeks 1986). by ‘doing gay’ (dowsett 1996), sexual actors may problematise the supposed rigid boundary and static polarised binary logic between heterosexuality and homosexuality and underline its permeable nature (rowe & dowsett 2008). this may weaken ‘traditional modes of group think’ and rather produce so-called ‘flourishing sexualities’; thus, more ‘sacral’, ‘individualized’, ‘reflexive’ and ‘informalized’ sexualised performances which express an ‘…endless hunger for instant change…and self-reinvention’ within the larger university context (plummer 2015:172). implications and concluding remarks in conclusion, the article seeks to consider the potential role of a social constructionist approach to resilience in encouraging the creation of a transformative university context for sexual minority academics and students. whether this is done through an increased sensitisation of the general university staff and student constituency on matters relating to gender and sexual diversity through, among others, the provision of formalised policies to safeguard them, the introduction of optional or compulsory courses and/or modules on the topic in order to comment on the intersectionality associated with such identities or practices and dispel ‘un-african’ labels and establishing ‘safer spaces’ to redress the consequences of homophobia, context specificity and the agency of sexual actors should be foregrounded. in so doing, one avoids adopting an ‘either/or’ approach (i.e. assimilationist vs. liberationist approach) to the position of sexual minorities, insofar as it foregrounds the continuous interplay between self-identified lgbtiq+ academics and students’ choices to assimilate, dis-assimilate and/or transgress communal contexts (e.g. safe spaces) for sexual minorities. their individual choices may result in their need to either identify with others based on their sexual orientation; develop an appreciation for the inherently diverse, fluid and reflexively constructed interpretations of homosexual identities; or it may, along liberationist lines, indicate their outright critique of heteronormativity. although the first two options risk the reinforcement of homonormativity within the parameters of an acceptable heteronormative view of the initial medicalised categorisation of homosexuality as simply pathological, assimilationist and homogeneous, it emphasises how these sexual subjects self-consciously enact their individual needs to access their social or hidden resilience – granted, within an existing heteronormative context. in adopting a contextually specific and localised view of the needs of academics and students, university management and designated allies (e.g. course developers, lecturers and students) may not only be able to engage with the limitations associated with the structural challenges presented by a presumed heteronormative context but also consider the agentic possibilities sexual minorities may negotiate within such structures. i am cognisant of the fact that proponents of queer theory may critique such an approach, but one should, as argued by proponents of social constructionism, consider how these individuals establish a continuous dialogue with their social environment to assertively construct their sources for thriving resiliently. acknowledgements competing interests the author declares that he has no financial or personal relationships which may have inappropriately influenced him in writing this article. references alvarez, s.d. & schneider, j., 2008, ‘one college campus’s need for a safe zone: a case study’, journal of gender studies 17(10), 71–74. https://doi.org/10.1080/09589230701838461 atkinson, e. & de palma, r., 2009, ‘un-believing the matrix: queering consensual heteronormativity’, gender and education 21(1), 17–29. https://doi.org/10.1080/09540250802213149 balfour, r., 2016, ‘the (in)visible gay in academic leadership: implications for reimagining inclusion and transformation in south africa’, in d. pillay, i. naicker & k. pithouse-morgan (eds.), academic autoethnographies: inside teaching in higher education, pp. 133–148, sense, boston, ma. beemyn, g. & rankin, s.r., 2016, ‘creating a gender-inclusive campus’, in y.m. miguel & s. tobias (eds.), trans-studies: the challenge to hetero/homo normativities, pp. 21–32, rutgers university press, new brunswick, nj. bhana, d., 2012, ‘understanding and addressing homophobia in schools: a view from teachers’, south african journal of education 32, 307–318. https://doi.org/10.15700/saje.v32n3a659 bhana, d., 2014, ‘“managing” the rights of gays and lesbians: reflections from some south african secondary schools’, education, citizenship and social justice 9(1), 67–80. https://doi.org/10.1177/1746197913497663 binnie, j. & skeggs, b., 2004, ‘cosmopolitan knowledge and the production and consumption of sexualised space: manchester’s gay village’, sociological review 52(1), 39–61. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-954x.2004.00441.x boyden, j. & mann, g., 2005, ‘children’s risk, resilience, and coping in extreme situations’, in m. ungar (ed.), handbook for working with children and youth: pathways to resilience across cultures and contexts, pp. 3–26, sage, thousand oaks, ca. bronfrenbrenner, u., 1993, ‘ecological models of human development’, in n. gauvain & m. cole (eds.), readings on the development of children, 2nd edn., pp. 37–43, freeman, new york. butler, a.h., alpaslan, a.h., strümpher, j. & astbury, g., 2003, ‘gay and lesbian youth experiences of homophobia in south african secondary education’, journal of gay and lesbian issues in education 1(2), 3–28. https://doi.org/10.1300/j367v01n02_02 cahill, a.j., 2011, overcoming objectification: a carnal ethics, routledge, new york. chang, y., 2005, ‘through queers’ eyes: critical educational ethnography in queer studies’, the review of education, pedagogy, and cultural studies 27, 171–208. https://doi.org/10.1080/10714410590963857 cox, n., dewaele, a., van houtte, m. & vincke, j., 2011, ‘stress-related growth, coming out, and internalized homonegativity in lesbian, gay, and bisexual youth. an examination of stress-related growth within the minority stress model’, journal of homosexuality 58(1), 117–137. https://doi.org/10.1080/00918369.2011.533631 de vos, p., 2015, ‘mind the gap: imagining new ways of struggling towards the emancipation of sexual minorities in africa’, agenda 29(1), 39–53. de wet, a., rothmann, j. & simmonds, s., 2016, ‘human rights: protecting sexual minorities or reinforcing the boundaries of “the closet”?’, the south african review of sociology 47(3), 85–109. dlamini, b., 2006, ‘homosexuality in the african context’, agenda 20(67), 128–136. dolan, j., 1998, ‘gay and lesbian professors: out on campus’, academe 84(5), 40–45. dowsett, g.w., 1996, practicing desire: homosexual sex in the era of aids, stanford university press, stanford, ca. epprecht, m., 2005, ‘“hidden” histories of african homosexualities’, canadian woman studies 24(2/3), 138–144. evans, n.j., 2002, ‘the impact of an lgbt safe zone project on campus climate’, qualitative research 43, 522–539. filiault, s.m. & drummond, m.j.n., 2008, ‘athletes and body image: interviews with gay sportsmen’, qualitative research in psychology 5(4), 311–333. fineman, m.a., 2014, ‘vulnerability, resilience, and lgbt youth’, temple political & civil rights law review 23(2), 307–329. foucault, m., 1978, the history of sexuality, vol. 1, vintage, new york. fox, c.o. & ore, r.e., 2010, ‘(un)covering normalized gender and race subjectivities in lgbt safe spaces’, feminist studies 36(3), 629–649. francis, d., 2017a, ‘homophobia and sexuality diversity in south african schools: a review’, journal of lgbt youth 14(4), 359–379. https://doi.org/10.1080.19361653.2017.1326868 francis, d., 2017b, troubling the teaching and learning of gender and sexual diversity in south african education, palgrave macmillan, new york. francis, d. & brown, a., 2017, ‘“to correct, punish and praise” lrc leaders experiences and expressions of non-heterosexuality in namibian schools’, international journal of inclusive education 21(12), 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1080/13603116.2017.1336577 francis, d. & reygan, f.c.g., 2016, ‘relationships, intimacy and desire in the lives of lesbian, gay and bisexual youth in south africa’, the south african review of sociology 47(3), 65–84. https://doi.org/10.1080/21528586.2016.1163290 ghaziani, a., 2015, ‘“gay enclaves face prospect of being passe”: how assimilation affects the spatial expressions of sexuality in the united states’, international journal of urban and regional research 39(4), 756–771. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2427.12209 gorman-murray, a., 2006, ‘homeboys: uses of home by gay australian men’, social and cultural geography 7(1), 53–69. https://doi.org/10.1080/14649360500452988 grace, a.p., 2006, ‘writing the queer self: using autobiography to mediate inclusive teacher education in canada’, teaching and teacher education 22, 826–835. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2006.04.026 grace, a.p., 2015, growing into resilience: sexual and gender minority youth in canada, university toronto press, toronto, on. grace, a.p., 2017, ‘two good gay teachers: pioneering advocate-practitioners confronting homophobia in schooling in british columbia, canada’, irish educational studies 36(1), 43–56. https://doi.org/10.1080/03323315.2017.1289701 grace, a.p. & benson, f.j., 2000, ‘using autobiographical queer life narratives of teachers to connect personal, political and pedagogical spaces’, international journal of inclusive education 4(2), 89–109. https://doi.org/10.1080/136031100284830 halberstam, j., 2005, in a queer time and place: transgender bodies, subcultural lives, new york university press, new york. jackson, s., 2006, ‘interchanges: gender, sexuality and heterosexuality: the complexity (and limits) of heteronormativity’, feminist theory 7(1), 105–121. https://doi.org/10.1177/1464700106061462 jagessar, v. & msibi, t., 2015, ‘“it’s not that bad”: homophobia in the residences of a university in kwazulu-natal, durban, south africa’, agenda 29(1), 63–73. https://doi.org/10.1080/10130950.2015.1022984 johnson, b., 2014, ‘the need to prepare future teachers to understand and combat homophobia in schools’, south african journal of higher education 28(4), 1249–1268. kaplan, h.b., 1999, ‘toward an understanding of resilience: a critical review of definitions and models’, in m.d. glantz & j.l. johnson (eds.), resilience and development: positive life adaptations, pp. 17–84, kluwer academic/plenum, new york. kitzinger, c., 2005, ‘heteronormativity in action: reproducing the heterosexual nuclear family in afterhours medical calls’, social problems 52(4), 477–498. https://doi.org/10.1525/sp.2005.52.4.477 kowen, d. & davis, j., 2006, ‘opaque young lives: experiences of lesbian youth’, agenda 20(67), 80–92. kumashiro, k., 2002, troubling education: queer activism and anti-oppressive pedagogy, new york, routledge falmer. lambert, e.g., ventura, l.a., hall, d.e. & cluse-tolar, t., 2006, ‘college students’ views on gay and lesbian issues’, journal of homosexuality 50(4), 1–30. https://doi.org/10.1300/j082v50n04_01 lewis, d., 2011, ‘representing african sexualities’, in s. tamale (ed.), african sexualities: a reader, pp. 199–216, pambazuka press, cape town. masten, a.s., 2001, ‘ordinary magic: resilience processes in development’, american psychologist 56(3), 227–238. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066x.56.3.227 masten, a.s., cutuli, j.j., herbers, j.e. & reed, m.j., 2009, ‘resilience in development’, in s.j. lopez & r. snyder (eds.), the oxford handbook of positive psychology, pp. 117–131, oxford university press, oxford. matthyse, g., 2017, ‘heteronormative higher education: challenging the status quo through lgbtiq awareness-raising’, south african journal of higher education 31(4), 112–126. https://doi.org/10.20853/31-4-890 maxey, i., 1999, ‘beyond boundaries? activism, academia, reflexivity and research’, area 31(3), 199–208. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-4762.1999.tb00084.x mcarthur, t., 2015, ‘homophobic violence in a northern cape school: learners confront the issue’, agenda 29(3), 1–7. msibi, t., 2009, ‘not crossing the line: masculinities and homophobic violence in south africa’, agenda 23(80), 50–54. msibi, t., 2012, ‘“i’m used to it now”: experiences of homophobia among queer youth in south african township schools’, gender and education 24(5), 515–533. https://doi.org/10.1080/09540253.2011.645021 msibi, t., 2013, ‘denied love: same-sex desire, agency and social oppression among african men who engage in same-sex relations’, agenda 27(2), 105–116. msibi, t., 2015, ‘the teaching of sexual and gender diversity issues to pre-service teachers at the university of kwazulu-natal: lessons from student exam responses’, alternation 12, 385–410. msibi, t., 2016, ‘bitter knowledge’, in m.n. rodriquez, j.w. martino, c.j. ingrey & e. brockenbrough (eds.), critical concepts in queer studies and education: an international guide for the twenty-first century, pp. 23–33, palgrave macmillan, new york. mutua, m., 2011, ‘sexual orientation and human rights: putting homophobia on trial’, in s. tamale (ed.), african sexualities: a reader, pp. 452–462, pambazuka press, cape town. petrovic, j.e., 2002, ‘promoting democracy and overcoming heterosexism: and never the twain shall meet?’, sex education 2(2), 145–154. https://doi.org/10.1080/14681810220144891 plummer, k., 2003, ‘queers, bodies and postmodern sexualities: a note on revisiting the sexual in symbolic interactionism’, qualitative sociology 26(4), 515–530. https://doi.org/10.1023/b:quas.0000005055.16811.1c plummer, k., 2011, ‘critical humanism and queer theory: living with the tensions’, in n.k. denzin & y.s. lincoln (eds.), the sage handbook of qualitative research, 4th edn., pp. 195–207, sage, thousand oaks, ca. plummer, k., 2015, cosmopolitan sexualities, polity press, malden, ma. rankin, s.r., weber, g., blumenfeld, w. & frazer, s. 2010, 2010 state of higher education for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people, viewed 30 december 2013, from http://lgbtq.sdes.ucf.edu/docs/campuspride2010lgbtreportsummary.pdf. reid, g., 2013, how to be a real gay: gay identities in small-town south africa, university of kwazulu-natal press, scottsville, ky. resnick, p.d., 2000, ‘protective factors, resiliency, and healthy youth development’, adolescent medicine 11(1), 157–164. reygan, f. & francis, d., 2015, ‘emotions and pedagogies of discomfort: teachers’ responses to sexual and gender diversity in the free state, south africa’, education as change 19(1), 101–119. https://doi.org/10.1080/16823206.2014.943259 richardson, e., 2004, ‘“a ripple in the pond”: challenging homophobia in a teacher education course’, education as change 8, 146–163. https://doi.org/10.1080/16823200409487084 richardson, e., 2008, ‘researching lgb youth in post-apartheid south africa’, journal of gay and lesbian issues in education 3(2/3), 135–140. rink, b.m., 2013, ‘que(e)riyng cape town: touring africa’s “gay capital” with the pink map’, in j. sarmento & e. brito-henriques (eds.), tourism in the global south: heritages, identities and development, pp. 65–90, centre for geographical studies, lisbon. rothmann, j., 2012, ‘sociology as bridge over troubled waters: establishing a link between the principles of lesbian and gay studies and queer theory’, the south african review of sociology 43(1), 41–61. rothmann, j., 2016, ‘the (de)professionalisation of the gay male academic identity: locking the closet door on south african university campuses’, the south african review of sociology 47(4), 40–59. rothmann, j., 2017, ‘the role of self-reflexivity on the part of gay male academics on south african university campuses’, acta academica 49(1), 1–31. rothmann, j. & simmonds, s., 2015, ‘“othering” non-normative sexualities through objectification of “the homosexual”: discursive discrimination by pre-service teachers’, agenda 103, 116–126. rowe, m.s. & dowsett, g.w., 2008, ‘sex, love, friendship, belonging and place: is there a role for “gay community” in hiv prevention today?’, culture, health & sexuality 10(4), 329–344. https://doi.org/10.1080/13691050701843098 rutter, m., 1979, ‘protective factors in children’s responses to stress and disadvantage’, in m.w. kent & j.e. rolf (eds.), primary prevention of psychopathology: vol. 3. social competence in children, pp. 49–74, university press of new england, hanover, nh. rutter, m., 2006, ‘implications of resilience concepts for scientific understanding’, annals of the new york academy of sciences 1094(1), 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1196/annals.1376.002 rutter, m., 2007, ‘resilience, competence, and coping’, child abuse and neglect 31, 205–209. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chiabu.2007.02.001 schippers, m., 2016, beyond monogamy: polyamory and the future of polyqueer sexualities, new york university press, new york. sears, j.t., 2009, ‘interrogating the subject: queering elementary education, 10 years on’, sex education 9(2), 193–200. https://doi.org/10.1080/14681810902829653 simon, w., 1996, postmodern sexualities, routledge, new york. slagle, r.a., 2007, ‘ferment in lgbt studies and queer theory’, journal of homosexuality 52(1), 309–328. tong, r., 2008, feminist thought: a more comprehensive introduction, 3rd edn., westview press, boulder, co. tucker, a., 2010, ‘the “rights” (and “wrongs”) of articulating race with sexuality: the conflicting nature of hegemonic legitimisation in south african queer politics’, social & cultural geography 11(5), 433–449. https://doi.org/10.1080/14649365.2010.488747 ungar, m., 2004a, ‘a constructionist discourse on resilience: multiple contexts, multiple realities among at-risk children and youth’, youth and society 35, 341–365. https://doi.org/10.1177/0044118x03257030 ungar, m., 2004b, nurturing hidden resilience in troubled youth, university of toronto press, toronto, on. ungar, m., 2011, ‘community resilience for youth and families: facilitative physical and social capital in contexts of adversity’, children and youth services review 33, 1742–1748. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2011.04.027 ungar, m., brown, m., liebenberg, l., othman, r., kwong, w.m., armstrong, m. et al., 2007, ‘unique pathways to resilience across cultures’, adolescence 42(166), 287–310. van den berg, e., 2016, ‘“the closet”: a dangerous heteronormative space’, the south african review of sociology 47(3), 25–44. https://doi.org/10.1080/21528586.2016.1182445 warren, c.a., 1974, identity and community in the gay world, john wiley, new york. watson, l.b. & dispenza, f., 2015, ‘the relationships among masculine appearance norm violations, childhood harassment for gender nonconformity, and body image concerns among sexual minority men’, journal of gay & lesbian mental health 19(2), 145–164. https://doi.org/10.1080/19359705.2014.993229 wells, h. & polders, l., 2006, ‘anti-gay hate crimes in south africa: prevalence, reporting practices, and experiences of the police’, agenda 20(67), 20–28. white paper 3 on transformation in higher education, 1997, ‘government gazette vol. 386 no. 18207’, 15th august. footnotes 1. for the purpose of this article, the abbreviation ‘lgbtiq+’ is used as an inclusive concept referring to those individuals who self-identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, queer and/or questioning as it relates to their sexual orientation and/or gender identity. writing from a south african perspective, msibi (2013) contends that regardless of the laudable transgressive properties of queer theory and the use of the concept ‘queer’, it is still informed by a westernised history and understanding of sexual identity. as such, the acronym lgbtiq+ is considered as more of an inclusive reference to those individuals who do not conform to heterosexual hegemony or heteronormative identity configurations which are informed by a cisgender model. also, consider fineman’s (2014:307) argument in favour of augmenting the initial lgbt (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) acronym with new terms and categories in order to ‘…express diverse understandings of sexuality, gender, physical bodies, and evolving identities’. 2. it is important to note the use of the plural in this regard. the reference to ‘homosexualities’ is indicative of the inherent diversity, plurality, localised and contestability associated with an individual’s sexual identity, as opposed to the initially rigid categorisation of the proponents of the medical model, which posited same-sex attraction as homogeneous and pathological (cf. fineman 2014; plummer 1996, 2003, 2015). 3. the acronym lgb (lesbian, gay and bisexual) is retained based on its usage by jagessar and msibi (2015) in their article. 4. kumashiro (2002) differentiates between four processes social researchers could use to encourage the establishment of anti-oppressive education pedagogies, strategies and policies in education. these include ‘education for the other’, ‘education about the other’, ‘education which is critical of othering’ and ‘education that changes society’. abstract introduction technology in higher education a disembodied and instrumentalist view of technology: a challenge and obstacle to transformation in higher education an embodied understanding of technology: merleau-ponty’s embodied phenomenology conclusion acknowledgements references footnotes about the author(s) jean du toit school of philosophy, north-west university, south africa anné h. verhoef school of philosophy, north-west university, south africa citation du toit, j. & verhoef, a.h., 2018, ‘embodied digital technology and transformation in higher education’, transformation in higher education 3(0), a52. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v3i0.52 original research embodied digital technology and transformation in higher education jean du toit, anné h. verhoef received: 10 july 2018; accepted: 28 aug. 2018; published: 23 oct. 2018 copyright: © 2018. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract background: the use of digital technology in higher education is overwhelmingly positively assessed in most recent research literature. while some literature indicates certain challenges in this regard, in general, the emphasis is on an encouragement and promotion of digital technology in higher education. while we recognised the positive potential of the use of digital technology in higher education, we were cautious of an instrumentalist and disembodied understanding of (digital) technology and its potential impact on higher education – as a sector of education and as a body of students. aim: to re-conceptualise the way in which technology is understood for its use in the higher education sector, as is argued, would be of benefit for transformation in higher education. setting: south african higher education sector. methods: phenomenology of embodiment. results: an embodied understanding of technology through the embodied phenomenology of merleau-ponty and an explication of its potential for transformation in higher education via the working concept of the embodied screen leads to a full understanding of the student as embodied and socially-embedded individual. conclusion: a more holistic and embodied understanding of digital technology serves to supplement transformation in higher education, especially if transformation is itself understood in concrete social and bodily terms as is the case in the south african context. introduction in the first part of the article, we present a brief overview of the positive assessment of the use of technology in higher education. the term ‘technology’, as used throughout this article, refers specifically to digital technology which is encountered in its various forms – internet, smartphones, computers, etc. – and which is used as such in the higher education context. ‘higher education’ refers to ‘all learning programmes leading to qualifications higher than the proposed further education and training certificate or the current standard ten certificate’ (south africa, department of education 1997:11). our focus will mainly be on the 26 public universities in south africa, functioning within a highly technologised global context. the first part of the article ends with a critique of technology in higher education. in response to this critique, we argue that a more embodied understanding of technology is needed than the predominantly instrumentalist view of technology. in the second part of the article, we elucidate this embodied understanding of technology through an appropriation of the philosopher maurice merleau-ponty’s embodied phenomenology in the context of digital technology. the working concept of the embodied screen is introduced to highlight what this alternative understanding of technology could entail: a foundational recognition of the student’s embodiment as means of engaging with technology in higher education. in the last part of the article, we envisage and discuss the implications of an embodied understanding of technology for the transformation of higher education. technology can play a major role in the transformation of higher education in general, but if transformation is understood in concrete social and bodily terms – as is the case in south africa – a more holistic and embodied understanding of technology is needed. this point is explicated in the conclusion by highlighting the implications of an embodied understanding of technology for transformation in higher education. technology in higher education the use of technology in higher education is not only taken for granted, but is also typically encouraged and promoted. for example, waghid and waghid (2016:281) argue that, ‘the onus is on both tertiary institutions and the state to enhance (higher) education by cultivating students’ capacities to use the internet and to enhance their digital literacy’, because ‘[r]esearch has shown that the application of digital technology has enhanced teaching and learning’ (p. 266). underwood (2009:8), who has conducted several studies on the impact of digital technology application in education, has a similar view. wankle (2011:6) also agrees and argues in his book, teaching arts and science with new social media, that the use of digital technology (like social media) could potentially stimulate technical literacy, social interaction and critical reflection and, furthermore, serve as a catalyst for cultivating excitement, interaction and sharing in students (p. 7). this positive potential of the use of technology in higher education has found prominence in various educational policies of government and of universities. the south african white paper on education, for example, states that ‘the ministry of education is committed to help harness the new teaching and learning technologies, especially through its technology enhanced learning initiative’ (south africa, department of education 1997:7). the transformative power of digital technology for higher education is similarly widely acknowledged. for example, in the united states the office of educational technology has recently published a supplement to the national education technology plan under the title ‘reimagining the role of technology in higher education’ and states that technology ‘offers the opportunity to catalyse more significant reforms to educational structures and practices’ (united states, department of education 2017:9). the nmc horizon report of 2017: higher education edition1 points out that technology continues to shape the internationalisation of higher education. internationalisation can, in turn, ‘broaden the discourse on transformation and encourage the rethinking thereof’ (du preez, simmonds & verhoef 2016:7). in the south african context, waghid et al. (2016:282) argue that the use of digital technology in higher education can ‘better students’ lives as digitally literate thinkers, and democratic and deliberative citizens’. there are, of course, concerns amongst critics about the use of digital technology in higher education and of its positive transformative potential. such concerns include issues of cost-effectiveness, the relative benefit of digital technologies (wainer et al. 2008:24), issues of access and equity, digital literacy as an isolated technological skill (adams becker et al. 2017:22), technological training of lecturers, integration of technology into curriculums (georgina & olson 2008:1) and the achievement gap (‘a disparity in the enrolment and academic performance between student groups, defined by socioeconomic status, race, ethnicity, or gender’ [adams becker et al. 2017:22]). other challenges include increased plagiarism, loss of focus (mindfulness, attention and contemplation) or scattered attention by students, uncertainty of the role of the educator and the challenge for educators to stay organised and current, while ‘educational needs, software, and devices advance at a strenuous rate’ (adams becker et al. 2017:23). furthermore, there are often assumptions and unrealistic expectations of learning enhancements through technology which are not realised. kirkwood and price (2014:26), for example, analysed articles on technology enhanced learning from 2005 to 2010 and conclude that ‘there seemed to be many cases of deterministic expectations that introducing technology would, by itself, bring about changes in teaching/learning practices’. however, this is not necessarily the case, as flavin (2017) indicates that: given the ubiquity of technology usage in higher education, there is a need to understand more fully the technology practices of students and lecturers, with a view to rethinking approaches to technology enhanced learning. (p. 3) despite some of these concerns about the use of digital technology in higher education, the vast majority of research literature on this matter (as previously mentioned) is positive about its use and potential. our aim in this article is not to oppose this positive assessment of digital technology, but rather to encourage a critical engagement with questions regarding the understanding and use of technology in higher education. this will be done in order to find a more holistic and embodied understanding of technology in higher education. our focus will therefore mainly be on the ‘intrinsic qualities’ of technology, rather than on its practice (although some practical implications will be discussed). our contention is that technology, as it is used and understood in higher education, is predominantly and in principle based on a naïve instrumentalist understanding of technology. we argue that, taking such an instrumentalist understanding of technology as basis or, in other words, suggesting that technology functions in a manner that pays no heed to the student as embodied being, disregards the foundational character of the bodily existence and embodied needs of its users. technology, utilised in this way – as a one-size-fits-all approach – in effect ignores students’ embodied contexts and personhood. this can have negative consequences for transformation in higher education, wherein transformation entails concrete changes in our society. the education white paper clearly states that: [t]he higher education system must be transformed to redress past inequalities, to serve a new social order, to meet pressing national needs and to respond to new realities and opportunities. (south africa, department of education 1997:2) transformation was even more concretely understood in the 2008 report of the department of higher education – based on the work of the ministerial committee on transformation and social cohesion and the elimination of discrimination in public higher education institutions (mcthe) (south africa, department of education 2008). compare also: transformation of higher education includes the following issues: epistemological change; discrimination and exclusions in terms of religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation, class and language; africanization or decolonisation of the curriculum; beliefs, attitudes, values and commitments of the whole system; power; diversity; and intellectual justice. (du preez et al. 2016:3) thus, while a more holistic and embodied understanding of technology might address some of the practical problems of the use of digital technology listed above such as the question of access and questions of personhood, its benefit may be significant in terms of transformation in higher education. in the next section, some examples are given with reference to how technology in higher education is mostly understood as something disembodied and instrumentalist. these examples stand in stark contrast to the views of clark and chalmers (1998:7), for example, who argues in their seminal article ‘the extended mind’ that technology is actually part of us. we take this view of clark and chalmers even further. technology is not only ‘tools’ that can be seamlessly integrated into the thinking process (as clark and chalmers argue), but also challenges us and integrates on a much more holistic and embodied manner with who we are. for us to trace such an embodied understanding of technology, we must first seek to understand the disembodied and instrumentalist approaches towards technology that hold sway in contemporary discussions of the use of digital technology in higher education. a disembodied and instrumentalist view of technology: a challenge and obstacle to transformation in higher education an instrumentalist view of technology is typical of and derived from the approaches of pragmatism and social constructivism. within the broader field of philosophy of technology, these approaches have become dominant since the empirical turn from the 1980s onwards (du toit 2018:30–39). such approaches cannot adequately and encompassingly describe the engagement between the individual and the technological artefact because of their inability to trace embodiment within this relation (du toit 2018:40–46). this is a centrally important point for the use of technology in higher education, because delimiting approaches (such as disembodied and instrumentalist perspectives) reduce the phenomenon of digital technology to a form of social epistemology which, in turn, obscures the true dynamically entangled nature of the individual and the digital technology artefact. the unfortunate result is that the full human (bodily) experience in this process is lost and the focus is shifted solely to the artefact. in the context of higher education, it means the student’s experience in the use of digital technology is lost (not reckoned with; ignored) or seen as totally abstract (intellectual) as if separated from his or her body. students are, however, physical human beings and the use of technology in higher education should, in our view, always reckon with this. in brief: when there is not a sufficient and nuanced understanding of the richly intertwined and mutable dialectical relation between the human and the technological (as with disembodied and instrumentalist perspectives), the full transformative potential of technology use in higher education remains unexploited and may even become an obstacle for transformation. furthermore, the reductionist approach to technology as a form of social epistemology, leads to a profound confusion of the concepts of theory and praxis with regard to technology. especially in pragmatism, theory and praxis (of technology) are often formulated as opposites. with the use of technology in higher education such a distinction between theory and practice is problematic, as the theory and the praxis of technology are intertwined in an idiosyncratic way that differentiates the field from the natural sciences and from socio-pragmatic approaches. furthermore, a particularist account of technology (focusing on only a particular artefact) is not sufficient to describe the relationship between the individual and the digital technology artefact on a broader scale. the problem is that digital technology artefacts do not provide the whole picture of the phenomenon of technology, because of the phenomenon’s intensified ‘continual beginning’ and its potential to become ‘hidden’ (du toit 2018:20–25).2 attempts to understand technology through micro-studies (e.g. single applications) and a focus on the artefactual (e.g. smartphone) are only sufficient for investigating the ‘phenomenon’ of technology to a limited degree. it neglects the interplay between theory and praxis, between the technical and the phenomenal, and between the individual and the artefact. we suggest a phenomenological alternative to overcome the shortcomings of social constructivist and pragmatist approaches towards technology. one problem with disembodied, reductionist and objectivist rationalist approaches towards digital technology is that such approaches inherently presume that individual experience of this contemporary form of technology is ‘numbed’ – the lived experience of the individual is disregarded, the phenomenon becomes ‘cold’ and ‘alienating’. it is assumed that, through such systematised thinking on digital technology, the individual is detached from himself or herself and others via digital technology. how then should one trace such a nebulous ‘object’ as technology? because technology is increasingly used in higher education, this question becomes highly pertinent in and for this context. to answer this question, we suggest an approach to technology through embodied phenomenology. we reckon that such an approach allows one to describe the individual’s experience of technology in an appropriately embodied manner; one in which the richly intertwined and mutable dialectical relation between the human and the technological comes to the fore. merleau-ponty’s central phenomenological project (1962:xviii) allows a starting point for such an approach, because he argues that one should ‘not overlook the phenomenon of the world and one’s being present in it through our bodies’. other approaches to technology do exactly this, overlooking the central phenomenon under investigation, and it is here where the correction should be made. therefore, in the next section, we will explicate the embodied phenomenology of merleau-ponty and appropriate it with regard to digital technology. in the last section, we will return to the implications of an embodied understanding of digital technology for higher education and its transformation. an embodied understanding of technology: merleau-ponty’s embodied phenomenology merleau-ponty’s embodied phenomenology presents an alternative to disembodied and instrumentalist perspectives regarding the use of digital technology in higher education. phenomenology in general, but particularly phenomenology in merleau-ponty’s account (1962:viii) is a ‘manner or style of thinking’ that directs philosophical analysis to a ‘direct and primitive contact’ and description of the world. this stands in contrast to inadequate methodological approaches found in prominent contemporary philosophy of technology methodological approaches, and which are also found in posthumanism and in postphenomenology (which remains disembodied and instrumentalist). instead of investigating technology qua technology from the side of artefacts (in a postulated body-artefact dichotomy), one’s body is, for merleau-ponty, the starting point as the dynamic though constant framework to think from. in other words, merleau-ponty’s unique development of phenomenology into an ‘embodied phenomenology’ presents a starting point for a deeper and more deliberate (holistic) inquiry into the phenomenon of digital technology. to understand merleau-ponty’s embodied phenomenology (1962) it is essential to highlight four principal themes with which he engages in his work: (1) perception is the individual’s entire bodily inhabiting of its environment; (2) perception is essentially perspectival and finite from the body (p. 81); (3) through perception the individual is absorbed within and directed towards objects within the world and ‘forgets’ the essence of consciousness in perception (p. 67; 1968:213) and (4) this sensual perceptual experience of the world extends to a perspectival structure of all human experience and understanding (merleau-ponty 1968; carman 2008:1–3). these themes are reflected throughout merleau-ponty’s phenomenological thought on embodiment and perception – to see the world (and technology) anew. merleau-ponty argues for the importance of an ‘ante-predicative knowledge’ the individual has of his or her body (baldwin 2003:79), a re-engagement with one’s ‘bodily commerce with the world’ (taylor 2004:46), that the individual engages with the world through his or her bodily existence as an ‘always “already there” before reflection begins’ in the world. it is through phenomenological description that one ‘[re-achieves] a direct and primitive contact with the world’ (merleau-ponty 1962:vii, 235) and one’s body is central in this process. bodily mediation entails the direct, lived experience of the world rather than through the application of strictures of theoretical constructs superimposed over one’s experience of the world (merleau-ponty 1962:190). for merleau-ponty, the ‘body-subject’ remains true to lived, bodily experience – it is grounded in contingent and temporal corporeal experience. therefore, it is necessary for a re-conceptualisation of the body as it is in relation to the phenomenon of digital technology. the facticity of embodiment of the body-subject opens up space for a truly new understanding of all our experiences – also for digital technology in higher education. it requires a re-conceptualisation of the relation between the embodied individual and the digital technology artefact, wherein the embodied nature of the individual is a constant thread. this is especially relevant with regard to digital technology, because with older technology artefacts the immersion of the individual ‘into technology’ was not that rigorous. digital technology has the effect that it immerses the individual in a unique and an unprecedented manner – one’s perceptual and experiential horizons are broadened or narrowed through a symphony of digital technology devices such as smartphones, tablets and basically any other internet-connected device working in unison. however, such an immersion is a bodily immersion par excellence (for the body is the foundation from where the phenomenon of digital technology is encountered) which necessitates an embodied approach to the understanding of digital technology. without recognition of the bodily immersion of the individual through digital technology, some crucial emergent characteristics of the phenomenon of digital technology will not be accounted for. such an account of the phenomenon of digital technology would remain fragmentary, limited and reductionist which is also the potential mistake to be made in understanding and using of digital technology in higher education. this will, in turn, undermine the potential power of the use of digital technology in transformation of higher education. therefore, it is necessary to describe the phenomenon of digital technology from the basis of radical embodiment to reflect the unique nature of the immersion and intertwining of the embodied individual and the digital technology artefact. to return to merleau-ponty (1962) on this point, the body is the manner (or permanence) through which perception is possible – the permanence of the body is ‘the ground for the relative permanence of disappearing objects’ (p. 105). an important aspect of the centrality of the body in perception is the assumed facticity of body (in comparison to the posthuman conception of the body as infinitely malleable and changing). however, the body per the body-subject is not a simplistic concept. one problem with the description of digital technology from the basis of the body is the ‘multiplication’ of bodies that is suggested in the literature on digital technologies (such as ‘virtual bodies’ vs. the ‘physiological body’) and by the recourse to empirical accounts of technology (in particular postphenomenology). these approaches miss the foundational character of embodiment, the inherent facticity of the body as basis for perception, and the relevance of the body for a description of the phenomenon of digital technology. even posthuman accounts of the phenomenon of digital technology start from the basis of questioning the relevance of the body as facticity in accounts of digital technology. instead of a multiplication of bodies or taking empiricism as recourse, it is necessary for a re-conceptualisation of the body as it is in relation to the phenomenon of digital technology (again, in contrast to posthuman conceptualisations). one needs to move beyond inadequate conceptualisations of the virtual body or a multiplication of bodies by asking what the nature of the body is. merleau-ponty conceptualises the body as the unitary basis of the individual’s lived experience. he argues that a philosopher’s idiom is always in one’s non-private bodily being, but merleau-ponty’s work opens up a space for considerations of other forms of being-in-the-body than his or her own body. he argues that there is no favoured style or modality of being just as there is no quantifiable measure of a minimum needed for bodily experience – all experience is ‘full’ experience, even if impoverished, incomplete or merely other. there exists in embodiment always the acknowledgement that our particular embodied situatedness could just as easily be another embodiedness, another situatedness. there is a transcendence, an intentionality and a unity of the body. however, the transcendence could be complete or ambiguous, the intentionality inhibited or unsure, and the unity discontinuous or staggered. although there are many forms of body or ways of being-in-a-body, there is always the body as foundationally constitutive for perception and experience. the transcendence, intentionality and unity of body thus have the possibility of expansion, change and modulation in and through its experience of certain phenomena of which the phenomenon of digital technology has a unique power because of its potential immersion of the individual. from the basis of the body-subject, merleau-ponty (1968:248–51) postulates the flesh as an ontological notion of being itself. the flesh can capture the presence of things, because it is an elemental being, moving to adjust itself to the axes of the visible, for ‘he who sees cannot possess the visible unless he is possessed by it, unless he is of it …’ (merleau-ponty 1968:134–135, 139). however, while we are of the world, we are paradoxically not the world (merleau-ponty 1968:127).3 the flesh presents a conceptual development of embodiment that has prominent implications for a description of the phenomenon of digital technology. the concept of the flesh finally shows that the world is not theoretically delimitable which means that the phenomenon of digital technology can never be separated from the world or our experience of the world. the non-delimitable nature of the world and the phenomenon of digital technology will form a central point of a foundational, encompassing and multimodal account of the phenomenon of digital technology. importantly, the flesh is, in itself, not merely an extension of embodiment. merleau-ponty’s concept of flesh presents an alternative to the traditional philosophical dualistic thinking on the separateness of body and world, self and other, subject and object, looking and being looked at, touching and being touched.4 it is the unitary concept of merleau-ponty’s thought that leads to a unitary description of the phenomenon of digital technology. through the flesh, the phenomenon of digital technology encroaches upon one, and one’s embodiment encroaches on the digital technology artefact. the body remains the stable yet dynamic foundation of this encroachment; one need not postulate posthuman changes in embodiment. rather, there is encroachment upon one by the phenomenon of digital technology and vice versa in one’s full humanity. in this originating encounter, this passage from the self unto the world is the space wherein the reciprocal intertwining of the relation between the human and digital technology occurs. it is this space that necessitates the concept of the ‘embodied screen’. both the individual and the artefact ‘become’ through the intertwining in lived experience, through perception based on perceptual faith. it is in this space where the transcendent rays of digital technology cross over into the body-subject. merleau-ponty (1968:65) describes this in a non-technological context as ‘what i find in “myself” is always the reference to this originating presence and to retire into oneself is identical to leaving oneself’. this seeming contradiction of ‘retiring into and leaving oneself’ is described by merleau-ponty as a chiasm, and this ‘crossing over’ (from oneself to the world and back) functions in a unique and overwhelming manner in the ‘embodied screen’ (when it comes to experiencing the phenomenon of digital technology). this chiasm (a ‘there is’ that is also an ‘i am’) creates meaning and cohesion, because i am the origin of a world in which i am already implicated. this does not imply idealism, but rather an opening up through the body to something else. it is from this point of meaning and cohesion that an embodied descriptive account of a ‘disembodied’ phenomenon such as the phenomenon of digital technology may be found. this also indicates why digital technology cannot be described as disembodied. perceptual faith, as the basis of perception, is the pre-reflective conviction that perception corresponds to the world as it actually is, while being mediated by the senses. it is the ‘unjustifiable certitude of a sensible world’ that underlies merleau-ponty’s thought (1968:23–24) on perception and the world. in our engagement with the world this is unproblematic, but when rationally articulated its apparent paradoxical character leads to confusion. while the concept of perceptual faith is important in the interrogation of our lived experience, the embodied screen entails a continuing re-conceptualisation of this interrogation of our lived experience through specifically digital technology artefacts. in our lived experience of the phenomenon of digital technology, there is at once proximity (through questioning) and distance (what is not ourselves). imaginative signification fills the spaces left by challenged perceptual faith. in the embodied screen this open-ended continuum and continual interplay (between the real and the imaginary) become of central importance, for, between the embodied facticity of the individual and the infinite possibilities that digital technology artefacts present, lies the lived experience of the phenomenon of digital technology. it is both perception and the imagination bound together by perceptual faith that are challenged by digital technology artefacts and which necessitates imaginative signification. the embodied nature of the individual is therefore a constant thread and it is this concept of the body (following merleau-ponty) that must be utilised in describing the relation between the human and digital technology artefacts, conceptually encapsulated in a neologism: the embodied screen. the embodied screen is a nuanced and technical neologism which is argued to allow insight into the interaction of the embodied individual with the phenomenon of digital technology and into digital technology artefacts themselves, particularly in higher education. the embodied screen can be described as that access point that exists as modulation between a multitude of digital technology artefacts and the embodied individual through which there is a reciprocal engagement between both these two ‘poles’. the screen is the hyper-modulation of flesh that allows passage between the embodied individual and digital technology artefacts in a unique manner that cannot but be described by means of embodied concepts because of the foundationally embodied though reversible character of this relationship. it specifically describes that unique contact point (a ‘see-through’ and ‘double-sided’ screen) between the embodied individual and digital technology artefacts. the embodied screen is thus the creative application and re-deployment of merleau-ponty’s embodied phenomenology to the phenomenon of digital technology. the embodied screen postulates unique access to the phenomenon of digital technology from the foundation of the individual’s pre-theoretical, lived embodiment and through the particular modulation of the flesh by digital technology artefacts. when these foundational points are used as a starting point, a richly intertwined and mutable dialectic relationship is revealed between the embodied individual and digital technology artefacts. on the one pole of this dialectic relationship stands the embodied facticity of the individual, and on the other pole, the digital technology artefact – the phenomenon of digital technology is found in the ‘between’ of these two poles and only arises in this circuit between body and artefact. the embodied screen conceptually encapsulates the individual’s body and the digital technology artefact as well as the unique emergent characteristics that arise from this relationship in the phenomenon of digital technology. these emergent characteristics (which may seem tangential) are crucial for explaining how the individual’s embodied sense-making is challenged and altered in the individual’s experience of the self, the other and the world in the phenomenon of digital technology. the embodied screen is transparent; it is a porous ‘membrane’ where reciprocal interaction between the embodied individual, through his or her flesh as the totality of sense experience and the digital technology artefact takes place. this is a reversible, intertwined relationship – the individual touches and is touched in digital technology interactions. such reversibility and modulation of the flesh challenge and change the embodied individual’s sense-making through, amongst others, challenges to perceptual faith and increased imaginative signification. conclusion an embodied understanding of technology and transformation of higher education as explained above, an instrumentalist understanding of technology has been dominant in the broader field of philosophy of technology since the empirical turn as of the 1980s onwards. this disembodied approach to technology derives from and is typical of pragmatism and social constructivism. within the higher education context, the enticement might be strong to follow this understanding of technology and thereby neglecting the embodied nature of technology. there are several problems with such a disembodied reductionist approach to technology, for instance: (1) the individual becomes detached from himor herself and others via digital technology; (2) digital technology becomes ‘cold’ and alienating; (3) the personhood and context of the student (user of technology) is ignored; (4) micro-studies on specific technology gets priority and not its broader effect and relationship with the individual; and (5) the individual’s embodied sense-making of the world and others is not reckoned with. we have called for an alternative, non-instrumentalist understanding of technology. through the embodied phenomenology of merleau-ponty, an alternative approach to digital phenomenology was delineated. such an approach can be encapsulated by the concept ‘embodied screen’ in which the reciprocal interaction between the embodied individual through his or her flesh as the totality of sense experience and the digital technology artefact is described. such an embodied understanding of digital technology may, first of all, challenge the way digital technology is predominantly understood and eventually used in higher education. an embodied understanding of digital technology has some significant implications for transformation of higher education. the epistemic framework of technology use in higher education is hereby altered as the following examples illustrate. firstly, transformation in higher education includes notions of decolonisation in which it becomes imperative that (post)colonial subjects will be able to recognise themselves within higher education (fanon 1967:191). this implies ‘possibilities of finding alternative schemes of thought, and of thinking critically about who and what the human in becoming is in (post)colonial contexts’ (becker 2017:7). to neglect these questions about the becoming of humans, the personhood of people and the historical context of students are all (unintended) consequences of an instrumentalist understanding and use of technology. in contrast, an embodied understanding of technology keeps in mind the embodied interaction of students with technology – it is always an embodied understanding. the personhood of the student is reckoned with. his or her language, culture, perceptual faith and imagination are not sidestepped through the use of digital technology, but remain fundamentally part of such technology use. secondly, an instrumentalist understanding of technology may promote a use of digital technology as if it is a mere tool to be given to everybody to be equally accepted and effectively used. the social contexts and personal embodiedness of those given this technology to are ignored. in effect, it is similar to give a spade to a hungry person and a well-fed person and expect them to use the tool to the same effect – as if the differences between them are now erased with each having a spade. with digital technology, a ‘digital divide’ has occurred because of this attitude. this digital divide is ‘constructed socio-economically rather than generationally, with users from privileged backgrounds tending to use the internet more widely and effectively than their less privileged peers’ (flavin 2017:87). to transform higher education to ‘redress past inequalities’ (south africa, department of education 1997:2) and to be not exclusive in terms of class (and others) therefore needs a more holistic and embodied understanding of digital technology. thirdly, an embodied understanding of digital technology challenges the transformation of higher education to not uncritically embrace the use of digital technology. because digital technology challenges and alters the individual’s experience of the self, the other and the world, it should be used with responsibility, sensitivity and expertise. it should be kept in mind, for example, that a certain ontology, epistemology and values are conveyed through the use of digital technology. the role of power (and politics) cannot be ignored. digital technology sets the user in a ‘certain mind-set’ – that of the program developer, the device developer and the interface without face. with constant alteration of the self (identity), the world, imagination and perceptual faith that takes place by using digital technology, questions about power and control (especially in a consumer world) become pertinent. the use of digital technology in higher education has a huge positive effect on various aspects of enhancing learning and teaching practices. this is not denied in this article, but rather confirmed. the ambiguity of the use of digital technology in higher education should not be ignored, however, but critically addressed. the way digital technology is used is often based on a certain understanding of it, for example an instrumentalist one. to transform higher education, a more bodily understanding of digital technology is needed. therefore, we argued in this article that a more holistic and embodied understanding of technology can be developed through the embodied phenomenology of merleau-ponty – encapsulated in the concept the embodied screen. in the absence of a sufficient and nuanced understanding of the richly intertwined and mutable dialectical relation between the human and the technological (as with disembodied and instrumentalist perspectives), the full transformative potential of technology use in higher education, remains unexploited and may even become an obstacle for transformation. digital technology can (and already does) play a pivotal role in the transformation of higher education. because transformation of higher education in the south african context entails social and concrete bodily transformation, a broader, more holistic and embodied understanding of digital technology is needed in higher education. acknowledgements competing interests the authors declare that they have no financial or personal relationships which may have inappropriately influenced them in writing this article. authors’ contributions j.d.t. and a.h.v. were the co-authors of this article. j.d.t. provided material from his phd for the merleau-ponty sections, while a.h.v. provided the basis for the application in terms of higher education in south africa in the introduction and conclusion. references adams becker, s., cummins, m., davis, a., freeman, a., hall giesinger, c. & ananthanarayanan, v., 2017, nmc horizon report: 2017 higher education edition, the new media consortium, austin, tx. baldwin, t., 2003, maurice merleau-ponty: basic writings, routledge, london. becker, a., 2017, ‘rage, loss and other footpaths: subjectification, decolonisation and transformation in higher education’, transformation in higher education 2(0), a23. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v2i0.23 carman, t., 2008, merleau-ponty, routledge, london. clark, a. & chalmers, d., 1998, ‘the extended mind’, analysis 58(1), 7–19. https://doi.org/10.1093/analys/58.1.7 clark, a., 2001, ‘natural-born cyborgs?’, in cognitive technology: instruments of mind – 4th international conference, ct 2001, proceedings (vol. 2117), springer verlag, berlin, germany, august 6-9, 2001, pp. 17–24. de botton, a., 1997, how proust can change your life, picador, london. du preez, p., simmonds, s. & verhoef, a.h., 2016, ‘rethinking and researching transformation in higher education: a meta-study of south african trends’, transformation in higher education 1(1), a2. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v1i1.2 du toit, j., 2018, ‘towards a merleau-pontian account of the phenomenon of digital technology: from disembodiment to the embodied screen’, phd thesis, north-west university. fanon, f., 1967, black skin, white masks, grove press, new york. flavin, m., 2017, disruptive technology. enhanced learning. the use and misuse of digital technologies in higher education, macmillan publishers, london. georgina, d.a. & olson, m.r., 2008, ‘integration of technology in higher education: a review of faculty self-perceptions’, internet and higher education 11, 1–8. https://doi:10.1016/j.heduc.2007.11.002 kirkwood, a. & price, l., 2014, ‘technology-enhanced learning and teaching in higher education: what is ‘enhanced’ and how do we know? a critical literature review’, learning, media and technology 39(1), 6–36. https://doi.org/10.1080/17439884.2013.770404 merleau-ponty, m., 1962, phenomenology of perception, transl. c. smith, routledge & kegan paul, london. merleau-ponty, m., 1968, the visible and the invisible, ed. c. lefort, transl. a. lingis, northwestern university press, evanston. proust, m., 1907, ‘impressions de route en automobile’, le figaro: journal non politique, nov, 53(3), pp. 11–19. south africa, department of education, 1997, education white paper 3: a programme for the transformation of higher education, government gazette, vol. 390, no. 18515, government printers, pretoria. south africa, department of education, 2008, the report of the ministerial committee into transformation in higher education (mcthe), department of education, pretoria. ströker, e., 1983, ‘philosophy of technology: problems of a philosophical discipline’, in p.t. durbin & f. rapp (eds.), boston studies in the philosophy of science; v. 80: philosophy and technology: proceedings … of a joint west german-north american conference on philosophy of technology, held at the werner-reimers stiftung, bad homburg (near frankfurt), west germany, april 7–11, 1981, pp. 323–336, reidel, dordrecht. taylor, c., 2004, ‘merleau-ponty and the epistemological picture’, in t. carmen & m.b.n. hansen (eds.), the cambridge companion to merleau-ponty, pp. 26–49, cambridge university press, cambridge. underwood, j., 2009, the impact of digital technology: a review of the evidence of the impact of digital technologies on formal education, becta, coventry. united states, department of education, 2017, office of educational technology. supplement to the national education technology plan: reimagining the role of technology in higher education, department of education, washington, dc, viewed 07 june 2018, from https://tech.ed.gov/files/2017/01/higher-ed-netp.pdf waghid, z. & waghid, f., 2016, ‘examining digital technology for (higher) education through action research and critical discourse analysis’, south african journal of higher education 30(1), 265–284. https://doi.org/10.20853/30-1-562 wainer, j., dwyer, t., dutra, r.s., comerleau-ponty, a., 1968, magalhães, v.b., ferreira, l.r., pimenta, v.a. & claudio, k., 2008, ‘too much computer and internet use is bad for your grades, especially if you are young and poor: results from the 2001 brazilian saeb’, computers and education 51, 1417–1429. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2007.12.007 wankle, c., 2011, teaching arts and science with new social media, vol. 3, emerald group publishing limited, new york. footnotes 1. for this report, 78 global experts in the field were consulted and it charts the five-year impact of innovative practices and technologies for higher education across the globe. with more than 15 years of research and publications, the nmc horizon project can be regarded as education’s longest-running exploration of emerging technology trends and uptake. (adams becker et al. 2017:2) 2. du toit (2018:22–23) explains this hiddenness as follows: firstly, technology is often hidden from human estimation after a period of continued human use. the telephone is an excellent example of how technology becomes hidden from human estimation. it was invented in 1876, and by 1900 there were 30 000 telephones in france. by 1907, proust wrote regarding the telephone that it was once ‘a supernatural instrument before whose miracle we used to stand amazed, and which we now employ without giving it a thought, to summon our tailor or to order an ice cream’ (de botton 1997:175; proust 1907). the telephone had gone from technological marvel to household item. digital technology presents this same challenge, although an in-depth inquiry is much more important here, because digital technology plays such an enveloping and encompassing role in the very fabric of one’s sense-making. digital technology has become transparent technology, ‘a technology that is so well fitted to, and integrated with, our own lives, biological capacities, and projects as to become almost invisible in use’ – in contrast to an opaque technology (clark 2001:17–24). secondly, inherent in philosophical reflection on technology is the recognition that the technological artefact is open to continual revision, redevelopment and replacement. elizabeth ströker (1983:323) argues that in one’s philosophical reflection on technology, one should be aware of the ‘paradox’ of the field’s ‘continual beginning’ and the continuing development and changing nature of technological artefacts. 3. just as there is encroachment between the two poles of these ‘dualisms’, so the world encroaches upon us and alters us. 4. in this study, such reversibility occurs specifically between the human and digital technology. such dualisms are challenged through merleau-ponty’s suggestion of inseparable association between such elements, their enmeshedness within their separateness – the chiasm and the intertwining. reversibility and the chiasm form intrinsic concepts of merleau-ponty’s conceptualisation of the flesh. in this regard and important for this study, the flesh is the foundational formulation of merleau-ponty’s thought, arising from his tracing of the ontological implications of a phenomenology that could account for its own limitations in his final work, (merleau-ponty 1968). abstract introduction programme renewal continuous programme renewal a brief theoretical perspective on programme renewal programme renewal and critical citizenship issues related to critical citizenship in programme renewal examples of promoting critical citizenship in programme renewal discussion conclusion acknowledgements references about the author(s) eli bitzer centre for higher and adult education, stellenbosch university, south africa elmarie costandius department of visual design, stellenbosch university, south africa citation bitzer, e. & costandius, e., 2018, ‘continuous programme renewal and critical citizenship: key items for the south african higher education curriculum agenda’, transformation in higher education 3(0), a37. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v3i0.37 original research continuous programme renewal and critical citizenship: key items for the south african higher education curriculum agenda eli bitzer, elmarie costandius received: 22 jan. 2018; accepted: 23 apr. 2018; published: 18 june 2018 copyright: © 2018. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract in this article, we explore the term ‘programme renewal’ and then continue to point out why programme renewal bodes an essential topic for continuous inquiry and attention. we also highlight the importance of approaching programme renewal from a sound theoretical base and point to the important issue of promoting critical citizenship with students in learning programmes. we finally point to the links between programme renewal and critical citizenship through four sample cases. introduction jonathan jansen, inspired by the work of reid (2006), and terwel and walker (2004), writes as follows about the curriculum as an institution (jansen, in bitzer 2009): … the university curriculum is that idea expressed in multiple ways that include but go beyond the ways of teaching, learning and assessing within a particular institutional context. it encapsulates what most workers within that institutional setting understand to be the character, content and boundaries of knowledge that came with being in that place, the university. it extends to include the understanding by institution dwellers of the particular link between knowledge and authority, about who possesses knowledge to act on and against others, and who are positioned simply as the recipients of authoritative knowledge. (pp. 126–127) issues of power, knowledge, access, inclusion and authority are thus foregrounded as institutional curriculum questions of major importance. since jansen’s 2009 observation, many of these issues emerged prominently, and even dramatically, across the south african higher education landscape. these issues include student protests under the ‘#feesmustfall’ banner, demands for ‘decolonised’ university curricula, the appointment of the heher commission of inquiry into university funding, the closing of some programmes in law education and the replacement of at least one minister of higher education and training. much of the backwash of these developments is still experienced and visible in several, if not all, south african universities (behari-leak, ramugondo & kathard 2016; butler-adam 2016). against the troublesome and turbulent south african higher education background, we (the authors) are convinced that multiple reasons exist why universities must engage in innovative and continuous programme renewal, including: programmatic responsiveness to changing internal and external higher education and professional contexts – in particular programme responsiveness to funding trends, policy changes, student demographics, increasingly diverse student bodies, the increasingly important role of information and communication technologies as well as to new knowledge markets. maintenance of programmatic sustainability and programme relevance to enhance job opportunities for graduates. planning and renewal of programmes in systematic, integrated and pro-active ways rather than in ways that are haphazard, fragmented and reactive. identification of educational priorities such as promoting graduate attributes, threshold learning outcomes, efficient throughput and the quality of the overall student learning experience. given the importance of programme renewal, we hold the view that continuous programme renewal needs to be considered as an essential item on the higher education curriculum agenda – in south africa and elsewhere. in the rest of this article, we explore the term ‘programme renewal’ and then continue to point out why programme renewal bodes an essential topic for continuous inquiry and attention. we also highlight the importance of approaching programme renewal from a sound theoretical base and point to the important issue of promoting critical citizenship with students in learning programmes. we finally point to the links between programme renewal, critical citizenship and four sample cases. programme renewal ‘programme renewal’ refers to the constant review, change and implementation of undergraduate and postgraduate university programmes as a response to internal and external educational, knowledge, economic and social needs (desha & hargroves 2014; oliver 2013; waters, rochester & macmillan 2012). however, programme responsiveness, as institutional or programmatic action, cannot and should not forfeit the unique institutional missions of universities. constant and continuous programme renewal should rather, within the context of institutional missions and the university as an institution, strive to meet the needs of increasingly technologically oriented economies to address the charge for relevant research, and to produce properly qualified graduates equipped to develop, keep on learning and participate in rapidly changing and competitive global environments (bitzer & botha 2011; oliver 2013). nationally, as south african universities are attempting to meet pressing needs within the african and global higher education contexts, programme responsiveness has become a central policy issue (ogude, nel & oosthuizen n.d.). yet, while efforts to renew and restructure university programmes are increasingly responsive, programmatic outcomes often appear incompatible. for instance, some outcomes may respond to immediate market needs, but, at the same time, do not produce the knowledge and skills required for new knowledge economies (also see stumpf 2005). this raises the following questions: how can higher education programmes respond to new knowledge demands? how can such responsiveness be operationalised? how may strategic and continuous programme renewal become an important and regular university feature? continuous programme renewal the renewal of university programmes implies several theoretical and practical dimensions. these dimensions include the basis of the renewal, the nature and extent of the renewal, how the demands of external and internal requirements are met (fox 2009), how programmes align with emerging policies, and how responsive are programmes to contextual changes (desha & hargroves 2014). programme renewal also relates to changes in disciplines and knowledge regimes (waters et al. 2012), the optimal use of resources and the continuous improvement of programmatic quality (oliver 2013). within the african context, calls for the decolonisation of universities, which implies ‘decolonised’ university curricula, became prominent in south africa during the ‘rhodes must fall’ campaign. it is in this context that mbembe (2015) argues, for instance, that many academic and professional university degree programmes reflect obsolete forms of knowledge and irrelevant pedagogies. he offers a particularly powerful critique of the dominant eurocentric approach to curriculum-making and programme development, including arguments against the hegemony of knowledge production within a western canon. he also proposes the reshaping of student learning to increasingly favour the mastering of crafts, and for students to take more responsibility and ownership for curriculum transformation. partly as a response to student and scholarly critique on favouring westernised canons of knowledge and pedagogies, one south african university (university a 2017) produced an extensive investigative report on ‘decolonising’ the curriculum. its main recommendations include that: the institution acknowledges a discriminatory past and creates spaces for reconciliation and restitution; the institution includes decolonisation as a core aspect of its systemic transformation with related themes such as place, programmes and people; engagement about curricula should happen within spaces that are sympathetic to the needs of marginalised groups and not be dictated by institutional management; decolonisation terminology should be commonly explained and understood so that debates on decolonisation can take place across the institution; the institution should provide resources and support for staff members who engage in decolonisation initiatives for teaching, learning and curriculum renewal which includes creating opportunities to bridge the gap between formal and cocurricular spaces; the institution should expand spaces for engagement by open discussions of what social justice may mean in relation to decolonisation. earlier, another programme renewal inquiry at the same university focused on the issue of critical citizenship (costandius & bitzer 2015). this investigation adopted a critical pedagogical stance whereby the links between university curricula and broader societal change were pointed out in terms of how a public university, through its academic and professional programmes, is increasingly expected to make relevant contributions for the public good. the study also indicated how important social issues such as equity, equal opportunities, social cohesion and relational human capital can be promoted by programme renewal. we shall return to some of these aspects later in this article. the involvement of students, the recipients of learning, in programme planning and implementation is promoted also in non-african contexts. for instance, a total of 103 universities in the us and 17 from outside the us responded to a survey on the impact of university curricula. the participating institutions indicated overwhelmingly that they did not consider students as ‘objects of teaching’ or being part of programme experimentation. they rather aim to actively involve them in campus conversations and participation in programmatic matters (werder & otis 2010). in australia, curtin university (2011) launched a major initiative to ensure that the institution’s degree programmes are internationally competitive and sustainable to benefit their graduates and society at large. programme sustainability focused mainly on efficiencies gained through deactivating and restructuring degree programmes, while the quest for excellence supported the ideal of constructively aligning programmatic learning outcomes, the assessment of student learning and promoting clearly identified graduate attributes (biggs & tang 2007). the underlying premise in the curtin case was that the achievement of general and specific graduate attributes would lead to enhanced employability (yorke 2006), while the initiative was launched against the background of an increasingly competitive higher education environment where programme excellence is one of the major keys to institutional survival and prosperity. another australian university, the university of adelaide (2013), also adopted a strategic approach to underpin its curriculum renewal process and to promote inclusivity, collaboration and anticipation. key aspects of their programme renewal and mapping process included questions such as: what do students need to do to achieve expected levels of knowledge, skills and applications (student learning activities)? what do students need to do to demonstrate that they have achieved programme and course learning outcomes (assessment of learning)? in the adelaide case, programme renewal revolved around two main issues, namely the purpose of programme renewal, and how the ‘fitness for purpose’ was going to be determined. the reigning argument was that ‘fit for purpose’ programmes could not be designed and renewed if the exact purpose of the programme is unclear. even within these limited number of examples, the need for and importance of continuous programme renewal are obvious for a number of reasons: firstly, universities that do not respond to internal and external needs and demands might soon be ‘out of business’ in highly competitive educational environments. secondly, graduates need to be equipped as best as possible for their respective professions for employment opportunities, for research careers and for making contributions as entrepreneurs. this can rarely happen at institutions with no inclination towards constant and continuous programme renewal. thirdly, programmes offered by public universities need to prepare students to make societal contributions and to become worthy and critical citizens. this can happen if both academic and administrative staff have a sense of what such citizenship means for programme planning and offerings. fourthly, university programme inquirers and planners have to be sensitive to bias towards particular philosophical, political and other underlying preferences – especially in polarised environments such as in south african higher education and in broader societal contexts. before we address critical citizenship as a particularly important programme renewal issue, the reader might be briefly reminded of the theoretical underpinnings of programme renewal. this reminder does not aim to be comprehensive, but rather to suggest that programme renewal and its accompanying strategies are, and should be, based on sound curriculum theory. a brief theoretical perspective on programme renewal geyser (2004:151) refers to four core ‘principles’ that need to be aligned when reviewing higher education programmes. these are: (1) a thorough analysis of those strategic factors that impact on the programme under review; (2) a critical analysis of the programme outcomes; (3) a serious (re)consideration of the teaching and learning that take place within the programme and (4) a review of the reigning assessment practices. these ‘principles’ form part of a wide range of reported curriculum renewal options and models (du toit 2011; university college dublin 2010). in addition, programme review is comfortably underpinned by a constructivist view of reality (muijs & reynolds 2005), where new ideas and knowledge are constructed based on the experience of, involvement in and a shared understanding of programme renewal rather than being perceived from the reviewers’ senses or ‘gut-feel’ (muijs & reynolds 2005:61). this stance supports the views of curriculum theorists, such as john dewey and lawrence stenhouse, who saw curriculum and programme renewal as processes guided by the identified learning needs of students (du toit & du toit 2004; pinar 2010). other renewal options, namely programme renewal based on canons of knowledge, subjects, disciplines or the solution of problems are all underpinned by prominent renewal theories involving epistemological or pragmatic perspectives (see oliver et al. 2010; university of british columbia 2016). biggs and tang (2007) added much value to programme renewal theory with their research on ‘constructive alignment’, fusing two important renewal driving principles: constructivism, and the alignment between the intended outcomes, student learning activities and the assessment of such activities within a programme. stefani (2009:48) views the idea of ‘constructive alignment’ as central to curriculum design and renewal, as it provides for a scholarly dialogue on programme issues, including achievable outcomes, programme standards, module structures, learning activities, learning assessment and programme evaluation. figure 1 depicts the format of a typical programme renewal process (also see stefani 2009:53) where explicit learning outcomes form the centre of the renewal model. learning activities, learning content, specification of the learning context(s) as well as the standards to be attained importantly, inform the intended learning outcomes (biggs & tang 2007). figure 1: a typical process model of programme renewal. the arrows pointing inwards signify the inputs from various sources and/or stakeholders such as scholarly peers, the institution, the community, employers, government and professional bodies. the questions ‘how? what? why?’ force those involved in programme renewal to question and reflect on their educational practices. the arrows pointing clockwise and those pointing outwards from the learning outcomes indicate the process of alignment. an evaluation of the total programme renewal and implementation process informs future programmatic decisions to improve and/or adapt the programme’s intended learning outcomes. an issue strongly advocated in programme renewal is for higher education programmes to aim at educating students with critical attributes regarding their own role in teaching and learning as well as their role within a broader social reality, once they have completed their qualifications. this highlights the importance of programme renewal that accommodates elements of critical citizenship which we address next. programme renewal and critical citizenship recently, the acclaimed higher education researcher, ron barnett, stated that to him there is no matter more important for universities than the programmes they offer; thus, there is no larger matter for inquiry than those very programmes (barnett, in bitzer & botha 2011:15). yet, the matter of programme inquiry and renewal does not attract the attention it deserves among those who conduct research into higher education, whether through theorising or via empirical research. the ways in which university programmes are developing, in both national and global environments, call for important inquiry, particularly in young democracies such as south africa. however, considerable challenges, such as organisational, disciplinary, theoretical and methodological challenges, may emerge during such an inquiry. moreover, it presents important citizenship challenges that one might consider as ideological. for instance, what kinds of values do we wish our degree programmes to represent? what kind of culture in the wider world do universities help to promote through their programmes? what kind of world (or country, as in south africa) do we have in mind as a horizon for our higher education programmes? and finally, what would be the nature of development that higher education institutions want to engender among their students? many university programmes have the potential to promote critical citizenship. but what do such attempts entail? promoting critical citizenship in learning programmes involves introducing a common set of shared values which include tolerance, diversity, human rights and democracy in student learning (after johnson & morris 2010:77–78). as an educational programme and pedagogy, critical citizenship encourages critical reflection on the past and the imagining of a possible future shaped by social justice in preparation of living together in harmony in diverse societies. critical citizenship education is therefore specifically aimed at the transformation of thinking on a personal level towards a wider public good. critical citizenship, as a concept and a practice in higher education programmes, links particularly well to critical pedagogy. the term ‘critical pedagogy’ refers to a set of education principles and practices closely related to critical thinking a main concern for the frankfurt school of thought where the ‘practice’ of teaching and promoting critical thinking in modern times emerged from. the term also resonates strongly with freire’s pedagogy of the oppressed (1993). critical pedagogy encourages academics, as educators, to develop context-specific programmes and strategies where both staff and students use dialogue to encourage a critical consciousness that involves citizenship issues (johnson & morris 2010). as programme renewal agent, critical citizenship can serve to promote transformation, to imagine a possible future and to affect broad societal change. furthermore, a critical citizenship perspective in programme renewal may assist in addressing both local and global calls for social transformation which is seen by makgoba (1997:22) as ‘… a noticeable change in form or character’. he argues that transformation is not reform, but rather ‘blueprint change’. similarly, fourie (1999:277) refers to harvey and green (1993:24), who suggest that ‘… [t]ransformation is not restricted to apparent or physical transformation but also includes cognitive transcendence’. to return to jonathan jansen’s observation in the opening section of this article: promoting critical citizenship in south african university programmes works against the perpetuation of existing perceptions and attitudes that stem from a colonial and apartheid past towards a shared future. as university graduates can contribute greatly to broader societal change (costandius & bitzer 2015; smith-tolken 2011), it seems imperative that university learning programmes are informed by critical citizenship perspectives. internationally, there are constant attempts to relate university programmes closer to societal issues and problems (desha & hargroves 2014; giroux 2014), and public universities are expected to make relevant contributions for the public good (leibowitz 2012). international higher education research agendas for programme inquiry are thus increasingly addressing important social issues such as equity, social cohesion and relational human capital. issues related to critical citizenship in programme renewal botha (2009) highlights some dimensions of the debate around university programmes by referring to the internationalisation of universities as compared to their localisation. in south africa, localisation often points to being situated on and being part of the african continent. many south african universities are therefore grappling with identifying the ‘most appropriate’ programmatic balance or focus, especially against the background of local skills shortages, on the one hand, and pressures to compete internationally, on the other. should a global citizenship be favoured above a local citizenship, or how can a balance be struck? in his most recent book on the effects of neoliberalism in higher education, henry giroux (2014) suggests that many academics are either unwilling to address the current attacks on the university programmatic curriculum or are disturbed over how the language of specialisation and professionalisation has cut them off – not only from connecting their work to larger civic issues and social problems, but also from developing any meaningful relationships with a larger democratic society. a critical citizenship approach in programme renewal thus requires a deep involvement by academics as lecturers and researchers, considering the political aspects and power influences that are always present in programme renewal. moreover, with their statement ‘… the political is always pedagogical’, helfenbein and shudak (2009:8) argue that lecturers have a duty not only to teach students to care, but also to teach them what to care about; in other words, to teach how to ‘… engage in the battle […] of ideas’. thus, lecturers must accept the ‘burden’ of ‘… intellectual and moral responsibility concerning the instruction in and of democracy’ (helfenbein & shudak 2009:8). michael apple (2010:658) and henry giroux (2014) argue that education at any level is not a neutral, technical activity. rather, as an act of influence, it must be seen as an ethical and political act. often these informal aims are not written into the formal degree programme curriculum. therefore, reflecting on the content of one’s teaching is crucial, asking whether spaces are created to develop critical thinking. an inclusive critical citizenship programme or the incorporation of critical citizenship education into a programme curriculum can potentially influence students and community members. programmes that promote or include critical citizenship should therefore incorporate learning spaces (bozalek 2004:71) where lecturers and students could come to terms with the past, including both those being discriminated against and the discriminators in ways that jansen (2009a:264) refers to as ‘… disrupting settled ways of knowing’. the learning, referred to by jansen, implies spaces where open conversations can take place in safe and non-threatening environments. examples of promoting critical citizenship in programme renewal community engagement constitutes only one, however important, example of how critical citizenship education can transform programme curricula (smith-tolken 2011). the aim of introducing community engagement in university programmes is to narrow the gap between universities and their communities (costandius & rosochacki 2012), and to establish a new set of values that is sensitive to citizenship and citizenship education through various platforms of learning. in addition, community engagement suggests explorative work in higher education curricula that promotes reciprocal learning between students, lecturers, and civic and other communities. all such learning points to programmes of learning that enable students and lecturers to gain new, but sometimes discomforting, experiences and perspectives. it also suggests programme curricula that promote non-conforming institutional and psychological learning spaces which consider past and current political and societal challenges. we want to highlight at least four examples of how critical citizenship can promote thinking and action at the programme renewal. these examples were all experienced first-hand by one of or both the authors as either programme renewal researchers or consultants at university a. example 1 as a programme renewal exercise, the department of visual arts recently included a critical citizenship module in their ba in visual communication design programme. the module aimed to sensitise students towards upholding the university’s vision, values and commitment to critical citizenship and to demonstrate such sensitivities in their leaning with and within communities outside of the university (see also costandius & bitzer 2015:76–105). the module included a number of well-planned projects and activities that involved art students and school learners from a neighbouring predominantly black township. the students, with their lecturers, were learning the importance of taking the emotional aspects of critical citizenship education seriously, moving beyond the emotional to rational actions and learning by ‘opening up’ to alternative views as well as questioning of own assumptions and values. new educational strategies emerged strongly from this exercise, including dialogue, community interaction, reflection and new media for expression of thoughts and ideas. it further became evident that more and longer sessions for dialogue between students and lecturers were needed to allow students to voice their experiences and concerns within both safe and disruptive learning spaces (see killen 2006) to discover new realisations about themselves, their relations to others and their relation to society. the programme renewal in this case proved to be highly effective in promoting experiential, relational and non-hierarchical learning activities among students and course staff. example 2 early in 2017, the programme accreditation report for the llb programme at university a was released (council on higher education [che] 2017). although the programme was found to be in good order and of good quality, the che commented as follows on the issue of promoting social justice (che 2017): in the opinion of the panel, though, the llb curriculum can and should do more to create an awareness among its students of the important role law plays in responding (or failing to respond) to social injustice. apart from the final-year elective module, practical legal training, in which students participate in the law clinic (around 30–40 students register for this module per year), students are not exposed in the curriculum to law-in-action studies. there is no street law module, for example, nor do any of the final-year electives provide for a public interest law module. the panel suggests that the faculty should consider, in the revised curriculum they are contemplating, that provision be made for one or more modules where students are required to engage with law-in-action from a public interest perspective, in order to instil in them an appreciation of how law can and should respond to social injustice that permeates south african society. (p. 3) as part of a complete overhaul of the llb programme in 2017, a programme renewal working group in the faculty of law proposed a new programme model where critical skills and attributes were to be integrated into all law subjects from the onset of the programme. in particular, social justice issues and student support were suggested to be seamlessly integrated into the first year of study, followed by more ‘specialised’ learning in the following years. as the llb programme renewal process is still being debated and refined, no firm implementation results are currently available. however, programme responsiveness to social justice and critical citizenship issues were evident from the exercise in 2017 and will continue into 2018. example 3 the mbchb programme at university a was originally introduced in 1956. it evolved from an entirely ‘traditional’ medical curriculum to the introduction of an organ system-based curriculum with separate pre-clinical and clinical organ system modules in 1999. the current curriculum, which was introduced in 2008, consists of single, integrated organ system modules. an inter-professional phase was also incorporated in the first semester of the first year. the mbchb programme was accredited by the health professions council of south africa (hpcsa) in 2011 and 2017, respectively, for a maximum period of 5 years. research by the centre for health professions education (chpe) in the faculty of medical and health sciences also showed that different cohorts of graduates were well prepared for their internships. yet, in spite of programmatic successes, several international, national and local developments urged the programme leaders to consider programme renewal. for example, internationally, a seminal lancet report (frenk et al. 2010) on the transformation of health professions education was one of the main catalysts for global curriculum reform initiatives within health professions. the report indicated that professional education did not keep pace with the health needs of populations and revealed a mismatch of graduate competencies to patient and/or population health needs, inadequate teamwork skills, a narrow technical focus (lacking holistic training encompassing all graduate attributes), episodic patient encounters rather than continuous care, predominant hospital orientation at the expense of primary health care and inadequate leadership skills for improving health systems’ performance. at the national level, the medical and dental professions board (mdb) accepted the lancet recommendations and developed a national core competency framework (medical and dental professions board of the hpcsa 2014), using the 2005 canmeds competency framework (frank 2005) as a guideline and incorporating social accountability as a measuring tool. similarly, at the local (university) level, a contextualised graduate attributes and/or core competency framework was developed to move towards transformative student learning, to facilitate the introduction of the doctor as change agent in communities and to promote communication skills in isixhosa. given all of the above, major curricular reform was inevitable and started with intensity in 2017. the proposed structure of the envisaged new mbchb curriculum initially used the metaphor of a double-stranded dna helix. the one strand represented the theoretical and clinical components of the curriculum, while the other represented the graduate attributes. graduate attributes were thus interlinked with curriculum content and clinical exposure, building spirally on threshold concepts along a developmental continuum. the base pairs of the dna strands represented a continued, longitudinal focus on the self, the patient, the community and the health care system. the conceptualisation of modules of the new mbchb curriculum is still evolving and will be further developed by expanded module teams during 2018. for instance, the first study semester of the new programme will entail a module for all students, titled ‘being and becoming’ and will focus on the transition from school to university, addressing questions such as: how do we help students to become more self-directed in their learning? how do we help them to understand the healthcare and social systems in which they will become professionals? how do we help them to understand their own identity development and to develop graduate attributes such as becoming critical citizens? example 4 in recent programme renewal projects across a number of disciplines and fields of study at university a, the re-orientation and development of programme staff proved to be crucial for encouraging and incorporating critical citizenship into programmes of learning. critical citizenship education, when adopted by departments or faculties, encourages further research into different strategies, approaches and applications to collaboratively work towards personal and social transformation. in those programmes, which were effectively making progress with critical citizenship education, the academic staff were prepared to be involved in curriculum change and evolution. it became clear that only through the actual practical implementation of critical citizenship education, academic staff were able to learn and improve their efforts towards promoting this important programme element, as each programmatic setting clearly has unique characteristics. thus, implementing and experiencing a course or a module in its specific programmatic setting or context is necessary before any limiting or promotional aspects of critical citizenship can be identified. moreover, it became evident that to educate for critical citizenship, academic staff needed a combination of subject knowledge (e.g. in art and design, law, health sciences, chemistry, theology, and sociology), experience in working with communities external to the university, and an interest in and awareness of critical citizenship education. as this is not a common combination of skills, some of these skills need to be learned. also, research into the effectiveness of incorporating critical citizenship in programmes should preferably be conducted by representatives from a range of different backgrounds so that it can be investigated and promoted from various vantage points. these four examples, taken from different programmatic contexts at one university, serve to illustrate how continuous and innovative programme renewal can purposefully and actively promote elements of critical citizenship. discussion when one considers the need for as well as the scope and complexity of programme renewal, a few salient points emerge. firstly, as confirmed by many authors (apple 2010; du toit 2011; giroux 2014; jansen 2009a; reid 2006; terwel & walker 2004), curriculum issues such as power, inclusion, exclusion, justice, citizenship, authority, relevance and curriculum intent cannot be separated from programme renewal. thus, it seems imperative that programme renewal staff and curriculum researchers keep these issues on their agenda. however, it is to be expected that current south african higher education complexities, such as demands for student access into universities, student funding, university financing, decolonisation of curricula and educational quality (behari-leak et al. 2016; butler-adam 2016), will enjoy priority, pushing issues like programme renewal and critical citizenship education to the bottom of the agenda. yet, programme renewal and critical citizenship education may effectively address some of these more ‘important and urgent’ issues quite effectively. secondly, while many good reasons exist for seriously engaging in programme renewal, often involving radical changes in international, national, institutional, professional and other contexts (costandius & bitzer 2015; desha & hargroves 2014; jansen 2009b), it is vital that programme renewal and critical citizenship education should not be haphazard and episodic attempts towards their promotion at universities. academic staff preparation for and involvement in programme renewal should be an institutional imperative, as programmes and graduates are the main ‘currencies’ of universities. much attention to such currencies, which requires constant, planned and regular phases of renewal and evaluation, is thus needed. the same goes for critical citizenship education, as only involvement and experience can contribute to real and deep transformation of learning. teacher preparation programmes that include courses, workshops and field experiences might be needed to develop teachers’ professional competencies and the confidence to educate for critical citizenship (also see ladson-billings 1999). thirdly, programme renewal expertise and support are essential and thus it is important to understand and apply the theoretical underpinnings related to programme renewal (du toit 2011; frenk et al. 2010; geyser 2004; helfenbein & shudak 2009). in the case of university a, for instance, an internationally acclaimed programme renewal researcher and facilitator was contracted not only to run a series of renewal workshops with programme staff, but also to develop a sound programme renewal model for institutional and programmatic use. although all the programmes nominated for renewal did not follow the same ‘recipe’, the same principles and broad guidelines were utilised to promote and execute the programme renewal projects. certain principles also need to be applied and guidelines followed for promoting critical citizenship in learning programmes. some programmes will adopt and adapt modules and courses quite easily to facilitate critical citizenship (e.g. arts, humanities, sociology, theology, health, education and others), while other programmes might find the challenge more demanding (e.g. engineering, military science, physics, accounting and others). lastly, while we do not assert that promoting critical citizenship education in programme renewal should be the main driver for change, we do claim that it is currently more important than ever before for universities to cultivate graduates that are sensitive towards and contribute to societal change and harmony. in a diverse and divided country such as south africa, this is of the utmost importance. graduates and professionals whose sole concern is their personal interest, without considering the wider national and community interest in some form or the other, do not contribute to those values held dearly by international, national and local communities. in his now acclaimed book homo deus – a brief history of tomorrow, harari (2015:376–377) warns against a future world dominated by technology, controlled by an elite few who know and own important algorithms and who do not have any feel for human inequality, suffering and injustice, causing and growing de-humanised societies and oppressive orders. conclusion ideally, a critical citizenship perspective in continuous programme renewal must include a clear definition of the concept of critical citizenship, substantial links to critical thinking and critical pedagogy, and a guiding framework for critical citizenship education. the challenge of ‘critically engaged’ programme curricula is to address institutional autonomy and public accountability in an increasingly differentiated south african higher education system. creating a safe space for engagement founded on mutual trust and dialogue might be needed, reinforced by collaborative knowledge production where students need to take control of their own learning in the political, social and cultural contexts where learning takes place. despite numerous, complex and ever-shifting forces striving for power in constructing such curricula, engaging curricula via critical citizenship education requires an increasingly participative and inclusive approach. acknowledgements competing interests the authors declare that they have no financial or personal relationships which may have inappropriately influenced them in writing this article. authors’ contribution both authors equally contributed to the research and writing of this article. references apple, m.w., 2010, ‘political research’, in c. kridel (ed.), encyclopedia of curriculum studies, pp. 658–661, sage, los angeles, ca. behari-leak, k., ramugondo, e. & kathard, h., 2016, ‘students in south africa feel unheard. here’s one way to listen’, the conversation, 11 october, p. 1. biggs, j. & tang, c., 2007, teaching for quality learning at university: what the student does, 3rd edn., open university press, berkshire. bitzer, e. & botha, n. (eds.), 2011, curriculum inquiry in south african higher education: some scholarly affirmations and challenges, sun press, stellenbosch. bitzer, e.m. (ed.), 2009, higher education in south africa, a scholarly look behind the scenes, sun media, stellenbosch. botha, n., 2009, ‘intercultural space in higher education curricula’, in e.m. bitzer & n. botha (eds.), curriculum inquiry in south african higher education: some scholarly affirmations and challenges, pp. 159–182, sun press, stellenbosch. bozalek, v., 2004, recognition, resources, responsibilities: using students’ stories of family to renew the south african social work curriculum, viewed 05 february 2012, http://igitur-archive.library.uu.nl/dissertations/2004-1203-094505/full=pdf butler-adam, j., 2016, ‘what really matters for students in south african higher education?’, south african journal of science 112(3/4), art. #a0151, 2 pages. https://doi.org/10.17159.sajs.2016/a0151 costandius, e. & bitzer, e.m., 2015, engaging higher education curricula. a critical citizenship education perspective, sun media, stellenbosch. costandius, e. & rosochacki, s., 2012, see kayamandi – see yourself, sun press, stellenbosch. council on higher education (higher education quality committee), 2017, the national review of bachelor of law (llb) programmes, first draft report, pretoria. curtin university, 2011, scorecard report on teaching and learning, curtin university, perth, western australia. desha, c. & hargroves, k., 2014, higher education and sustainable development: a model for curriculum renewal, routledge, london. du toit, g., 2011, ‘curriculum types and models: a theoretical inquiry’, in e.m. bitzer & n. botha (eds.), curriculum inquiry in south african higher education: some scholarly affirmations and challenges, pp. 59–79, sun media, stellenbosch. du toit, g.f. & du toit, e.r., 2004, ‘understanding outcomes-based education (obe)’, in j.g. maree & w.j. frazer (eds.), outcomes-based assessment, pp. 1–27, heinemann, sandown. fourie, m., 1999, ‘institutional transformation at south african universities: implications for academic staff’, higher education 38(3), 275–290. https://doi.org/10.1023/a:1003768229291 fox, j.d., 2009, ‘moderating top-down policy impact and supporting eap curricular renewal: exploring the potential of diagnostic assessment’, journal of english for academic purposes 8(1), 26–42. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2008.12.004 frank, j.r. (ed.), 2005, the canmeds 2005 physician competency framework. better standards. better physicians. better care, the royal college of physicians and surgeons of canada, ottawa, canada. freire, p., 1993, pedagogy of the oppressed, continuum, new york. frenk, j., chen, l., bhutta, z.a., cohen, j., crisp, n., evans, t. et al., 2010, ‘health professionals for a new century: transforming education to strengthen health systems in an interdependent world’, the lancet 376(9756), 1923–1958. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0140-6736(10)61854-5 geyser, h., 2004, ‘programme development and a curriculum design perspective’, in s. gravett & h. geyser (eds.), teaching and learning in higher education, pp. 139–156, van schaik, pretoria. giroux, h.a., 2014, neoliberalism’s war on higher education, haymarket books, chicago, il. harari, y.n., 2015, homo deus. a brief history of tomorrow, penguin books, london. harvey, l. & green, d., 1993, ‘defining quality’, assessment & evaluation in higher education 18(1), 9–34. https://doi.org/10.1080/0260293930180102 helfenbein, r.j. & shudak, n.j., 2009, ‘reconstructing/reimagining democratic education: from context to theory to practice’, educational studies 45, 5–23. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131940802649110 jansen, j., 2009a, ‘the curriculum as an institution in higher education’, in e.m. bitzer (ed.), higher education in south africa: a scholarly look behind the scenes, pp. 123–154, sun media, stellenbosch. jansen, j.d., 2009b, knowledge in the blood: confronting race and the apartheid past, stanford university press, palo alto, ca. johnson, l. & morris, p., 2010, ‘towards a framework for critical citizenship education’, the curriculum journal 21(1), 77–96. https://doi.org/10.1080/09585170903560444 killen, r., 2006, effective teaching strategies: lessons from research and practice, 4th edn., thomson, sydney. ladson-billings, g., 1999, ‘preparing teachers for diversity’, in l. darling-hammond & g. sykes (eds.), teaching as the learning profession, pp. 86–123, jossey-bass, san francisco, ca. leibowitz, b., 2012, ‘understanding the challenges of the south african higher education landscape’, in b. leibowitz, l. swartz, v. bozalek, r. carolissen & b. leibowitz (eds.), higher education and the public good: views from the south, trentham books in collaboration with sun media, stellenbosch, straffordshire. makgoba, m.w., 1997, mokoko: the makgoba affair: a reflection on transformation, vivlia, florida, johannesburg. mbembe, a., 2015, decolonizing knowledge and the question of the archive, viewed 06 december 2017, from http://wiser.wits.ac.za/system/files/achille%20mbembe%20-%20decolonizing%20knowledge%20and%20the%20question%20of%20the%20archive.pdf medical and dental professions board of the health professions council of south africa (hpcsa), 2014, core competencies for undergraduate students in clinical associate, dentistry and medical teaching and learning programmes in south africa, (february), 1–14, viewed 03 june 2015, from http://www.hpcsa.co.za/uploads/editor/userfiles/downloads/medical_dental/mdb%20core%20competencies%20-%20english%20-%20final%202014.pdf muijs, d. & reynolds, d., 2005, effective teaching: evidence and practice, sage, london. ogude, n., nel, h. & oosthuizen, m., n.d., the challenges of curriculum responsiveness in south african higher education, nelson mandela metropolitan university, port elizabeth. unpublished internal document. oliver, b., 2013, ‘graduate attributes as a focus for institution-wide curriculum renewal: innovations and challenges’, higher education research & development 32(3), 450–463. https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2012.682052 oliver, b., ferns, s., whelan, b. & lilly, l., 2010, ‘mapping the curriculum for quality enhancement: refining a tool and processes for the purpose of curriculum renewal’, in proceedings: auqf2010, quality in uncertain times, gold coast, australia, june 30 –july 02, pp. 80–89. pinar, w.f., 2010, ‘currere’, in c. kridel (ed.), encyclopedia of curriculum studies, pp. 177–178, sage, los angeles, ca. reid, w.a., 2006, the pursuit of curriculum: schooling and the public interest, information age publishing, greenwich, ct. smith-tolken, a., 2011, ‘the university curriculum as engaging with external non-academic communities: a grounded theory inquiry approach’, in e.m. bitzer & n. botha (eds.), curriculum inquiry in south african higher education: some scholarly affirmations and challenges, pp. 349–370, sun media, stellenbosch. stefani, l., 2009, ‘planning teaching and learning: curriculum design and development’, in h. fry, s. ketteridge & s. marshall (eds.), a handbook for teaching and learning in higher education: enhancing academic practice, 3rd edn., pp. 40–57, routledge, new york. stumpf, r., 2005, a possible programme model for the nelson mandela metropolitan university, workshop of the interim management, nmmu, port elizabeth. terwel, j. & walker, d. (eds.), 2004, curriculum as a shaping force: towards a principles approach in curriculum theory and practice, nova science publishers, new york. university a, 2017, recommendations of the task team for the decolonisation of the university curriculum, unpublished report. university college dublin (ucd), 2010, programme renewal plans, unpublished institutional document, dublin, ireland. university of adelaide, 2013, curriculum renewal road map: a compendium of resources to support curriculum review and renewal of coursework programs at the university of adelaide, unpublished report, adelaide, australia. university of british columbia, 2016, first year engineering curriculum renewal project, institutional planning document, vancouver. waters, c.d., rochester, s.f. & macmillan, m.a., 2012, ‘drivers for renewal and reform of contemporary nursing curricula: a blueprint for change’, contemporary nurse 41(2), 206–215. https://doi.org/10.5172/conu.2012.41.2.206 werder, c. & otis, m.m. (eds.), 2010, engaging student voices in the study of teaching and learning, stylus, sterling, va. yorke, m. (ed.), 2006, employability in higher education: what it is – what it is not, the higher education academy, london. abstract introduction: identifying the landscape mapping the contours conclusion references footnotes about the author(s) rian venter faculty of theology, university of the free state, south africa citation venter, r., 2016, ‘theology and the (post-)apartheid university: mapping discourses, interrogating transformation’, transformation in higher education 1(1), a5. http://dx.doi.org/10.4102/the.v1i1.5 original research theology and the (post-)apartheid university: mapping discourses, interrogating transformation rian venter received: 03 june 2016; accepted: 18 july 2016; published: 30 sept. 2016 copyright: © 2016. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract this article examines the specific position of theology at south african universities, following the recent developments on campuses that catapulted the urgency for greater commitment to radical transformation in higher education to public attention. a large corpus of material is generated on theological education as such, but the major question is rarely thematised as the transformation of theology at public universities in (post-)apartheid south africa. this article addresses the nature of the challenge by following a distinct approach. ten major discourses in the wider reflection on theological education are identified and interpreted as avenues to achieve three aims: to convey the unique challenge for theology, to give historical texture to issues conventionally addressed a-politically in theology and to forward an interpretation of ‘transformation’ for theology that emphasises its multi-layered nature. introduction: identifying the landscape the various #mustfall movements on south african university campuses in 2015 have made the overwhelming impression that transformation should be addressed with renewed urgency and be appreciated for its complex nature. higher education has come a long way since 1994, but something is amiss. the positive spin-off of last year’s turmoil is the generation of the imperative to think afresh about the nature of transformation. this article is interested in one specific field of study, theology, and what renewed reflection might entail for it. although the influence of theology has diminished owing to various reasons, of which growing secularisation has played no small role, it is still accorded intellectual space in several public universities. what would transformation for this distinct field of study imply? despite yearning for the stable and the immutable, theology and theological education could never be immunised from the larger social context. in the apartheid era, theology, at some institutions, provided religious legitimisation to the racial ideology. this no longer happens, but the question arises as to whether theology has re-envisioned itself sufficiently to make a responsible and meaningful social contribution in a new democratic dispensation. this article pursues a distinct line of argumentation: it maps and explores contemporary discourses taking place in theology and theological education, with the purpose of gaining better insight into the multifaceted challenge of transformation. it would have been possible to describe the challenge of transformation in general terms, but by following this approach, the article endeavours to integrate a large range of discussions and perspectives and focus them all on the central concern of transformation. the massive and important volumes of essays by the world council of churches (see the two applicable ones to the south african context – phiri & werner 2013; werner et al. 2010) evidence the extent of the vibrant international discourses. what also transpires from these reflections is the neglect to address the notion of the public university and the uniquely south african transformation imperative for theology. anyone acquainted with the debates on theological education (for excellent treatments of overviews, see gonzález 2015; miller 2014; wingate 2005) would not only testify to the myriad questions at stake but also to a specific hiatus – a clarification of the radical nature of the challenge to transformation. this article aims to identify the major discourses, draw explicit attention to the best available scholarship, and profile in the process a multi-layered notion of transformation. mapping the contours the institutional space: facing the irony the first discourse expresses a strange irony: the ‘queen of sciences’ has fallen from grace (for the long history of this development, see zakai 2007). with seismic shifts, especially in western consciousness and the growth of secularism, the very religious and specifically christian underpinnings to the emergence of universities in the late medieval period are increasingly dismissed, and theology receives a lukewarm, if not outright hostile, welcome at public universities. often, the ‘numbers-game’ speaks louder than ideological considerations – faculties of theology are smaller than some departments in other fields of study and are not as profitable. the questions in this discourse are clear: should theology still receive space at a public institution such as a university, and what are the implications of such a location in a pluralistic and democratic country for theology itself? this is not only a major international debate (see d’costa 2005; hauerwas 2007; kelsey 2009; werner 2012) but also one that has been addressed in south africa (see venter 2011; wethmar 1996). whether the ramifications of a university setting have been fully grasped and adequately theorised locally is an open question. some churches, especially those of reformed orientation, still deem that the faculties are ‘theirs’ and that church oversight committees have a valid power base. historically, the study of theology and theological education has been institutionalised in diverse forms, for example, in ecclesiastical seminaries, or even at church-oriented universities, and the question where theology should be primarily located is a perennial one (see brown 1994). some churches prefer private institutions; reformed churches in south africa have consistently realised the importance of the public university. what is required is a clear sense of the rationale for location at a public university and the implications of such a space. the shape of challenge of a public tertiary location should be identified and is arguably one of legitimisation: why should theology be accommodated at a public university; does the knowledge, transmitted and generated, serve public good or narrow sectional interests? in the south african context, this question of legitimisation has an unavoidable historical specificity: what is the epistemic contribution to this society with its particular history and present moment? a large number of auxiliary and related questions surface in this discourse: the relation of theology to the humanities (see brittain & murphy 2011; lategan 1993) and the relationship with churches. this discourse requires the participation of three stakeholders, namely universities, faculties of theology and churches (see tracy 1981:3–46). at stake are not only fundamental issues such as the role of transcendence in society, and the social ethic of knowledge, but also imperatives of plurality and enlarged identities. if theology experiences her final demise at public universities, it would immensely impoverish all partners (see lombaard 2016:1–5). the enriching dialectic is critical, in this instance: on the one hand, it furthers humanisation, the deepening quest for transcendence implicit in all epistemological endeavours at universities and, on the other, it nurtures openness, and the forming of inclusive and pluralistic identities in theology and religious communities. in south africa, this discourse still has a long way to go: for institutions, to realise the potential of religion to humanise, and for theology and religion, to escape from fundamentalist propensities. the post-apartheid condition: embracing transformation ‘transformation’ is a heuristic term that refers to changes in higher education in post-1994 south africa. the referent is the apartheid ideology and its pervasive manifestations in all areas of society, as well as at universities. at stake is the undoing of the vast discriminatory practices and systems, and establishing of comprehensive justice. numerous changes have taken place in theology. some faculties have been phased out; some departments have been reconfigured; access and appointment of persons either excluded or marginalised have happened; and curricula have been revisited. landman (2013:239), in her overview of theological education in south africa, even claims ‘over the past thirty years, theological education in south africa has developed from being white, male and/or denominational to liberational, ecumenical and inclusive of gender, race and belief’. the question could, however, be raised as to what extent have theology practitioners adequately theorised the imperative for transformation. deeper and more hidden traces of colonialist, modernist, racialised and even patriarchal power dynamics often escape scrutiny, especially in the epistemic practices in the curricula and research agendas and paradigms. the dominance of certain intellectual traditions, especially the reformed one, at the four remaining faculties of theology (bloemfontein, potchefstroom, pretoria and stellenbosch) is still a huge remnant of the past. the #mustfall movements of 2015 have stimulated a renewed sense of seriousness to the debate on the pace and depth of transformation. the important second national higher education summit on transformation1 re-emphasised the incomplete task ahead. the comprehensive and radical nature of the challenge becomes increasingly clear: it includes issues not only of access, staffing, leadership and finance but also of institutional culture, pedagogical approaches, symbols, language and knowledge. one could also refer to the human, the knowledge and the institutional dimensions. some crucial attempts have already been made to theorise these deeper reaches of transformation (see naude 2004; venter & tolmie 2012; venter 2015). this line of exploration should be pursued. ‘epistemological transformation’ has become an apt shorthand description to refer to these critical and deeper contours of transformation. this refers to questions such as whose knowledge is transmitted, for whom is knowledge generated and to what effect? this discourse highlights the very nature of knowledge, its interaction with society and its intrinsic ethical character. in some sense, this epistemological dimension of transformation is the prism that refracts the light of reflection in the various discourses, including those identified in this article. whatever we discuss can hardly escape the power/knowledge reality. a new contextual theology: finding orientation again at the heart of the struggle of theology to come to terms with the challenge of transformation is the need for a new contextual theology, one that adequately responds to the post-apartheid context in its multifaceted character. prior to 1994, apartheid provided a centripetal force to prophetic and ethically sensitive theologies. since the advent of democracy, it seems that churches and theology have lost an orientating compass (for good discussions of this dilemma, see cuthbertson 2008; egan 2007). there is evidently no clear direction as to which way theology should go. this does not at all imply that commendable work is not being undertaken; such an impression would do a great disservice to serious theological scholarship. major research contributions have been made, for example, on public theology (see de villiers 2011), on ecology (see conradie 2013), on feminist theology (see haddad 2013) and on the faith/science dialogue (see conradie & du toit 2015). apart from these new ‘trends’, traditional theological disciplines have been revisioned, for example, the old testament (for an overview, see bosman 2015). the impressive oeuvres of scholars such as j de gruchy and d smit, who have consistently produced quality theological work with a sensitive antenna to the south african context, should be acknowledged (for only one example of their respective contributions, see the volume by marks 2008). despite the presence of commendable contributions, one cannot but escape the impression that something is neglected: an orientation that discerns the myriad of social changes, seizes the deep cynicism in the present south african mind, and speaks to the heart of africa. in its various disciplinary manifestations, the discourse is too diverse, too fragmentary. a more integrative theological project is necessary. it may even be questioned whether such a theology is at all possible. the finnish scholar v-m kärkkäinen has embarked on an ambitious systematic theological project, which he calls a constructive christian theology for the pluralistic world, and in which he emphasises the requirements of coherence, inclusiveness, dialogue and hospitality (see the introduction to the first volume 2013:1–35). perhaps, something similar is required for the south african context but translated into the realities of the post-apartheid context. coupled with a theology of justice, such an orientation could encourage simultaneously a memory of the past, an attentiveness to persistent forms of suffering and a respect for the plurality of intellectual traditions, and for the multiple voices of the conventional other. as long as theology, in its disciplinary embodiments, does not subject its very nature to scrutiny, it would not be able to engage deep transformation. the publics of theology: broadening allegiances traditional theology has been intimately linked to the church; it is a function of the church and should serve the life of the church. this was tenable in a dispensation where higher education served narrow nationalist purposes; theology, by implication, provides religious sanction. this becomes obviously problematic in a democracy. confessional theology is by nature exclusionary, and public institutions cannot fund education that only benefits certain sections. it is understandable that the changing situation at universities becomes alienating to churches. where theology was previously nurturing growth in a narrow and well-defined tradition, the new situation has become more complex and even unsettling. the transition to inclusive democratic public universities in south africa renders reflection on the three publics of theology – church, society and academy – critically important (for a good discussion of this, see the 1991 article by bosch who applies the insights of tracy to the south african context) and exposes the irony of traditional approaches. while expounding a universalising interpretation of reality with its confession of creation, salvation and cosmic destiny, ironically confessional theology tends to narrow these implications to very discrete social embodiments. whether confessional theology with a focus on church could still be defended at a public institution becomes a contested issue (see deist 1994). perhaps, the advent of a new set of values at universities opens a potentially enriching opportunity for theology. the social and intellectual capacities of religious traditions could be interrogated, explored and imaginatively revisioned for the common good. this shift from a narrow community interest to a broader social application is a major trajectory deviation for theology. service to the common good is a new situation for theology (for a discussion of universities and the pursuit of ‘common good’, see leibowitz et al. 2012b). the shape of the challenge crystallises in the notion of accountability. the role of church oversight committees (traditionally, the so-called ‘curatoria’) has obviously diminished, if not totally becoming untenable. if a criteriology of meaningfulness should be construed, social impact and multidisciplinary participation should minimally be considered. in his recent work flourishing (2015), volf thinks along these lines: in a globalised world, religion can make a contribution to human well-being. the ramifications of this for theology in a south african context are obvious. the imperative of transformation is a fruitful stimulus for theology to rethink its basic nature, task and function. ultimately, it could even encourage theology to design a programme, for example, in spirituality and ethics, which opens career options way beyond ecclesiastical vocations. theology versus religious studies: rethinking power/method in the previously mentioned discourses, no distinction was made between (christian) theology and the study of religion. the assumption has been implicit that ‘theology’ refers to the christian faith. transformation at public universities requires that this relationship be subjected to scrutiny. this is not only a south african but also an acute international challenge (see, for example, good treatments from a variety of viewpoints – bird & smith 2009; cady & brown 2002; fiorenza 1991; uk benchmark statement 2007). the shape of the question of the relationship has a particular genealogy: in a colonial era, the study of religion was situated in the subject–discipline of missiology; theology has been exclusively the study of christianity; and, if studied outside the parameters of mission, religion was relegated to a department that dealt with the world-religion phenomenologically. the implications of this configuration should be understood: one religion – christianity – was privileged, and a distinction was made methodologically between the presence of faith convictions and supposedly value-free study. both these premises have become contested. the playing field has been levelled and all religions should be equally respected and valued. with the emergence of constructionist understandings of human knowledge, a positivist approach to religion is questionable; academic study will always pre-suppose some form of values and interests. it is not yet clear how this discourse will eventually impact practical arrangements at universities. what is inevitable, however, is greater attention to the study of islam and african religion,2 as well as scholarly involvement of practitioners of these religions. how coherence is to be established in a sea of intellectual traditions will be a daunting task. the benefits of greater inclusion should not be missed: the study field will be expanded from a narrow ecclesial focus to one that prioritises human quests for transcendence, meaning-making and planetary flourishing. fragmentation of the disciplines: searching for integration the present encyclopaedia of theology, that is, the division of subject disciplines, displays a vast compartmentalisation of knowledge. the separate fields of old and new testaments, systematic theology and ethics, church history and polity and practical theology and missiology manifest a typical modernist rationality with its separation and specialisation. justifiably, much discontent has been voiced internationally over the past few decades (see, for example, the book by farley 1983; welker & schweitzer 2005). not only does this state of affairs have an adverse effect on effective student learning and christian ministry, but it also hides theology’s ability to engage with complex social problems such as, for example, alterity, racism and poverty. alternative reconfigurations of the disciplines in a triad structure of texts, beliefs and practices are often enthusiastically discussed, but the fragmentation of the disciplines is rarely, if at all, placed in the context of the imperative of transformation. once this occurs, the self-directedness of most disciplines transpires. most often disciplines serve the scholarly societies of the disciplines and not those of the general public. when the alienation is placed in the frame of interdisciplinarity, wider conversations crystallise, for example, between theology and the natural sciences, theology and the arts, and theology and cultural theory. the dialogical nature of theologising is thus highlighted and the epistemic source base is broadened. interdisciplinarity could serve as an epistemic vehicle to address complexity. urgent social challenges such as, for example, those pertaining to reconciliation and sexuality could in this way be treated in a much more intellectually satisfying manner. a great deal of work is still to be done in this regard. epistemology and alterity: re-imagining knowledge all the various challenges in the quest for transformation of theology could arguably be contracted in a single denominator: inclusion and epistemic justice. the violence of apartheid is to be found in its exclusionary nature. as reference to those who have been marginalised or denigrated in terms of their gender, ethnicity, culture and sexuality, ‘alterity’ becomes a crucial optic for considering transformation. knowledge has been constructed from primarily western, male and bourgeoisie perspectives. this is obviously a sophisticated discourse, as it addresses subtle power dynamics that are not always so visible but immensely decisive to shape a social order. good work has already been done and note should be taken, for example, of that on woman and theological education (chopp 1995; trisk 2015). as part of this discourse, the critical debate on ‘africanising the curriculum’ should be addressed (see the volume by msila & gumbo 2016). what this entails for theology has been the subject of investigation for quite some time (see, for example, amanze 2012; buitendag 2014; higgs 2015; maluleke 2006; maluleke & nadar 2004; naidoo 2016; walls 2002). what progress has already been made to reconstruct curricula is an open question. where there is some openness to alterity and inclusion, often the corpus of knowledge is treated as an ‘add-on’, not the fundamental perspective to reconceptualise the entire curriculum. the basic texture of the curriculum remains the same – african lies only in the extension of a western rationality. the simple, but profound, questions about whose knowledge and knowledge for whom should be taken very seriously. the nature of epistemic paradigms, of methodologies, of rhetoric or of truth construction and of language comes into play. the ramifications of this project will be far-reaching. womanist, african and postcolonial theologians have already produced a great deal of work on this subject. the fabric of religious traditions could be redefined in this process. ecology of student life: striving to be ‘at home’ the presence of the problematic features identified in the previous discourses has a combined effect of generating pervasive alienation among students on south african university campuses. the various #mustfall movements introduced a distinct ‘turn to the student’ dimension in the transformation reflection since 2015. symbols, fees, language and even the employment conditions of service workers are important constituents of a new university ethos. at stake is a comprehensive creation of an alternative institutional culture, a culture that replaces the apartheid legacy. the resurfacing of the debate on race is also not surprising in this regard (see, for example, the good collection of essays by mangcu 2015). the notion of the ‘ecology of student life’ could be employed to refer to the presence and dynamics of multiple factors that build a tertiary and epistemic home. some good research has also been done on the task to let students ‘feel at home’ (see the volume by tabensky & matthews 2015). the face of theological faculties in south africa has changed, and the student profile has become much more diverse and inclusive. whether adequate and substantial thinking has taken place on intercultural theological education is doubtful. it is worth taking note of the national and international reflection in this regard (see dames 2010; esterline & kalu 2006; fernandez 2014). conditions that do not inhibit students, but respect their agency, are to be created and nurtured. formation: accounting for student attributes the ‘turn to the student’ has another dimension amounting to a separate discourse: formation. the notion of detached knowledge has become obsolete; a sense that all knowledge in its transmission and generation is deeply imbued with concerns and interests has become dominant. this becomes apparent in the performative effect of the knowledge encounter. the entire epistemic experience shapes the consciousness and forms the identity of students. in the general higher education discussion, this has become critical and the focus is on the need to address the quality of future citizenship (see, for example, the volume by leibowitz et al. 2012a). in theological education, the issue has taken its own distinct shape internationally, well-formulated by kelsey (1993) whether an ‘athens’ or a ‘berlin’ emphasis is followed, that is, whether intellectual scholarship or character is prioritised. in south africa, scholars such as conradie (1997) and naidoo (2008), in particular, have attended to the complexity and urgency of this challenge. conventionally, theological education has mainly focused on nurturing a specific denominational tradition, for example, introduction to, and growth in the reformed tradition. churches often lament that faculties neglect traditional identity formation. the transformation imperative immeasurably contests this narrow concept of identity and advocates more ‘catholic selves’. the constructive of student selves through the entire educational process should be intentionally approached in light of a specific political past, contemporary social exigencies and a globalised world. the church debate on identity should be rephrased in concrete historicised terms, and move beyond the propensity to privatised knowledge as if it concerns the individual sanitised from larger social conflicts. the south african landscape is littered with pathological attitudes of cynicism, intolerance of the other and insensitivity to justice. theology is exceptionally suited to project an alternative world of hope, respect and flourishing. in this regard, theology could make a most fruitful contribution to public universities. theological theology: witnessing uniqueness the danger is real that the study of religion and theology could be reduced to merely the exposition of a civil religion for the sake of social ethical functions. that a sense of transcendence, of the ultimate and the sacred could be eclipsed in the drive for social relevance should be faced. the question becomes one of the inalienable, unique and distinct contribution of religion and theology. in a christian sense, this has been thematised as seeking the theological dimension of theology. good international and local literature is also available (see, for example, kelsey 1992; robinson & smit 1996; smit 1993; volf 2005). the symbol of the divine or of god becomes central in this discourse, and the shape of the challenge is to explore to what extent this reality could have fruitful existential, social and cosmic meaning. life’s so-called ‘big questions’ about origin and destiny, truth and goodness, identity and community, and justice and hospitality are addressed from this metaphysical perspective. god concepts are constructions, and the task ahead for christian theology is daunting and exciting: to retrieve an acute sense of the triune god, and to explore the potential of this symbol to contribute to human flourishing in a specific and concrete context. obviously, the freedom and hiddenness of god should be honoured; but, the christian symbol and its distinct genealogy is an immense epistemic resource to deepen the conversation on transformation. in a christian sense, this is a soteriological notion, and it refers to holistic healing of the human society and the cosmos. this theological discourse could contribute to expand and deepen the debate on transformation. it introduces the question about ultimate values and orientations (for a discussion of god and the public university, see venter 2013). conclusion navigating a direction by approaching an exploration of transformation via an identification of 10 major discourses taking place in theology about the future of theological education at public institutions, a complex and multifaceted notion gradually emerges. a new way of doing theology is required, a new re-imagining that would take its locale at a public institution within the specific (post-) apartheid context with utmost seriousness. the well-being of the common good becomes a primary referent. this would require a rethinking of the traditional divide between religion and theology, and the fragmentation of the sea of disciplines. at the heart of the knowledge project is epistemic justice, which requires the inclusion of neglected voices and experiences of those conventionally ignored and suppressed. the performative effect of the knowledge transmitted becomes a matter of scrutiny, as students should be formed in a way that enables them to function in a new society. central to the theological transformation is reconstruction of its central symbol – the rethinking of the divine in ways that promote flourishing. how all this will concretely play out in each institution will vary in light of its unique ecology, but the main direction is fairly clear. competing interests the author declares that he has no financial or personal relationships which may have inappropriately influenced him in writing this article. references amanze, j.n., 2012, ‘the voicelessness of theology and religious studies in contemporary africa: who is to blame and what has to be done? setting a new agenda’, missionalia 40(3), 189–204. bird, d.l. & smith, s.g. (eds.), 2009, theology and religious studies in higher education: global perspectives, continuum, london. bosch, d.j., 1991, ‘the nature of theological education’, journal of theology for southern africa 77, 3–17. bosman, h.l., 2015, ‘ants, spiders or bees … and ticks? a typology of old testament scholarship in south africa since 1994 within its african context’, old testament essays 28(3), 636–654. http://dx.doi.org/10.17159/2312-3621/2015/v28n5a5 brittain, c.c. & murphy, f.a. (eds.), 2011, theology, university, humanities: initium sapientiae timor domini, cascade, eugene, or. brown, e., 1994, ‘kweekskool teenoor teologiese fakulteit: die ervaring van die nederduitse gereformeerde kerk’, hervormde teologiese studies 50(1&2), 68–94. http://dx.doi.org/10.4102/hts.v50i1/2.2544 buitendag, j., 2014, ‘between the scylla and the charybdis: theological education in the 21st century in africa’, hervormde teologiese studies/theological studies 70(1), art. #2855, 1–5. http://dx.doi.org/10.4102/hts.v70i1.2855 cady, l.e. & brown, d. (eds.), 2002, religious studies, theology, and the university: conflicting maps, changing terrain, suny press, albany, ny. chopp, r.s., 1995, saving work: feminist practices of theological education, westminster john knox, louisville, ky. conradie, e.m., 1997, ‘an abc in theological education’, nederduits gereformeerde teologiese tydskrif 38(4), 349–361. conradie, e.m., 2013, ‘contemporary challenges to christian ecotheology: some reflections on the state of the debate after five decades’, journal of theology for southern africa 147, 106–123. conradie, e.m. & du toit, c.w., 2015, ‘knowledge, values, and beliefs in the south african context since 1948: an overview’, zygon 50(2), 455–479. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/zygo.12167 cuthbertson, g., 2008, ‘south africa’s democracy: from celebration to crisis’, african identities 6(3), 293–304. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14725840802223606 dames, g., 2010, ‘intercultural theological education: towards a new future for faculties of theology at higher education institutions in south africa’, scriptura 110, 237–248. http://dx.doi.org/10.7833/110-0-113 d’costa, g., 2005, theology in the public square: church, academy and nation, wiley-blackwell, oxford. de gruchy, j.w., 2008, ‘constructing a south african theological mind’, in d.c. marks (ed.), shaping a global theological mind, pp. 35–39, ashgate, hampshire. deist, f.e., 1994, ‘moet teologiese opleiding kerklik-konfessioneel wees?’, hervormde teologiese studies 50(1&2), 53–67. http://dx.doi.org/10.4102/hts.v50i1/2.2543 de villiers, e., 2011, ‘public theology in the south african context’, international journal of public theology 5, 5–22. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/156973211x543715 egan, a., 2007, ‘kingdom deferred? the churches in south africa, 1994–2006’, in s. buhlungu et al. (eds.), state of the nation: south africa 2007, pp. 448–469, hsrc press, cape town. esterline, d.v. & kalu, o.u. (eds.), 2006, shaping beloved community: multicultural theological education, westminster john knox, louisville, ky. farley, e., 1983, theologia: the fragmentation and integration of theological knowledge, fortress, philadelphia, pa. fernandez, e.s. (ed.), 2014, teaching for a culturally diverse and racially just world, cascade books, eugene, or. gonzález, j.l., 2015, the history of theological education, abingdon, nashville, tn. haddad, b., 2013, ‘the south african women’s theological project in historical perspective’, journal of theology for southern africa 145, 35–58. hauerwas, s., 2007, the state of the university: academic knowledges and the knowledge of god, blackwell, oxford. higgs, p., 2015, ‘the african renaissance and the decolonisation of theological education’, in m. naidoo (ed.), contested issues in training ministers in south africa, pp. 43–56, sun media, stellenbosch. kärkkäinen, v.-m., 2013, christ and reconciliation: a constructive christian theology for a pluralistic world, 1, eerdmans, grand rapids, mi. kelsey, d.h., 1992. to understand god truly: what’s theological about a theological school?, westminster john knox, louisville, ky. kelsey, d.h., 1993, between athens and berlin: the theological education debate, eerdmans, grand rapids, mi. kelsey, d.h., 2009, ‘theology in the university: once more, with feeling’, modern theology 25(2), 315–327. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0025.2008.01521.x landman, c., 2013, ‘theological education in south africa’, in i.a. phiri & w. werner (eds.), handbook of theological education in africa, pp. 239–245, cluster, pietermaritzburg. lategan, b.c., 1993, ‘teaching theology in the context of the humanities’, scriptura s11, 28–35. leibowitz, b. (ed.), 2012b, higher education for the public good: views from the south, sun media, stellenbosch. leibowitz, b., swartz, l., bozalek, v., carolissen, r., nicholls, l. & rohleder, p. (eds.), 2012a, community, self and identity: educating south african university students for citizenship, hsrc press, cape town. lombaard, c., 2016, ‘theological education, considered from south africa: current issues for cross-contextual comparison’, hts teologiese studies/theological studies 72(1), 1–5, http://dx.doi.org/10.4102/hts.v72i1.2851 maluleke, s.m. & nadar, s., 2004, ‘alien fraudsters in the white academy: agency in gendered colour’, journal of theology for southern africa 120, 5–17. maluleke, t.s., 2006, ‘the africanization of theological education: does theological education equip you to help your sister?’, in e.p. antonio (ed.), inculturation and postcolonial discourse in african theology, pp. 61–76, peter lang, new york. mangcu, x. (ed.), 2015, the colour of our future: does race matter in post-apartheid south africa? wits university press, johannesburg. marks, d.c. (ed.), 2008, shaping a global theological mind, ashgate, hampshire. miller, g.t., 2014, piety and plurality: theological education since 1960, cascade books, eugene, or. msila, v. & gumbo, m. (eds.), 2016, africanising the curriculum: indigenous perspectives and theories, sun media, stellenbosch. naidoo, m., 2008, ‘the call for spiritual formation in protestant theological institutions in south africa’, acta theologica. supplementum 11, 128–146. naidoo, m. (ed.), 2015, contested issues in training ministers in south africa, sun media, stellenbosch. naidoo, m., 2016, ‘overcoming alienation in africanising theological education’, hervormde teologiese studies/theological studies 72(1), art. #3062, 1–8. http://dx.doi.org/10.4102/hts.v72i1.3062 naude, p., 2004, ‘is there a future for scholarship? reformed theological scholarship in a transforming higher education environment’, journal of theology for southern africa 119, 32–45. phiri, i.a. & werner, d. (eds.), 2013, handbook of theological education in africa, cluster, dorpspruit. robinson, p.j. & smit, d.j., 1996, ‘what makes theological education “theological”? a south african story on the integrity of theological education’, skrif en kerk 17(2), 405–419. http://dx.doi.org/10.4102/ve.v17i2.527 schüssler fiorenza, f., 1991, ‘theological and religious studies: the contest of the faculties’, in b.g. wheeler & b. farley (eds.), shifting boundaries: contextual approaches to the structure of theological education, pp. 119–149, westminster john knox, louisville, ky. smit, d., 1993, ‘what makes theological education theological? overhearing two conversations’, scriptura 11, 147–166. smit, d., 2008, ‘on belonging: doing theology together’, in d.c. marks (ed.), shaping a global theological mind, pp. 153–162, ashgate, hampshire. tabensky, p. & matthews, s. (eds.), 2015, being at home: race, institutional culture and transformation at south african higher education institutions, university of kwazulu-natal press, pietermaritzburg. tracy, d., 1981. the analogical imagination: christian theology and the culture of pluralism, crossroads, new york. trisk, j., 2015, ‘choosing the better part: engendering theological education’, in m. naidoo (ed.), contested issues in training ministers in south africa, pp. 57–69, sun media, stellenbosch. uk benchmark statement on theology and religious studies, 2007, viewed 1 december 2011, from http://www.qaa.ac.uk/academicinfrastructure/benchmark/statements/theology.asp vale, p., hamilton, l. & prinsloo, e.h. (eds.), 2014, intellectual traditions in south africa: ideas individuals and institutions, ukzn press, pietermaritzburg. venter, r. (ed.), 2011, faith, religion and the public university, acta theologica supplementum 14, sun media, bloemfontein. venter, r., 2013, ‘speaking god at a public university in south africa: the challenge of epistemological transformation’, studia historiae ecclesiasticae 39 (suppl. 1), 231–245. venter, r., 2015, ‘transformation, theology and the public university in south africa’, acta theologica 35(2), 173–203. venter, r. & tolmie, f. (eds.), 2012, transforming theological knowledge: essays on theology and the university after apartheid, sun media, bloemfontein. volf, m., 2005, ‘dancing for god: challenges facing theological education today’, evangelical review of theology 29(3), 197–207. volf, m., 2015, flourishing: why we need religion in a globalised world, yale, new haven, ct. walls, a.f., 2002, ‘christian scholarship in africa in the twenty-first century’, transformation 19(4), 217–228. welker, m. & schweitzer, f. (eds.), 2005, reconsidering the boundaries between theological disciplines, lit verlag, münster. werner, d., 2012, ‘oslo: the future of theology in the changing landscape of universities in europe and beyond’, the ecumenical review 64(3), 393–404. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1758-6623.2012.00183.x werner, d., esterline, d., kang, n., & raja, j. (eds.), 2010. handbook of theological education in world christianity, regnum, oxford. wethmar, c.j., 1996, ‘wat het athene met jerusalem te doen? enkele histories-sistematiese gesigspunte in verband met die vraag of teologie aan die universiteit tuishoort’, skrif en kerk 17(2), 473–490. wingate, a., 2005, ‘overview of the history of the debate about theological education’, international review of mission 94(373), 235–247. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1758-6631.2005.tb00499.x zakai, a., 2007, ‘the rise of modern science and the decline of theology as the “queen of sciences” in the early modern era’, reformation and renaissance review 9(2), 125–151. http://dx.doi.org/10.1558/rrr.v9i2.125 footnotes 1. see www.dhet.gov.za/summit for papers presented. 2. this has happened over recent years in the department of religion studies at the university of johannesburg abstract introduction literature review discussion and conclusion acknowledgements references about the author(s) oscar o. eybers unit for academic literacy, university of pretoria, pretoria, south africa citation eybers, o.o., 2019, ‘applying ayittey’s indigenous african institutions to generate epistemic plurality in the curriculum’, transformation in higher education 4(0), a68. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v4i0.68 original research applying ayittey’s indigenous african institutions to generate epistemic plurality in the curriculum oscar o. eybers received: 04 apr. 2019; accepted: 30 apr. 2019; published: 24 june 2019 copyright: © 2019. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract background: south africa’s institutions of higher learning are currently experiencing a dispensation in which calls for curricula transformation and decolonisation reverberate. while the need for curricula evolution is generally accepted, there appears to be a lack of awareness of methodologies which are applicable to changing curricula. to this end the study proposed the incorporation of ayittey’s text indigenous african institutions into mainstream curricula for the following reasons: it is a rich source of indigenous african knowledge and includes history and information which relate to all disciplinary faculties and their areas of teaching. aim: the following conceptual study aimed to highlight the value of george ayittey’s seminal text, indigenous african institutions of 2006, towards implementing curricula in south african universities that are epistemically diverse. setting: this study is contextualised in higher learning spaces in the african context. method: the methods of this study involved a textual probing of previous discourses on epistemic diversity in university curricula that value pre-colonial african history. the study also highlighted pre-colonial african modes of organisation as emphasised in ayittey’s texts, which are relevant epistemic sources for dissemination in contemporary, african scholarly. results: the results of the study indicated that africa’s pre-colonial era contains rich sources of indigenous and epistemic knowledge required for social organisation during that era. ayittey’s text describes how african cultures gave form to relationships between families, communities, nations and the natural environment. this knowledge was seen as valuable for curriculum developers who aim to implement epistemically diverse curricula in mainstream african university modules. conclusion: the study concluded by conceptually arguing for curricula that incorporate and draw on regional and global contexts. ayittey’s text is an enabling instrument in such a curricula model that aims to increase student awareness of indigenous african epistemic systems and modes of organisation, as related to the rest of the humanity. it was also argued that when juxtaposed with western epistemic modes in the curriculum, africa’s epistemologies may aid in creating inclusive learning experiences. keywords: george ayittey; indigenous knowledge; epistemic pluralism; curricula; diversity. introduction south africa has recently experienced turmoil in its tertiary sphere. while much of it derived from students’ financial grievances, an equal amount of discontent emerged because of ideological disgruntlement (angu 2018; nyamnjoh 2016; pillay 2016). increasingly, segments of the student populace rebelled against what they experienced as colonised or eurocentric paradigms in south african universities. a statue of cecil rhodes, based at the university of cape town, came to be seen as a symbol of black oppression and pain. this sentiment reflects mbembe’s (2015:2) suggestion that ‘cecil rhodes belonged to [a] race of men who were convinced that to be black was a liability’. the current study is concerned with conceptualising curricula that reverse students’ experiences of alienation or pain by replacing these with belonging. carolissen and kiguwa (2018:1–2) acknowledge that experiences of belonging may be shaped by power relations in universities. such power relations, in turn, emerge from numerous variables that are not ‘unidimensional’ in nature but entail ‘complex intersectionalities’ (carolissen & kiguwa 2018:3). in these configurations, variables such as race, gender, culture or ideological orientation are efficacious. but as carolissen and kiguwa (2018:3) acknowledge, in south africa, ‘black students […] despite [their] legitimate student status […] continue to experience their rights within universities as conditional, contingent, marginal and, circumscribed by the terms of the other’. such experiences emerge, partially, because of institutional cultures that render fragile students’ sense of belonging. cabrera et al. (1999:135) argue that when students are exposed to an environment that includes discrimination or prejudice, they are prone to withdraw from it. because of these real experiences and observations, this study aims to examine the role that pre-colonial african history and culture may contribute towards epistemic pluralisation of disciplinary fields in south african universities. it will argue that ayittey’s indigenous african institutions (2006), by virtue of its title and scope, is a rich source of knowledge that is capable of infusing continental knowledge into tertiary level curricula. the infusion of pre-colonial epistemologies – including cultural and organisational systems – into the system is then argued as a textual mechanism to reduce student alienation. literature review indigenous african institutions and epistemic diversity it is impossible to implement epistemically diverse curricula in south africa without knowledge of how africans lived in the pre-colonial dispensation. asante (1991:28) argues that curricula should ‘place [students] or centre [emphasis added] them, within the context of familiar cultural and social references from their own historical settings’. failure to implement pedagogies that ground students in their cultures and identities risks ‘destroying their sense of place’ (asante 1991:30). in south african universities, alienation among many students is a reality (smit 2012:373). it is therefore essential to draw on the richness that pre-colonial african history and epistemic modes offer towards the project of developing inclusive learning experiences for all students of higher learning in south africa. assie-lumumba (2012) declares that in pre-colonial africa, the purpose of education was to prepare young people to be responsible members of the community. she further stresses that during this dispensation, education was provided and equally received by all members of communities (assie-lumumba 2012:24). while elders were responsible for sharing principles and values required for adulthood and the survival of the community, the receptors of this knowledge passed it on to the youngest of children (assie-lumumba 2012:24). instruction from elders included knowledge related to community legends, traditions, including ways of interacting with the natural environment, and local history (assie-lumumba 2012:24). like educational systems worldwide, pre-colonial african modes of instruction also aimed to teach ‘the various […] technologies, sciences, art, music and traditional laws of governance. in all these it [had] its own philosophy, content and method of teaching’ (fordjor et al. 2003:185). within this vein, if curricula in south african universities are to be epistemically diversified, there must be an alternative pedagogical model that acknowledges epistemic ways africans employed to educate their communities and interact with the natural environment in the pre-colonial era. ayittey’s text provides ample examples of epistemic practices and principles that could be incorporated into contemporary curricula towards achieving this purpose. curricula implications of philosophies and principles underpinning indigenous african institutions for south african universities of higher learning to epistemically diversify curricula in mainstream disciplines and fields of studies, it is necessary to recall, reflect upon and incorporate principles and values that generated indigenous african institutions. this process involves what has come to be termed a process of decoloniality. saurombe (2018) conceives of the decolonial process as reintroducing the humanness of african agency, their cultures and histories, into the curriculum. such a process is essential because a colonially inherited education system has ‘excluded indigenous epistemologies and practices of […] south african people’ (saurombe 2018:122). fomunyam and teferra (2017) agree with this claim. in their view, decoloniality involves ‘the foregrounding of local or indigenous knowledge and experiences in curricula content, thereby downplaying […] eurocentric or global north experiences which [have] dominated curriculum content for centuries’ (fomunyam & teferra 2017:197). decolonisation, in the above context, involves an increase of curricula focus on indigenous knowledge and experiences to reduce perceived hegemony of eurocentrism. himonga and diallo (2017:5) declare that decoloniality entails a move to more inclusive educational cultures. for these reasons, ayittey’s text, indigenous african institutions (2006), is critical for the african project of decolonising and implementing epistemically diverse curricula in our universities. it highlights how, in every domain of human social organisation, african knowledge systems and ways of doing may be incorporated into mainstream disciplinary curricula. embedding african epistemologies in the university curriculum most south african universities have faculties related to humanities, law, science and commerce. ayittey’s (2006) text illustrates how africans organised and structured their societies in each of these domains. as argued by the scholars above, knowledge of indigenous african practices is essential to implement more africanised and epistemically inclusive curricula. humanities the humanities constitute a broad field of study. they include, but are not limited to, disciplines as diverse as fine art, linguistics, sociology, psychology, anthropology, political science and education. fields of studies associated with humanities are also referred to as social sciences. according to the economic and social research council of the united kingdom (2018:1), ‘social science is […] in its broadest sense, the study of society and the manner in which people behave and influence the world around us’. drawing on this definition, an epistemically diverse curriculum that values local knowledge and contexts should, in addition to illustrating western modes of organisation, highlight african ways of engaging in human relations and the natural environment during the pre-colonial dispensation. starting with artistic expression, it is well known that southern africa has evidence of the most ancient examples of rock painting (henshilwood, d’errico & watts 2009). incorporating knowledge of the history and theoretical approaches towards these works enables lecturers and students alike to embed their experiences in an african framework. ancient african art may be incorporated into the curriculum of literacy, linguistic and language courses. in ayittey’s (2006) text, art – whether verbal, musical or in image – is presented as having fulfilled a critical function in transmitting cultural values of communities. ayittey (2006:36) writes that ‘african art, dance, music and, other human activities were […] intertwined with every aspect of life’. however, and from an ontological perspective, indigenous african art, in its multitude of manifestations, reveals how in the pre-colonial era ‘the metaphysical sphere, was not divorced from concrete experience, especially since the physical and the metaphysical were aspects of reality’ (ayittey 2006:36). the value of these epistemic and ontological approaches, as emerging from indigenous african institutions, is that if they are applied in the lecture hall or classroom, students, too, may apply them as alternative modes of generating knowledge, as did africans during the pre-colonial dispensation. by incorporating the values and principles underpinning artwork in the pre-colonial phase, lecturers and students may, in unique ways, experience an epistemically diverse curriculum that simultaneously draws on their own, local ways of knowing. law ayittey’s indigenous african institutions (2006) suggests that africa has among the most ancient of legal systems in the world. bohannan (1968) concurs by stating that africa is home to some of humanity’s oldest legal systems. these were necessary because in africa, as elsewhere, societies ‘cannot exist without rules and principles that govern relationships between a person and other persons, the community and the environment’ (ayittey 2006:67). of the numerous examples that ayittey (2006:71, 74, 75) offers of indigenous legal systems in africa, he mentions family-orientated legal modes of the ga-dangme people who populate regions in ghana, togo and benin. the dispute resolution systems of the kpelle in liberia and the igbo of nigeria are also highlighted, as is the elder-centred system of the bukusu people of kenya. as with global, legislative processes, pre-colonial legal systems in africa were buttressed by sets of principles. variations in african legal principles emerged because of their geographic origins and according to the structure of societies. for example, in the ga-dangme, family-orientated system, the weku yitso, or family head, is responsible for embodying ‘virtues and values that the family seeks to portray [and] to ensure proper […] conformity of the actions of members of the family to group-approved standards’ (ayittey 2006:71). a critical function of the weku yitso was to preserve harmony among community and family members. legal principles that the weku yitso valued and would apply are avoidance of shia-sane [conflict], okadi [evidence] and odasefoi [the involvement of witnesses] (ayittey 2006:71). the agency afforded to the weku yitsos, and their responsibility for maintaining order among families, was similar to judges who preside over disputes. the significance of these examples of indigenous african legal systems is that they are still relevant to not only contemporary law classes but may be embedded in curricula across faculties to reveal how – philosophically, culturally and through language – africa’s pre-colonial era represents a rich source of knowledge that may aid in epistemically diversifying contemporary curricula in south african universities. natural sciences as with its traditional legal practices, pre-colonial africa equally evidences ample examples of how the people of the continent interacted with the natural environment. in the contemporary age, such interactions and the study thereof are associated with the natural sciences. examples of scientific practices that emerge from africa’s iron age include: discoveries of several […] furnaces and smelted iron artefacts in cameroon, gabon, central african republic and congo, dating from [3,000 and 2,000 years ago] indicat[ing] that […] bantu farmers [possessed] the technology for iron metallurgy. (bayon et al. 2012) the introduction of iron technologies among african societies significantly altered agricultural methods, as stronger and more sophisticated tools were developed (van der merwe & avery 1982). the impact of new farming tools and techniques contributed to the shift of many communities from hunter-gather or pastoralist societies to settled formations who engaged in crop farming (oliver, oliver & fagan 1975). examples of these crops include pearl millet and yams (oliver et al. 1975). noticeably, these communities also began to increase their domestication of cattle, to maintain surpluses of foods and to cultivate wealth through the possession of these commodities (ayittey 2006:401). it is impossible to exhaust analysis of africa’s iron age and the technological effects it had on a significant proportion of african people. consideration and recalling of africa’s iron age is but one facet of how the natural sciences were applied in the pre-colonial era. african architecture, utilisation of natural medicines and modes of water-based travel all reveal how africans were innovators in their own right. such knowledge, whether in natural sciences or other faculties, has the potential to challenge stereotypes of pre-colonial africa as a ‘dark continent’ and epistemically diversify curricula. commerce contrary to the colonial narrative that africans lived wildly or even haphazardly, africans possessed age-old systems of manipulating the natural environment to produce various goods for subsistence and trade (ayittey 2006; conrad 1996). schneider (1986:181) states that ‘while africans often conducted their economic affairs in ways not identical to [the west], their behaviour can still be considered economic and commensurate with a market process’. a market process, of which ayittey’s text (2006:317–319) provides ample examples, involves the ways and means by which people organise production, exchange and distribute goods, as well as acquire finance under the authority of traditional authorities. with a lens on western africa, skinner (1964:205) observes that the region: [h]ad economies which made agricultural produce available in amounts large enough to be sold in rural and urban markets [as well as] crafts specialisation often organised along the line of craft guilds […] whose members manufactured goods to be sold at these markets. pre-colonial africans partook in commercial practices that extended beyond regional domains. skinner (1964:355) describes how ‘markets served as local exchange points or nodes, and trade was the vascular system unifying all of west africa, moving products to and from local markets, larger market centres, and still larger centres’. the significance of africa’s pre-colonial commercial systems for contemporary development of epistemically plural curricula is that they will enable students, not just of commerce-related subjects, but all disciplines, to perceive how africa’s socio-economic organisation was dynamic and evolving. the essence of indigenous african institutions the significance of ayittey’s text is that it highlights to readers the depth and richness that african pre-colonial epistemologies and modes of organisation represent. indeed, when reflecting on africa’s immense socio-economic crisis, ayittey (2006:11) argues that some of the core causes for such conditions relate to ‘difficulty [in] penetrating […] layers of mythology [and] ignorance […] enshrouding africa and [her] people’. this sentiment correlates with the principles of scholars in the decolonial domain who argue that africa’s cultures, epistemologies and traditions are marginalised in contemporary curricula (angu 2018; kumalo 2018; nyoka 2013). angu (2018) describes the constraints of african epistemologies in tertiary curricula as a process of marginalisation. kumalo (2018), applying the concept of abjection, the non-seeing of blackness or african culture, argues that decoloniality must address this concern. likewise, in theorising decoloniality, nyoka (2013) points out the effects of negation of the african experience in tertiary experiences. here, those ways that are authentically african, or have originated in the african lived and historical experience, are negated by curricula theorists, designers and implementers. ayittey’s text may, therefore, be approached as a source that is applicable as data or evidence of africa’s epistemic richness. in revealing to the reader how in every human sphere, be it agriculture, modes of social organisation, literacy practices, law, economic practices and art, africa may be scrutinised as a source of knowledge and not a dark continent which has little to contribute to how we approach knowledge in the higher education arena. nyoka (2013) argues that it is problematic to solely view disciplinary content via western theoretical lenses and frameworks. if we adopt this stance, then indigenous african institutions as a repository of african epistemic modes and ways of doing, may be applied towards designing epistemically plural curricula. conceptual argument ayittey’s text, in the outlook of this study, is an effective tool for two reasons. firstly, it may aid in the process of africanising tertiary-based curricula; secondly, it may contribute towards diversifying active epistemologies in the lecture hall. the first objective was discussed above. by sharing insight into pre-colonial modes of organisation and associated cultural principles, ayittey provides ample data and information to steer curricula towards a more african-centred orientation. however, the stance of the current study is that because of africa’s, south africa’s and the globe’s multicultural character, effective application and incorporation of ayittey’s text in curricula designs should co-exist with western and other epistemologies. african epistemic modes should not be presented exclusively. as teffo (2011:25) argues, ‘the east, west and africa have each played historic roles in generating and disseminating knowledge, science and culture’. africa does not exist in isolation. while unequal in many respects, it is undeniable that because of the evolution of technology and other variables such as globalisation, the world is becoming a smaller place (asongu & nwachukwu 2017). as such it is necessary for african universities to develop among the student populace those epistemologies and associated practices that are required not only in africa, but throughout the globe. such pedagogy is referred to as global citizenship education (goren & yemeni 2017). disciplinary modules are suitable structures for embedding african and global epistemologies. this intersection is illustrated in figure 1. figure 1: interplay of african, global and western epistemologies in the curriculum. discussion and conclusion eurocentric curricula and methodologies in southern african universities are unable to generate learning experiences that are multicultural in character and are epistemically just. instead, they reproduce inequalities in higher learning spaces that are manifest in greater society. such epistemic injustice ‘grant[s] differential levels of credibility and intelligibility to individuals based on their membership in different social groups’ (catala 2015:424). continuing in such an epistemic trajectory is untenable for south africa. rather, regional institutions of higher learning require curricula that value epistemic plurality (solomon 2006). in such pedagogic environments, the histories, epistemic traditions and ways of doing of multiple communities are incorporated into the curriculum. ayittey’s indigenous african institutions (2006) is applicable in fostering development of epistemically diverse curricula by contributing the african side of things. his text, while only one perspective of pre-colonial africa, re-introduces those principles and practices of social and knowledge organisation that were lost in the implementation of contemporary disciplines. while epistemically juxtaposing pre-colonial modes with global knowledge processes, students’ experiences of alienation may be reduced, and universities may reap the benefits of curricular cultural richness. curricula that draw on the knowledge and history highlighted in ayittey’s text should not be presented in an exclusive manner. that is, african epistemologies and pre-colonial modes of organisation should be taught alongside alternative philosophies and theories that enhance understanding of disciplinary content. by drawing on the richness that diverse human cultures have to offer in the curriculum, we may enable students’ development into experts who are aware of their african foundations and, simultaneously, of their status as citizens of the global community. west-pavlov (2017) conceptualises the structures of such interaction as ‘participatory cultures’. it is undeniable, however, that the history of higher education in africa has experienced eurocentrism. as such it is necessary to re-centre african epistemologies in the classroom. by juxtaposing these epistemic strategies with those ways of knowing as emerging from around the globe, we prepare, in the outlook of this study, our students to operate in a world that is culturally and organisationally diverse. acknowledgements the author thanks dr pineteh angu for his critical feedback. competing interests the author declares that he has no financial or personal relationships that may have inappropriately influenced him in writing this article. authors’ contributions i declare that i am the sole author of this research article. ethical considerations no human participants were empirically engaged in this study therefore ethical clearance was not required by the author’s institution. funding this research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors. data availability statement data sharing is not applicable to this article as no new data were created or analysed in this study. disclaimer the views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any affiliated agency of the authors. references angu, p., 2018, ‘disrupting western epistemic hegemony in south african universities: curriculum decolonisation, social justice, and agency in post-apartheid south africa,’ the international journal of learner diversity and identities 25(1), 9–22. https://doi.org/10.18848/2327-0128/cgp/v25i01/9-22 asante, m.k., 1991, ‘the afrocentric idea in education’, the journal of negro education 60(2), 170–180. https://doi.org/10.2307/2295608 asongu, s.a. and nwachukwu, j.c., 2017. the comparative inclusive human development of globalisation in africa. social indicators research, 134(3), 1027–1050. assie-lumumba, n., 2012, ‘cultural foundations of the idea and practice of the teaching profession in africa: indigenous roots, colonial intrusion, and post-colonial reality’, educational philosophy & theory 44(s2), 21–36. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-5812.2011.00793.x ayittey, g.b.n., 2006, indigenous african institutions, 2nd edn., transnational publishers, ardsley. bayon, g., dennielou, b., etoubleau, j., ponzevera, e., toucanne, s. & bermell, s., 2012, ‘intensifying weathering and land use in iron age central africa’, science 335(6073), 1219–1222. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1215400 bohannan, p., 1968, justice and judgement amongst the tiv, oxford university press, london. cabrera, a.f., nora, a., terenzini, p.t., pascarella, e. & hagedorn, l.s., 1999, ‘campus racial climate and the adjustment of students to college: a comparison between white students and african-american students’, the journal of higher education 70(2), 134–134. https://doi.org/10.2307/2649125 carolissen, r. & kiguwa, p., 2018, ‘narrative explorations of the micro-politics of students’ citizenship, belonging and alienation at south african universities,’ south african journal of higher education 32(3), 1–11. catala, a., 2015, ‘democracy, trust, and epistemic justice’, the monist 98(4), 424–440. https://doi.org/10.20853/32-3-2542 conrad, j., 1996, heart of darkness, pp. 17–95, springer, new york. education and social research council, 2018, ‘what is social science?’, viewed 3 january 2019, from https://esrc.ukri.org/about-us/what-is-social-science/. fomunyam, k.g. & teferra, d., 2017, ‘curriculum responsiveness within the context of decolonisation in south african higher education’, perspectives in education 35(2), 196–207. https://doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v35i2.15 fordjor, p., kotoh, a., kuma kpeli, k., kwamefio, a., bernard, m., owusu, e. et al., 2003, ‘a review of traditional ghanaian and western philosophies of adult education’, international journal of lifelong education 22(2), 182–199. https://doi.org/10.1080/0260137032000055321 goren, h. and yemini, m., 2017. global citizenship education redefined–a systematic review of empirical studies on global citizenship education. international journal of educational research, 82, 170–183. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.linged.2018.11.001 henshilwood, c.s., d’errico, f. & watts, i., 2009, ‘engraved ochres from the middle stone age levels at blombos cave, south africa, journal of human evolution 57(1), 27–47. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhevol.2009.01.005 himonga, c. & diallo, f., 2017, ‘decolonisation and teaching law in africa with special reference to living customary law’, potchefstroom electronic law journal/potchefstroomse elektroniese regsblad 20(1), 1–19. https://doi.org/10.17159/1727-3781/2017/v20i0a3267 kumalo, s.h., 2018, ‘explicating abjection – historically white universities creating natives of nowhere?’, critical studies in teaching and learning’, 6(1), 1–17. https://doi.org/10.14426/cristal.v6i1.132 mbembe, a, 2015, ‘decolonizing knowledge and the question of the archive’, unpublished manuscript, viewed from n.d., http://wiser.wits.ac.za/system/files/achille%20mbembe%20-%20decolonizing%20knowledge%. nyamnjoh, f.b., 2016, rhodes must fall: nibbling at resilient colonialism in south africa, langaa research and publishing, bamenda, cameroon. nyoka, b., 2013, ‘negation and affirmation: a critique of sociology in south africa’, african sociological review/revue africaine de sociologie 17(1), 2–24. oliver, r.a., oliver, r. & fagan, b.m., 1975, africa in the iron age: c. 500 bc-1400 ad, cambridge university press, cambridge. pillay, s.r., 2016, ‘silence is violence: (critical) psychology in an era of rhodes must fall and fees must fall’, south african journal of psychology 46(2), 155–159. https://doi.org/10.1177/0081246316636766 saurombe, n., 2018, ‘decolonising higher education curricula in south africa: factoring in archives through public programming initiatives’, archival science: international journal on recorded information 18(2), 119–141. schneider, h.k., 1986, ‘traditional african economies’, in p.m. martin & p. o’meara (eds.), pp. 181–198, indiana university press, bloomington, in. skinner, e.p., 1964, ‘west african economic systems’, in m.j. herskovits & m. harwitz (eds.), economic transition in africa, pp. 77–97, northwestern university publishers, evanston, il. smit, r., 2012, ‘towards a clearer understanding of student disadvantage in higher education: problematising deficit thinking’, higher education research & development 31(3), 369–380. https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2011.634383 solomon, m., 2006, ‘norms of epistemic diversity’, episteme 3(1–2), 23–36. teffo, l., 2011. epistemic pluralism for knowledge transformation. international journal of african renaissance studies-multi-, inter-and transdisciplinarity, 6(1), 24–34. van der merwe, n.j. & avery, d.h., 1982, ‘pathways to steel: three different methods of making steel from iron were developed by ancient peoples of the mediterranean, china, and africa’, american scientist 70(2), 146–155. west-pavlov, r., 2017, ‘participatory cultures and biopolitics in the global south in in koli jean bofane’s congo inc’, research in african literatures 48(4), 105–121. https://doi.org/10.2979/reseafrilite.48.4.08 abstract introduction literature review methods results discussion conclusion acknowledgements references about the author(s) jacob m. shivley department of clinical sciences, college of veterinary medicine, mississippi state university, united states citation shivley, j.m., 2019, ‘acquisition of pedagogical knowledge by instructors of veterinary medicine’, transformation in higher education 4(0), a54. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v4i0.54 original research acquisition of pedagogical knowledge by instructors of veterinary medicine jacob m. shivley received: 19 july 2018; accepted: 05 dec. 2018; published: 27 feb. 2019 copyright: © 2019. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract background: when practitioners of veterinary medicine enter academia as faculty or clinical instructors, they are asked to perform research, provide service and outreach, and educate students, yet the teaching component is a struggle for many. it has been posited that academic clinicians develop a teaching style similar to those they observed while in school but this has not been confirmed with empirical evidence. aim: the aim of this research was to determine how veterinary instructors obtained pedagogical knowledge prior to their faculty appointment. setting: the sample consisted of veterinary faculty at a college of veterinary medicine from the southeastern united states. the land-grant university that the veterinary school is associated with is one of only a few schools to earn both research and community engagement rankings from the carnegie foundation for the advancement of teaching. methods: online surveys were administered to a stratified sample of veterinary faculty and instructors. a mixed-methods approach was utilised to collect and analyse both close-ended and open-ended data. a coding process provided labels for emerging themes, concepts and examples and each research question was answered with descriptive detail. results: descriptive results showed that most instructors (93%) did not receive formal teacher training but derived their pedagogical knowledge from role models prior to teaching. many faculty members (70%) attended university-sponsored workshops offered by their institutions to build upon and improve their teaching skills. conclusion: overarching themes reflected observational learning in situ and a general emphasis on non-cognitive skill development, particularly regarding interpersonal skills. introduction veterinarians are trained to be clinicians and they are required to be skilled in medical diagnostic procedures, client communication skills and surgical techniques (avma 2015; hill et al. 2012). these doctors learn basic and applied sciences for a multitude of species and are taught complex problem-solving skills (creevy et al. 2017). however, when veterinarians enter academia as faculty, they are expected to perform research, provide community service and outreach, and educate veterinary students (glicken 2004). a potential problem for many veterinary faculty is the non-traditional teaching component of their appointment (bell 2013; glicken 2004; magnier et al. 2014; smith & lane 2015). it is a commonly held belief that many teachers, including veterinary educators, are not classically trained in pedagogy or educational psychology theory (creevy et al. 2017; dolby & litster 2015; hashizume et al. 2016; hofmeister & mccullick 2016; lane & strand 2008); however, this has not been empirically demonstrated. furthermore, there is a need in the veterinary education literature to describe how veterinary instructors obtain pedagogical knowledge. the purpose of this study was to determine the following: how do veterinary faculty obtain knowledge regarding effective instructional strategies? who do veterinary faculty source their knowledge from regarding instructional strategies? what types of instructional strategies do veterinary faculty obtain from their knowledge sources? the information obtained from this study should lead to suggestions and improvements for current veterinary teacher development strategies. literature review veterinary educators the lack of formal pedagogical education for medical faculty is not a problem unique to the veterinary field (bing-you et al. 2017; wilkerson & irby 1998). jason and westberg (1982) found that most medical school faculty had no formal teacher preparation. when seeking to answer how clinical teachers in human medicine acquired knowledge about teaching, irby (1994) found that they sourced knowledge by observing teachers when they were learners. this observational emulation suggests that role models are a vital key for clinical teachers who have had no formal training in teaching. this can be a slow and arduous process, often involving experimentation and reflection to find what works and what fails (wilkerson & irby 1998). medical teacher education has since grown to include faculty development initiatives and enhanced learning curriculum (steinert et al. 2016; strand et al. 2015), yet sourcing pedagogical knowledge for the medical teacher is still a challenge for clinical training environments (denton et al. 2015). when describing pedagogical concepts that must be mastered by clinical teaching faculty, irby (2014) listed knowledge of pedagogy and learners, and knowledge integrated in teaching scripts, as foundational. finally, chen et al. (2016) concluded that medical faculty developed skills to teach multi-level learners while on the job and that a developmental approach during their appointment accounted for acquiring this pedagogical knowledge. for veterinary medicine, it has been posited that academic clinicians develop a teaching style similar to those they observed while in school (smith & lane 2015), but this has not yet been confirmed with empirical evidence. this observational learning could also explain how veterinary educators obtain pedagogical knowledge, but the need to ask these questions remains. teachers in other disciplines piece together the knowledge needed to become good teachers in similar ways. research has shown that nurse educators learn on the job and use mentors in discovering how to effectively teach (gardner 2014). ironside, mcnelis and ebright (2014) discovered that nurses in clinical education continue teaching the way that they were taught, which included a focus on memorisation of medical knowledge, time management skills and completing medical records. these disparities highlighted in nursing education are also found in other fields. interestingly, even teacher educators describe gaps in the development of teaching skills and acquiring pedagogies for educating student teachers. these teacher educators were expected by their professors to learn on site, but they eventually depended on their previous experiences while in school as classroom teachers (goodwin et al. 2014). a recurring theme found by researchers is the need for improving teaching practices in higher education through faculty development programmes, but how these programmes should be constructed is a matter of debate (devlin & samarawickrema 2010; glicken 2004; huston & weaver 2008; peluso & hafler 2011; sunal et al. 2001). wilkerson and irby (1998) suggested that medical school comprehensive faculty development programmes include professional, instructional, leadership and organisational development, and that teaching skills are separate from expertise in the educator’s field. peer coaching has been advocated as a teacher development strategy, particularly for the older, more experienced faculty member (huston & weaver 2008). this approach focuses on collaborative, reflective learning strategies with equally experienced faculty members who meet to discuss and question the problems faced at their levels. it also advocates for the experienced faculty to mentor junior faculty. sunal et al. (2001) explored a series of faculty development programmes and studied why faculty members may be inhibited in their effort to become more effective teachers. they suggested that personal efficacy is valued above teacher efficacy. personal efficacy was defined as ‘a faculty member’s beliefs about his or her ability to facilitate student potential learning’ and teacher efficacy was defined as ‘a faculty member’s belief about their own teaching ability’ (p. 251). low personal efficacy results in a teacher believing that his or her students will not learn regardless of what the teacher does in that course. low teacher efficacy results in a teacher believing that because of his or her poor teaching skills, he or she cannot successfully teach the students. faculty members with higher personal efficacy are more likely to effect change in teaching and instructional strategies. positive teacher development may not occur unless the educators experience dissatisfaction with their current personal concepts of teaching (steinert et al. 2016; strand et al. 2015; sunal et al. 2001). clinical teachers share traits with effective teachers (smith & lane 2015). it is beyond the scope of this article to provide a complete review of the literature on what constitutes an effective or successful teacher. however, in reviewing the literature, there are a few salient points worth mentioning. often, the different roles of a clinical educator cannot be accomplished by one person, and, in fact, clinical education may take a whole team. clinical teachers have to take their roles beyond that of a role model or mentor, and also have to be the information provider, the case facilitator, the assessor of the learner, the course planner and the resource developer (harden & crosby 2000). furthermore, excellent clinical teaching goes beyond ordinary teaching (sutkin et al. 2008). non-cognitive characteristics, such as enthusiasm, relationship skills and the ability to inspire, support, actively involve and communicate with students, dominate the themes of superior clinical teaching. these activities promote an emotional component and a connection with students, which transcends the construction of biomedical knowledge. these traits may be inherent in the excellent teacher, and may not be easily taught in formal teacher development protocols. however, formal educational strategies are still advocated for enhancing the skills of the clinical teacher. thinking aloud, role modelling, reflection and the guided thinking process, deconstructing concrete experiences and providing the opportunity for active practice and timely feedback have all been identified as necessary for veterinary clinical educators (smith & lane 2015). an ethnographic case study of veterinarians in clinical teaching found that the effective educator demonstrated a reflective approach to clinical teaching (magnier et al. 2014). these teachers sought to provide a challenging yet safe learning environment, while establishing rapport with learners. at the time of submission of this article, studies on veterinary educators’ formal teacher education prior to their faculty appointment or how veterinary faculty members pieced together the knowledge needed to become teachers were not found. based on the literature review, it was hypothesised that most veterinary faculty had limited to no formal training in teaching practices prior to their academic appointments. the information obtained will fill the knowledge gap regarding how veterinary faculty members obtain pedagogical knowledge and should lead to suggestions and improvements for current veterinary teacher development strategies. methods conceptual framework the educational psychology theory that the project can be rooted in is situated cognition (brown, collins & duguid 1989; lave & wenger 1991). this theory, also known as situated learning, could potentially explain how veterinary faculty members have derived a large portion of their education background from their communities and interactions in everyday life, from the collections of people and events they were influenced by while in veterinary school or other social settings. in medical education, those that influence this type of learning could be other students, patients, clinical instructors or environmental settings (young et al. 2014). this type of learning can often be described as unintentional. as it is hypothesised that most veterinary faculty will not have formal educational backgrounds, they are likely to use their experiences with previous educators and combine them with current mentoring from senior faculty to be successful. to this point, cognitive apprenticeship as described by collins et al. (1991) likely will play a role. in this apprenticeship, the novice authentically learns from an expert who passes down traditions and methods. this is a form of sociocultural learning and can be embedded in an academic setting, within the workplace or within medical education (lyons et al. 2016). in the context of this study, this theory could also help explain how junior faculty could improve their teaching through relationships with expert teachers in their respective fields (collins et al. 1991; stalmeijer 2015). procedures a mixed-methods approach was used to collect and analyse both closeand open-ended data. qualitative methods that have been successfully employed in the past were used to establish the credibility of this study (creswell 2013; shenton 2004). honesty was highly valued by allowing participants to decline the survey process, encouraging them to be frank and open in their answers, and letting participants withdraw from the research process at any time. openand close-ended questions allowed a broader explanation of the research questions. this helped the participants to clarify some of the survey responses and provide richer information. to establish transferability and dependability, transparency was highly valued and the context of the results of the study was made available. this included the number of participants involved, the data collection methods employed and the time of the data collection. all participants were informed of the scope of the study and individual unsigned consent was obtained. there were no consequences for those who declined to participate. instructors who were recruited in person received an unsigned consent document for personal records, which included a statement indicating informed consent and a brief description of the study’s purpose and procedures. instructors who were recruited by email received another version of the consent document which provided the same information as mentioned above. survey instrument the pedagogical knowledge acquisition survey–faculty (pkas-f) (online appendix 1) was created in the fall of 2016 for the collection of data among veterinary faculty and it arose from multiple discussions and literature reviews during the author’s educational psychology class. it was designed to answer the three research questions in order to fill the gap in the knowledge of veterinary educators. content was checked by an assistant professor of educational psychology at the institution where the survey was delivered to ensure appropriate organisation and presentation. the content was organised to first capture demographic information, and then subheadings were used to group questions into (1) teacher education training prior to becoming veterinary faculty, (2) teacher education since becoming veterinary faculty, (3) desire to learn, (4) formal teacher education, (5) influences and (6) teaching ability. close-ended yes/no questions were utilised to capture answers without ambiguity, but were then followed with open-ended questions to develop a richer data set. where appropriate, a likert scale was used instead of yes/no responses in order to obtain richer data. the survey was intended to be completed in 30 min or less and was designed to lead veterinary faculty through a self-reflection process. only the questions that captured information needed to answer the research questions were analysed. this survey was distributed to all consenting participants via an online survey engine. upon completion, the researchers gathered all data from the survey company. corresponding items on the pkas-f were mapped to the research questions (table 1). table 1: research questions mapped to items on survey instrument, pedagogical knowledge acquisition survey–faculty. participants and context participants were recruited for the study in the fall of 2016 based on publicly shared online information that indicated the individual’s position as an instructional faculty member at a college of veterinary medicine in the southeastern united states. email correspondence was used to recruit and secure consent from the participants. the recruitment email served as a disclosure of information about the study to potential participants, and was structured in a way that allowed for unsigned consent. the sample consisted of veterinary faculty (n = 29) from a southeastern university college of veterinary medicine. a stratified sampling technique was used to capture data from different subgroups of instructional faculty (i.e. clinical instructor [n = 4], assistant professor [n = 5], associate professor [n = 9] and professor [n = 11]), all teaching in veterinary medicine. it was anticipated that sampling from a single university would not be problematic when considering that instructional faculty had arrived at their current positions with highly varied backgrounds and experiences. the land-grant university that the veterinary school is associated with is one of only a few schools to earn both research and community engagement rankings from the carnegie foundation for the advancement of teaching. the college of veterinary medicine awards doctor of veterinary medicine (dvm) degrees, master’s degrees and doctor of philosophy degrees. it has been fully accredited by the american veterinary medical association since 1981. the dvm degree is a 4-year curriculum that is composed of 2 years of classroom and laboratory work and 2 years of clinical education, which is a uniquely innovative approach in veterinary medical education. the clinical rotations vary from 4 to 8 weeks, with an emphasis on skill acquisition and technical competency. observational, passive and experiential learning all play important roles in the clinical rotations. clinical faculty along with residents and interns are responsible for delivering the learning experiences in the final 2 years of clinical education. data analysis codes emerged from inductive and deductive thematic analyses. memorable quotes were noted and summaries were constructed including the main themes, points and insights expressed by each participant. next, a coding process provided labels for emerging themes, concepts and examples (table 2). after comparing and contrasting the various themes and concepts, each research question was answered with descriptive detail (rubin & rubin 2012). table 2: examples of coding and condensation, question 26. quantitative analysis was conducted using ibm spss statistics version 24. the analysis investigated correlations between the instructors’ current position (question 3) with the instructors’ desire to learn more about teaching and instructional strategies (question 7). the latter question used a likert scale with six responses from 1 (not at all) to 6 (most definitely). in g*power version 3.1.9.2, the statistical test was defined as correlation: point biserial model, and the type of power analysis was defined as post hoc: compute power – given alpha, sample size and effect size. ethical considerations this project received institutional review board approval with protocol id: irb-17–416 from the mississippi state university. results the results of this study supported the assumption that many instructors at a single intuition arrived at their position from varied backgrounds (table 3). in fact, 30 different institutions or colleges were represented when looking at the educational backgrounds of the participants. these varied backgrounds increased the quality of data received, allowing a view through the lenses of these educators to obtain insightful and meaningful responses (rubin & rubin 2012). table 3: reported instructor educational backgrounds. how do veterinary faculty obtain pedagogical knowledge? based on the survey results, it was found that most instructors (n = 27; 93%) did not receive formal teacher training, which supported the initial proposition. only two participants had received prior formal education training: one had a bs in education and the other had taken two education curriculum graduate-level courses. much of the faculty who responded to question 10 (n = 20) reported attendance to university-sponsored workshops or seminars (n = 14; 70%) held by the center for teaching and learning once already in their faculty appointments. for instance, dr y stated, ‘i have attended seminars at a number of different institutions that i have worked at covering a variety of topics … powerpoints, organisation, use of clickers, etc.’ (associate professor, southeastern united states). faculty who attended conferences related to teaching and instruction (n = 3; 15%) described learning about problem-based learning, test writing and clinical instruction. independent study and self-directed learning was used by a few faculty members (n = 2; 10%), as demonstrated by dr a’s willingness to personally read books on the subject: ‘in my reading, i noticed several references indicating that enthusiasm is a more powerful explanatory variable than most others in relating to student success’ (professor, southeastern united states). one faculty member had taken two graduate courses since entering the faculty appointment and noted, ‘the assessment and evaluation course was my favorite. i was made more aware of how to present essential material to the students in a clear and direct way, and how to compose a test that determines the effectiveness of instruction.’ (participant m, associate professor, southeastern united states). in an interesting contrast, 21 faculty members reported learning about teaching prior to their faculty appointments by emulating a past teacher they admired as students. who do veterinary faculty source their knowledge from? the majority of faculty who responded to question 26 (n = 24) reported obtaining their knowledge from a role model of some sort (n = 21; 88%). of those responding that role models were a significant source of pedagogical knowledge, four stated that their parents were teachers and served as a significant influence in becoming an educator themselves. when responding to question 27, many participants (n = 20; 69%) indicated that they emulate past or present teachers and most of those (n = 15; 75%) modelled teachers or professors they had when they themselves were students. dr c illustrated, ‘several were role models for enthusiasm. …while i am not sure i remembered more of what they taught, they modeled passion for learning, for teaching, and for the profession. several were role models for clarity, brevity and organization … even though they provided less “content”, what they taught me was remembered (“less is more”).’ (professor, southeastern united states) dr u explained, ‘that is how i have developed my teaching styles. i looked at my professors during veterinary school, and the faculty members, and tried to use techniques that were effective in my teaching style.’ (assistant professor, southeastern united states) what types of instructional strategies do veterinary instructors obtain or use? responses to questions 11, 12 and 25 were best summarised and conceptually coded across all participants (n = 29) to provide the most meaningful description of the data. this process was performed similarly to the descriptions in table 2. the resulting themes were ranked in order according to the frequency of response category and quotes from open-ended questions were used to provide rich descriptions. utilise student feedback survey participants considered utilising student feedback as a way to gauge the effectiveness of their instructional strategies and if they should make changes to the types of strategies currently in use. furthermore, they use student feedback as a way to increase teacher enthusiasm. ‘student feedback. i consistently alter clinical teaching based on student feedback. students tell you (in one way or another) how they learn best and where the gaps are in their education. i try to alter my delivery and fill these gaps – especially with 3rd and 4th year students.’ (participant r, professor, southeastern united states) ‘teaching style has been an evolution based on student performance and feedback.’ (participant q, professor, southeastern united states) develop rapport and show interest in students survey participants saw the need to connect with students on a personal level and make sure that the students feel supported and cared for. ‘connecting with the students and seeing them enthusiastic, appreciative, and understand the material (without focusing only on the test).’ (participant b, associate professor, southeastern united states) ‘1. make learning fun (use of anecdotes from previous life experiences to ‘make a point’). 2. give students a role in their education (ask for feedback or questions before, during and after class). make certain that they’re ‘getting it’ (assume nothing). find out where they are beginning before moving on.’ (participant d, professor, southeastern united states) emphasise the practical relevance of content survey participants saw the need to lead students on a journey of synthesising memorised material, facts and lectures into the greater clinical picture of caring for patients, performing surgery and communicating to other professionals. ‘as a student, i sat through years of lectures wondering about the subject relevance to vet practice. but when i started clinical rotations, i began to see the relevance of that didactic material, which lead to asking more why questions. “why” questions lead to “how” (why do we do that? how does that work?). i have always asked students to explain why they wish to do specific things on rotation and have tried to incorporate clinical examples in the didactic courses to provide a frame of reference. i also try to use underlying principles to support how and why we do things the way we do.’ (participant l, professor, southeastern united states) ‘1. i have tried to incorporate clinical scenarios in lectures and rounds, as well as give examples from cases when discussing things one on one.’ (participant u, assistant professor, southeastern united states) learn different teaching and assessment techniques survey participants understood that they did not enter their faculty appointment with all the pedagogical knowledge needed to effectively teach. they must therefore learn new concepts. ‘understanding by design, writing clear, understandable instructional objectives and assessment accommodations for student diversity.’ (participant m, associate professor, southeastern united states) ‘it uncovered the science behind teaching and educational psychology for which i was previously ignorant. it’s nice to learn evidence-based practices for teaching similar to what we learn for veterinary medicine.’ (participant x, assistant professor, southeastern united states) ‘use of failure when taking pedagogical risks – try things even if they don’t work; pre-post concept testing; that students perceive themselves as victims of their monster mentors – attempting to show a human side in daily actions may reduce that dynamic.’ (participant l, professor, southeastern united states) emphasise passion or enthusiasm for content survey participants conveyed that not only should veterinary educators be passionate about animals, displaying passion and enthusiasm for veterinary medicine as a discipline, but also the content being taught is important for student learning. ‘1. vital for teacher to demonstrate enthusiasm/passion for discipline; 2. basic principles are important, but teacher must stress clinical relevance early and often; 3. students are more willing to learn from a teacher they like or respect than from one they don’t. …while i am not sure i remembered more of what they taught, they modeled passion for learning, for teaching, and for the profession.’ (participant c, professor, southeastern united states) ‘i learned a lot about teaching from my mentors. however, i think enthusiasm for teaching comes from within. this enthusiasm, or lack thereof, is absolutely noticed by the students.’ (participant t, associate professor, southeastern united states) maintain reasonable grading expectations survey participants realised that this includes learning how to write well-crafted exam questions that test synthesised knowledge and not just memorisation of facts. this also involves being consistent from student to student when subjective grading is involved. ‘i recognized mistakes i was making with writing test questions. i am more familiar with concepts and strategies that allow test questions to more accurately assess an examinee’s knowledge and understanding. test questions that require conceptual understanding rather than just memorization, fair test questions with only one correct answer, fair questions without misleading distractors.’ (participant k, clinical instructor, southeastern united states) ‘listen to student concerns, respond in a timely manner, be consistent with grading.’ (participant g, professor, southeastern united states) use multiple teaching strategies or be flexible survey participants stated that they must be lifelong learners and learn new, innovative ways to educate veterinary students, even if that means trying new techniques and failing. the participants also suggested that different strategies may be more effective for one learner versus another. ‘use of failure when taking pedagogical risks try things even if they don’t work; pre-post concept testing.’ (participant l, professor, southeastern united states) ‘strategy – in clinical teaching, its all about being flexible. one strategy may not work for all. and we have to make the learning environment comfortable by keeping the student relaxed. i try to ascertain if an individual is “getting it” – if not, i try another way to explain (visuals, models, etc.).’ (participant r, professor, southeastern united states) use current and interesting examples or use current literature survey participants conveyed that research and current literature can inform and enhance the learning environment. therefore, veterinary educators should see the need to read up on the current literature in clinical veterinary medicine and apply this to their instructional strategies. ‘given a limited amount of preparation time i spend more of it trying to find interesting and exciting examples that illustrate the potential clinical importance of the concept or illustrating new therapies that are just coming to human medicine and will likely make their way to veterinary medicine soon.’ (participant a, professor, southeastern united states) ‘i try to incorporate stories (e.g. cases or something i’ve read in a research article) that are both interesting, sometimes bizarre, or just fun so they can remember an association; i try to invest in the class hoping they invest in it too.’ (participant b, associate professor, southeastern united states) additional findings of interest results from a post hoc quantitative analysis of veterinary educators (n = 29) yielded one significant pearson correlation with a medium effect size, a power of 0.65 and a = 0.05. a significant correlation (r = -0.41; p < 0.05) demonstrated a moderate negative relationship between current job title or position and the level of desire to learn more about effective teaching methods. to elaborate, the relationship indicated decreases in the level of desire to learn more about teaching as job title or position increased among veterinary faculty. in an interesting contrast, most participants who responded to question 32 (n = 27) stated that teaching in veterinary medicine was both an innate and learned ability (n = 24; 89%), indicating that many veterinary faculty understand that it is possible to improve instructional strategies and further develop pedagogical knowledge. dr s stated: ‘i think the most successful teachers have a passion for teaching that really cannot be taught. teaching can certainly be enhanced through instruction and when these two are merged a very proficient instructor develops.’ (associate professor, southeastern united states) dr a clarified: ‘we have a faculty member in my department who does careful self-evaluations each year of his teaching and uses them to improve. his evaluation scores from students have consistently improved over time. however, the teachers who are typically rated as the very best (the ones who win awards, etc.) are often gifted in ways or have a personality that would be difficult for someone without those gifts or personality to emulate.’ (professor, southeastern united states) discussion the results of this study support the proposition that most veterinary instructors do not receive formal teacher education prior to their teaching appointments. three overarching themes emerged from the analysis across all survey item responses and sample strata. the first two represent the emotional and personal component of educators. rapport, respect, caring for, or understanding students. passion or enthusiasm for subject. when listing how a role model influenced his teaching strategies, one participant noted: ‘1. vital for teacher to demonstrate enthusiasm/passion for discipline; 2. basic principles are important, but teacher must stress clinical relevance early and often; 3. students are more willing to learn from a teacher they like or respect than from one they don’t.’ (participant c, professor, southeastern united states) these non-cognitive characteristics arose repeatedly in response to open-ended questions and described the need for veterinary educators to ensure that their students feel cared for and respected. the characteristics also described the perceived need to display some sort of positive emotional connection that educators have with the material they are teaching. these two overarching themes validate previous research findings regarding the importance of interpersonal skills for effective teaching (bing-you et al. 2017; buskist et al. 2002; irby 2014; keeley, ismail & buskist 2016; keeley, smith & buskist 2006). when considering non-cognitive characteristics of teachers, these may be defined as problem-solving skills, emotional health, social skills, work ethic, community responsibility, affection, open communication, rapport, enthusiasm and creativity (borghans, meijers & ter weel 2008; keeley et al. 2016). faculty members already have a good command of content knowledge and appear to be in higher level positions where a more holistic view of teaching and content knowledge is required; therefore, they may be looking for specific ways to enhance these non-cognitive teacher traits. also, faculty may have more time to reflect about the development of non-cognitive skills, therefore enhancing non-cognitive traits and allowing them to become more effective teachers. based on the points mentioned above, non-cognitive skills matter and should become more prominent in teacher development programmes and educational policy (garcia 2014). following these first two themes, the third overarching theme shifts to the emphasis of pedagogical acquisition. observation of models plays an important role in teacher development. one participant detailed this well: ‘i try to emulate parts of the teaching style from many of my professors. i remember what inspired me to succeed while in vet school and try to emulate those teaching strategies.’ (participant k, clinical instructor, southeastern united states) this theme was clearly articulated by a majority of participants and emphasises how veterinary faculty utilise observational learning within social cognitive theory (bandura 1986). situated cognition and cognitive apprenticeship theories appear to play an important role in veterinary instructor development and should be considered when building teaching development programmes. korthagen (2004) made a strong argument for focused core reflection being essential in improving the educator, and this interview process could pilot what this reflection process may look like for veterinary educators. this exercise takes the teachers on a journey to discovering their professional identity and knowledge acquisition. it includes reflecting on role models, events, communities and social constructs that have positively or negatively shaped one’s professional identity. when teachers become more self-aware, they can make choices that positively impact their professional development and their teaching practices. as clinical educators source their pedagogical knowledge from observation of role models, using a similar strategy in teacher development programmes would be a natural model to effect change. the findings of this study prompt more questions. limitations of this survey included a lack of examination of the quality of instructor knowledge. an assessment measuring gaps in instructors’ pedagogical knowledge and whether veterinary educators feel fully equipped to teach would provide valuable information. important parameters of effective teaching, the engagement in the scholarship of teaching and learning and other scholarly contributions were not surveyed, which could have added further depth to a study of this nature. a more detailed survey and analysis of common themes among veterinary educators on what instructional strategies are currently used and the effectiveness of these strategies could highlight deficits in pedagogical knowledge and inform needed innovations in veterinary medical education. when this is known, teacher development programmes could be tailored to meet these pedagogical gaps. conclusion most veterinary educators in this study did not receive formal teacher training, and instead derived their pedagogical knowledge from role models and past teachers prior to their faculty appointment. situated cognition and cognitive apprenticeship theories appear to play an important role in veterinary instructor development. overarching themes reflected observational learning while in the natural educational environment when faculty were themselves students. a general emphasis on non-cognitive skills development, particularly regarding interpersonal skills, emerged as an important proficiency among veterinary educators. acknowledgements the author would like to thank nicole leach and audri brown for their insight and collaboration. the views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not represent the views of any institution. competing interests the author declares that he has no financial or personal relationships that may have inappropriately influenced him in writing this article. references american veterinary medical association (avma), 2015, coe accreditation policies and procedures: requirements, american veterinary medical association, schaumberg, il, viewed 17 august 2015, from https://www.avma.org/professionaldevelopment/education/accreditation/colleges/pages/coe-pp-requirements-of-accredited-college.aspx bandura, a., 1986, social foundations of thought and action: a social cognitive theory, prentice-hall, inc., englewood cliffs, nj. bell, c.e., 2013, ‘faculty development in veterinary education: are we doing enough (or publishing enough about it), and do we value it?’, journal of veterinary medical education 40(2), 96–101. https://doi.org/10.3138/jvme.0113-022r bing-you, r.g., blondeau, w., dreher, g.k. & irby, d.m. 2017, ‘t2 (teaching & thinking)-in-action skills of highly rated medical teachers: how do we help faculty attain that expertise?’, innovations in education and teaching international 54(5), 409–417. https://doi.org/10.1080/14703297.2015.1093425 borghans, l., meijers, h. & ter weel, b., 2008, ‘the role of noncognitive skills in explaining cognitive test scores’, economic inquiry 46(1), 2–12. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1465-7295.2007.00073.x brown, j.s., collins, a. & duguid, p., 1989, ‘situated cognition and the culture of learning’, educational research 18(1), 32–42. https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189x018001032 buskist, w., sikorski, j., buckley, t. & saville, b.k., 2002, ‘elements of master teaching’, teaching of psychology: essays in honor of wilbert j. mckeachie and charles l. brewer 1, 27–39. chen, h.c., fogh, s., kobashi, b., teherani, a, ten cate, o. & o’sullivan, p., 2016, ‘an interview study of how clinical teachers develop skills to attend to different level learners’, medical teacher 38(6), 578–584. https://doi.org/10.3109/0142159x.2015.1073238 collins, a., brown, j.s. & holum, a., 1991, ‘cognitive apprenticeship: making thinking visible’, american educator 15(3), 6–11. creevy, k.e., cornell, k.k., schmiedt, c.w., park, h., rong, h., radlinsky, m. et al., 2017, ‘impact of expert commentary and student reflection on veterinary clinical decision-making skills in an innovative electronic-learning case-based platform’, journal of veterinary medical education 45(3), 1–13. creswell, j.w., 2013, qualitative inquiry and research design: choosing among five approaches, sage, thousand oaks, ca. denton, g.d., griffin, r., cazabon, p., monks, s.r. & deichmann, r., 2015, ‘recruiting primary care physicians to teach medical students in the ambulatory setting: a model of protected time, allocated money, and faculty development’, academic medicine 90(11), 1532–1535. https://doi.org/10.1097/acm.0000000000000778 devlin, m. & samarawickrema, g., 2010, ‘the criteria of effective teaching in a changing higher education context’, higher education research and development 29(2), 111–124. https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360903244398 dolby, n. & litster, a., 2015, ‘understanding veterinarians as educators: an exploratory study’, teacher in higher education 20(3), 272–284. https://doi.org/10.1080/13562517.2014.1001835 garcia, e., 2014,. the need to address noncognitive skills in the education policy agenda. briefing paper# 386, economic policy institute, washington, dc. gardner, s.s., 2014, ‘from learning to teach to teaching effectiveness: nurse educators describe their experiences’, nursing education perspectives 35(2), 106–111. https://doi.org/10.5480/12-821.1 glicken, a.d., 2004, ‘becoming an effective teacher: applied principles of adult learning’, journal of veterinary medical education 31(3), 268–272. https://doi.org/10.3138/jvme.31.3.268 lin goodwin, a., smith, l., souto-manning, m., cheruvu, r., tan, m. y., reed, r. et al., 2014, ‘what should teacher educators know and be able to do? perspectives from practicing teacher educators’, journal of teacher education 65(4), 284–302. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022487114535266 harden, r.m. & crosby, j., 2000, ‘amee guide no 20: the good teacher is more than a lecturer-the twelve roles of the teacher’, medical teacher 22(4), 334. https://doi.org/10.1080/014215900409429 hashizume, c.t., hecker, k.g., myhre, d.l., bailey, j.v. & lockyer, j.m., 2016, ‘supporting veterinary preceptors in a distributed model of education: a faculty development needs assessment’, journal of veterinary medical education 43(1), 104–110. https://doi.org/10.3138/jvme.0515-075r hill, l.n., smeak, d.d. & lord, l.k., 2012, ‘frequency of use and proficiency in performance of surgical skills expected of entry-level veterinarians by general practitioners’, journal of the american veterinary medical association 240(11), 1345–1354. https://doi.org/10.2460/javma.240.11.1345 hofmeister, e.h. & mccullick, b.a., 2016, ‘best practice: what can veterinary educators learn from pe teachers?’, journal of veterinary medical education 43(3), 271–274. huston, t. & weaver, c.l., 2008, ‘peer coaching: professional development for experienced faculty’, innovative higher education 33(1), 5–20. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10755-007-9061-9 irby, d.m., 1994, ‘what clinical teachers in medicine need to know’, academic medicine 69(5), 333–342. irby, d.m., 2014, ‘excellence in clinical teaching: knowledge transformation and development required’, medical education 48(8), 776–784. https://doi.org/10.1097/00001888-199405000-00003 ironside, p.m., mcnelis, a.m. & ebright, p., 2014, ‘clinical education in nursing: rethinking learning in practice settings’, nursing outlook 62(3), 185–191. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.outlook.2013.12.004 jason, h. & westberg, j., 1982, teachers and teaching in us medical schools, appleton & lange, east norwalk, ct keeley, j., smith, d. & buskist, w., 2006, ‘the teacher behaviors checklist: factor analysis of its utility for evaluating teaching’, teaching of psychology 33(2), 84–91. keeley, j.w., ismail, e. & buskist, w., 2016, ‘excellent teachers’ perspectives on excellent teaching’, teaching of psychology 43(3), 175–179. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15328023top3302_1 korthagen, f.a., 2004, ‘in search of the essence of a good teacher: towards a more holistic approach in teacher education’, teaching and teacher education 20(1), 77–97. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2003.10.002 lane, i.f. & strand, e., 2008, ‘clinical veterinary education: insights from faculty and strategies for professional development in clinical teaching’, journal of veterinary medical education 35(3), 397–406. https://doi.org/10.3138/jvme.35.3.397 lave, j. & wenger, e., 1991, situated learning: legitimate peripheral participation, cambridge university press, cambridge. lyons, k., mclaughlin, j.e., khanova, j. & roth, m.t., 2016, ‘cognitive apprenticeship in health sciences education: a qualitative review’, advances in health sciences education theory practice 22(3), 723–739. magnier, k.m., wang, r., dale, v.h.m. & pead, m.j., 2014, ‘challenges and responsibilities of clinical teachers in the workplace: an ethnographic approach’, journal of veterinary medical education 41(2), 155–161. https://doi.org/10.3138/jvme.0813-111r1 peluso, m.j. & hafler, j.p., 2011, ‘medical students as medical educators: opportunities for skill development in the absence of formal training programs’, yale journal of biology and medicine 84(3), 203–209. rubin, h.j. & rubin, i., 2012, qualitative interviewing: the art of hearing data, 3rd edn., sage, thousand oaks, ca. shenton, a.k., 2004, ‘strategies for ensuring trustworthiness in qualitative research projects’, education for information 22(2), 63–75. https://doi.org/10.3233/efi-2004-22201 smith, j.r. & lane, i.f., 2015, ‘making the most of five minutes: the clinical teaching moment’, journal of veterinary medical education 42(3), 271–280. https://doi.org/10.3138/jvme.0115-004r stalmeijer, r.e., 2015, ‘when i say… cognitive apprenticeship’, medical education 49(4), 355–356. https://doi.org/10.1111/medu.12630 steinert, y., mann, k., anderson, b., barnett, b.m., centeno, a., naismith, l. et al., 2016, ‘a systematic review of faculty development initiatives designed to enhance teaching effectiveness: a 10-year update: beme guide no. 40’, medical teacher 38(8), 769–786. https://doi.org/10.1080/0142159x.2016.1181851 strand, p., edgren, g., borna, p., lindgren, s., wichmann-hansen, g. & stalmeijer, r.e., 2015, ‘conceptions of how a learning or teaching curriculum, workplace culture and agency of individuals shape medical student learning and supervisory practices in the clinical workplace’, advances in health sciences education 20(2), 531–557. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10459-014-9546-0 sunal, d.w., hodges, j., sunal, c.s., whitaker, k.w., freeman, l.m., edwards, l. et al., 2001, ‘teaching science in higher education: faculty professional development and barriers to change’, school science and mathematics 101(5), 246–257. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1949-8594.2001.tb18027.x sutkin, g., wagner, e., harris, i. & schiffer, r., 2008, ‘what makes a good clinical teacher in medicine? a review of the literature’, academic medicine 83(5), 452–466. https://doi.org/10.1097/acm.0b013e31816bee61 wilkerson, l. & irby, d.m., 1998, ‘strategies for improving teaching practices: a comprehensive approach to faculty development’, academic medicine 73(4), 387–396. https://doi.org/10.1097/00001888-199804000-00011 young, j.q., van merrienboer, j., durning, s. & ten cate, o., 2014, ‘cognitive load theory: implications for medical education: amee guide no. 86’, medical teacher 36(5), 371–384. https://doi.org/10.3109/0142159x.2014.889290 abstract introduction higher education transformation in south africa the current status of access and participation in higher education in south africa policy changes that required curriculum transformation in higher education programmes why has curriculum transformation across south african higher education taken this path? where to from here in higher education curriculum transformation? conclusion acknowledgements references about the author(s) labby ramrathan school of education, university of kwazulu-natal, south africa citation ramrathan, l., 2016, ‘beyond counting the numbers: shifting higher education transformation into curriculum spaces’, transformation in higher education 1(1), a6. http://dx.doi.org/10.4102/the.v1i1.6 original research beyond counting the numbers: shifting higher education transformation into curriculum spaces labby ramrathan received: 06 june 2016; accepted: 08 sept. 2016; published: 25 oct. 2016 copyright: © 2016. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract since the dawn of democracy in south africa, the path of higher education transformation has been guided by the ‘white paper 3: a programme for higher education transformation’. this path has largely been conceptualised within a framework of equity through redress and social justice that sought to change the face of higher education through demographic changes. hence higher education transformation largely took on a number-counting process. the curriculum changes that have taken place thus far have largely been of an instrumental and responsive modality. in this paper i argue that deep curriculum transformation in higher education will be possible if we shift our gaze from predominantly a number-counting exercise to curriculum intellectualism. the next wave of higher education curriculum transformation would be a fundamental rethink based on emerging curriculum theories. introduction a recent attempt to influence higher education curriculum was made through a proposal for the introduction of a flexible curriculum for the undergraduate programmes offered across higher education institutions (che 2013a). this proposal was based on a numerical assessment of cost associated with the low throughput and high attrition for universities as noted through the many reports (e.g. vital stats 2011 by che 2013b; diagnostic overview presented by the national planning commission 2011) on student throughput and dropout in higher education. the argument is based on the recognition that school education has not provided the competence in learners to transit into higher education and that, in order to address this transition gap, either school education needs to improve on its quality or higher education should do something to address the shortcomings of school education. the proposal for the flexible curriculum sought to address the shortcomings of school education through changes to the higher education undergraduate curriculum. currently, most higher education institutions in south africa offer some form of foundation programme to widen access and to provide additional support to students that do not meet admission or selection requirements into programmes. the proposal recognises that the cost associated with low throughput and high dropout is less than that associated with changing a 3or 4-year programme into a 4or 5-year programme, respectively, with options to complete a year earlier for students who do not need such academic support. this early exit brings the flexibility dimension to this proposal. why are we, as south african intellects and policymakers, continuing in this instrumental and numerical mode of thinking and response? issues of under-preparedness, low throughput and high dropout from higher education are global phenomena with, for example, the us context engaging with this problem for nearly a century (tinto 2012) with no clear resolution to these issues. higher education transformation in south africa has thus far been located within the domain of counting numbers. the transformation agenda for higher education set several goals. most were numerical changes to patterns of higher education offerings that had their roots in apartheid ideology and that the south african democratic government sought to radically change. these numerical changes related to widening access, changes in programme type enrolment patterns, institutional re-landscaping to address issues of resources, quality and historical legacies (elaborated in the forthcoming section) and programme differentiation. although these transformational agendas are revealing themselves in the demographic changes noticeable in higher education statistics (che 2013b), the problems of throughput, dropout and academic support still remain and have the potential to destabilise the transformational achievements noted (e.g. changes in enrolment patterns across qualification types and changes in demographics of student populations) (ramrathan & pillay 2015). several interventions were made attempting to stem this critical problem of low efficiencies recorded in higher education outputs. these interventions included identification, monitoring, supporting and tracking of students identified as at risk of failing; introduction of access and foundation programmes; and several secondary support programmes like financial support, food security and student counselling. these interventions have the potential to address the inefficiencies noted, but their effects have not yet been realised. fundamental changes to higher education curricula have not happened across south african higher education institutions for nearly a century; they bear a close resemblance to colonial education (che 2013a). thus far changes to higher education curricula have been cosmetic and of an instrumental nature, largely in response to policy drivers (e.g. national frameworks for qualifications and curriculum frameworks developed by professional bodies) and social and health issues (introduction of modules for language competence, hiv and other life-threatening diseases). the field of curriculum studies has, in the last two decades, expanded significantly beyond instrumental discipline-based curriculum development (adding and removing of modules as and when needed) to include mode 2 transdisciplinary knowledge systems (nowotny, scott & gibbons 2003), autobiographical approaches or currere (pinar 2010), complicated conversations (pinar 2010) and epistemological and ontological innovations located in indigenous knowledge systems. the current trajectory on curriculum reforms in higher education is lacking in its approach to innovative ways of curriculum intellectualism, largely because of the fixation on redress transformation agendas based on numerical changes. therefore, in this paper i argue that despite the changes made to higher education curriculum in south africa since apartheid, fundamental curriculum transformation has not yet taken place within higher education and that an appropriate opportunity is now available to embrace new intellectualism related to higher education curriculum transformation. the argument is based on an analysis of the transformation that has taken place in higher education thus far. a synopsis of higher education transformation in south africa since democracy is presented as a context to understand the priorities that have driven the transformational agenda thus far. the paper extends to include episodes of curriculum transformation that have resulted in instrumental changes to programme offerings, including that of my personal experience as a teacher education coordinator, in reconceptualising programmes when demanded to through policy changes. the paper concludes with a discussion on how curriculum transformation might unfold in the next leg of higher education transformation in south africa. higher education transformation in south africa the history and consequences of apartheid within south africa have been well documented in the literature (e.g. brown 2006; cloete 2006). in summary, for the purpose of this paper, these include a race-based categorisation that was strategically used to discriminate and sustain white privileges by dominating blacks (african students are considered a distinct group from the generic ‘black’ nomenclature, which comprises african, indian and coloured – the distinctive racial groups that were considered disadvantaged during the apartheid era). this domination lead to retrogressive life experiences for those disenfranchised by apartheid policies and structures. education of black people, for example, was neglected in comparison to white education (brown 2006). during apartheid, the funding for black education was extremely low and this was paralleled by a reduced participation especially for the majority of the african population, who were clearly only being schooled for low-skilled jobs (brown 2006). chetty and vigar-ellis (2012:909) commented that ‘education in south africa is an area where the effects of apartheid have been felt severely’. moja and cloete (1996) noted early in our democratic society that, through a review of south african universities, the overall higher education system at that time perpetuated inequalities and that reforms to redress inequalities were needed to ensure greater relevance, accountability and democracy. the national commission on higher education (nche), chaired by prof. j. reddy, was proposed and adopted with the purpose of making appropriate policy recommendations for changes to the higher education system within south africa (moja & cloete 1996). although it was assumed that the main driver of change would be government policy, changes in higher education institutions following a variety of routes resulted in certain apartheid differences being accentuated and new differences started emerging in the higher education institutional landscape. for example, the merger process of higher education institutions that was initiated in 2002 left some historically privileged institutions unchanged and accentuated exclusions through, for example, language polices that were seen to be exclusionary. some institutions experienced research marginalisation in terms of funding, as privileging research was seen as an income-generation process. institutions that had a superficial focus on research, therefore, were financially disadvantaged as they were not able to generate significant funding through research outputs and, therefore, could not attract research-active high quality staff to drive the research agenda of the institution. in its education priorities, the nche asserted the principle of equity with redress, development to spark productivity and democratisation through participation and representation. the numerous broad nche aims are greater constituency participation for mass education, increasing various types of linkages or partnerships, participatory modes at institutions and responsiveness to more open knowledge systems (department of education 1996). the nche thus asserted systematic coordination (even of qualifications), which included unity, diversity, flexible entry, more participation with equal opportunities and the building of open-ended research capacity for a sustainable innovative system and to create international standards with sensitivity directed towards student needs (department of education 1996). the national plan for higher education (department of education 2001), which was approved by cabinet in february 2001, identified five key policy goals and strategic objectives necessary for achieving the overall goal for the transformation of the higher education system as follows: to increase access and to produce graduates with the skills and competencies necessary to meet the human resource needs of the country to promote equity of access and outcomes and to redress past inequalities through ensuring that student and staff profiles reflect the demographic composition of south african society to ensure diversity in the institutional landscape of the higher education system through mission and programme differentiation to meet national and regional skills and knowledge needs to build high-level research capacity, including sustaining current research strength, and to promote research linked to national development needs to restructure and consolidate the institutional landscape of the higher education system to transcend the fragmentation, inequalities and inefficiencies of the apartheid past and to enable the establishment of south african institutions consistent with the vision and values of a non-racial, non-sexist and democratic society. a current review of these transformation goals suggests that some of these goals have been met, while others are ongoing aspirations (letseka & malie 2008; lewin & mawoyo 2014; ramrathan 2013). each of these transformational goals was largely number based and required shifts in numerical accountability as evidence of achieving the transformational goal. for the purpose of this paper, i engage with student access to higher education as a transformation goal to show the over-reliance on number changes rather than fundamental changes to the nature, form and experience of higher education curricula in south africa. the current status of access and participation in higher education in south africa the increase in demand for higher education seems to be a worldwide phenomenon (schofer & meyer 2005), with higher education capacity not increasing sufficiently to accommodate this increased demand. in the south african context, approximately 17% of those who complete their grade 12 (matriculation) school education access higher education across the 26 public funded institutions, in spite of the targeted enrolment plans of 20% to be realised in 2001 as indicated in the national plan for higher education (department of education 2001; lewin & mawoyo 2014). the latest audited statistics indicate that in 2011, approximately 938 000 students were enrolled in higher education across the public universities, growing from 495 000 in 1994. the enrolment of african students rose from 43% of total enrolment in 1994 to 67% in 2010. using the generic nomenclature black, enrolment increased from 55% in 1994 to 81% in 2011 (lewin & mawoyo 2014), suggesting that participation of the previously denied population groups has increased to reflect the demographics of our country. a more nuanced picture appears when one considers participation rates in terms of the national population demographics. while enrolment figures tell us the number of students per race category enrolled in higher education, the participation rate is a more complex phenomenon where the enrolment of a particular race group is measured in terms of its proportional population demographics. for example, while 2% of the population of south africa are indians, the 6% enrolment of indians in higher education constitutes a 47% participation rate amongst the indian population group. this nuanced calculation means that, proportional to their population size, indian students have a higher participation rate than african or coloured students. the current situation suggests that the indian and white population participation rates are much higher than those of the african and coloured population groups, implying that participation in higher education for the african and coloured population groups is still marginal and unrepresentative of their population size. while the increase in enrolment since the dawn of democracy seems encouraging, issues of access are still very much a central discourse, especially within the context of quality education, student success and graduation rates. while, for example, the current demographics of higher education reflect the demographic population of south africa, far-reaching communities (usually in deep rural areas) continue to be marginalised. the forms of marginalisation include lack of adequate marketing of higher education in deep rural communities, thereby limiting potential access of these marginalised communities to higher education study programmes. overall, there seems to be an overt sense that, as a national agenda, the transformation of higher education in relation to student access and participation has achieved its intended goals. there is, however, growing concerns that this agenda is being threatened (letseka & malie 2008; ramrathan 2013) with the realisation that student graduation rates, quality of graduates and equity of access will severely compromise the gains made by the transformation charter. the throughput rates, graduation rates and dropout rates across public higher education institutions are a cause for concern with the human science research council, recording as many as 40% of students dropping out of university in their first year of study (university world news 2008) and graduation rates being in the region of only 15% (department of higher education 2013). concern about the low efficiency of higher education was noted by the department of education (1997), which initiated a series of intervention programmes that included additional preparation of school learners for higher education through programmes such as the upward bound programme (ramrathan, manik & pillay 2007); access programmes for students who did not meet admission requirements into particular programmes; and foundation programmes to provide epistemological access to university studies. the proposal by the council for higher education (2013a) on the introduction of a flexible curriculum was the latest higher education curriculum intervention to address issues of low throughput and high dropout levels across institutions. however, this proposal was not accepted based on review comments received on the proposal. the curriculum interventions to support transforming the higher education system in terms of access were of an instrumental nature of potential additive value without asking fundamental questions like the following: what curriculum would be most appropriate for the kinds of students that are aspiring to higher education studies; where would these qualifications lead the graduate to; and what learning experiences should students be exposed to and why? policy changes that required curriculum transformation in higher education programmes noting that changes to higher education since apartheid were to be driven by appropriate policy recommendations, the first wave of curriculum transformation that i experienced and worked through in higher education offerings was the modularising of courses into coherent units of learning. institutions were required to modularise their courses into term, semester or year-long modules. credit values were allocated to each module. there was no clear guidance on how credit values should be allocated. hence, institutions developed modules by breaking up existing courses into smaller units of learning and allocated credit points based on institutional decisions. in my institution, a term module was allocated three credit points, a semester module was allocated six credit points and a year module was allocated 12 credit points. the purposes of modularising programmes were to allow for the following: recognition of units of learning as well as full qualifications transferability of units of learning across programmes portability of units of learning across institutions through recognition of prior learning. a further development to the modularisation process was the standardisation of module credits within the national qualification framework (nqf). in this development, one credit point was deemed equivalent to 10 notional hours of study, meaning that a module that is allocated 15 credit points would require an average student to spend approximately 150 notional hours of module engagement, which includes attending lectures, tutorials and seminars; self-study; assessments; and additional reading. the modular system and its associated credit values formed the basis of qualification construction, recognition of learning and qualification certification. the second wave of curriculum transformation was initiated by the introduction of regulatory frameworks that sought to (1) register qualifications on the nqf as regulated by the south african qualifications authority, (2) accredit qualifications for quality offerings as regulated by the council for higher education and (3) obtain approval of programme qualification mix for subsidy purposes. this wave of curriculum transformation was located within an outcomes-based ideology with credit points and level descriptors forming the structure of a programme within the nqf. programmes could be registered on the nqf as either whole qualifications with exit level outcomes, programme total credit points and assessment criteria or by registering units of learning with rules of combination, with each unit of learning contributing to the attainment of graduate attributes for the programme. for the teacher education programmes a parallel regulatory framework, norms and standards for educators (nse), was developed and gazetted in 2000 (department of education 2000). institutions that offered teacher education programmes were required to develop teacher education qualifications in line with the nse. the identified roles of a teacher informed the design of teacher education programmes. the nse was arguably a technical curriculum guided by units of learning and associated credit points that accounted for how each of the seven roles of an educator would be developed. the third wave of curriculum transformation is currently unfolding and was initiated by a review of the nqf. the new nqf now has 10 levels, with the doctoral qualification occupying the uppermost level of the nqf. pathways within the nqf were developed to allow for transitions between qualification types and programme streams, meaning that students can start their academic study within one study field but change streams to another qualification in a different field of study. academic and professional qualifications were pegged at different levels, while programme study periods were changed. for undergraduate and honours programmes the study periods remained 30 weeks per academic year and constituted a minimum of 120 credit points per annum, whereas research degrees (master’s and doctoral degrees) were extended over 45 weeks per academic year and constituted a minimum of 180 credit points per annum. further developments in curriculum changes were in relation to generic and professional bachelor’s degrees, with professional bachelor’s degrees being pegged at level 8 of the nqf and generic bachelor’s degree at level 7. post-graduate qualifications from honours level upwards were required to include research training with varying scopes of research capacity development. from the above waves of curriculum reforms within higher education, it is clear that these reforms were instrumental in nature and still located within a counting rationality. credit points, level descriptors and rules of combination formed the basis of curriculum reforms. there were, however, attempts at deep curriculum transformation associated with epistemology and ontology. the conception of deep curriculum transformation was developed from a notion of deep teacher learning (samuel 2009). samuel (2009) uses the metaphor of an iceberg to illustrate deep teacher professional learning, where that which is above the water is representative of public propositional knowledge in the form of theories, principles and policies. that which is below the surface is more complex and is formed from a wealth of craft knowledge in contexts, relationships and ways of being. the first of these attempts was located in the debates and curriculum changes relating to mode 1 knowledge (disciplinary-based knowledge systems) and mode 2 knowledge (transdisciplinary knowledge systems) ontologies (nowotny et al. 2003), which initiated a transdisciplinary approach to knowledge construction. there is evidence of success in this line of curriculum transformation with the introduction and proliferation of new academic disciplines based on transdisciplinary research agendas. a second attempt at deep curriculum transformation is located in the drive to explore and privilege indigenous epistemologies and indigenous knowledge systems. these two attempts at deep curriculum transformation suggest a shift from a numerical counting-based transformation agenda to an agenda that has the potential to fundamentally transform higher education curriculum. why has curriculum transformation across south african higher education taken this path? noting that, under apartheid governance, education was where the majority of apartheid’s effects were felt severely (chetty & vigar-ellis 2012), the promotion of equity, redress and social justice within a democratic south africa had to take on a policy-driven process. the policy-driven process has an inherent weakness: policies are by nature political and informed by political agendas. this weakness presents a sense of tentativeness, meaning that policies could change depending upon reviews for fitness for purpose, as was the case across the school curriculum policies that were implemented since democracy. the school curriculum changed several times since the introduction of outcomes-based education through curriculum 2005 into the school education system. changes to the custodians of policies (for example, member of the executive councils of provincial governments) based on low accountability may results in new custodians attempting to make their footprint in educational reforms and often making drastic changes from their predecessors. as apple (1993) suggests: [e]ducation is deeply implicated in the politics of culture. the curriculum is never simply a neutral assemblage of knowledge, somehow appearing in the texts and classrooms of a nation. it is always part of a selective tradition, someone’s selection, some group’s vision of legitimate knowledge. it is produced out of the cultural, political, and economic conflicts, tensions, and compromises that organize and disorganize a people. (p. 1) similarly, tierney (1989:4) believes that if knowledge is socially constructed, then the methodology used to study the curriculum needs to unearth the multitude of organisational voices in order to understand how knowledge has been constructed, who constructed it and what alternative constructions are possible. in a similar vein, chisholm (2003) advocates that: [i]n national political processes such as curriculum making, voice is refracted through both the positioning of the voice and authority of who speaks. the authority of voice is derived from the positionality of the speaking voice. in addressing the authority and positionality of voice, the question of power is also critical: who exercises power, how and through which voice. (p. 2) within the south african politics since apartheid, political transformation has taken centre fold in developing the nation and the ruling party has become the dominant voice of change in every facet of life, including that of higher education. while the area of educational transformation is broad, a specific focus is placed in this paper on curriculum transformation in higher education, alongside that on the higher education transformational goals set for the south african higher education system. it is within this politically driven transformational context that i cast a critical lens on my experience of reconceptualising the bachelor of education curriculum that is expected to be in place by 2017 across higher education institutions within south africa. through this critical lens i demonstrate the power dynamics inherent in curriculum reforms within higher education. most institutions are currently reconceptualising their bachelor of education curriculum as part of the compliance requirement necessitated by the introduction and gazetting of two new higher education frameworks that have direct influence in the construction of this curriculum. the first of the frameworks is the higher education qualification framework (department of education 2007a), an outcome of the review and revision of the nqf. the second framework is the national framework for teacher education (department of education 2007b), which arose out of a review of teacher education in south africa by a ministerial committee appointed by the then–minister of education. the second framework is perhaps more pertinent to this paper, as it sets the framework for regulating all qualifications in teacher education within south africa. this regulatory framework was gazetted in 2015 as the minimum requirements for teacher education qualification (department of higher education 2015). it is through this regulatory framework that i demonstrate a layered rationality conception in curriculum construction as well as the hierarchies within each layer that have thus far influenced curriculum decisions. the importance of illuminating these layers of hierarchies and power dynamics lies in the identification and understanding of how these hierarchies and power dynamics operate and influence curriculum design. drawing on apple’s (1993) notion that curriculum is never simply a neutral assemblage of knowledge, these layers of influence attest to how power is used to influence curriculum decisions. i call this (figure 1) the ‘layered rationality of curriculum construction’, where at each level of curriculum engagement there is a different lens of rationality that guides its decision-making, and through this process some things are kept in and some are discarded or relegated to the periphery. there can be several layers of rationality that influence curriculum decisions (figure 1 displays only three layers, an overarching layer of political governance, a subordinate layer constituted by the institution offering the curriculum and a third layer that is influenced by multiple organs or individuals competing for dominance). in addition, at each of these levels of engagement, several competing structures, processes and bodies do exist and demand curriculum spaces in the curriculum design and that the influence of these structures, processes and bodies be dependent upon the power base they command. figure 1: a diagrammatic depiction of a three-layered rationality of influence in curriculum decision-making. making more explicit the above conceptualisation of layered rationality, i draw on my experience in designing and gaining approval for the bachelor of education qualification within and outside of the institution. starting at the lowest rung of a rationality hierarchy, a wants rationality based on desirability allows individuals, groups (e.g. disciplines) and professional bodies to place on the table a dream list of desirable things that they would like to see within a curriculum. this means that this layer of demand is the greatest but that there is a realisation that not all their ‘wants’ can be accommodated within the final curriculum because of the curriculum space available for a programme design. at this layer, a lot of trade-offs are expected and usually the stronger bodies would have a greater say in what gets in and what is kept out. in this situation, the political strength of the competing forces determines what stays in and what gets sidelined in curriculum choices. in constructing the bachelor of education qualification at my institution, the individual academic staff and discipline interests formed the competing forces within the subordinate level. staff presented their list of wants in the reconceptualised curriculum, which included their personal specialisation focus or aspects from their academic experience that could be satisfied through curriculum interventions (e.g. more emphasis on discipline management). disciplines wanted more subject content modules to be included in the programme. the influence of the teaching profession through the south african council for educators was minimal and was considered as part of the policy requirements for teacher development. while each of these competing agents in curriculum design has positions of power, the process of approval within the university structures renders staff and discipline wants within a curriculum design powerless. this is because the final say of what gets included in a curriculum ultimately belongs to the university’s decision-making structures. hence, what gets into the curriculum design is dictated by the level of leverage the agents have. the institution thus forms the next layer of decision-making within the curriculum design process. the institution places its priorities and demands on curriculum construction for programmes offered. for example, an institution wanted to promote its language policy and foundational programmes to increase access and participation. the institution also wanted to remove progression obstacles like prerequisites and co-requisites within the programme design. hence, these curriculum elements had to be incorporated in the design of undergraduate programmes if these programmes were to be approved by the approval structures. in this case, the institution had greater leverage than the discipline or the staff in determining what was included and what was sidelined in curriculum construction. this is because of the decision-making powers that reside in the university’s structures. the staff of disciplines cannot offer a programme that is not approved by the university structures and therefore rendered less powerful in curriculum decision-making. there are, however, instances where the institutional power is subdued by other agents, like professional bodies (e.g. health professional council of south africa and engineering council of south africa) who use registration for practice as their bargaining tool for domination. at the institutional level of curriculum construction engagement, a management rationality would influence decision-making. at this level, issues of management would be the lens through which decisions would be made. some of the management principles considered would be, amongst others, time management, distribution, coordination, work schedules, outputs and accountability. through this lens, curriculum decisions are made that fit in with the management discourse and curriculum aspects are either retained, added in or left out. in the redesign of the bachelor of education, the management decisions were related to the capacity to offer a range of teaching specialisations. for example, in deciding on the further education and training teaching specialisation to be offered, the inability to employ additional staff due to financial constraints restricted the specialisation choices to scarce skills subjects. hence resource constraints informed the curriculum choices from a management perspective. finally, there is the political rationality layer, where controlling agents, based on their mandates and manifestos, would make decisions on what is kept and what is left out based on what political decisions govern their actions. the government, for example, would ask how this curriculum would meet its party mandates and manifestos. how are certain agendas of the ruling political party promoted through the curriculum? what kind of citizens does the political party envision and how does the curriculum contribute to this creation of citizenship? the power in the governance rationality is exercised through national policies and sanctioned through registration, accreditation and approval protocols. the bachelor of education needed to satisfy particular national imperatives like learner-centred education, inclusive education, integration of computer technology in teaching and learning and focused engagement with the curriculum and assessment policy statement. programmes that did not explicitly show how these competences were developed within the bachelor of education were not approved by the department of higher education and, therefore, could not be offered by the institution. where to from here in higher education curriculum transformation? scanning the literature on curriculum within higher education and from my personal experiences and reflections on curriculum decision-making and construction, it seems clear that curriculum construction continues to be influenced at an institutional level by the deep critique related to its contested nature (apple 2010; pinar 2010), its complicated conversation (pinar 2010) and politically charged observances, hierarchies and power dynamics (apple 2012) (e.g. the case of the bed curriculum design). these observances have been well documented in, for example, michael apple’s writings on curriculum indicating that the power located within curriculum discourses is difficult to eradicate and that curriculum intellectuals need to consistently disrupt and record these power dynamics. it is perhaps now time to reflect more deeply on understanding the power dynamic within curriculum construction rather than to preoccupy ourselves with trying to neutralise these power dynamics. apple’s (2010) writings suggest that the relationship between power and curriculum construction be continually illuminated, disrupted and recorded in order to propel changes on a continual basis. this recording of hegemonic biases in curriculum accumulates to form the strong turbulence that is needed to propel change. it must also be noted that the disruption and recording of hegemonies in curriculum construction is tentative and evolving. when change happens, new forms of hegemony become apparent, as within the curriculum craze that is currently unfolding within south africa, and therefore the continuous illumination, disruption and recording of curriculum hegemony must become a continuing norm. for deep curriculum transformation to occur within the south african higher education system, a deliberate shift away from a counting exercise is needed. the curriculum spaces for deep curriculum transformation lie beyond the public propositional perspective of accounting. rather, through new insights into curriculum (e.g. a focus on situated and propositional ontologies, innovative and transformative ways of inquiry, embracing complexities and uncertainties and that which is biographically influenced), deep curriculum transformation within higher education is possible. noting that south african higher education was adopted almost a century ago, it has remained largely unchanged despite the major changes that have occurred socially, politically and economically. we should examine why, for example, a generic bachelor’s degree requires two majors that may sometimes not necessarily cohere or be cognate. deep curriculum intellectualism is needed to shift the gaze from instrumental curriculum reforms to higher education curriculum located within an ontological orientation rather that a responsive orientation. conclusion in this article i attempted to locate higher education curriculum reforms within a transforming higher education system with a view to illuminating the fixation on a number-counting rationality that is currently driving post-apartheid reforms. through my personal experience in reconceptualising the bachelor of education degree at my institution, i reflected on the power of various agents involved in the decision-making process, suggesting a layered rationale illuminating where centres of powers are located, each demanding spaces in the curriculum for their agendas. the layered rationale metaphor attempted to show the dominance of power dynamics in curriculum construction. drawing on apple’s conception of hegemony and curriculum, i argued that by moving beyond the power dynamics inherent in curriculum decision-making, deep curriculum intellectualism is possible and should form the next wave of curriculum reforms in higher education within south africa. acknowledgements competing interests the author declares that he has no financial or personal relationships that may have inappropriately influenced him in writing this article. references apple, m.w., 1993, ‘the politics of official knowledge: does a national curriculum make sense?’, discourse 95(2), 222–241, viewed 11 january 2012, from http://www.stanford.edu/class/educ232b/apple.pdf apple, m.w., 2010, ‘keynote address at the world congress for comparative education society’, xiv world congress, istanbul / turkey, june 14–18. apple, m.w., 2012, ‘social structure, ideology and curriculum’, in m. lawn & l. barton (eds.), rethinking curriculum studies: a radical approach, pp. 1–251, routledge, new york. brown, k., 2006, ‘“new” educational injustices in the “new” south africa: a call for justice in the form of vertical equity’, journal of educational administration 44(5), 509–515. http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/09578230610683787 chetty, y. & vigar-ellis, d., 2012, ‘understanding the needs of science access students for university support services’, south african journal of higher education 26(5), 908–925. chisholm, l., 2003, ‘the state of curriculum reform in south africa: the issues of curriculum 2005’, in r. southall, a. habib & j. daniel (eds.), state of the nation, pp. 268–289, hsrc, pretoria. cloete, n., 2006, transformation in higher education: global pressures and local realities, vol. 10, springer, the netherlands. cloete, n., fehnel, r., masassen, p., moja, t., perold, h. & gibbon, t., 2002, transformation in higher education. global pressures and local realities in south africa, juta and company (pty) ltd, cape town. council for higher education, 2013a, a proposal for undergraduate curriculum reform in south africa: a case for a flexible curriculum structure, report of the task team on undergraduate curriculum structure, che, pretoria. council for higher education, 2013b, vital stats 2011: public higher education 2011, che, pretoria. department of education, 1996, green paper on higher education transformation, government printers, pretoria. department of education, 1997, education white paper 3: a programme for the transformation of higher education, department of education, pretoria. department of education, 2000, norms and standards for educators, government gazette no. 20844, department of education, pretoria. department of education, 2001, the national plan for higher education, government gazette no. 22329, department of education, pretoria. department of education, 2007a, national framework for teacher education, government press, pretoria. department of education, 2007b, the higher education qualification framework, higher education act (act no 101 of 2007), government press, pretoria. department of higher education, 2013, statistics on post-school education and training in south africa, government press, pretoria. department of higher education, 2015, minimum requirements for teacher education qualifications, government gazette no 38487, government press, pretoria. letseka, m. & maile, s., 2008, high university dropout rates: a threat to south africa’s future, hsrc policy brief, hsrc press, pretoria. lewin, t. & mawoyo, m., 2014, student access and success: issues and interventions in south african universities, inyathelo: the south african institute for advancement, cape town. moja, t. & cloete, n., 1996, ‘transforming higher education in south africa: a new approach to governance’, journal of the association of african studies issue: a journal of opinion 24(1), 10–16. national planning commission, 2011, diagnostic overview, department of higher education, pretoria. nowotny, h., scott, p. & gibbons, m., 2003, ‘introduction: mode 2’revisited: the new production of knowledge’, minerva 41(3), 179–194. http://dx.doi.org/10.1023/a:1025505528250 pinar, w.f., 2010, curriculum studies in south africa. intellectual histories and present circumstances, palgrave macmillan, new york. ramrathan, l., 2013, ‘towards a conceptual framework in understanding student dropout in higher education institutions’, south african journal of higher education 27(1), 209–220. ramrathan, l. & pillay, g., 2015, ‘re-imagining and expanding the discourse of student access, throughput and drop-out within the south african higher education context’, alternations 17(2015), 6–27. ramrathan, p., manik, s. & pillay, g., 2007, ‘transformational access: upb as a possibility for promoting access to he’, south african journal of higher education 21(4), 733–752. samuel, m., 2009, ‘beyond the garden of eden: deep teacher professional development’, south african journal of higher education 23(4), 737–759. schofer, e. & meyer, j.w., 2005, ‘the worldwide expansion of higher education in the twentieth century’, american sociological review, 70, 898–920. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/000312240507000602 tierney, w.g., 1989, curricular landscapes, democratic vistas: transformative leadership in higher education, 1st edn., praeger publications, new york. tinto, v., 2012, completing college: rethinking institutional action, university of chicago press, chicago, il. university world news, 2008, ‘student drop-out rates alarming’, viewed 17 june 2010, from http://www.universityworldnews.com abstract introduction learning to see beyond the limits of humanity listening to the voices of the social implications acknowledgements references footnotes about the author(s) colby dickinson department of theology, loyola university, chicago, il, united states citation dickinson, c., 2019, ‘bruno latour and the myth of autonomous academic discipline: rethinking education in the light of various modes of existence’, transformation in higher education 4(0), a75. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v4i0.75 original research bruno latour and the myth of autonomous academic discipline: rethinking education in the light of various modes of existence colby dickinson received: 26 aug. 2019; accepted: 07 nov. 2019; published: 11 dec. 2019 copyright: © 2019. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract background: issues of identity, interdependence, relationality and violence are far larger than the human species alone, although humanity has often pretended as if it alone were the beneficiaries of studying such ideas. aim: pedagogically, the complexity of existence beyond human being must influence the traditional humanities curriculum or risk further isolation and alienation within humanity-dominant narratives. setting: as climate change continues to alter our comprehension of what is truly at stake in the survival of life on this planet, however, humankind needs a complete rethinking of its relationship with the multiple forms of life that dwell alongside it, as well as the traditional division between the humanities and the sciences within academic settings. methods: it is with this scenario before us that i turn to the work of bruno latour who re-conceives of humanity’s relationship with nature as an interdisciplinary and boundary-crossing project, one that has deep pedagogical implications. results: i demonstrate how latour’s collaborative and highly original work ranges across disciplines and provides new ways to contemplate research in academia. conclusion: latour’s thought moves beyond polarising anti-humanist language and towards a way to limit the sovereign claims of humanity, opening discourse towards other non-human participants. keywords: bruno latour; complexity; modes of existence; interdisciplinary; non-human participants. introduction the human sphere rises by pushing back its own animal premise. being human means the acquired inability to remain an animal. in metaphysical terms, this yields the thesis that we are on the island of the idea, whose infinite nature pushes the finitude of empirical environments to the background. this would make the infinite an enclave within finite circumstances. it would gape open like an abyss directed upwards, as an interruption of life required to bear a vision of that which is more than life. whoever can understand that may do so. however one puts it: the space islands of humans are forward-deployed posts against the open. (sloterdijk 2016:460) for, perhaps, the entirety of its history, humanity has established itself over and against the rest of existence, mainly against other animals, certainly against the plant life, microbes and inanimate matter that make up the rest of existence on this planet. humankind’s ability to dominate over nature has in fact characterised its definition of itself. in this ‘interruption of life’ brought about in order to secure humanity its place amongst the infinite, as sloterdijk (2016) has phrased matters above, a metaphysics is conceived as that which legitimates, not so much the existence of any divine being per se, but of the human being itself. the space of ‘the open’, as rilke had once termed it and as heidegger later appropriated it in his own analysis of the border between the human and the animal, is really a site of negotiation and contestation wherein the human being comes to face its own image, and perhaps to see it deconstructed before its very eyes.1 as part of its confrontation with humanity and its history, modern humanist thought gave way in the early to mid-20th century to less anthropocentric dimensions of critical inquiry, what some considered to be a form of anti-humanism.2 though such a stance certainly contains within it the possibility of repealing longstanding definitions of the human being – and so likewise risks establishing positions that might be deemed inhuman at times – what such positions ultimately reveal to us are the limitations of seeing the world through purely human eyes and so from an extremely limited and solely human perspective. although such anthropocentric views are readily questioned today, the impact that this rethinking has upon education and learning has yet to be more thoroughly exhausted. pedagogically, and in terms that need to ripple through an academic context more often bent on either diminishing or exalting the humanities, we have not really begun to lessen the hold of such an anthropocentric perspective in the classroom or in terms of curriculum development, while at the same time retaining something of its importance. so many fields within the humanities – history, politics, economics, psychology, sociology, anthropology, languages and literatures, not to mention theology – have been almost entirely reliant upon the focal point of the human being, a remnant of humanity’s long struggle with itself and its own understanding. this very limited point of view, however, and as voices in the sciences often remind us, is drawing to a close.3 so much anxiety surrounds the possible death of the humanities in its contemporary struggle with the relevance (and funding) of the sciences. however, perhaps the problem is not the potential irrelevance of the humanities, but rather the failure of the humanities to open up to life lived beyond the very limited perspective of humanity (felski 2016:215–229).4 the life that seemed to be larger than the physical, empirical life surrounding it – what sloterdijk (2016) marked as the entrance of metaphysics and its myriad justifications for humanity’s dominance over everything else in our world – needs to be brought down to the level of simply life itself, of but one of the other life forms that occupy the world in which we live.5 issues of identity, interdependence, relationality and violence, amongst so many others, are far larger than the human species alone, though humanity has frequently pretended as if it alone were the beneficiaries of studying such ideas. as the increasingly drastic realities of climate change continue to alter our comprehension of what is truly at stake in the survival of life on this planet, humankind is, however, desperately in need of a complete rethinking of its relationship to the multiple forms of life that dwell with it as well as the traditional division between the humanities and the sciences within academic and university settings. regarding pedagogy, and as should become clear in what follows, more of the complexity of existence beyond the human being must be brought to bear upon the traditional humanities curriculum or the risk of further isolation and alienation might spell a catastrophic end to human civilisation. it is with this impending and admittedly apocalyptic scenario before us that i want to look at the work of bruno latour which, more recently, re-conceives of humanity’s relationship to nature as an interdisciplinary and boundary-crossing project, one that has deep pedagogical implications that, i argue, we must learn to embrace more fully. this is not to suggest that latour’s work is the first or the most comprehensive account of the need to make such movements in academic discourse. his collaborative work across various unique disciplines and perspectives – from the philosophy of science to the limits of religious discourse – however, provides new ways to contemplate research in an academic setting, and in a way that fully dovetails with ongoing work in ecological, ecofeminist and critical – theoretical fields. in what follows, i want to introduce and examine some of the implications of his philosophical thought as it moves beyond polarising anti-humanist language and towards a way to limit the sovereign claims of humanity, opening discourse up towards other, non-human participants in ways that we have only just begun to consider. it is my hope that this introduction to latour’s work within a pedagogical perspective might yield some fruitful points of mutual engagement for those already working in similar territory. learning to see beyond the limits of humanity according to latour (2013b): nothing prevents readers who have now become coinvestigators from proposing to restitute experiences and link values in ways that differ completely from my own. (p. 480) as numerous voices make clear to us nearly every day, humanity has long neglected to take seriously the complex relationships, environments, biospheres and ecosystems that have been functioning on this planet long before humanity, only relatively recently, ascended to the top of a self-constructed pyramid asserting its own dominance. humanity has, and certainly continues, to define itself according to an elaborate series of identities, properties, possessions, representations and capacities that are, viewed from the perspective of those abundant natural phenomena that far exceed the population of humanity, quite limited. yet the society and normative order we have created, including all of the social, linguistic, legal, juridical, political, religious and economic markers that comprise most human affairs, sets an exceedingly narrow vision of who has the right to speak within such a context, indeed who even has anything like legal rights at all. from the beginning, then, we must recognise how the academic classroom is inherently confined and conditioned to limit its participants to those alone who have set boundaries in advance for what types of speech will and will not be allowed. what is missed, omitted, marginalised or otherwise excluded from this conversation is so numerous, however, as to almost render the entire enterprise of education superfluous before it begins – a point that a good many ‘practical’ learners who have found traditional education to be less than to their liking have doubtlessly noted for centuries. it is consequently no surprise that the popular imagination permeating our world today is full of those apocalyptic images that signal the limitations of human existence, from post-apocalyptic zombie scenarios to imagined worlds where disease has rendered life nearly impossible, from a planet that can no longer reproduce children to another one where unleashed natural disasters or monstrous creatures upend all normative daily life. these suggestive images go some ways towards explaining the success of weisman’s (2007) the world without us, a realistic, scientific look at what would happen to our world should humankind suddenly stop existing. this disaster scenario – from a human point of view at least – may have at one time seemed rather pessimistic or bleak, though it has increasingly begun to take up a certain space more squarely within a popular consciousness that knows how something about human existence as it is currently configured is strangely amiss. powers’ (2018) pulitzer prize-winning novel the overstory about the world of trees and nature conflicting with a decidedly human–financial agenda points us in much the same direction, though it also underscores the fundamental problem with trying to rethink humanity’s relationship with other, non-human actors who traditionally have no rights and so no place within political and economic discussions. as one of his characters, a copyright and patent lawyer, reflects at one point upon a legal proposal that would grant rights to non-human things, such as trees (powers 2018): the proposal is bound to sound odd or frightening or laughable. this is partly because until the rightless thing receives its rights, we cannot see it as anything but a thing for the use of ‘us’ – those who are holding rights at the time. (p. 250) as he eventually goes on to consider corporations, universities, states and infants all have lawyers who represent them, so why cannot other non-human things? what is it within us that gives us this need not just to satisfy basic biological wants, but to extend our wills over things, to objectify them, to make them ours, to manipulate them, to keep them at a psychic distance? (powers 2018:250–251) the implicit answer, of course, is that a psychic distance is necessary in order to assert dominance over a ‘thing’, or whatever is defined as ‘less than human’ and so devoid of the rights that are granted only to those things we have chosen to bestow with dignity. humanity’s often extremely limited coordinates used to determine the worth of valid and invalid representations depend upon utterly precarious constructs needing to be critically called into question. this is precisely where the philosophy of latour becomes of critical interest to us, as he repeatedly points beyond what lays before our eyes in order to see a much more complicated, but also realistic, world of varied and multiple modes of existence. as an example of such limitations, we might note, for example, and as latour most certainly does, the ways in which humanity has become overly reliant upon those facile dualisms that structure our world in hegemonic fashion.6 the restrictions of ancient and modern dualistic categories – raw/cooked, sacred/profane, real/constructed, mind/body, conservative/liberal, transcendence/immanence, nature/nurture, freedom/predetermined, heaven/hell, master/slave, friend/enemy and so onto the limits of all human forms of speech – are surpassed by the various modes of existence that go far beyond these overly simplistic renderings and which interact in various and diverse ways (latour 2013b:146). as latour (2013b:458) himself describes these relationships in his monumental study an inquiry into modes of existence, the interactions between these modes – some of which include religion, law, politics, fiction, technology and morality – make a movement away from a monolithic vision of each mode of existence, signalling their intertwined existence as well as presenting a lesson in how everything must learn to inhabit a multi-verse and not a singular universe that dictates a singular logic or a singular morality which only comes, for its part, to fear any semblance of plurality or relativism. according to the multifaceted logic that latour espouses, there is no mystery within existence other than the recognition that there are multiple other modes and agents involved in the construction of any given perspective, expressing in their totality a situation that appears to obscure or veil what can be known about a thing, but which really issues a call to show more compassion and understanding for the complexity of existence itself. as latour (2013) himself describes this almost mystical state of material existence: this impression that there is always something more than what is known in the thing known does not refer at all to the unknowable […] but to the presence of other modes whose equal dignity epistemology, despite all its efforts, has never allowed to be recognized. (p. 85, emphasis in the original) if only humanity would look deeper into whatever perspective or phenomenon we see, he implores, we might be able to comprehend better some of the many factors that are at work in making this only apparent singularity what it is for us within a given context. not being able to sense the complexity of a given ‘object’ (which is really always a subject in its own right), we are typically left with a mistaken impression of a thing’s identity, as if it were able to exist on its own, as something possessable, fixed and determined. we thereby fall headlong into a category mistake that is so commonly made as to be misunderstood as the normative measure (latour 2013a).7 from latour’s (2013b:17) point of view, judging one mode of existence with the veridiction criteria of another mode – something that happens a good deal of the time and which only further obscures our detection of those forces working necessarily in unison with each other – frequently results in numerous tensions that might otherwise be dispelled if they were only more properly understood. for example, the criteria used in the realm of politics to determine veracity is quite often thrust upon religion, or the criteria used in legal matters is assumed to be appropriate for moral decisions, creating impasses and conflict where none was necessarily inherent to a given reality. though it is certainly the case that any particular mode is invested in relationships with other modes, the moment they intersect in an embodied agent or event, each mode also provides a unique window into the operations of whatever is transpiring at a specific moment, what latour calls a process of ‘veridiction’ for that particular mode. in his words (latour 2013b): a mode of existence is thus always both a version of being-as-other (a debiting of discontinuity and continuity, difference and repetition, otherness and sameness) and also its own regime of veridiction. (p. 183) taking the time to understand each mode of existence and its various manners of operating can therefore go some way towards defusing potentially confusing situations, as well as clear a path towards other modes of existence that had previously been neglected within a given context. the possibility of hearing voices that had been marginalised or suppressed beforehand is dependent upon our ability to open humanity towards understanding how such interactions, overlaps and distinctions between modes actually work in a given, and always unique, context. and though each mode has its own procedures for securing veracity, no single mode functions in complete isolation from another, giving us a much fuller picture of reality than we could ever hope to represent in language. there is always a call for witnessing to how more complexity is at stake in assessing reality, even if reality itself cannot be representationally exhausted. listening to the voices of the social seeing better how the various modes of existence function together allows us moreover to gain a new perspective entirely on the domain of the social. the ‘social’, as humanity has traditionally conceived it, is really, according to latour (2013b:280, 296), ‘the concatenation of all the modes’ whose unity can no longer be guaranteed by a human institution. it is a complex tapestry of alterity and multiplicity that could be of great benefit precisely when humanity does not attempt to override its plurality and difference through the imposition of a sense of continuity offered through arguments involving essentialist configurations of substance and nature (latour 2013b:279). the domain of the social must be left to its own processes and dynamics, he argues, and not brought under the veridiction criteria of one mode only, as certain political and religious formulations have been tempted over the course of history to do. it is in this sense that latour (2018:12–13) acknowledges how globalisation should imply a multiplication of viewpoints, not their restriction under a particular universal heading. a totalitarian state or all-encompassing religious world view is not the path towards which the social walks, and though his embrace of a pluralistic interaction of modes may sound at times like a capitalist, free-market enterprise, this is the reality of what lies at the heart of the state of being-as-other that ceaselessly involves ‘the mini-transcendence of alteration’ (latour 2013b:254). the goal, as latour (2013b:203) describes it, is one of imploring a maximum of transformations and embracing metamorphosis as a process so that ‘everything can, everything must, become something else.’ it is in this sense that latour’s philosophy extends the philosophy of seeing ‘oneself as another’ into new realms beyond the self/other division.8 as one might also surmise from these suggestions, resisting the desire to provide order ‘too quickly’ to the complex realities around us – the very stuff of reductive representations – becomes the maxim that drives latour’s (2013b:401) analysis of the various modes of existence and their interactions. it is these creative fictions we weave together through the interactions of law, politics, religion and the like that are what make the domains of politics, religion and law possible in the first place (latour 2013b:249). trying to disentangle them completely from one another in order to make discrete categorical distinctions may be helpful for focusing one’s view in a very narrow sense (and such efforts should certainly not be discouraged), but such efforts are ultimately something that must be linked up with other modes in order to recognise the sheer complexity of modes and interactions actually at play in a given context. this is a task involving interpolations, amalgamations, syncretism and harmonics, or, more simply, the recognition that such tasks were always already happening throughout the many worlds inhabited on this planet throughout history (latour 2013b:304). though these endeavours may never be exhaustively catalogued or fully understood, this fact in no way reduces the need to strive for such complete comprehension (a task akin to the sociologist pierre bourdieu’s efforts to always ‘objectify objectivity’). although his categories are mainly dependent upon humanity’s perspective on itself and its world, it becomes clear fairly soon in his analysis that what he is ultimately aiming for goes far beyond the limitations that humanity has placed upon itself. insanity, latour (2013b:301) counters, for example, is produced only by the myth of autonomy – a modern claim advanced by almost every academic discipline that asserts its own methods and knowledges to assert its sovereign descriptive claims over reality. this point is duplicated at another higher level when we simply apply it to humanity in relation to the rest of the world as a whole, something which latour certainly endorses in his work. and this point is one that we would be well advised to pay particular attention to as well, for the way in which fragmented academic discourses proceed is by imagining that one discipline’s account of reality suffices for an exhaustive description of that reality, when it is rather a highly limited perspective that, historically at least, fails to account for perspectives beyond those asserted by humanity. as latour (2013b:298) himself notes, the problem with religion historically was that it, as a single mode of existence, feigned to ‘take responsibility for all domains – politics, morality, art, the cosmos, law, even the economy.’ religion’s reductive gestures were enough, at least historically at certain points in time, to displace other (sovereign) claims and to elevate itself as the sole arbiter of knowledge at the same time. this problem, however, was not just that of religion but that of humanity as a whole as it sought to elevate itself above all of the other existences that occupy and dwell within this planet. with such thoughts, we are returned to sloterdijk’s (2016) insistence that metaphysics began with humanity’s attempts to exceed the forms of life situated all around it. such an example of religion’s justifications for dominance, i would highlight as well, does little more than beg the question of how a single disciplinary domain or field of inquiry might attempt to do the same in a contemporary setting, providing reductive explanations, for instance, of complex and multifaceted phenomena, not to mention how the entire educational edifice of the humanities still bears the imprint of a reductively oriented humanity in the very way it is structured within universities and their discourses. the traditional ploys for sovereign power, as embodied in a monolithic perspective that attempts to describe all of reality from its singular point of view – the ‘objective’, ‘god’s eye’ angle – are only furthered through particular disciplinary observations and the anthropocentrism of university academics on the whole. embedded within such ‘expert’ opinions are formulations of subjectivity indebted to uniquely modern claims to sovereignty that have been roundly critiqued but which still maintain a hegemonic hold over the institutions and identities that govern academic discourse. it is from this point of view that latour’s steadfast critiques of the subject/object dichotomy are most needed. when latour therefore suggests that just as humanity once had to invent the fiction of sovereignty in order to introduce a new political paradigm, so too do we have the opportunity as well to invent a new way of performing politics beyond the old fictions that have carried us this far. accordingly, we are right to extend an analogy from political forms of sovereign power into the realm of university discourse and academic disciplines in order to challenge the ways in which the professorial voice or the voice of the researcher is articulated, maintained and defended as a sovereign subject currently in need of displacing or at times perhaps replacing altogether (latour 2017:263). though there is nothing new to such revaluations as these insights have characterised educational theory for quite some time now, there is still the ongoing quest to understand what new forms of education might supplant those models of expertise and knowledge-accumulation that have dominated modern pedagogical discourse. there is still to be heard the many other voices that surround humanity but which, until now, have not been allowed a place at the table where the main conversation about the fate of our planet is being had. we might think, for example, what a curriculum might be like if academics were less inclined to centralise historically metaphysically laden disciplines (e.g. the significance of religion, wars, eurocentric male political actors and so forth) and more inclined to study ecosystems, migration patterns, human – animal interactions, the ‘poetry’ (symmetry) of nature and so on. beyond this highly suggestive formulation of things, the true pedagogical revolution occurs when latour contemplates new forms of political association that disseminate sovereign power into multiple locations, causing it to be no longer the sole possession of humanity. it is here that a complete rethinking of democracy takes place.9 latour’s (1993:142–145) introduction of what he terms a ‘parliament of things’, where traditional anthropocentric models of sovereign power are challenged and restricted based on the sovereignty of other claims, such as those of the animal world, the natural environment, air and water and so forth, becomes a prime illustration of how disciplinary associations, for example, might be reformulated along these very same lines of thought. as he describes the limitations imposed upon any one particular agent in a recent study of the fate of our planet (latour 2017): [i]f one party is capable of taking the territory of another because that other is already occupying, invading, or restricting it, then that party will be granted equal sovereignty. it will not have to act surreptitiously; it will have to introduce itself and state its interest, indicate its war aims, specify its friends and its enemies – in short, say where it is, what allows it to distance itself from the others. in so doing, it will make visible to the others the territory that it occupies or that preoccupies it. (pp. 268–269) although this suggestion would otherwise conjure thoughts of a warm welcome by any particular discipline of knowledge within the academy, the practical realities of disciplinary knowledges, methods, histories and archives rather indicate limitations to such overlap, trespassing and efforts aimed at consilience. what passes as a proper methodology in one discipline, for example, may appear to contradict that of another, leaving an impasse between groups and persons that appears as insurmountable. the received wisdom of a given tradition becomes entrenched and frequently dogmatic, denying even the best intentioned interdisciplinary perspectives. what latour (2017:272) would rather work towards articulating, however, is a refocusing of interest and insight on the ‘several overlapping authorities’ that exist in reality, for no domain is an isolated island unto itself. the complexities of existence dictate that this be so. each discipline, if perceived from another angle, is already invested in other methods, knowledges, tactics, opinions and imprecise, and even concealed, relationships. learning to see more of this complexity and relationship should be the main occupation of education, though the preservation of a dominant narrative that provided by homo sapiens has rather taken centre stage for far too long. what becomes of education in the century to come, on the other hand, depends very much on our ability to adapt to this new way of seeing the complexity and interdependence of reality. in very practical terms, latour recognises that any particular focal point – such as say, the sociological, economic, religious or biological – cannot expect to master the techniques and insights of every other domain, allowing rather for various fictional representations to replace more precise accounts until a later, more precise reckoning can be made. that’s why latour (2017:273) claims that, in a parliament of things, there will be a need for the fiction of representation for those things that cannot speak for themselves, such as water and air, but this is a fiction comparable to the fiction of the sovereign that hobbes had once imagined in his leviathan. his formulation of the concept of gaia is accordingly that it is not something needed to replace the sovereignty of nation states, or to represent the earth as ultimately sovereign over humanity; it is needed in order to demand that sovereignty be shared and not held in the possession of one particular agent (latour 2017:280). implications at this point, it should be obvious, but also perhaps incredibly daunting, to realise the implications of latour’s suggestions for education today. as many others have suggested for some time now within pedagogical research, there is certainly the need to allow ‘other’ disciplinary methods and knowledges to overlap with and permeate each other, causing interdisciplinarity to thrive as the central principle of education, perhaps no longer beholden to traditional disciplinary boundaries as has been typically considered normative, though relying upon the various models of veridiction associated with each at the same time. educators must allow new linkages of varied knowledges to ripple outwards into other modes of existence, with one impacting the other, such as frequently occurs between politics and law, for example. but such interactions are truly only the tip of the iceberg, as such activity also means allowing new ‘non-academic’ voices into the academy, even allowing non-human actors into the laboratory of the humans as subjects in their own right, no longer as non-human ‘things’ denied the rights to their own existence. as one of latour’s commentators, miller (2013:63), has put it: ‘nature cannot be neatly separated from society and the human cannot be neatly distinguished from the nonhuman’, a conclusion with drastic effects upon learning on the whole. in a time where climate change scientists need to have their voices heard more clearly than ever, it is imperative that we too learn to transgress traditional boundaries and let non-human actors be part of academic and political conversations in ways that allow us to creatively rethink the very nature of education from the ground up. in particular, and in a way that shares with ecofeminist thought (and even ecofeminist theologians), latour is attentive to the ways in which such reconfigurations of our most basic educational norms (like the division between the sciences and the humanities) can only come about through a critique of those modern forms of sovereignty that have sustained disciplinary boundaries and territories. his focus on the plurality of various modes of existence is a direct challenge to monolithic notions of sovereignty and autonomy that resonates with ongoing work in political theory and political theology. in other words, pedagogical reform will only be possible, from latour’s point of view, once we learn to take seriously the historically weddedness of humanity to its religious, political, economic and philosophical legacies. it is only by addressing the social and political complexities of the human being and its historical dominance over nature – as manifested in each of these various disciplines – that we might begin to reformulate educational norms in such a way as to open up the disciplines much wider towards other non-human participants. acknowledgements competing interests the author has declared that no competing interests exist. authors’ contributions i declare that i am the sole author of this research article. ethical consideration this article followed all ethical standards for a research without direct contact with human or animal subjects. funding this research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors. data availability statement data sharing is not applicable to this article as no new data were created or analysed in this study. disclaimer the views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of any affiliated agency of the author. references agamben, g., 2004, the open: man and animal, transl. k. attell, stanford university press, stanford. anderson, p., 2017, the antinomies of antonio gramsci, verso, london. derrida, j., 2008, the animal that therefore i am, m.-l. mallet (ed.), transl. d. wills, fordham university press, new york. felski, r., 2016, ‘introduction’, new literary history 47(2/3), 215–229. https://doi.org/10.1353/nlh.2016.0010 geroulanos, s., 2010, an atheism that is not humanist emerges in french thought, stanford university press, stanford, ca. hägglund, m., 2019, this life: secular faith and spiritual freedom, pantheon, new york. keller, c., 2018, political theology of the earth: our planetary emergency and the struggle for a new public, columbia university press, new york. latour, b., 1993, we have never been modern, transl. c. porter, harvard university press, cambridge. latour, b., 2013a, rejoicing: or the torments of religious speech, transl. j. rose, polity, cambridge. latour, b., 2013b, an inquiry into modes of existence: an anthropology of the moderns, transl. c. porter, harvard university press, cambridge. latour, b., 2017, facing gaia: eight lectures on the new climatic regime, transl. c. porter, polity, cambridge. latour, b., 2018, down to earth: politics in the new climatic regime, transl. c. porter, polity, cambridge. miller, a.s., 2013, speculative grace: bruno latour and object-oriented theology, fordham university press, new york. northcott, m.s., 2013, a political theology of climate change, eerdmans, grand rapids, mi. powers, r., 2018, the overstory, w.w. norton, new york. purdy, j., 2018, after nature: a politics for the anthropocene, harvard university press, cambridge. ricoeur, p., 1995, oneself as another, transl. k. blamey, university of chicago press, chicago, il. sloterdijk, p., 2016, spheres, vol. 3, foams: plural spherology, p. 460, transl. w. hoban, semiotext(e), south pasadena, ca. touya de marenne, e., 2016, the case for the humanities: pedagogy, polity, interdisciplinarity, rowman & littlefield, london. weisman, a., 2007, the world without us, picador, new york. wood, d., 2005, the step back: ethics and politics after deconstruction, suny press, albany, ny. wood, d., 2019, reoccupy earth: notes toward an other beginning, fordham university press, new york. footnotes 1. see, amongst others, the relevant remarks made in both derrida (2008) and agamben (2004). in the context of contemporary philosophical reconsiderations of human being and its relation to ecology, see wood (2005) as well as his more recent re-occupy earth: notes toward an other beginning (wood 2019). 2. see the historical narrative unfolded in geroulanos (2010). 3. see the arguments presented in, amongst others, touya de marenne (2016). 4. these reflections are, in part, inspired by the issue of new literary history devoted to the question of humanities in the light of the work of bruno latour specifically. 5. the decline of metaphysics in the modern era and the accompanying rise of atheism and secularity have provided a focus upon humanity, but one sphere of a much more complex and diverse existence that surrounds it at the same time as this realisation also opens up an increased stress upon a life lived without metaphysical supports – just another life amidst many other lives. see, for example, the argument for atheism made in this context in hägglund (2019). for more political theological responses to climate change, see, amongst others, keller (2018) and northcott (2013). 6. i am drawn here to the work of antonio gramsci and his analysis of dualistic thought in the context of hegemonic political forms. see anderson (2017). 7. latour gives us a brilliant insight into such categorical mistakes as those that lie between religion and science in his extended essay rejoicing: or the torments of religious speech. 8. see how this theme is also developed in the philosophy of ricoeur (1995), specifically in his oneself as another. 9. his comments are shared in this regard with those of climate scientists and politicians who have argued for a wider opening of political forms of representation within contemporary democratic contexts. see, amongst others, purdy (2018), where the author argues for expanding democracy to include other non-human actors, citing latour’s work explicitly in favour of such a position. abstract background design and methods findings implications for further research conclusion acknowledgements references about the author(s) juliet ramohai school of higher education studies, university of the free state, bloemfontein, south africa citation ramohai, j., 2019, ‘a black woman’s perspective on understanding transformation and diversity in south african higher education’, transformation in higher education 4(0), a58. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v4i0.58 original research a black woman’s perspective on understanding transformation and diversity in south african higher education juliet ramohai received: 09 oct. 2018; accepted: 25 jan. 2019; published: 26 mar. 2019 copyright: © 2019. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract background: today, transformation and diversity are concepts that form an integral part of the functioning of higher education institutions globally. these two concepts have drawn vast amounts of interest from scholars who work in the field of higher education studies. aim: the current article considers the perspectives of black women academics in an exploration of the concepts of transformation and diversity. this standpoint approach brings to the fore the voices of black women in the changing higher education landscape, in an attempt to provide an understanding of prevailing gender inequalities. setting: the study was conducted at one higher education institution, involving women academics from different faculties and different social backgrounds. methods: the adoption of a gender approach sheds light on a social justice perspective that higher education institutions in south africa aspire to attain. the article reports on 12 black women’s configuration of transformation and diversity from a gender perspective in a country where gender in higher education has always been an issue of contention. results: the inclusion of four white women academics in the study served the goal of contrasting their views with those of the black women, to illuminate the intersectionality of race and gender in human experiences. a thematic analysis of data highlights the complexities of understanding the role of institutional management, self-responsibility and self-awareness in transformation and diversification processes. the role of different standpoints in understanding transformation also came out strongly in the findings. conclusion: it can, therefore, be concluded that standpoints play a crucial role in meaning making and experiences of transformation for women academics in institutions of higher learning. keywords: diversity; transformation; standpoint theory; women academics; higher education. background this article applies a standpoint perspective to investigate the way transformation and diversity in south african higher education relate to black women. it also sheds light on the importance of understanding and appreciating transformation and diversity in higher education in south africa. the argument presented is that, while higher education institutions in south africa strive to transform socially, the voices of black women academics need to be taken into account if institutions are to make progress. this claim is made against a background where, through the years, black women involved in higher education have been facing many forms of marginalisation (hesa 2014). attempts to marginalise black women have ranged from cultural oppression within familial and societal traditions of masculinity and femininity (mans & lauwrens 2013) to marginalisation imposed historically by legislative rules (south africa 1953). the consequence of marginalisation has been that women academics could not fully benefit from transformation agendas of institutions (badat 2010). this means that any attempts at transformation need to redress these imbalances of the past, by understanding the needs and experiences of this most marginalised group, that is, black women academics. by adopting a standpoint approach, the article presents the argument that gender multivocality in transformative discourses do not serve the redressal agenda. while the argument could be that all women have faced marginalisation, in one way or another, and have to be considered in transformation plans, in the south african context, this simple argument overlooks the gross disparities that used to exist among race and gender groups. for example, while an afrikaner woman was also marginalised, her woes ended within the walls of a cultural group. she could still enrol at a university, although she would have limited, gender-based choices, because of the home-carer role that limited her freedom of choice. hers was not a war against a system that limited any freedom of choice and humanity. her experiences cannot be compared to those of a black woman. therefore, it is important that the social justice agendas, which put emphasis on equity and equality in higher education institutions in this country, place black woman academics at the forefront of transformation processes, in order to heed state-led mandates in south africa. to understand the arguments in this article, the next section provides a brief explanation of the processes of transformation and diversity as understood from the perspectives of institutions and the state in south africa. the discussion continues to the history of black women in the labour force and specifically in higher education spaces. the intention of this discussion is to highlight the importance of a mindshift in understanding gender transformation and the need to prioritise black women in transformation attempts by institutions. the empirical study described in the sections that follow presents the methodology adopted for this study and its results, in the form of the perspectives of women academics themselves on transformation and diversity. transformation and diversity in higher education transformation and diversity cannot be divorced from each other when considering change processes and practices in institutions of higher learning. the interdependence of these two concepts is a result of the social, economic and political history of south africa as a country in general and higher education in particular. the racial, gender and class divisions that characterised apartheid south africa presented insurmountable challenges to the higher education context (breetzke & hedding 2017; bunting 2006). even though south africa has managed to conquer its turbulent past, remnants of that past have persisted into the current dispensation and need to be addressed. the persisting challenges, especially those of gender and race, have forced institutions in this country to institute processes and plans in an endeavour to heed the transformation agenda impressed by the state (che 1997). the focus of this article on black women, diversity and transformation emanates from the realisation that, while all higher education institutions in south africa are working hard to transform, black women still face numerous challenges pertaining to upward mobility, research success and overcoming gender-based epistemological stereotypes (joubert & guenther 2017; ramohai 2016). while state-led mandates emphasise the need to redress past ills that affected this most marginalised group, institutions still do not have gender equity policies that intentionally talk to black women in transformation plans (zwane et al. 2015). failure to develop intentional plans that address the capacity needs of black women academics could hamper transformation plans and reduce institutions’ attempts to avoid political correctness that only focuses on head count (dhet 2013; hesa 2014).the consequence of this massification perspective to transformation is that it paints a deceiving picture of gender transformation. insider perspectives usually indicate that black women often become outsiders from within and do not successfully participate in their institutions (lloyd-jones 2009). naicker (2012) points out that institutions are characterised by centres of power that continue to suppress women academics and make them invisible and voiceless. however, it needs to be acknowledged that transformation in higher education is a complex process that differs from context to context (badat 2010; che 2015; dhet 2009, transformation cannot be understood as a blanket term that applies to one institution as it would to the next. each institution has its own academic and social dynamics and challenges that require a contextualised approach to change. the individualism of institutional dynamics is not reflected only across different countries but is seen even within the same country, across institutions (che 2015). for example, in terms of country differences, while most higher education institutions in britain confront challenges pertaining to gender inequalities and have to transform in this regard (david 2015; morley 2005), south african higher education institutions mostly battle with race and then gender, disability and class (badat 2010). on the other hand, within south african higher education institutions themselves, previously white afrikaans institutions face challenges relating to racial inequalities – to a much larger extent than previously black institutions. this complexity makes it difficult to have a uniform definition of the process of transformation across global higher education institutions. although it is difficult to define transformation, breetzke and hedding (2017:146) believe that, in the south african context, it is important to consider transformation in terms of the ‘undoing of the historical injustices that the majority of the black african population suffered in terms of access, availability and representation in the higher education sector of the country’. although the redress could include black men, gender complexities still make black women a priority in transforming higher education institutions. owing to the complex nature of defining the term transformation as a process in higher education institutions, it is difficult to gauge progress unless areas of transformation within institutions are clearly spelled out in institutional plans and initiatives. if an institution strives to transform its gender balance, for example, there should be clear, documented plans on how this will be achieved and monitored. it is not enough to talk about broader diversification without developing targeted and intentional plans for the focused groups (chec 2014). therefore, the south african government clearly communicates its mandate to institutions, informing them that they should consider and prioritise black women academics when they transform and diversify their staff (dhet 2016). while the preceding argument advocates that gender should take centre stage in transformation, haring-smith (2012) believes that diversity is sometimes erroneously regarded as being confined to race, class and gender. as a result, some transformation plans confine themselves to these visible aspects, overlooking other important indicators, such as socio-economic, ideological and political diversity, which also need to be considered in the transformation process. turner, gonzalez and wong (2011) raise the important point that women are not a homogenous group but inhabit multiple identities that make each one’s social reality different. thus, even if they have gender-focused transformation and diversity plans, institutions need to bear in mind that women are not a homogenous group bound by their gender similarity. various aspects of their backgrounds and experiences give them different standpoints that require thorough consideration in the compilation of transformation plans. on this point, sang (2018) argues that, while certain aspects of womanhood might lead to some common experiences for women (in the case of this article, women academics), there are identity variables that intersect to create unique experiences for different groups of people (lawrence 2018). the variables include class, race and geographical backgrounds that form locations and positionalities that define people. when people make sense of their social environments, they use these locations as interpretation lenses that help them to create meanings for themselves. for example, black women from urban areas and advantaged schooling backgrounds have a much greater opportunity to obtain employment in higher education; women from rural areas and disadvantaged schooling backgrounds may find themselves marginalised by socio-economic systems when they search for employment. this analysis re-emphasises the complexity of transformation in higher education. with reference to the importance of considering transformation and diversity from multiple angles, vermeulen (2011) urges institutions to consider two forms of diversity: constituential and value-climate diversity. constituential diversity refers to a visible mix of indicators, such as race, gender and class, while value and climate diversity depicts the social environment and culture of different constituencies. the latter form of diversity, which haring-smith (2012:9) refers to as ‘invisible diversity’, is more complex and difficult to address. in relation to black women, once more, the backgrounds that form part of the standpoints and dispositions they use to adapt to new environments render them vulnerable to hostile cultures and practices that perpetuate gender stereotypes. the stereotypes that communities use to construct gender roles (mollaeva 2017) make it difficult for women to survive in male-oriented spaces that reinforce the constructed roles. sadly, scholars have found that institutional cultures are still predominantly masculine (kele & pietersen 2015; tsikata 2007) and, in terms of staff component, are still white. this claim casts the focus on the intention of institutions to transform and eradicate gender-stereotype-affirming practices in diversity plans. haring-smith (2012) and tienda (2013) argue that, if institutions are serious about transformation, they have to make it an inclusive practice that considers an inclusive excellence. black women in south african higher education the history of black women worldwide and in south africa specifically represents a sad reality. for decades, the black woman has been the face of poverty (sahrc 2017), seen through the domestic-worker lenses (hickson & strous 1993; marais & van wyk 2015). the subjugation of black women to the position of domestic workers confirmed constructions of women as home-carers and child-bearers (mohutsioa-makhudu 1989; smith 1992), which, in apartheid south africa, were accompanied by horrific stories of oppression and dehumanisation at the hands of white masters (hickson & strous 1993). history has not given the black woman the recognition she deserves, and she has not been considered as a worthwhile being who can contribute positively and cause positive change in the political and corporate world (ueno 2010). it is for this reason that, when south africa broke with the apartheid era, the government immediately placed its focus on how the role of the black woman could be deconstructed and reconstructed, to give it dignity (maodzwa-taruvinga & divala 2014). policies, acts and legislative documents were drawn up (altbacht, reisberg & rumbley 2009) to ensure that black women could be actively involved in the knowledge economy and world of work (doe 1996; maodzwa-taruvinga & divala 2014; south africa 1996). higher education was one of the target areas for this redress. the mandate for higher education has been to ‘increase access to higher education for black women, as students and part of staff’ (che 1997; hesa 2014). employment challenges affect not only south african higher education, but other countries too (turner, gonzalez & wong 2008). in south africa, however, the state has been proactive in addressing employment-related challenges, especially those related to access and success. institutions have been mandated to produce annual reports to indicate how they have responded to this mandate (commission for gender equality 2017). as a result, black women’s access to academic positions has driven employment practices in higher education. however, research indicates that black women in academia do not succeed as expected (herman 2011) – with success in this regard being measured by the ability to conduct research, engage in quality teaching and learning, and involvement in engaged scholarship (dhet 2013; hesa 2014). this means that higher education transformation has to address the challenge of ensuring that black and women academics possess the intellectual and academic capabilities that enable them to engage successfully in these three areas. a recent study by joubert and guenther (2017) brings to the fore one of the challenges facing black women as researchers or scientists in south africa. the study indicates that, of the 211 academics who are considered active scientists in the country, 78% are white, and only 17% are black women. this indicates that, in response to the low numbers reflected in this statistic, institutions need to capacitate black women academics. doing so would ensure that black women academics participate in higher education as knowledge producers (maodzwa-taruvinga & divala 2014). alluding to the standpoints of black women academics, especially newcomers to the academy, dominiguez-whitehead and moosa (2014) point out that the past apartheid era and its socio-political climate impacted negatively on the ability of these women to survive in academia. while institutions try to implement capacity-building programmes to assist these women, the author is of the opinion that not enough has been done to respond to the research capacity of black women academics. theoretical framework to ground the transformation arguments, the article draws on a feminist standpoint theory. different feminists (brooks 2006; harding 2004; smith 1992; woodman 2018; wylie 2003) present individual approaches to standpoint theories; however, generally, these theories make three broad claims. these claims are that: knowledge is socially situated marginalised groups are socially situated in ways that make it possible for them to be aware of things and ask questions, compared to the non-marginalised research that is focused on power relations should begin with the lives of the marginalised, by listening to them and hearing their voices. according to these claims, the marginalised and their experiences take centre stage in research that uses standpoint theories. woodman (2018) emphasises the point that standpoints engage different social positions of individuals and assist individuals to create distinct perspectives that shape their experiences. wylie (2003) believes that the experiences originate from the systematically structured roles and relations that shape the epistemologies of the marginalised. these experiences enable the marginalised to form a collective positioning and location and accumulated knowledge, from which they can interpret systems within their social environment. this understanding of standpoint theory makes this theory relevant to this article. it is important to look at black women academics’ experiences, positioning and locations within higher education and to use them as lenses to interpret the extent to which institutions are changing. women’s perceptions of transformation and diversity at their institution, derived from their positioning or standpoints as black women coming from marginalised backgrounds and entering academic spaces, serve as the basis for the discussions in this article. the article looks closely at how the black women involved use their experiences to evaluate their dispositions towards their transforming institution. the standpoint approach assists in situating the arguments in this article within a transformative understanding, in which black women use their disposition to reflect on their own contributions to transformation at their institution. the aim of standpoint theory, as a theory of knowledge building and as a research method (brooks 2006), is achieved when women strive to provide meaning, to change systems in their institution and to place themselves at the centre of the change process. brooks (2006) echoes the role of standpoint research when she emphasises that the knowledge and understanding of women’s experiences gained through standpoint research should be used to bring about social change or improvement. improvement is attained when women share their experiences, critically examine their environments and develop, as epistemic agents, critical perspectives and consciousness that guide them to question and understand issues in their environment (brooks 2006). design and methods the study employed a case study design that focused on the phenomenon of transformation in south african higher education. this qualitative approach afforded participants a chance to narrate their experiences in in-depth discussions that used critical, challenging questions and probes (terre blanche, durrheim & painter 2006). although scholars differ significantly when it comes to the use of case study approaches in research, baxter and jack (2008:4) argues that a case study approach can be considered when: the focus of the study is to answer ‘how’ and ‘why’ questions you cannot manipulate the behaviour of those involved in the study you want to cover contextual conditions because you believe they are relevant to the phenomenon under study the boundaries are not clear between the phenomenon and context. a case study was, therefore, the most appropriate method for a study that investigated experiences of a specific group within a specific context and in which participants’ contextual conditions would determine their perceptions of the phenomenon under study. study population the study population was women academics at one institution. with the purpose of the study in mind, a first subunit of 12 black women was selected. for this group, maximum variation (palinkas et al. 2015) was achieved by including women academics from different faculties and post levels at the institution. four of these women were from a sister campus, which has predominantly black staff and which might have different transformation dynamics. the years of working experience in higher education were also considered important. this is because years of service might have had an influence on how the women viewed their institution’s transformation attempts. with the main purpose of testing possible contrasting views on the interpretation of the concept of transformation, especially in a study that sought to understand standpoints, a similar group of four white women academics was also selected. data collection data was collected mainly through four focus group discussions held with the black women academics. the white women academics were involved in the last focus group, so that their voices could be added to the discussion. the women used their own standpoints and dispositions to interrogate their understanding of the institution’s transformation and diversity processes, and they deliberated on how they could contribute to the success of these processes. data in this study was analysed using a thematic approach with a critical interpretation. the method involved analysing data to find common threads of information that helped me to make meaning of the data sets (stead & bakker 2010). the critical interpretation looked into different aspects of power issues reflected in the women’s narratives. this analysis included considering how systemic and structural factors played out in shaping the perspectives of the women involved. codes were used as participant identifiers during data analysis (breen 2006). these depicted their race, (black woman [bw], white woman [ww]), position (junior lecturer [jl], lecturer [l], senior lecturer [sl], professor [p]) and the focus group discussion number (fg1–fg4). member checks were done to ensure that the analyses depicted the expressed views and feelings of the women academics accurately. ethical considerations all women that participated in this study provided their informed consent. details pertaining to the study and methods of data collection were clearly outlined in the invitation letter to the participants. to adhere to the ethics requirements, application for ethical clearance was granted by the institution’s education ethics committee (permit number ufs-edu-2011-0040). findings in accordance with standpoint theory, the research process allowed black women academics to reflect on their transforming institution, using their experiences. participants could evaluate their dispositions regarding institutional processes of transformation and diversity by placing themselves within these processes, as members who also had an obligation to ensure the success of the processes. while adopting a self-interrogatory approach drove the discussions, the women defined transformation processes in terms of how the institution handled the processes. they also projected their understanding and expectations of how the institution needed to align the processes with the goals of diversity expressed in the institution’s mission statement. through the deliberations, an understanding of transformation as a two-pronged process emerged. not only did the women understand transformation as an institutional management process, they also understood their obligation to contribute to the success of the process. led by the broad perspectival themes that were identified, the findings of the study are presented under four main headings, namely transformation as institutional responsibility; transformation as a personal responsibility; perspectives on institutional dynamics; and contrasting standpoints of white woman academics. transformation as an institutional responsibility defining transformation was a difficult process, because of its complexity. the women involved in the focus group discussions had different understandings of the process, depending on individual standpoints. the women from the main campus and the sister campus used their institutional experiences as well as an understanding of the geographic location of the institutions to define transformation and diversity. as mentioned previously, institutional dynamics are crucial in transformation plans. while the main campus was a racially diverse institution situated in an urban area, the sister campus was predominantly black and situated in a rural area. the two different ecologies themselves led to different understandings of transformation. while women from the main campus emphasised that ‘more black women have to be considered for senior positions if this institution is serious about transformation’, those of the other campus were concerned about ‘our black campus, which consists mostly of academics without phds … our students complain about this a lot and have even raised it with the rectorate’. these different understandings already point to the complications that institutional management have to grapple with in transforming the institution. however, despite the complexity of the concept, there was consensus that: ‘the minute you talk about transforming something, it means you are changing something completely, overhauling it.’ (bw1, l, fg1) ‘transformation is an active [action] word. transforming means there is a new way of doing things.’ (bw4, l, fg1) the women indicated that overhauling institutional structures included the ‘way the institution is addressing diversity on the campus’ (bw6, l, fg1), and, to them, diversification was ‘a huge word with a lot of impact’ (bw4, l, fg1) on the daily running of the institution. the women explained the impact was on the visibility and success of women academics at the institution. hence, issues of ‘equity and equality’, which most studies in south africa have reported as needing attention (sahrc 2018), became essential for conceptualising diversity and transformation. equity refers to the visible diversity of the mass of women who gained access to the institution, while equality means parity in success. we need to consider that black women academics, at the time of the study, were mostly concentrated in junior positions and were not visible in research. although the groups participating in this study consisted of white women academics as well, issues the groups discussed focused mainly on black women academics. by viewing black women from the position of a group that was under-represented within the staff component, that faced challenges relating to upward mobility and that had to endure a culture of white male supremacy, the women were of the opinion that transformation had to be primarily an institutional process of redress, one that mainly needed to be driven by the institution’s management: ‘… there are certain procedures to be put in place, certain systems and policy changes, whatever … and we cannot do much to see to it that that kind of change is implemented at this level.’ (bw9, jl, fg2) the kind of transformation that this statement alludes to is a reformation transformation (badat 2010), which focuses on policies and practices. such transformation addresses issues of policy formulation, which, in the case of gender diversity, includes matters pertaining to ‘equity and equality’. the fact that the institution under study, and a number of other institutions in south africa, did not have gender equity policies (zwane et al. 2015) was indicative of the unwillingness of institutions to make necessary reformations in this regard. focused policies that spell out recruitment and retention matters, as well as the institutional obligation to institute capacity-building measures aimed at black women academics at the two campuses, were absent. these thoughts were expressly voiced in the focus group discussion: ‘i would say the [institution] is transforming if they could address issues of equity.’ (bw5, l, fg2) if diversifying the institutional space through successful gender considerations became the key goal of the institution, the women were adamant that recognition of the physical presence of the black women academics, as well as successful participation therein, needed to be taken seriously: ‘what is the institution doing to recruit more black women into the institutional space, and what is it doing to develop the black female academic? are there gender offices within the institution that oversee the success of this group? transformation for me is about the institution responding to these critical questions.’ (bw7, sl, fg2) the question on the recruitment of black women was important to the women, because not only were black women, especially at the main campus, underrepresented, but they were also confined to the lower ranks of lecturer and junior lecturer. the situation was even more dire at the sister campus, where, as indicated earlier, the staff component consisted of ‘mainly people without phds’ (bw9, jl, fg2). while the women were aware of the criteria for promotion, which placed research as the most important component of promotions, the women questioned the institution’s readiness and willingness to capacitate black women to move up the academic ladder. this concern resonates with the overall national concern on the scarcity of black women in senior positions (dhet 2016), which they could only attain if they could actively engage in research and publishing. the black women held the belief that the institution could only claim to have transformed if its capacity-building programmes targeted women in general and black women in particular. it was the women’s standpoint position that, as there was need for women to participate more actively in knowledge production, the institution needed to create spaces that would equip them with skills to achieve this goal. this was a concern, specifically, for the women at the sister campus, who were concerned about their postgraduate studies. their challenge was that they had to carry enormous teaching loads, because they were junior lecturers. this denied them the time and space to progress with their own phd studies. transformation as a personal responsibility it was interesting to note that, while the women understood transformation and diversity as mainly a management responsibility, they moved beyond that narrow understanding, to include themselves as responsible parties in the success of the processes. one of the women stated in the focus group discussion: ‘it [transformation] is a change that has to happen, but there should be self-awareness first, individual awareness. transformation is an individual thing and an institutional thing. there can’t be institutional transformation if there isn’t individual transformation.’ (bw2, sl, fg3) the critical understanding that emerges from this statement relates to the importance of self-awareness and individual responsibility for transformation. black women academics’ responsibility towards the transformation process at the institution immediately became clear in the statement. the women needed to make a mindshift, from that of entitlement as a previously marginalised group, to that of assuming shared responsibility for and accountability to the advancement of transformation, as well as appreciation of diversity in the institution. it could have been easy for the women to adopt a victim standpoint and to use the state-led position on women empowerment (dhet 2016) to make a claim against the institution – after all, institutions are required by higher education regulations (badat 2010) to prioritise black women in transformation initiatives. this entitlement mentality has been observed in a number of other spheres in the country, in which citizens have stopped being proactive, but merely make demands of government (seepe & mthembu 2011). the participants emphasised that black women had to avoid this mentality from creeping in and realise the responsibility they carried to contribute to the success of transformation at the institution. this sentiment was presented thusly: ‘[transformation entails] knowing yourself and where you come from and understanding other people around you and where they come from.’ (bw1, l, fg1) ‘[it entails] appreciating that we are black and we are women without attaching any negative connotation to the concepts or feeling any sense of entitlement.’ (bw7, sl, fg1) one woman in the team presented her thoughts on self-awareness and appreciation succinctly by stating that: ‘this will help us to accept that we have strengths that the other people might not have, and that we have weaknesses and allow others to help us with these. by so doing we will also learn to accept the role of others in our academic lives, and as a result see that we need each other. isn’t it how we will celebrate diversity and avoid racial and gender tensions within the university?’ (bw2, sl, fg3) although in the beginning the women wanted to hold the institution solely accountable for the transformation agenda, they later realised that their contribution was equally important. they realised that, especially at the level of interpersonal relationships and through extra effort in building own capacity through research endeavours and group mentoring, they could achieve plenty and capacitate themselves for the upward mobility about which they were concerned. regarding their responsibility in relation to research, they resolved that: ‘you[an academic] are independent, do your own research. how far you develop is also dependent on your own effort, collaborations and all that. much of it is also dependent on you, as much as maybe the hod [head of department] and the dean still need to do their part, but a lot of it is also dependent on you.’ (bw1, l, fg3) the realisation expressed here pushed these women to reflect on their practice as academics, while they understood the importance of the institution’s responsibility in this regard. they had initially only framed their understanding of transformation narrowly, on what the institution was failing to do for them. more importantly, there were concerning systemic challenges that they had to face as black women academics. included in these challenges were stereotypes of black women academics as lacking expertise held by colleagues (especially white colleagues), being seen as nothing but equity appointments, having to endure the culture of whiteness and male domination, being excluded through language and an overall lack of a sense of belonging. the women felt strongly that they could either bow down and succumb to the stereotypes or move beyond them, by challenging themselves to do more. they needed to understand this positioning and the standpoint it placed them in and use it as a resilience-building mechanism that could assist them to move forward. smith (1992:329) cautions against succumbing to negative constructions as follows: we [women] do not reiterate what we are constructed to be, but we explore the constructions to go beyond what is implicated by them. (smith 1992:329) this realisation shows that the women’s standpoints and how they are constructed should not constrain them and cause them to affirm stereotypes. instead, such stereotypes should serve as a powerbase that helps them to understand the systems of oppression and find ways to deal with them (brooks 2006; harding 2004). institutional dynamics in transformation by reflecting on progress achieved by the institution on transformation, the women acknowledged that the institution had made noticeable strides towards transformation. they believed that, as a way of acknowledging the progress that had been made, it was important to consider institutional dynamics. the institution had been an historically white afrikaans-medium university. the dawn of democracy and new government policies that demanded educational reforms (che 1997) also entailed a merger between this institution and another institution in the same area. this meant that institutional cultures and climates needed to be overhauled to accommodate the merger. taking this challenge into cognisance was important for the women academics in the study, because any reflection on transformation progress had to consider history. the women themselves stated that it was important to have an understanding of the history of the institution: ‘when it comes to the university, a person should also understand how the institution was fifty years ago and how it is today so that one can see if transformation is taking place.’ (bw7, sl, fg2) the women likened the difficult task of transforming an institution to a gemstone with different facets: ‘transformation [at this institution] is like taking a gemstone, which when you look at it has things you can see with your eyes, but if you project the light, you see things that you cannot see with naked eyes.’ (bw1, l, fg1) the metaphor of a gemstone used by this participant presents a critical point, which emphasises the importance of considering all angles when interrogating the progress that institutions make in transforming their spaces. focus should not be mono-dimensional, nor should it be only on the negatives – it is important to look at achievements, too. in the context of institutional cultures, the preceding statement, furthermore, makes a case for acknowledging the complexity involved in understanding and successfully attaining transformation at the institution. on the surface, the institutional community could have expected that creating equity and equality would be easy. however, institutional knowledge pertaining to the culture and history of the institution would lay bare the difficulties that the institution had to overcome in making transformation a reality, especially for black women constituencies. alluding to the difficult dynamics relating to transformation at the institution, the women expressed that ‘[one] only gets to understand those if [one] has crossed a lot of people’s paths in this institution’ (bw7, sl, fg3). the statement alludes to an awareness that the institution might have been struggling with transformation, but there were areas in which it was making progress. this realisation made the women appreciate the institution’s efforts, and they adopted a stance that acknowledged that they were co-accountable with the institution for transforming it. contrasting standpoints of black and white women academics an interesting result of the focus group discussion comprising both black and white women academics was the way different standpoints influenced perspectives on transformation at the institution. according to the black women, the institution had to focus more on redress and restitution. they indicated that they measured transformation on the following: ‘… the institution’s ability to reflect on the restitution, which means moving away from the past and working on addressing all issues that have led to imbalances, especially gender and race imbalances.’ (bw3, jl, fg4) ‘… [the] proper representation, which reflects the society within which the institution exists.’ (bw1, l, fg4) these views, expressed by the black women, contrasted with the views held by the white colleagues in the group, who stated: ‘the institution is paying too much attention in trying to be politically right … it pays attention more to race than gender.’ (ww3, l, fg4) ‘you shouldn’t think that i am jealous. i am absolutely not, but do you think what the management is doing is right? i don’t see our people having a future here. the focus is on black people. they seem to have forgotten that we [white women academics] were also marginalised. i think transformation focus has to shift.’ (ww1, sl, fg4) it became clear in this session that, even though participants shared the status of ‘womanhood’, their locations (standpoints), brought about by race, differed. the white women colleagues were opposed to transformation attempts that were meant to redress the past ills that related to black women’s issues. according to one of them: ‘the status quo was that a black man, black woman and a white female [had always] assumed a second class position to the so-called superior role of the white male. so it is not only black women that are marginalised in this regard.’ (ww2, p, fg4) this statement brings out a painful misconception of south african history, according to which some black people viewed all white people as privileged. black people had always been oblivious to the gender-based oppression that the white afrikaner woman suffered and the marginalisation therein (mcclintock 1991). while the afrikaner woman had gained access to the university space earlier than the black woman had, the culture, tradition and beliefs about women as home-carers had limited the afrikaner woman’s choices to administrative and clerical jobs (alexander & simons 1959; van der westhuizen 2013). in spite of this reality, the burden of double marginalisation of black women (bantu education act 1953; extension of the university education act, 1959) within an intersectionality of race and gender needs to be acknowledged and addressed. nevertheless, the white women academics believed that certain aspects of transformation needed to consider them as a marginalised group too. one woman pointed this out when she said: ‘let me take an afrikaner woman, she has never been given power before; that is why when she finally gains power through promotions, she usually uses it as an oppressive tool.’ (ww2, p, fg4) assuming different standpoints here might have led to misconceptions about one another and, in turn, the racial tensions that the institution was experiencing at the time. each group believed that the other was in an advantaged position and was being given priority by virtue of the colour of their skin. the following expression by a white colleague hints at the bottled and simmering anger that groups might have harboured about each other. this was a response to the point raised on the need for black women to be capacitated: ‘i never had any mentoring when i first came to the university. maybe black women need it because their circumstance is different.’ (ww1, sl, fg4) important as it is to understand that women have generally been marginalised, and to understand the anger that this woman expressed, the debate around transformation has to be understood within broader national issues, which have rendered black women as the most marginalised members of society and institutions. implications for further research understanding the lived and told experiences of black women academics, as presented herein, refers directly to issues of policy development. the findings presented indicate that gender issues in higher education need to find space in development. the findings beg the following questions: how do institutions of higher learning in south africa respond to gender equity matters, especially as they pertain to black women academics? in what way are gender policies translated into practice in south african higher education? these questions, and many others that tap into gender policy development in higher education, need to drive conversations meant to advance gender equity and equality in institutions. conclusion this article shed light on the importance of standpoints in understanding and appreciating transformation and diversity in higher education in south africa. an exploration of an understanding of the process of transformation illuminated how black women academics’ standpoints and dispositions could provide a more nuanced interpretation of the process of transformation at institutions of higher learning. the complex nature of transformation is presented clearly in this article. the article argues for acknowledging the role of context and the need to consider institutional dynamics in transformation plans. the metaphor of a gemstone, expressed by a participant during the study, emphasises the importance of adopting a multidimensional view on transformation, one that considers all facets and the multilayered complexities that institutions have to face when dealing with the processes of transformation and diversification. a further critical point highlighted by the article is that transformation attempts and plans have to depart from the history of gender in the south african education system. while both institutions and the government in south africa have constantly highlighted this argument, the article makes a significant contribution to providing a fresher understanding of transformation, as a personal responsibility and self-awareness process. arising clearly from the findings is an emphasis on co-accountability for the success of transformation in institutions of higher learning. the argument presented is that the burden of transformation should not be placed solely on institutions’ management – instead, individuals should also assume responsibility. while negative institutional dynamics might be working against a positive outlook on transformation for black women, the article highlights the need to use negative experiences as a power base and springboard to build resilience and move forward towards successful transformation. the article explains that this is only possible if black women understand their standpoints and locations and the influence that these might have on their perceptions. including women from different race groups unearthed the roles that context, location and positionality play in the way institutional communities interpret transformation in their institutions. it could be argued that this article helps to take gender discourses forward within south african higher education, which is still awash with gender inequalities. acknowledgements competing interests the author declares that she has no financial or personal relationships that may have inappropriately influenced her in writing this article. references alexander, r. & simons, h., 1959, job reservation and the trade unions, enterprise, cape town. altbacht, p., reisberg, l. & rumbley, l., 2009, trends in global higher education: tracking an academic revolution, unesco, paris. badat, s., 2010, the challenges of transformation in higher education and training institutions in south africa, development bank of southern africa, johannesburg. baxter, p. & jack, s., 2008, ‘qualitative case study methodology: study design and implementation for novice researchers’, the qualitative report 13(4), 544–559. breen, l., 2006, ‘a practical guide to focus-group research’, journal of geography in higher education, 30(3), 463–475. breetzke, d. & hedding, d., 2017, ‘the changing demography of academic staff at higher education institutions (heis) in south africa’, higher education 76(1), 145–161. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-017-0203-4 brooks, a., 2006, ‘feminist standpoint epistemology: building knowledge and empowerment through women’s lived experience’, in s. hesse-biber (ed.), feminist research practice, pp. 53–82, sage, london. bunting, i., 2006, ‘the higher education landscape under apartheid’, higher education dynamics 10(1), 35–52. https://doi.org/10.1007/1-4020-4006-7_3 cape higher education consortium (chec), 2014, a policy brief: support for building the next generation of academics in south africa, chec, cape town. commission for gender equality (cge), 2017, gender transformation at institutions of higher learning 2015/2016, cge, pretoria. council on higher education (che), 1997, education white paper 3: a programme for the transformation of higher education, government gazette, 24 july, general notice 1196 of 1997, department of education, pretoria, viewed 19 june 2018, from https://www.che.ac.za/sites/default/files/publications/white_paper3.pdf council on higher education (che), 2015, annexure 8: the transformation of south african higher education, department of justice, pretoria. david, e., 2015, ‘women and gender equality in higher education’, education sciences 5, 10–25. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci5010010 department of education (doe), 1996, green paper on higher education transformation, department of education, pretoria. department of higher education and training (dhet), 2009, report of the ministerial committee on transformation and social cohesion and the elimination of discrimination in public higher education institutions, dhet, pretoria. department of higher education and training (dhet), 2013, white paper for post-school education and training, dhet, pretoria. department of higher education and training (dhet), 2016, report on the second national higher education transformation summit, 15–17 october 2015, viewed 19 june 2018, from http://www.dhet.gov.za/summit/docs2015.html dominiguez-whitehead, y. & moosa, m., 2014, ‘new academics in the south african research-oriented academy: a critical review of challenges and support structures’, alternations 12, 260–282. harding, s., 2004, the feminist standpoint theory reader: intellectual and political controversies, routledge, new york. haring-smith, t., 2012, ‘broadening our definition of diversity’, liberal education 98(2), 6–13. herman, c., 2011, ‘elusive equity in doctoral education in south africa’, journal of education and work 24(1–2), 163–184. hickson, j. & strous, m., 1993, ‘african women domestics: providing the ultraexploited with psychologically empowering mental health services’, journal of black studies 24(1), 109–122. https://doi.org/10.1177/002193479302400107 higher education south africa (hesa), 2014, annual report 2014, hesa, pretoria. joubert, m & guenther, l., 2017, ‘in footsteps of einstein, sagan and barnard: identifying south africa’s most visible scientists’, south african journal of science 113(11/12), 1–9. https://doi.org/10.17159/sajs.2017/20170033 kele, t. & pietersen, j., 2015, ‘women in leadership in south african higher education institutions: narrations of their leadership operations’, international journal of sustainable development 8(5), 11–15. lawrence, a., 2018, ‘the power of intersectionality to transcend national identity on the united states’, studies in ethnicity and nationalism 17(2), 168–176. https://doi.org/10.1111/sena.12235 lloyd-jones, b., 2009, ‘implications of race and gender in higher education administration: an african american perspective’, advances in human development 11(5), 606–618. https://doi.org/10.1177/1523422309351820 mans, h. & lauwrens, j., 2013, ‘christian-afrikaans women under construction: an analysis of gender ideology in finesse and leef’, image and text 22, 45–64. maodzwa-taruvinga, m. & divala, j., 2014, ‘experiences of black women teacher educators in the south african higher education system’, south african journal of higher education 28(6), 1961–1971. marais, c.& van wyk, c., 2015, ‘future directiveness within the south african domestic workers’ work-life cycle: considering exit strategies’, indo-pacific journal of phenomenology 15(1), 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1080/20797222.2015.1049896 mcclintock, a., 1991, ‘“no longer in a future”: women and nationalism in south africa’, transitions 51, 104–123. https://doi.org/10.2307/2935081 mohutsioa-makhudu, k., 1989, ‘the psychological effects of apartheid on mental health of black south african women domestics’, journal of multicultural counselling and development 17(3), 134–142. https://doi.org/10.1002/j.2161-1912.1989.tb00425.x mollaeva, a., 2017, ‘gender stereotypes and the role of women in higher education (azerbajan case study)’, education and urban society 50(8), 1–17. morley, l., 2005, ‘gender equity in commonwealth higher education’, women’s studies international forum 28, 209–221. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wsif.2005.04.008 naicker, l., 2012, ‘the journey of south african women academics with a particular focus on women academics in theological education’, studia historiae ecclesiastica 39, 325–336. palinkas, a., horwitz, s., green, c., wisdom, j., duan, n. & hoagwood, k., 2015, ‘purposeful sampling for qualitative data collection and analysis in mixed method implementation research’, administration and policy in mental health 42(5), 533–544. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10488-013-0528-y ramohai, j., 2016, ‘women in senior positions in south african higher education: a reflection on voice and agency’, alternation 23(1), 135–157. sang, k., 2018, ‘gender, ethnicity and feminism: an intersectional analysis of the lived experiences feminist academic women in uk higher education’, journal of gender studies 27(2), 192–206. https://doi.org/10.1080/09589236.2016.1199380 seepe, s. & mthembu, t., 2011, ‘victim mentality among blacks’, sowetan online, viewed 30 june 2011 from, https://www.sowetanlive.co.za/opinion/columnists/2011-06-30-victim-mentality-back-among-blacks/ smith, e., 1992, ‘sociology from women’s experience: a reaffirmation’, sociological theory 10(1), 88–98. https://doi.org/10.2307/202020 south africa, 1953, bantu education act. act no. 7 of 1953, government printer, pretoria. south africa, 1959, extension of university education act, government printer, pretoria, p. 16. south africa, 1996, national commission on higher education (nche): a framework for transformation, council on higher education, pretoria. south african human rights commission (sahrc), 2017, research brief on gender and equality in south africa 2013–2017, shrc, cape town. south african human rights commission (sahrc), 2018, equality report 2017/2018, sahrc, cape town. stead, b. & bakker, t., 2010, ‘discourse analysis in career counselling and development’, the career development quarterly 59(1), 72–86. https://doi.org/10.1002/j.2161-0045.2010.tb00131.x terre blanche, m., durrheim, k. & painter, d., 2010, research in practice: applied methods for the social sciences, uct press, cape town. tienda, m., 2013, ‘diversity = inclusion: promoting integration in higher education’, education research 42(9), 467–475. https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189x13516164 tsikata, d., 2007, ‘gender institutional cultures and the career trajectories of the faculty of university of ghana’, feminist africa: rethinking universities 2007(8), 26–41. turner, v., gonzalez, c. & wong, k., 2008, ‘faculty of color in academe: what 20 years of literature tell us’, journal of diversity in higher education 1(3), 139–168. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0012837 turner, v., gonzalez, c. & wong, k., 2011, ‘faculty women of colour: the critical nexus of race and gender’, journal of diversity in higher education 4(4), 199–211. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0012837 ueno, k., 2010, ‘identity management among indonesian and filipina migrant domestic workers in singapore’, international journal of japanese sociology 19(1), 82–97. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-6781.2010.01128.x van der westhuizen, c., 2013, ‘identities, sexuality and class in liberalising, democratising south africa: the reconstruction of the afrikaner woman’, unpublished phd thesis, university of cape town. vermeulen, p., 2011, diversity management in higher education: a south african perspective in comparison to a homogeneous and monomorphous society such as germany, che, pretoria. woodman, k., 2018, ‘feminist standpoint theory and meghan trainor’s “dear future husband,” a rhetorical criticism’, a journal of undergraduate research 11, 84–95. wylie, a., 2003, ‘why standpoint matters’, in r. figueroa & s.g. harding (eds.), science and other cultures: issues in philosophies of science and technology, pp. 26–48, routledge, taylor & francis, new york. zwane, n., ralesai, k., mbhense, l., hadebe, v., walker, m. & loots, s., 2015, gender equality policy brief 2015, university of the free state centre for research on higher education and development (crhed), bloemfontein. abstract acknowledgements references footnotes about the author(s) martina l. mabille department of ethics and apologetics, faculty of theology, north-west university, potchefstroom, south africa citation mabille, m.l., 2019, ‘foucault and the origins of the disciplined subject: post-subjectivity as a condition for transformation in education’, transformation in higher education 4(0), a72. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v4i0.72 original research foucault and the origins of the disciplined subject: post-subjectivity as a condition for transformation in education martina l. mabille received: 17 may 2019; accepted: 09 aug. 2019; published: 18 nov. 2019 copyright: © 2019. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract background: the need for transforming south african education can ultimately be traced to a form of western subjectivity which dominated europe since the classical age (1600–1750). the notions of ‘discipline’ and ‘subjectivity’ suggest distinct associations with repressive regimes like apartheid, and the present article will argue that the assumptions behind apartheid education cannot be understood without understanding the still more foundational assumptions – taken as axiom – underlying western subjectivity. this conception of subjectivity underlies the ‘disciplined society’ and its concomitant ethos of expansion, ranging from its colonial projects to the rise of the human sciences. as a result, it is of considerable value for the south african educational environment to consider michel foucault’s unmasking of the interplay between subjectivity, truth and power, and to explore the possibilities offered by foucault’s own ethic of transgression. aim: drawing on michel foucault’s genealogy of the modern subject and archaeologies of modern knowledge, it will be demonstrated that the process of transformation of higher education in south africa not only provides the opportunity to tend to a grave historical injustice, but also to develop a critique of modernist educational practices of the west and thus to cultivate its own educational ethos as a more just and authentic south african alternative. setting: south african higher education in the 21st century. methods: foucauldian–nietzschean genealogy, in the spirit of foucault’s own use of nietzsche: ‘the only valid tribute to thought such as nietzsche’s is precisely to use it, to deform it, to make it groan and protest’. result: a re-considered and reconfigured notion of educational identity beyond the confines of modernist western subjectivity. conclusion: while full justice can never be done to the full horrors of the past, the process of transformation in education may provide an opportunity to not only address injustices in the past, but also to create a new african educational ethic which may contribute something truly new to the world’s educational heritage. keywords: education; enlightenment; foucault; transformation; progress; power. from the idea that the self is not given to us, i think that there is only one practical consequence: we have to create ourselves as a work of art. – michel foucault it is rather surprising that in neither his archaeologies of knowledge nor his genealogies of identity did foucault ever devote a full investigation to the field of education as he did with health, madness, crime, sexuality or subjectivity itself. this is even more so given the fact that foucault was personally involved in the évéments [events] of may 1968 and formulated his most important ideas within the context of employment in higher educational institutions. it is still more the case if one considers that education lies on the nexus between archaeology and genealogy, that is, it is the field of transmission of knowledge about the human being and at the same time, the space in which the identity of man1 as a transcendental guarantor for the validity of this knowledge is forged. education may thus be viewed as one of the key sites of the ‘normalising’ tendencies characteristic of modernity and a particularly significant space for the operation of bio-power, a prime example of which may be seen in the institution of apartheid. however, drawing on the later foucault, it will be demonstrated that such power is not absolute and that ways of resistance exist. what makes this particularly significant for south africa is that the process of transformation in south africa offers a unique opportunity for harnessing such strategies of resistance and cultivating a new ethic of freedom beyond the constraints of western subjectivity. the most sustained discussion of education occurs during an interview with jon simon at the university of buffalo (foucault 1971), part iii of discipline and punish, and a general discussion with high school pupils for the journal actuel in 1977. towards the 1970s, foucault shifted from his archaeological concerns with the construction of knowledge to the more nietzschean question of the shaping of the subject with his substantive research into punishment and sexuality. it is no accident that foucault’s most important discussion of education occurs within this context, rather than his earlier archaeological work on the classification of knowledge since the classical period (although the term ‘discipline’ immediately suggests both a branch of knowledge and the practice of training people to obey a set of rules or code of conduct under threat of punishment). he sees the advancement of modern educational institutions as closely intertwined with the emergence of a disciplined, interiorised subject. this subject is by no means innocent: morgan brigg, for example, draws a parallel between foucault’s shift from sovereign power to bio-power and the shift among colonial powers from colonial to ‘developmental’ discourse (briggs 2002). as latter-day educational ideals remain grounded in the ideals set during the classical age, it may benefit latter-day educational practitioners to consider the complicity of these ideals in forging a subject designed by, and for relations of bio-power. the larger western position is mirrored in the south africa of the apartheid era, about which fourie and strydom write that ‘the institutional phase of higher education studies in south africa tended, until the late 1970s, to operate largely within a historical and educational mould and took the form of the histories of individual institutions’ (1999:155). foucault himself admits: among all the societies in history, ours i mean, those that came into being at the end of antiquity on the western side of the european continent-have perhaps been the most aggressive and the most conquering; they have been capable of the most stupefying violence, against themselves as well as against others…. … it must be kept in mind that they alone evolved a strange technology of power treating the vast majority of men as a flock with a few as shepherds. they thus established between them a series of complex, continuous, and paradoxical relationships. (foucault 1988:11) in his revisionist account of the changes that occurred in 18th and 19th century penal reform, foucault challenges the classic liberal (also marxist and weberian) accounts that the abolition of torture and public spectacle in favour of gentler methods of correction simply represents hard-won humanitarian progress, and that ‘society’ was advancing towards a more humane state. instead, he draws attention to the significance of the displacements which occurred with respect to the object of punitive practices. for foucault, much of modernity obscures the need for explanation: among the reasons for the success of the operation of modern power networks is that it seems to present its manifestation as self-evident: what else can we do but to incarcerate prisoners on a massive scale? what is there to do with the insane except to send them to asylums? moreover, surely, modern-day schooling has been nothing but a tool of emancipation from a state of ignorance? taking his cue from marx, foucault traces the proliferation of techniques of subjection in the west to the increasing demands of capitalism. as wealth became accumulated in larger quantities in ports, warehouses, workshops and factories, more efficient forms of control were required to prevent theft and keep track of the flow of money. in addition, greater urban populations had to be controlled and an increasingly complex legal system2 demanded a greater literate population. more importantly, the new goals of increased growth and productivity meant that workers had to be rendered docile (‘discipline’) to maximise their working potential and integrate them into mechanised processes of production. the emergence of the ideal of a fully literate populace from the late 18th century is far from simply an instance of enlightenment emancipation, but a decisive moment in the history of subjection: the exchange of sovereign power for bio-power. ‘bio-power’ indicates the sum of disciplines, techniques, institutions and discourses which developed in order to trace track, survey, constitute and shape populations as well as individuals. in contrast to the old sovereign power, with its seat in the body of the monarch and cumbersome need for violent spectacle (think about the execution of damiens with which foucault famously opened discipline and punish) for the broad population, the new techniques of visibility were of the population subject to control. the growing need to maximise utility led to the development of what foucault called ‘the art of light and the visible’ (foucault 1979:7). the classical age saw an increased emphasis on visibility, with hospitals, workshops, factories, asylums, shops, housing projects – and, importantly, schools – organised to ensure the greatest degree of visibility possible with a single gaze: openings, walls, aisles, gaps and temporary divisions were designed to maximise survey ability. from the 18th century onwards, school pupils were organised, hierarchised and divided to ease inspection. it is not difficult to draw a parallel with the desire of the south african regime from 1948 to categorise and classify along racial lines. in the case of south africa, as engelbrecht notes, separated education departments, situated under the tripartite governmental system, led to a society fragmented and categorised under racial lines (2006:254). foucault writes that the scope of this gaze became increasingly wider: ‘for a long time, ordinary individuality – the everyday individuality of everybody – remained below the threshold of description. the disciplinary methods lowered the threshold of describable individuality and made of this description a means of control and a method of domination’ (foucault 1979:7). in schools, increasing attention was paid to punctuality, gestures, poses, attitudes as well as differences in behaviour that previously went unnoticed or were not considered to be of any significance. in modernity, power became directed towards generating a self that relates to itself through a codified, colonised and above all continuous form of critical self-reflection which imposes hegemony as it observes and demands certain desirable characteristics by delegitimising all other alternatives as ‘other’. by defining the self as a figure of hidden circuitous causalities and deep-harbouring truths, panoptic power succeeds in developing western man – and all the others upon which he exercises his colonial power – as deep-examining selves. a particularly significant mechanism that aided this process was the examination, which became widespread in schools as well as hospitals and asylums. rooted in the increasingly powerful natural sciences and subject to inductive logic, the examination allowed for a level of objectification with minute specificity and allowed for the tracking, recoding and grading of differences between individuals, refining the process of individualisation. the individual was transformed into a ‘case,’ who may be described, judged, analysed, measured, compared with ‘other’ and who has to be ‘trained’ or corrected, classified, normalised or excluded. this is the operation of the nietzschean ‘will to truth’ at its most meticulous: micro-penalties were introduced at different points in order to force behaviour into compliance with the normalising judgements implied by the exam’s telos[end]. it is also a form of evaluation which steers individuals towards utilitarian aims: while the aim of the examination cannot be reduced to a purely benthamite pain or pleasure calculus, the academic examination is designed to favour distinct outcomes. this left little playroom for the developing pupil. it is particularly significant to note that access to higher education has always been a prominent item on the agenda for the apartheid government. concomitant with that government’s economic privileging of white communities was the direction of resources towards rendering white pupils ‘visible’ in order that they can be ‘cultivated’. in other words, it is possible to say that one of the dividing lines between those privileged by apartheid education and those allowed to slip under the surface of invisibility was the normalising gaze. the purpose of the normalising gaze was to establish certain forms of behaviour, attitudes and abilities while at the same time excluding others. however, in contrast to other critics of modernity (i.e. weber and the frankfurt school), foucault’s normalising gaze does not simply demand similitude. while it limits the range of possibilities of behaviour (confining those who fail to meet the standards of normalisation to categories such as the perverse, delinquent or insane), within the limits of the ‘normal’ itself, the normalising gaze also categorises, identifies, classifies and orders, thus helping to constitute difference. to a significant extent, the ‘normal’ is always deferred – it is always refined, redefined and being worked upon. foucault writes in this respect: ‘in a sense the power of normalization imposes heterogeneity, but it individualizes by making it possible to measure gaps, to determine levels, to fix specialties and to render these differences useful by fitting them one unto another’ (foucault 1979:84). in the case of south africa in particular, it is clear that education served as a crucible for the development of white normality, with an ‘unshaped’, ‘uncultivated’ other slipping beneath the surface of visibility. paradoxically, higher visibility also renders resistance to the norm more problematic. in the case of south africa in particular, it has to be noted that one of the tools engendering the division between visibility and invisibility is funding. money steers the ‘gaze’. wangenge-ouma writes in this respect that ‘funding is probably the most important tool that was utilised by the apartheid state, and is being utilised by the post-apartheid state, to achieve the desired access policy goals. the use of funding mechanisms to achieve particular access goals is not surprising. it is generally agreed that the funding of higher education is intricately linked with issues of accessibility’ (2012:831). what renders resistance to such power mechanisms even more difficult is that at the same time that people are commodified as exchangeable objects in a highly disciplined and abstracted labouring force, ‘the individual is carefully fabricated’ (foucault 1979:217). within carefully delimited hierarchies, disciplinary power finds and maintains hierarchies and ‘separations’ between those on differing ranks, and even those on the same rank. this means that legitimate channels of resistance are also codified and pre-determined. not only are the ‘useful’ and useless’ separated, but also a ‘continuous individualising pyramid’ (foucault 1979:220) is established (what marx called the ‘reserve’ of labour, but also to ensue continuous control). at the heart of modernity lies a mechanism ‘which coerces by means of observation’ (foucault 1979:220). observation, illumination and various forms of ‘unlocking’ and ‘bringing to the surface’ became the mode of relating to the self and the natural world. atoms of natural bodies (human or otherwise) became objects of knowledge to be examined, classified, ordered around or excluded. as it is no accident that modern education was forged in the crucible of the interplay between power and use, it is no accident either that the quintessential tools of early modernity were the telescope (galileo), the observatory, the lens and a variety of light beams. as such tools were essential in the development of an ordered and classified natural world (to a greater degree at least from the ‘given’ aristotelian chain of being), ‘the observatories of humanity rendered it possible to constitute pacified and controlled subjects’ (foucault 1979:171). it should be noted that this form of visibility is not only distinct from, but also for all intents and purposes, opposed to the sense of visibility for which fanon (1986) argues in black skins, white masks. fanon draws upon a classic hegelian notion of recognition, according to which an oppressed group gains the opportunity to join the charmed circle of ‘the recognised’ – those who are raised from a state of nature towards a state of full humanity. for foucault, as for freud, this process itself is fraught with danger and new forms of power. if tools amplifying natural vision exemplified modern humanity’s control over nature, then the technology that exemplified the power behind his own self-constitution has to be bentham’s panopticon. this famed architectural scheme was composed of a ring of fully illuminated cells built around a central watchtower. the building was designed to allow the guard to be able to see the prisoners without them, in turn, being able to see the guard. ‘all that is then needed is to put an overseer in the tower and place in each of the cells a lunatic, a patient, a convict, a worker or a schoolboy’. what is often overlooked is that besides the debate whether the panopticon really served as the basis for penal institutions, it was a school, the ‘pedagogical machine’ of the école militaire, which provided the original inspiration for bentham’s panopticon (see, e.g. foucault 1986:173). aside from the obvious labourand money-saving advantages, this installed in prisoners a sense of being observed without them being able to empirically verify this fact, instituting a radical asymmetrical relationship. with the ever-present possibility of being observed, the individual – for this is what he has fully become by now – is compelled to watch over himself, to become for all intents and purposes his own guard.3 according to foucault, the panopticon displays ‘which each individual under its weight will end by interiorizing to the point that he is his own overseer, thus exercising this surveillance over and against himself’ (foucault 1980a:155). unlike the blunt power of the communist or fascist state, the aim is not simply to entrap subjects that would otherwise resist, but to create subjects that would produce their own gazes, interiorised disciplinary gazes with a thoroughness and depth that could never be sustained from without. this ‘supremacy of light’ demands that its subjects become sources and relays of light themselves, to such an extent that the function of this relentless will to observation becomes itself autonomous. in other words, if the panopticon aims at pure light, or pure transparency, then what one might call the autopticon, or the deep self, aims at an object that constantly moves beyond reach, at best a ‘dark shimmer’ (foucault 1980a:151). with the rise of panoptic disciplinary power, it is no longer simply the deviation, visible error or crime that is judged, but also the drives, instincts, passions and desire that lurk beneath the visible: ‘these shadows lurking behind the case itself’ (foucault 1979:17, my emphasis). the judgement of the disciplinary gaze is generally characterised by a depth dimension: it deciphers, compares, measures and analyses all with a view (!) to render visible. the most obvious examples are prisons and mental institutions, but it is also discernible in the relentless tracking of children at schools through constant evaluation and examination. concomitant with this development in the late 19th century was the proliferation of anxieties about children: their sexualities, moral character and performance. it, in fact, amounted to nothing short of the re-arrangement of the adult–child relationship, the multiplication of activities and sites designated especially ‘for children’ (i.e. ‘children’s literature’ and the project of sentimentalising children during the victorian era) and the invention of education as a science. rather surprisingly, foucault locates the inner receptacle for the operation of the disciplinary gaze in the soul. far from being a leftover from a more religious age, the soul acts as general referent to disciplinary power: it represents the core of that which is educated, trained, punished, normalised and identified. similar to the shift from surface phenomena to the depths of the inner sinful self which accompanied the transition from pagan europe to christianity, from the mid-19th-century, the locus of punishment was no longer the body, but the soul. penance now operated upon ‘the depths on the heart, the thoughts, the will, the inclinations’ (foucault 1979:16). it was ‘intended not (just) to punish the offence, but to supervise the individual, to neutralize his dangerous state of mind, to alter his criminal tendencies’ (foucault 1979:18). the punishment carried with it ‘an assessment of normality and a technical prescription for a possible normalization’ (foucault 1979:21). what is more, ‘humane’ penal procedures became entangled with a new corpus of knowledge, a science of penology, whose purpose was the ‘management of the depths of the human soul’ (rose 1990:7). the soul is both the result of power, and that which allows it to operate on micro-level. according to foucault, as the body of the premodern king was duplicated and became the atemporal embodiment of power in the medieval period, the bodies of those within institutions of disciplinary power engender their own form of duplication. the soul became an ‘inner self’ – that which surveys and governs from within, the ‘real’ self, that which must be found and cultivated at all costs. the soul is each individual’s very own autopticon, which represents the panopticon under the flesh of the individual’s own being. the soul is the ‘reality reference’ of the power operating in schools, the workplace, asylums and prisons. it is that which is identified, objectified, classified, pacified and educated. perhaps, most significantly, the soul is that which surveys from within and makes external observation almost superfluous. a particularly significant manifestation of the operation of power upon the ‘deep self’ or the soul occurs in the ‘moralising’ practices characteristic of both late modern asylum and educational practices. with the birth of the asylum and the universalisation of modern schooling, guilt was used to produce more pacified, responsible and unified selves. this is mirrored in juridical practices of enquiry that moved far beyond the individual acts and tried to isolate the tendencies, drives and deepest personal desires that supposedly constituted the ‘identity’ of the delinquent. both disciplinary power and the operations of the inner autopticon are pre-occupied with minutiae. for the disciplined man no detail is unimportant, but not so much for the meaning that it conceals within it as for the hold it provides for the power that wishes to seize it. (foucault 1979:40) it is interesting to note that within the pedagogic context, expanding numbers of school children, re-valuated curricula and increasing numbers of university-trained teachers, the emphasis in school punishments shifted from vengeance to a kind of ‘moral orthopaedics’ and amendment of personal flaws. being part of an increasingly hyper-capitalist global order means that south african needs for transformation in education are often superseded by managerial needs. as kistner points out, south african transformation is not only threatened by ‘old-fashioned transformation-resistant white fuddy-duddies’, but also internalised models of ‘social value’ in the human sciences and ‘streamlining’, ‘fast-tracking’, cost-cutting and ‘managerialism in the higher education system’.4 it may still be difficult for a post-rousseauian society to stomach, but depth is not a natural dimension of existence. unlike the pre-socratic greeks, for whom the surface was the main field of operation, the modern subject experiences the visible as a barrier between himself and the true meaning that he seeks. foucault argues that it should be seen as a correlate of the effect of a variety of technologies operating upon the individual. even the notion of the ‘individual’ is far from innocent in this respect. along with the creation of the ‘soul, the dimension of depth is created by designated sex as “the secret” that is surreptitiously identified by the actions, thoughts, emotions and desires’ of the self. a kind of ‘universal signified’, which must be uncovered at all costs, signifies true self beneath the contingencies of appearance. sex operates as much more than procreation of pleasure, but constituted the true meaning beneath the visible, the truth that is always ‘elsewhere’. immediacy is always deferred. the visible is a barrier between ourselves and the truths that we seek. as sex is discursively attached to the visible, the visible is always expanding, presenting a range of objects between ourselves and the truths we ultimately seek. we are deep selves not only because we are taken to be beings with a particular dimension of depth, but we are also become beings directed towards depth. one may call it a being-unto-depth. because the promise of freedom is promised within the depths of self, one is obliged to delve deeply and ‘tell what one is and what one does what one recollects and what one has forgotten, what one is thinking and what one thinks one is not thinking’ (foucault 1980a:60). the failure to do this would perpetuate and expand our sense of authenticity, our ‘repression’, and render us blind to our actual nature. as lionel trilling (1972:307) notes, the mere word ‘authentic’ bears traces of violence: ‘authentheo; to have power over, also to commit a murder. authentes: not only a master, but also a perpetrator, a murderer, even a self-murderer, a suicide’ (trilling 1971:131). however, as foucault demonstrates, this promise of freedom is merely a ruse and that draws people into a field of operation for a variety of power strategies. it is, in fact, a colonised space where selves are trapped to become the object of power. unlike the medieval period, truth is no longer ‘the child of protracted solitude’ (foucault 1980b:131) discovered privately and in silence. instead, it became a common phenomenon ‘a thing of this world it is produced only by multiple forms of constraint’ (foucault 1980b:131). in a marked difference to hannah arendt, foucault does not find empowerment in the shared public character of truth, but a complex site of repression. this means that there is no ‘final’ point of power, which is by no means teleological in character. power proliferates and fragment is the ‘discovery’ of the self, and the dimensions it ‘discovers’ never depletes itself. it is particularly clear where sexuality is concerned, which foucault illustrates at the hand of the concept latency. sex as it appears is always suspect: sex ‘truly’ resides’ in the depths of the self which are beyond easy access. we are obliged to search for it, but we can neither search deep enough, nor do it alone. discovering sex is always to occur with the aid of ‘the other who knows’ (foucault 1980a:70). as beings defined by our profound depths, we require experts to help us find ourselves and identify who we really are. such experts include psychiatrists, psychologists, teachers, therapists, counsellors and other figures of authority – the masters of truth. through the demands of such authorities, an endless number of discourses develop around the task of deciphering, analysing, codifying and locating the truths extracted from the deep. this allows such authority figures to classify the subjects revealed through these truths on scales of normalcy. while sex is concerned, the truth is above all defined in terms of unity. the task of recovering our ‘true’ sexuality has in late modernity become the meta-narrative of our liberation. however, as foucault demonstrates, in trying to ‘liberate’ our sexuality, we do not place ourselves beyond power. instead, we are active in its deployment: [we] ‘are fastened to the deployment of sexuality that has lifted up from deep within us a sort of mirage in which we think ourselves reflected – the dark shimmer of sex’ (foucault 1980a:157). we may say that we entered into a faustian bargain when we, in exchange for sexual liberation, gave up our miranda escobedo – the right to remain silent. this does not mean that one is only allowed to talk about sex, but that all aspects of life become governed by the rules and demands governing sex. on the one hand, we find the positing of a definite unity. on the other hand, we are told that this essential unity is so elusive that it requires constant surveillance by others to discover it. foucault notes that during the 19th century, the family became increasingly defined through its sexual features. boys and girls are separated (also in schools, and such schools became increasingly ‘prestigious’), great attention is paid to infant sexuality, masturbation and ‘family health’ became an object of state interest, with schools often being units of access. sexual forms of deviation are identified, codified and multiplied. this is mirrored in the multiplication of the ‘surfaces of intervention’ increasingly accessible to schools, psychologists and their forms of the juridico-epistemological power formation. the discussion of the formation of the juridical model of subjectivity would be incomplete without referring to its archaeological compliment. in the order of things (1973), foucault engages in a theoretical analysis of the modern ‘sciences’ of ‘man’. in this text, he is interested in exposing (sic) the historical a priori of modern theories of the human subject: this a priori is what in a given period, delimits in the totality of experience a field of knowledge, defines the mode of being of the objects that appear in that field provides man’s everyday perception with theoretical powers and the defines conditions in which he can sustain a discourse about things that is recognized to be true. (foucault 1973:158) as an epistemic nexus that is at once subject and object, foucault claims that the concept ‘man’ does not represent the essence of homo sapiens [the human being] in any ahistorical sense, but represents a being that burst upon the intellectual scene at the beginning of the 19th century and acted as a transcendental condition for the existence of the human sciences. foucault maintains that a new epistemic space with new demands and possibilities began to emerge with the receding of the classical age. during this period, truth was understood in terms of an object’s position with respect to the table of representation which was constructed to represent god’s order of the universe. as a result, representation was the mode of expression of truth about the word. however, representation soon made way for a model natural history based on organic structure, ‘an internal principle not reducible to the reciprocal interactions of representations’ (foucault 1973:64). foucault demonstrates that as the internal principle of inflection began to replace the classical logic of representation – reflected in among others, ricardo’s model of labour, cuvier’s primacy of functions and ropp’s grammatical wholes, objective truth, like the truths of the subject, began to recede within the hidden depths of the world. in the space left behind by ‘truth’, man soon emerged. this being stands at the centre of life, language and nature, and he – and he is pretty much a he – finds that he is only accessible through these fields of knowledge and that they determine his identity. he finds himself in the paradoxical position of being at once a transcendental guarantor for, and at the same time a result of an irreducible anteriority. (foucault 1973:303) as great as is the gap between the finite subject and the discourses which constitute his identity, everything given in thought is in itself based upon finitude. as man stepped unto the throne vacated by god, he found that the world once guaranteed by god has deserted his humanist inheritor. as man attempts to ground the order of the same, he merely finds that ‘his language, his thought, his laughter in the space of that already dead god’ (foucault 1973:385). despite the plethora of disciplinary practices, man has not succeeded in establishing an ontology final and solid enough to allow man to be fully present to himself. the subject of modernity who invited himself to be free from the restraints of tradition and sovereign power already finds himself inscribed in a network of power where he not only finds himself already enslaved – and enslaving others – but chasing a mirage that will never be fully and satisfactorily present. subjectivity was not only born in chains, but also in failure. thus, as flynn points out, ‘man’ is a mere flatus vocis in history, even for the human ‘sciences’ (2005:31). in other words, there is neither foundational principle, nor originary cause to either a man or his foundational sciences. words such as ‘man’, ‘author’, ‘subject’, ‘civilised’ and ‘natural’ dissolve under foucault’s nominalist scrutiny. we have moved way beyond a past where a kant could deal in epistemological absolutes. neither institution nor epistemology can stave off criticism by appealing to holiness and absoluteness. the subject has become unmasked as a foundational prejudice. if there is a threat of endless measureless following in the wake of an exhausted cogito [self], it also offers endless possibilities not only for resisting the legacy of western subjectivity or objectivity, but even of overcoming it. among what foucault has termed the ‘unthought’, the shadow that was cast with descartes’s ‘i think’, the construct that was supposed to lead to truth and certainty came the abyss of the unthought. however, it may be well that this very abyss offers a way out from the great confinement of subjectivity. it may well be the very domain which offers an opportunity to imagine a self that is shaped by an aestheticised consciousness rather than a discipline one, a form of identity that is open-ended rather than teleological and does not take the demands of late-modern capitalism as its ultimate raison d’être [reason for existence]. for foucault, there is considerable freedom to be found in the fact that there is no original identity to be hunted down, no need for a philosophical mole to burrow beneath appearance for a stability, which, even if found, is unlikely to be able to serve as stable foundation. there is no need to fear something originary unknown, alienated, concealed or repressed, which leaves the late-modern self free to engage in a hermeneutics of self-interpretation or an ethics of play. in other words, rather than a barthesian sense of erasure, foucault envisions a self that is created rather than produced. he therefore celebrates the death of man as harbouring the potential of new philosophical possibilities beyond the horizon of western subjectivity and educational ideals formulated beyond discipline, managerial models and use value: the end of man … is the return to the beginning of philosophy. it is no longer possible to think in our day other than in the void left by man’s disappearance. for this void does not create a deficiency; it does not constitute a lacuna that must be filled. it is nothing more, and nothing less, than the unfolding of a space in which hit is once more possible to think. (foucault 1973:342) if the end of man is harnessed, and its paradoxical nature understood, it should be possible to construct a form of identity beyond the struggle between visibility and non-visibility. the task of education should be framed in terms of finding and establishing fields of self-creation capable of offering alternatives to the utilitarian ethic that underlies late capitalism. knowledge is not archived, but communal, rendering it possible to be transferred in a fluid, democratic and stimulating way. acknowledgements the author acknowledges the opportunity to be part of the postdoctoral programme of the nwu. competing interests the author has no conflicting interests in the current situation. authors’ contributions i declare that i am the sole author of this research article. ethical consideration this article followed all ethical standards for a research without direct contact with human or animal subjects. funding this research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors. data availability statement data sharing is not applicable to this article as no new data were created or analysed in this study. disclaimer the views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any affiliated agency of the author. references briggs, m., 2002, ‘post-development, foucault and the colonization metaphor’, third world quarterly 23(3), 421–436. https://doi.org/10.1080/01436590220138367 ellison, d., 1985, rousseau and modernity, cambridge university press, cambridge. engelbrecht, p., 2006, ‘the implementation of inclusive education in south africa after ten years of democracy’, european journal of psychology of education 21(3), 253–264. https://doi.org/10.1007/bf03173414 fanon, f., 1986, white masks, black skins, pluto press, new york. flynn, t., 2005, ‘foucault’s mapping of history’, in g. gutting (ed.), the cambridge companion to michel foucault, pp. 29–48, cambridge university press, cambridge. https://doi.org/10.1017/ccol0521840821.002 foucault, m., 1971, ‘j.k. simon: a conversation with michel foucault’, partisan review 38, 192–201. foucault, m., 1973, the order of things: an archaeology of the human sciences, vintage books, new york. foucault, m., 1979, discipline and punish, transl. a. sheridan, vintage books, new york. foucault, m., 1980a, the history of sexuality, transl. r. hurley, an introduction, vol. 1, p. 157, vintage books, new york. foucault, m., 1980b, ‘power/knowledge’, in c. gordon (ed.), pantheon books, new york. foucault, m., 1988, ‘truth, power, self: an interview with michel foucault’, in l.h. martin, h. gutman & p.h hutton (eds.), technologies of the self, pp. 9–15, university of massachusetts press, amherst, ma. fourie, a.h. & strydom, m, 1999, ‘higher education research in south africa: achievements, conditions and new challenges’, higher education 38, 155–167. https://doi.org/10.1023/a:1003756016644 kistner, u., 2010, a south (african) dream? negotiating affirmative action for social cohesion in the transformative state: policy, platitudes, progress and prospects, pretoria, february 25–26, (unpublished), an abridged version appeared under the title ‘under new management’ in the ‘beyond matric’ supplement of the mail and guardian, april 16–22, pp. 5–6. rose, n., 1990, ‘governing the enterprising self’, unpublished paper presented at on the values of the enterprise culture, university of lancaster, september 1989, the revised version is published in p. heelas & p. morris (eds.), the values of the enterprise culture: the moral debate, unwin, london. trilling, l., 1972, sincerity and authenticity, harvard university press, cambridge, ma. wangenge-ouma, g., 2012, ‘tuition fees and the challenge of making higher education a popular commodity in south africa’, higher education 64(6), 831–844. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-012-9531-6 footnotes 1. the question of man is central to modern western epistemologies. currently problematic, it is addressed below. 2. see, for example, the famous jarndyce v jarndyce in charles dickens’ bleak house, discussed by donna leon in willful behavior (2010) london: penguin, p. 308. 3. an interesting pedagogic parallel would be intercom systems in schools that allow a principal to listen into classrooms without being able to be observed or listened in himself or herself. 4. paper unpublished, see reference list. abstract introduction the professionalism of academic scholars theoretical framework research methodology presentation of data and results of the analysis conclusion, discussion and recommendations acknowledgements references footnotes about the author(s) cok bakker research group normative professionalisation in higher education, utrecht university of applied sciences, utrecht, the netherlands ina ter avest faculty of behavioral and movement sciences, vrije university, amsterdam, the netherlands research group ‘philosophy of life and/in education’, inholland university of applied sciences, amstelveen, the netherlands citation bakker, c. & ter avest, i., 2019, ‘teacher training for religious education: engaging academics through the dialogical self theory’, transformation in higher education 4(0), a50. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v4i0.50 original research teacher training for religious education: engaging academics through the dialogical self theory cok bakker, ina ter avest received: 11 june 2018; accepted: 05 dec. 2018; published: 28 mar. 2019 copyright: © 2019. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract background: in the netherlands, most of the academic curricula for teacher training in religious education (re) focus on shortfalls of students, like a lack of knowledge about the plurality of worldviews and the diversity in interpretations of the christian tradition. in our research project, the focus is not on the students, but on the university professors and lecturers who teach the subject of re: professors and lecturers who train and educate students to teach re. aim: the main aim of the project was to gain a better insight into the inherent complexity of the professionalism of academics, that is, their own positionality in the plurality of the roman catholic traditions they adhere to in relation to their capabilities and commitment to the current curriculum – the ‘old’ one – and the new curriculum to be developed, in the context of the dutch plural society. setting: respondents in this research were university professors and lecturers of the teacher training institute of tilburg university, located at utrecht, the netherlands. methods: for this investigation, we used a research instrument based on the dialogical self theory and its self confrontation method for organisations to gain insight into professionals’ own and their colleagues’ positionality regarding teaching re. results: preliminary results show that the self confrontation method for organisations has shown itself to be a challenging instrument to invite academics involved in the process of data construction and data analysis. conclusion: based on these results, we recommend to include the research population in a validation process to increase the sustainability of the results and to maximise engagement in the implementation phase of the new curriculum. keywords: religious education; teacher training; academics’ positionality; normative professionalism; dialogical self theory; valuation theory. introduction in the netherlands, over the past decade, only a small number of the students who enrol in a teacher training programme at a university have been raised in a family and educational context that is religiously homogeneous. this development is not surprising because the netherlands is one of the most secularised countries of europe (jackson et al. 2007; van de donk et al. 2006). although christianity and christian values are part of the dutch national identity, nowadays the majority of students are raised in a non-confessional family, attend a secularised christian or public secondary school and meet peers in membership organisations that are unrelated to the church or any other religious community. they know little about the christian tradition or the role it played in the history of the netherlands. however, a considerable number of these students are not indifferent to secular and religious rituals and symbols in general (ter borg et al. 2008). on the contrary, they prove to be highly interested in worldviews, rituals, religiosity, spirituality and related traditions. this generation of students is designated as ‘unaffiliated spirituals’ (van de donk et al. 2006). they believe without belonging, or, in other words, their belief system is flexible and includes a variety of elements from different traditions. as a generation they represent a life orientation typified by a so-called ‘multiple religious belonging’ (kalsky & pruim 2014). these students are confronted with different discourses regarding the ‘truth claims’ of traditions (versteegt 2010:72–74), and sometimes even encounter conflicting opinions and statements. this is the situation for students in different departments, including those entering teacher training for religious education (re). in this highly secularised and pluralistic worldview context, students have to choose between a variety of (semi-) academic contexts to obtain an academic degree, so as to become a licensed teacher in this domain. the academic institutions in question are not that different in their pedagogical approach; however, the difference lies in their life orientation-related view on education. in the netherlands, academic teacher training programmes are nearly always offered by faculties of universities with an explicit protestant, humanistic or roman catholic ethos. the teacher training department, which is the object of our study, is closely connected to the faculty of theology of one of the smaller dutch universities – in this case, a university and a faculty with an explicit roman catholic focus. this roman catholic teacher training institute (rc-tti), nevertheless, admits students from any religious or secular worldview background. the dominant catholic atmosphere of this faculty, however, might be problematic for secular ised christian students in some cases, and even more so for students who enter university with a well-defined, but unreflected and exclusively interpreted (christian) religious conviction, or with a so-called ‘foreclosure’ in the development of their religious or semi-secular worldview in general (bakker & ter avest 2008; marcia 1980). the professionalism of academic scholars instead of focusing on the deficiencies of students, like their lack of knowledge about religious and secular traditions, in our research we focus on academics who teach the subject of re and on the religious beliefs and convictions which they hold. it is the task of university professors and lecturers to train their students to become ‘good re teachers’ – good teachers for students in secondary education – be it in schools with a christian identity or in state schools – all of them populated by students with a variety of religious and secular backgrounds. in everyday practice, this means that in the 4-year re training programme priority is given in the first place to the development of so-called instrumental professionalism, with its focus on techniques of how to teach in an informative way. religious education students have to study and practise pedagogical strategies, classroom management and leadership styles. students receive information about the educational and political arena in the netherlands. in addition, re students are taught about the christian tradition – for some students this is the tradition their parents were associated with in one way or another – and about other secular and religious traditions which people in the netherlands adhere to, with islam being the second most important religion in the netherlands after christianity. last but not least, over the course of a 4-year training, attention should be given in the curriculum of teacher training in re to the development of the students’ so-called normative1 professionalism, focusing on their own position in the religious arena and their own way of coping with diversity. this is concretised in the reflection which students in the course of their teacher training develop about their biographically rooted value orientation and its relation to the institution they enter as an re teacher, and about their own positionality in the field of religious and secular worldviews – and the politics of education in the netherlands – in general (see, e.g., kelchterman 2013; van der zande 2018). instrumental professionalism is included in this more versatile development called normative professionalism (bakker 2014, 2016; van den ende & kunneman 2007; van ewijk & kunneman 2013). to train re students in their instrumental professionalism and coach them in the reflection on their value-related positionality (normative professionalism), academics themselves should be aware of their own positionality with regard to the above-mentioned aspects of instrumental and normative professionalism (cf. ter avest et al. 2009; van der want et al. 2009). the stimulation and support of academics (professors and lecturers) in the development of their own normative professionalism to facilitate the professional identity development of re students include a provocation (or even seduction) to leave the ‘comfort zone’ of long-standing beliefs and face uncertainty, which makes them vulnerable (hermans & gieser 2012; kelchtermans 2009). in this process, they become aware of their longing for what is left behind (retrospective nostalgia) as well as of their longing for a new situation (prospective nostalgia; du preez 2011), that is, the situation that the newly implemented curriculum of their tc-tti attains a high status (in the netherlands, and in europe as well). our research question is a methodological one derived from the theoretical perspective of the dialogical self theory: how to invite, challenge or even provoke academics to leave their comfort zone, make them face and show their vulnerability, and how to get academics to commit to a new curriculum in an enthusiastic way which is motivating for their students as well. subquestions are related to the self-understanding of academics (cf. vloet, jacobs & veugelers 2016), including the awareness they have of their comfort zone (their actual way of interpreting and adhering – in some way or another – to the roman catholic tradition), the different ways in which they commit themselves and corresponding various degrees of commitment, and their knowledge of the core aspects of the new curriculum to be developed. the aim of our study is to stimulate the self-understanding of academics and to make them aware, as individuals, of their actual positionality regarding the roman catholic tradition (the ‘voice of tradition’), as well as of their team’s positionality in relation to the education and training of the students in this rc-tti, in the context of the dutch pluralistic society. with this study, we contribute to the body of knowledge regarding the (pre)conditions like self-knowledge, self-awareness and self-esteem which have to be in place, in order for academics to commit to new and innovative developments in education. theoretical framework in the western world, identity development is considered to be a core aspect of education, wherein identity development is understood as subjectification (biesta 2014). identity development in the sense of subjectification is a major educational objective in the west, for primary education up to higher and academic education. we follow the analysis of taylor (2009), as presented in ‘a secular world’, to describe the development of secularisation as well as its meaning for the identity development of people today. according to taylor, it is the change in the process of identity construction that has had – and still has – a huge impact on the way people position themselves in their context. the main principle according to which a person’s position in society is organised and structured (the hierarchical principle of status and belonging to a certain family, belonging to a group of respected craftsmen, belonging to a religious community) fades away to make place for the principle of the dignity of all human beings, the dignity of citizens in a democratic society. in a democratic society there is equal recognition of the dignity of every individual. recognition of this dignity becomes an important issue because this kind of dignity does not go without saying, like in earlier days when a person’s status was based on this person’s place of birth; in modern times recognition is something you have to gain, and in the attempt to gain it you might fail (taylor 1989, 2007). the result of the process of modernisation is an individualised identity. while in earlier days knowing what to do to be a good member of society was based on the knowledge of good and evil as this was transmitted in the christian tradition, these days knowing what to do is the result of an inner process of searching in the self for ‘the source of the good’. this inner process gives rise to stress because of the need for authenticity and, as a process, leads to an individualised way to be ‘a good human’: ‘i do it my way’. in the event that a person cannot find an authentic and unique way, this may result in the statement: ‘i miss the point of my life’. ‘in articulating the point of my life, i am also defining my self’ (taylor 1991:29). however, according to taylor, this process can only be successful in dialogue with ‘significant others’: ‘this crucial feature of human life is its fundamentally dialogical character’ (taylor 1991:30). we define our identity always in dialogue with, sometimes in struggle against, the things our significant others want to see in us. even after we outgrow some of these others – our parents, for instance – and they disappear from our lives, the conversation with them continues within us as long as we live (verhofstadt-denève 1995, see also hermans & gieser 2012). we need relationships to fulfil, but not to define, ourselves. (taylor 2009:33) following taylor, we conclude that authenticity and recognition are two sides of the same coin. it seems that it is precisely this difference that figures as a constitutive part in a constructive dialogue whereby identity – and also professional identity – is constructed, which has been ignored, glossed over and assimilated into a dominant or majority identity. this assimilation is the cardinal sin going against the ideal of authenticity (taylor 2009:38), which leads to a false homogeneity (taylor 2009:44). the need to have one’s dignity recognised, not only as a person but even more so as a beginning professional, and the need to be recognised as someone different and autonomous, makes students vulnerable. professors and lecturers who are aware of this vulnerability, bearing responsibility for the development of their students, have to take care of them while, at the same time, they need to invite their students to leave their comfort zone. a pedagogy of challenge and care, a so-called provocative pedagogy (ter avest & bertram-troost 2009; ter avest et al. 2012), materialises this dual focus. the same challenge, arising from vulnerability, poses itself for professors and lecturers. the loss, to a certain extent, of cultural identity is the way out of the comfort zone of a well-respected professor or lecturer in re, who functions in the dutch plural context. subsequently, for contemporary re teachers in secondary education, it is the will and courage to face one’s vulnerability that is preconditional for facilitating (the development of) new kinds of normative professionalism (cf. roy, in: oudenampsen 2014). identity development understood in terms of a development of commitments is articulated by marcia (1980). marcia distinguishes between commitments in private life (like a commitment to relationships with parents and friends, and the commitment to a secular or religious worldview) and commitments in professional life (like a commitment to training for a particular profession and commitment to political decisions, rules and regulations which apply to one’s professional field). included in our approach of identity development are the peer group and the membership organisations which constitute the life world of youngsters, and which are a major influence on their (religious) identity development (bakker & ter avest 2008; jackson 1997; marcia 1980). according to marcia, identity develops initially in four statuses which relate to each other in a hierarchical order: a development starting at the status of foreclosure, proceeding through diffusion and a status called moratorium, and which is concluded by arriving at identity achievement. crucial in this process of identity development, according to marcia, is the possibility to explore because of the need of the individual to explore a variety of value orientations and worldviews, and their respective positions towards existential questions. this kind of exploring can be done, for example, by taking the perspective of ‘the other’ or, to put it in another way, by ‘walking in the shoes of the other’ (roebben 2009), which makes it possible to arrive at deeply felt commitments. in marcia’s view, such deeply felt commitments are preconditional for a stable status of identity achievement to emerge. this phase of exploration, which could also be named a phase of research, results in stable commitments, with regard to a choice of profession2, a political stance and a ‘companion for life’. in our view, knowledge about and adaptation to this specific explorative phase in the identity development of students is crucial for academics to perform well at ttis. this last sentence, formulated in a kind of statement: ‘we as a team decided that knowledge about and adaptation to the explorative phase in the identity development of students should be taken as our guide while preparing lessons’, can be seen as a valuation. ‘valuation’ is a core concept in the valuation theory and the dialogical self theory – the dutch psychology professor hubert hermans is the founding father of these theories (hermans & gieser 2012; hermans & hermans-jansen 1995). according to the valuation theory (vt), persons are motivated in their behaviour by two basic motives: the s-motive aiming at strengthening self-awareness and self-esteem, and the o-motive directed towards care for others and belongingness in relation to others. it is through affect-related responses to persons or situations that the sand o-motives become visible. for example, the affect of ‘tenderness’ refers to the o-motive, and the affect of ‘pride’ refers to the s-motive – in a positive way. valuation theory states that a person can experience different feelings at the same time, or the same feelings in a similar context. for example, walking in the woods with my dog gives me a feeling of happiness while, at the same time, i feel powerless when my dog starts chasing a rabbit, quickly followed by another feeling – pride – when my dog immediately returns to me when i call it. following the line of thought in the dialogical self theory, different feelings represent different ‘voices’ in myself, which are voices that can flexibly change position in my self as a result of a change in context. i am a multi-voiced self. the voice of ‘my mother’ comes to the fore (e.g. ironing my clothes, i remember her showing me how to do that), but in the context of a seminary for colleagues the critical voice of ‘my mother’ will make place for the voice of ‘my professor’, whose constructive criticism is still supportive in my mind. by way of scoring on a validated list of affects, the strength and direction of the motivational commitment (positive, i.e. p-directed, or negative, i.e. n-directed) is visualised, along with the preference for or dominance of the sor the o-motive, in a certain situation or towards a certain person. to challenge the academics and unlock their longstanding beliefs, and inspired by the concept of the multi-voiced self in our research, we make use of an instrument called the self confrontation method. at the basis of this instrument lie the valuation theory and the dialogical self theory, presented by hermans and hermans-jansen (1995) and reviewed, renewed and extended by hermans and hermans-konopka (2010) and hermans and gieser (2012). research methodology originally, the self confrontation method was constructed for individuals, for therapeutic aims. this instrument has been adapted for groups and organisations (scm-org; van de loo 2010, 2012; wijsbek 2009). the self confrontation method starts with an interview when used for a person, or with a focus group interview when used for a team. people are invited to tell about their life and ‘critical incidents’ which took place, a narrative triggered by a so-called ontlokker (a question or a statement with an ‘eliciting’ function). ontlokkers direct the story telling activity, by specifically asking the interviewees about situations or persons that were important for them in the past (yesterday marking the beginning of the past), or are important to them today, or are expected by the interviewees to be important for them in the future. these situations may have occurred within the family, at work or with friends. with the help of the interviewer, the responses of the interviewees are summarised in so-called valuations: short statements representing the core of the response. in general, the outcome of the interview is a list of 20–30 valuations. in addition, each person is invited to relate these single valuations to a list of 16 validated affects (like tenderness, loneliness, care, anger). the strength of the affect in a particular case is represented by a number between 0 and 5; 0 means that the valuation has no relation with this particular affect and 5 means that the affect is very strong in the situation which is described in the valuation. every valuation can give rise to a mix of feelings, a characteristic coined as emo-diversity. a flexible balance between positive and negative feelings is required for personal well-being and resilience (schwartz 1986). for example, the valuation ‘we as a team decided that knowledge about and adaptation to the explorative phase in the identity development of students should be taken as our guide while preparing lessons’ can give rise not only to strong feelings of anger (5 because i have to submit my own ideas to the decision of the team), but also to strong feelings of pride (5 because i feel an expert in working according to a theoretical framework, and in working with related concepts). the scoring of all valuations shows a pattern, which through its correlations gives insight into the directedness of the person’s or the group’s motivational commitment: whether it is mainly selfor other-directed, whether this is mainly in a positive or in a negative way, and with the mix of feelings on which the directedness is based. our research population, the existent team responsible for the construction of a new curriculum, consists of a group of 17 academics, 14 men and 3 women. nearly all of them are theologians, with the exception of two persons, who have a different academic specialisation. one of the participants is trained in methodology and the other is educated as a psychologist. all of them are familiar with the roman catholic tradition – to a greater or lesser extent. in this intervention research, qualitative research instruments were used, like focus group interviews and individual writing tasks. during the research process (march–may 2014), these academics worked alternately as individuals, in pairs and in small groups, in four sessions of 2 h each. the interventions in these sessions were developed by the researchers, a theologian/educationalist and a psychologist of religion. they also prepared these meetings, chaired them and wrote the reports. to investigate the positionality of the academics/team members with regard to their teaching activities, all of them are invited upon the first meeting – as a first intervention – to write down a moment taken from their teaching practice that they would label as an example of ‘good education’. they discuss these examples in pairs. next, during a second team meeting, we introduced conceptualisations of ‘good education’ which were developed, among others, by the pedagogue gert biesta (2012). we presented and discussed the distinction between technical and normative professionalism, in the way we have elaborated this distinction in our own utrecht research group (bakker 2014; bakker & wassink 2015; see also van den ende & kunneman 2007; van ewijk & kunneman 2013). the reports of the first and second meeting and its interventions, as well as the reports of the discussions which followed (focus group conversation), are analysed by way of ‘close reading’3 (rubin & rubin 2003). characteristic statements emerging from these discussions are re-formulated in so-called valuations.4 these valuations are the input in the scm5-related instrument, the scm-org; this constitutes the third intervention pertaining to the third session, conducted according to the multi-facetted and multi-methods design of our research project. the fourth intervention, which pertains to the fourth session, is the invitation for academics to act as co-researchers in the process of analysing and interpreting the results of the scores of the standardised scm-org instrument (the empirical data). these four interventions are designed to get, firstly, insight into the individual positionality of academics, that is, on a personal level with regard to their adherence to the roman catholic tradition; secondly, to get insight into the team’s positionality with regard to the education and training of students in the roman catholic training institute (rc-ti) and the rc-ti as a whole and, finally, to acquire insight about the relation of this positionality to the roman catholic church and the roman catholic religious tradition as a whole. by means of these interventions, the team members gain insight in the ‘voice’ of tradition, how it manifests in their own lives and in the training institute. in this article the focus is on answering the research questions through intensive collaboration with academics who take on the role of co-researchers. they are involved in the process of analysing and interpreting the data resulting from the online scoring of the valuations, and by this manner of participation a strong feeling of commitment to the outcomes is established. for the construction of the set of valuations, we made use of the examples of ‘good practice’ which the team members provided and of the theoretical input collected during the team meetings. next, we drew on the reports about the focus group conversations which followed (the third intervention which took place in team meetings), during which academics jointly discussed the core characteristics of the present-day and future teacher training in re. before we introduce the tasks which we presented to the team members in order to invite them to co-operate as co-researchers, we provide examples of significant valuations, in the way they emerged out of the examples of good practice and the theoretical and practice-oriented focus group conversations6: 2. society demands that i include the culture of young people in my lessons. 3. an re teacher trained at the rc-tti is familiar with the catholic tradition and experiences this tradition in an authentic way. 5. an re teacher educated at the rc-tti is trained both as a theologian and as a pedagogue, and is thus well equipped to explore existential questions with students in secondary education. 16. an re teacher trained at the rc-tti is, first of all, a theologian. 18. students of the rc-tti learn about the catholic tradition, and about other religious traditions besides. 23. future: we, as the rc-tti, are highly respected in europe. the sum total of 25 valuations constitutes the team’s ‘system of valuations’. the whole system of valuations is shown to the team by means of an online presentation. more specifically, every valuation out of 25 is screened separately, and is shown in consecutive order to the single team members (the academics), asking them to relate each of the 16 validated affects to the situations that are described. every team member is asked to score – on a scale from 0 to 5 – to what extent the separate valuations elicited particular feelings out of a list of 16 feelings (referring to selfand other-motive, and related to positive and negative feelings). the 25 valuations are shown on the screen in consecutive order, and underneath the valuations the affect terms appear one by one, whereby the team members are given the possibility to enter a score between 0 and 5 for every single affect term. the 16 feelings are listed below, with their validated relation to the selfor other-motive, including the positive or negative-direction of the respective affect term. it should be pointed out that neither the sor o-directedness, nor the por n-direction is shown to the respondents. self-motive: self-esteem, strength, self-confidence, pride other-motive: care, kindness, friendship, team-spirit positive: enjoyment, satisfaction, inner calm, trust negative: inferiority, anxiety, disappointment, anger the scores of the participating academics are analysed by using software engineered by psycro bv/scmpro service.7 presentation of data and results of the analysis we present the data of our study which focuses on the development of insight into the ‘voice of tradition(s)’ by our individual team members and the team as a whole, with the help of scatter diagrams which represent the reactions of our respondents to the so-called valuations. these valuations challenged our participants to explore their positionality regarding ‘the voice of tradition’ and their personal commitment to the old and the new curriculum (i.e. still to be developed). more specifically, it was their positionality in the past, in the present and for the future (i.e. the positionality they wish for in the future) that was explored by means of the valuations. there is a high correlation (0.94) between the scores given to affects which relate to the actual situation (the situation at the time of the scoring), and the scores given to affects which relate to the future situation. the following valuations show high correlations (higher than 0.90) with both of these situations – future as well as current situation: 3 a teacher trained at the rc-tti knows and experiences the roman catholic tradition from an insider’s perspective. 5 an re teacher educated at the rc-ti is trained both as a theologian and as a pedagogue, and is thus well equipped to explore existential questions with students in secondary education. 7 alumni of the rc-tti are aware of their own positionality regarding the roman-catholic tradition. 9 the roman catholic teacher is loyal to his school and to the church. 14 the rc-tti promotes the grading up of the status of the subject re. 15 a teacher trained at the rc-tti initiates at the school the discussion about ‘good education. 20 future: working closely with the coach at the school, i am responsible for the development of ‘the good catholic teacher’. 22 future: students are all ears for any teacher trained at the rc-tti. what these valuations have in common is their high scores on feelings related to the self-motive, paired with high scores to the other-motive – though these latter scores are lower than the scores on the self-motive. one could say that the selfand other-motive, representing care for oneself as a professional and the directedness towards others, are interwoven in the conceptions which academics have about the contemporary and the future reality of the rc-tti. regarding the self-motive, or care for one self, the mean scores for the feeling of self-esteem are generally the highest (3.32), while those for pride are the lowest (3.06). self-esteem gets the highest mean score (4.69) for the valuation no. 5: an re teacher educated at the rc-tti is trained both as a theologian and as a pedagogue, and is thus well equipped to explore existential questions with students in secondary education. the lowest mean score (1.13) for self-esteem is given to valuation no. 4: the bishop is the person who is primarily responsible for the quality of the rc-tti. like self-esteem, pride gets the highest score (4.25) on valuation no. 5. the lowest mean score (1.00) for pride is for valuation no. 10: the professional body is dominated by senior academics. self-esteem and pride, though, are undermined by anxiety (corr. −0.91 and −0.90, respectively) and disappointment (corr. −0.97 and −0.93, respectively). these scores might point to a possible conflict between the professional autonomy that academics favour, and their disappointment about the restrictions that are imposed on them – because of the dominance of clerical and senior participants – in the discussion about the future curriculum of the rc-tti. such a conflict might hinder – but might also have a stimulating effect on – the reformulation of the relationship between church and educational institute. regarding the other-motive, or directedness towards others, the mean scores for the feeling of team-spirit are generally the highest (2.76) and the feeling of kindness gets the lowest mean score (2.41). team-spirit gets the highest score (4.00) on valuation no. 20 future: working closely with the coach at the school, i am responsible for the development of ‘the good catholic teacher’. the lowest mean score (1.44) for team-spirit is for valuation no. 10: the professional body is dominated by senior academics. the highest mean score for kindness (3.06) is given to valuation no. 12: the rc-tti encompasses knowledge about and experience with spirituality. the lowest mean score (1.19) for kindness, like for team-spirit, is given to valuation no. 10: the professional body is dominated by senior academics. team-spirit and kindness are both undermined by feelings of anxiety (corr. −0.83 and −0.87, respectively) and disappointment (corr. −0.83 and −0.87, respectively). these scores might shed light on a matter that concerns all the staff members, namely the apparent discrepancy between a longing for close co-operation and shared responsibility with the coaches at the schools, and the dominance of senior academics who generally are of the opinion that, at the end of the day, they – and only they – contribute to the professional qualities of re teachers who pass their exams at the rc-tti. this discrepancy needs to be elaborated upon because it might hinder the innovation of the curriculum at this institute. in three scatter diagrams, the intensity of the scores is shown in its positive or negative strength. the first scatter diagram gives an overview of all the positions of a single person. for every single person, this diagram shows how every valuation out of 25 (by way of the scores) is situated in the negative side (the upper left side) of the scatter diagram, and how the other valuations are positioned in the positive side (the right down side) of the scatter diagram. for the greater part, the respondents relate in a negative way to the valuations no. 1 (a teacher trained at the rc-tti transmits truth claims to pupils at secondary schools in the way this is prescribed by the roman catholic tradition), no. 4 (the bishop is the person who is primarily responsible for the quality of the rc-tti) and 10 (the professional body is dominated by senior academics). one dissonant voice is heard. this person values the transmission of roman catholic truth claims to pupils in a positive way. the second scatter diagram shows the visualised presentation of one single valuation, and how the single group members are positioned (by way of their scoring) in regard to this specific valuation. in our research, this showed, for example, with regard to valuation no. 7: alumni of the rc-tti are aware of their own positionality regarding the roman-catholic tradition. in general, the respondents are situated at the positive side of the scatter diagram; only one person in the negative side of the diagram is the dissonant voice regarding this specific valuation. in general, this diagram presents a homogeneous picture in the sense that the respondents agree and are all positioned either on the negative or the positive side of the diagram. the presentation of some single valuations pictures the spread of the positive and negative position of the different single group members. more or less isolated dissonant voices of group members are seen in seven of the in the scatter diagrams presented valuations. depending on the valuation, different persons have a dissonant voice. the third diagram gives an overview of the group scores. this diagram shows how the different appreciations of the valuations are scattered within the space of the diagram. this scatter diagram shows, for example, that the team scored a specific group of valuations in a generally positive way: 3 a teacher trained at the rc-tti knows and experiences the roman catholic tradition from an inside perspective. 7 the teacher graduated at the rc-tti is well aware of her/his own positionality regarding the catholic tradition. 12 the rc-tti encompasses knowledge about and experiences with spirituality 14 the rc-tti promotes the grading-up of the subject of re 15 a teacher trained at the rc-tti initiates at the school the discussion about ‘good education’. 18 students at the rc-tti know about the catholic tradition and other worldview traditions in the netherlands. 20 future: together with the coach of students’ teaching practice i am responsible for the development of ‘the good catholic teacher’. 22 future: students are all ears for any teacher trained at the rc-tti. these valuations share a focus on personal development and commitment, and another group of valuations in a negative way: 1 a teacher trained at the rc-tti transmits truth claims to pupils at secondary schools in the way this is prescribed by the roman catholic tradition. 4 the bishop is the person who is primarily responsible for the quality of the rc-tti. 10 the professional body is dominated by senior academics. these valuations revolve around an attitude of resisting top-down/external influences on the teaching content of re professionals and their positionality regarding the roman catholic tradition. professional autonomy visibly turns out to be a preferred position. these scatter diagrams are analysed with the co-operation of the academic scholars themselves, by including them as co-researchers in our study (the fourth intervention). to familiarise them with their task as co-researchers, we developed assignments in which they were asked to analyse and interpret the outcomes of their reactions (‘scoring’) to the valuations (hermans & hermans-jansen 1995). one of the assignments was to discuss with each other the different positions a person her/himself and the colleagues occupy with regard to valuation number x, x1, x2 and so forth. at this stage of the co-researching process, the valuations with a mixed picture in the scatter diagrams were brought into the discussion. questions like ‘how can the difference in the scoring of valuation no. x be interpreted?’ in this phase of the analysis, special attention was given to the ‘dissonant voices’ about each of these valuations (cf. ter avest 2014a; van de loo 2012). another assignment invited the team members to compare the team’s positioning of valuation x with how they positioned valuation y, or with the positioning of a group of valuations. ‘what differences and/or commonalities do you notice?’ ‘what is your interpretation of the differences and/or commonalities?’ what is the meaning of your interpretation for the actual and new-to-be-developed curriculum of the teacher training institute? as a result of the analysis and the interpretations of the academics that were involved in it, we wrote a ‘state of the art’ in which we formulated the different positions with regard to the teams’ system of valuations, and which summarised the consequences of this positionality for a new curriculum-to-be-constructed. the text focused on a number of contrasting feelings: feeling confirmed in one’s positioning, versus being ‘violated’, or being invited to leave the comfort zone to enter the internal and external dialogue on autonomy versus restrictions, that is, restrictions on the part of the bishop, or limitations resulting from the close cooperation with coaches working at secondary schools. a dialogue on these topics, which takes the dissonant voices into account, is preconditional for the work that has to be done for the new curriculum-to-be-constructed, a curriculum with the aim to recognise and include contemporary youth sub-culture in the construction of the identity of an re teacher in secondary education (cf. knausgard 2014). raising hopes for the success of the dialogues to come is the shared commitment for curriculum innovation, as this is seen, for example, in the homogeneous picture that the diagram shows for valuation no. 20: future: working closely with the coach at the school, i am responsible for the development of ‘the good catholic teacher’. shared feelings on this aspect of the new curriculum might be a solid ground to overcome the tensions. conclusion, discussion and recommendations based on our observations during this process, the positive feedback of the academics involved and the results of the analyses of the data, we answer our research questions in the following way. we conclude that the dialogical self theory-based method of the self confrontation method for organisations has shown itself to be a challenging instrument to invite academics involved in the process of data construction and data analysis. however, much time had to be invested (four team meetings of approximately 2 h, and at least 1 h of homework for each of the participants to score the valuations) in the process of reflecting on personal and team positionality. in particular, the aspect of not being analysed, but being involved and committed to the process of analysing in the role of a co-researcher, was not only innovative from a methodological point of view but also highly appreciated by the academics of this specific teacher training institute for re teachers. awareness was raised through clarification of the theoretical framework of the dialogical self theory about the close relation between a person’s and the team’s commitment (cf. verhofstadt-denève 1995) and the (im)possibility to realise a new curriculum (cf. hargreaves & fullan 2012). in the context of the netherlands as a pluralistic society, innovation of the training of re teachers at teacher training institutes may be urgent. the realising of such an innovation depends not only on the degree of motivation and commitment, but, to a large extent, also on capabilities of the academics involved to reflect on their individual and group positionality and take the consequences. for the persons involved, the self confrontation method for organisations raised their awareness of their own and their colleagues’ different ways and different intensities of commitment (their actual way of interpreting and adhering – in some way or another – to the roman catholic tradition) and their motivation for innovation of the curriculum. in addition, as the facilitation of dialogue is at the heart of the dialogical self theory and its methods, the self confrontation method for organisations also informed colleagues about each other’s competencies with regard to the team effort of innovation. not only for academics in re the use of the dialogical self theory-related instruments might be helpful, but also in disciplines other than re and theology. the self confrontation method for organisations is a promising instrument to research and transform academics’ positionality in their current and future (possibly innovative) approach of their work. the transformative power of this instrument is in its dialogical approach, doing justice to and recognising each participant’s multi-voiced contribution regarding the challenges faced by a team of academics. the challenge that lies at the heart of this method of co-researching is the introduction of the characteristics of dialogical self theory and its self confrontation method, in a condensed way in a team meeting of only 2 h. a minimal degree of familiarity with the core concepts of this theoretical framework is preconditional to come up to the expectations of this process. this must be done by an expert in the field of the dialogical self theory and its instruments like the self confrontation method for organisations in such a way that team members are well enough informed to make sure that none of them feel violated at some point, but, on the contrary, all feel invited and empowered to engage in the analysis of the constructed data. with our theoretical approach of the dialogical self theory, we contributed to the body of knowledge regarding preconditions which have to be in place, in order for academics to commit to joint efforts of innovation in education. however, more research about this dialogical type of collaboration in data construction and data analysis is required. in addition to including academics in the process of formulating the so-called valuations, and in the process of analysing and interpreting results – a process that, in itself, already gave much insight – we recommend to include the research population in a validation process, a crucial aspect of the self confrontation method as this was developed primarily. as a monitoring process, the validation process is important, relevant and efficient. it performs these functions not only in terms of the sustainability of the results, but even more so when it comes to minimising any feelings of violation for each person and with regard to the team’s comfort zone, and to maximise engagement in the implementation phase of the new curriculum. the coaching of academics, which revolves around the stimulation of a growing awareness, is an ongoing process for every person and for the team as a whole, and a necessary one to keep up with developments regarding the place of religion in society. to be capable to educate the next generation of re teachers, academics should work continuously on their own authentic positionality with regard to the core characteristics (the valuations) of the old and new to-be-constructed curriculum. this is work in progress. these scholars need to strengthen their will to leave their own comfort zone, and their resolution to create a shared commitment towards the new curriculum. last but not least, reflection is needed upon the work in progress in order to learn from their shared history on their way to the future of a catholic teacher training institute as a highly respected institute in today’s europe. acknowledgements competing interests the authors declare that they have no financial or personal relationships that may have inappropriately influenced them in writing this article. authors’ contributions c.b. was the project leader and responsible for the project design. i.t.a. was responsible for the theoretical framework of the dialogical self theory and its self confrontation method for teams. references bakker, c., 2014, het goede leren. leraarschap als normatieve professie, [good learning; teaching as a normative profession], public lecture given at utrecht university/utrecht university of applied sciences, utrecht. bakker, c. & wassink, h., 2015, leraren en het goede leren. normatieve professionalisering in het onderwijs, [teachers and good learning; normative professionalization in education], utrecht university, utrecht. bakker, c. & montesano montessori, n. (eds.), 2016, complexity in education: from horror to passion, sense publishers, rotterdam. bakker, c. & ter avest, i., 2008, ‘opnieuw denken: de visie van marcia op identiteitsontwikkeling [thinking anew: marcia’s view on identity development]’, in k. meijlink c.s. reflecties op multiculturele identiteit. onderwijspakket stel je voor; de kunst van het beleven en ontmoeten. identiteitsontwikkeling in de basisschool [reflections on multicultural identity; educational package just imagine – the art of experience and encounter], pp. 7–15, marnixacademie, utrecht. biesta, g., 2014, the beautiful risk of education, routledge, london/new york. du preez, p., 2011, ‘reconciliation through dialogical nostaligia in post-conflict societies: a curriculum to intersect’, compare: a journal of comparative and international education 44(1), 117–135, https://doi.org/10.1080/03057925.2013.859875 hargreaves, a. & fullan, m., 2012, professional capital. transforming teaching in every school, columbia university, teachers college press, new york. hermans, h.j.m. & gieser, t. (eds.) 2012, handbook of dialogical self theory, cambridge university press, cambridge cb2 8ru, uk. hermans, h.j.m. & hermans-jansen, e., 1995, self-narratives. the construction of meaning in psychotherapy, the guilford press, new york nj 10012. hermans, h.j.m. & hermans-konopka, a., 2010, dialogical self theory. positioning and counter-positioning in a globalizing society, cambridge university press, cambridge cb2 8ru, uk. jackson, r., 1997, religious education. an interpretive approach, hodder and stoughton, london. jackson, r., 2011, ‘special issue: religion, education, dialogue and conflict: the redco project’, british journal of religious education 33(2), 105–109. jackson, r., miedema, s., weisse, w. & willaime, j.-p. (eds.), 2007, religion and education in europe: developments, contexts and debates, waxmann, münster. kalsky, m. & pruim, f., 2014, flexibel geloven. zingeving voorbij de grenzen van religies [flexible faith. construction of meaning crossing the borders of religious traditions], skandalon uitgeverij, vught. kelchtermans, g., 2009, ‘who i am in how i teach is the message. self-understanding, vulnerability and reflection’, teachers and teaching: theory and practice 15(2), 257–272. https://doi.org/10.1080/13540600902875332 kelchtermans, g., 2013, de leraar als (on)eigentijdse professional. reflecties over de ‘moderne professionaliteit’ van leerkrachten [the teacher as a present-day/out-dated professional, reflections on the ‘modern professionalism’ of teachers], onderwijsraad, den haag. knausgård, k.o., 2014, ‘ik ben niemand [i am nobody]’, vrij nederland, vol. 37, september 13, pp. 71–72. korthagen, f.a.j., 2001, linking practice and theory. the pedagogy of realistic teacher education, lawrence erlbaum associates, london, in close cooperation with kessels, j., koster, b., lagerwerf, b. & t. wubbels. marcia, j.e., 1980, ‘identity in adolescence’, in j. adelson (ed.), handbook of adolescent psychology, pp. 159–187, wiley, new york. oudenampsen, m., 2014, ‘de mars van gods stoottroepen [the march of god’s army]’, de groene amsterdammer 138(37), pp. 26–29. roebben, b., 2009, seeking sense in the city; european perspectives on religious education, lit verlag, berlin. rubin, h.j. & rubin, i.s., 2003, qualitative interviewing. the art of hearing data, sage, thousand oaks, ca. schwartz, r.m., 1986, ‘the internal dialogue. on the asymmetry between positive and negative coping thoughts’, cognitive therapy and research 10(6), 591–605. https://doi.org/10.1007/bf01173748 taylor, c., 1989, sources of the self, the making of modern identity, cambridge university press, cambridge cb2 2ru, uk. taylor, c., 1991, the malaise of modernity, house of anansi press, toronto. taylor, ch. 2009, a secular age, the belknap press of the harvarduniversity press, cambridge, massachusetts, and london, england. ter avest, i., 2014a, ‘value orientation of teams’, presentation at the dialogical self conference, the hague 19–22 august. ter avest, i., (ed.), 2014b, af en toe stemmen [attuning and adapting to the other’s voice], gopher b.v., amsterdam. ter avest, i., bertram-troost, g.d. & miedema, s., 2012, ‘provocative pedagogy, or youngster need the brain to challenge world view formation’, religious education 107(4), 356–370. ter avest, i., jozsa, d.-p., knauth, t., rosón, j. & skeie, g. (eds.), 2009, dialogue and conflict on religion. studies of classroom interaction in european countries, waxmann, münster. ter borg, m., borgman, e., buitelaar, m., kuiper, y. & plum, r. (eds.), 2008, handboek religie in nederland; perspectief, overzicht, debat [handbook religion in the netherlands; perspectives, overview, debate], meinema, zoetermeer. van de donk, w.b.h.j., jonkers, a.p., kronjee, g.j. & plum, r.j.j.m. (eds.), 2006, geloven in het publieke domein. verkenningen van een dubbele transformatie, [religion in the public domain. explorations of a double transformation], university press, amsterdam. van de loo, r., 2012, ‘de stem van de dissonant: stimulering van meerstemmigheid en dialoog bij teamontwikkeling’, [the voice of the dissonant: challenging multi-voicedness and dialogue in team development], in f. meijers (ed.), wiens verhaal telt? naar een narratieve en dialogische loopbaanbegeleiding [whose story are we talking about? towards a narrative and dialogical career coaching], uitgeverij garant, antwerpen, pp. 219–236. van den ende, t.m.l. & kunneman, h.p., 2007, ‘normatieve professionaliteit en normatieve professionalisering een pleidooi voor conceptuele verdieping’, [normative professionalism and normative professionalisation. a plea for conceptual clarification], in g. jacobs, r. meij, h. tenwolde & y. zomer (eds.), goed werk. verkenningen van normatieve professionalisering, pp. 68–87, swp, amsterdam. van der want, a., bakker, c., ter avest, i. & everington, j. (eds.), 2009, teachers responding to religious diversity in europe. researching biography and pedagogy, waxmann, münster, new york, münchen, berlin. van der zande, e., 2018, ‘life orientation for professionals. a narrative inquiry into morality and dialogical competency in professionalisation’, phd thesis, utrecht university, utrecht, the netherlands. van ewijk, h. & kunneman, h. (eds.), 2013, praktijken van normatieve professionalisering [praxis of normative professionalization], swp, amsterdam. verhofstadtdenève, l., 1995, zelfreflectie en persoonsontwikkeling: een handboek voor ontwikkelingsgerichte psychotherapie [self-reflection and personal development: a handbook for development-oriented psychotherapy], uitgeverij acco, leuven. versteegt, i., 2010, ‘diversiteit in de klas – perspectief van de leerkracht’, [diversity in the classroom – from a teacher’s perspective], phd thesis, utrecht university, utrecht, the netherlands. vloet, k., jacobs, g. & veugelers, w., 2016, ‘teacher’s professional identity development as a dialogical process’, paper of the dialogical self conference, september 7–10, poland, september 7. wijsbek, j., 2009, de dialogische organisatie [the dialogical organisation], koninklijke van gorcum, assen. footnotes 1. in the concept ‘normative professionalism’, the normative aspect refers to the inclusion of the value orientation (values and norms) of the practitioner’s perspective on everyday issues in his or her work and the (deep) reflection thereof. 2. for the normative professional identity development of academics at teacher training institutes, it is of utmost importance that three domains which can be traced within their personal commitment are brought into a flexible balance: their personal commitment to a (religious or secular) worldview, to their teacher training institute and to the value orientation of society as a whole (van ewijk & kunneman 2013; kelchtermans 2013). 3. ‘close reading’ refers to repeated reading and accordingly marking the pivotal concepts of a text, categorising and coding. for an extensive description of this process, see rubin and rubin (2005:206–209). 4. these valuations can be seen as ‘findings’ of the preceding interventions. however, at the same time the analysis of these valuations by the lecturers as co-researchers is at the heart of our innovative methodology. 5. scm: self confrontation method (hermans & hermans-jansen 1995). 6. the numbers in the paragraph below point to the sequence in the system of valuations. 7. psycro bv/scmpro service was purpose-built for the analysis of scm-scores, in close cooperation with the founder of the valuation theory and dialogical self theory. abstract introduction the involvement of stakeholders a postcolonial perspective problem statement research question aims of research review of relevant literature research approach: design-based approach empirical research: methodology interpretation of the data towards a first attempt assessing the competencies conclusion acknowledgements references about the author(s) ian a. nell department of practical theology and missiology, faculty of theology, stellenbosch university, cape town, south africa citation nell, i.a., 2020, ‘competency-based theological education in a postcolonial context: towards a transformed competency framework’, transformation in higher education 5(0), a74. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v5i0.74 project research number: 00-ian nell tau proposal v.1 25/07/2018 original research competency-based theological education in a postcolonial context: towards a transformed competency framework ian a. nell received: 13 aug. 2019; accepted: 22 jan. 2020; published: 11 mar. 2020 copyright: © 2020. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract background: assessment of students for ministerial practice is traditionally performed through assignments and oral examinations, which often only concentrate on the knowledge component and outcomes of the programme. assessing students in this way lead to a view of religious practitioners as people who are not really in touch with their parishioners and communicating in language that is not addressing their needs and this normally leads to a disjuncture between knowledge, practice and context. disjuncture of this nature signals a need for a broader set of competencies than simply working with and analysing texts in theological education. aim: the aim of this research is to develop a set of competencies that responds to the reality that the practice of ministry takes place within a rich diversity of postcolonial settings and practices. setting: the research was done as part of my own interest in developing a competency framework for religious leaders. i am coordinating the master of divinity program as well as the postgraduate diploma in christian ministry at our faculty of theology. both these programs directly relate to the preparation of students for ministerial leadership. methods: the central research question of this study was formulated as follows: what are the central ingredients for developing a competency framework for ministerial formation from a postcolonial perspective at a research-intensive university in south africa? the method that was used to answer the research question was a literary study of primary and secondary sources related to a broad set of competencies and then narrowing it down to religious leadership as well as some qualitative empirical research in the form of personal interviews. results: the research in the article looked at the ways in which a competency framework can help translate generic graduate attributes into a set of competencies that is specific to the field of ministerial training. some empirical work showed evidence of a growing postcolonial awareness in the development of these competencies. conclusion: through this research a competency framework for religious leaders has successfully been developed. the next phase of the research project will be to implement the framework, to have feedback and to make some adjustments. keywords: competency-based theological education; postcolonial context; assessment; competency framework; master of divinity. introduction the overarching question that led to this research was: how well do we prepare our graduates for the 21st century? we have to take the comment of tencer (2017:2) seriously: ‘eighty five percent of jobs that will exist in 2030 haven’t been invented yet’. we therefore have to prepare our students and graduates for a world for which it is essentially not possible to prepare. in preparing our students for these professions that do not yet exist, we have the further responsibility to assess whether they will be in the position to do the work competently. therefore, the assessment of students enjoys a high priority in higher education institutions all around the world, and there are also ongoing efforts to improve it by adopting new policies every year. all this is related to quality assurance and control and forms an integral part of the higher education qualification framework in south africa. at the faculty of theology at stellenbosch university (su) (2013), we are currently in the process of going through a new phase of policy renewal in this regard and it forces every lecturer to investigate in depth his or her various forms of assessment. assessment of theology students for ministerial practice is traditionally performed through completing assignments and oral examinations, which often only concentrate on the knowledge component and outcomes of the programme. this has mimicked a view of ministerial practitioners as intellectuals ‘preaching over the heads of the congregants and not in touch with the pastoral needs of the members’. this normally leads to a disjuncture between knowledge and practice. this disjuncture signals the need for a broader set of competencies than just working with and analysing texts in ministerial education (burger & nell 2012). this also responds in part to the reality that the practice of ministry is performed within a rich diversity of postcolonial settings and practices (naidoo 2012). to resolve this dilemma, a competency framework can help translate generic graduate attributes as well as the profiles of students who finished their studies, as developed by different partner churches, into a set of competencies that is specific to the field of ministerial training. the involvement of stakeholders the need for a competency framework also flows from an initiative from the side of su in developing four generic graduate attributes, namely, an enquiring mind, an engaged citizen, a dynamic professional and a well-rounded individual. stellenbosch university has begun the process of embedding the graduate attributes within the curriculum as well as the co-curriculum to ensure that students acquire the core competencies that move them towards graduate success. the importance of a competency framework has also been recognised by different partner churches at our faculty, for example, by the uniting reformed church, which states in its ‘profile for ministers of the word in the uniting reformed church in southern africa’ (urcsa 2014:13) the following: values or attitudes – genuine faith, a sense of calling, self-respect, character traits, reflexivity, respect for others knowledge – basic theological orientation, the bible or hermeneutics, systematic theology, theological ethics, church history, practical theology, missiology, intercultural theology, ecumenism, church polity and interdisciplinary approach, willingness and ability to use insights from other sciences, global context, general knowledge skills – communication skills (proclaiming, teaching, writing), interpretation (hermeneutical) and intellectual skills, spirituality, management or leadership, pastoral caregiving, involvement in society (research, intervention, ecumenical cooperation, community issues). before i move on to the problem statement and the research question, it is worthwhile to get some clarity on what is meant by a postcolonial perspective, seeing that this is the context in which this research was performed. a postcolonial perspective much has been written on what is meant by ‘postcolonial,’ especially since the student protests and the #fallist movements came into existence from october 2015 onwards. a number of distinctions have to be made. postcolonialism, according to scholars keller, nausner and rivera (2004) and sharp (2012), is primarily concerned with an indication of the time historically following various movements towards independence in the former colonies. in that sense, it is also critical of new forms of colonialism that are ongoing. however, looking at the historical development of colonialism, we see that it is related to the organisation of nations and people in hierarchical relationships of oppression and domination. a postcolonial perspective could therefore be articulated as narratives that venerate inequalities and hide behind masks of colonising patterns of relationships. a postcolonial perspective therefore emphasises the authenticity of diverse involvement by unmasking the norms that suppress people and limit their possibility for participation. participation here refers to the purpose of mutuality in relationships between people from diverse structures of interpersonal relationships to institutional and ecclesial structures (abraham 2008:377). postcolonial theories therefore analyse unequal power relations in the era after the formal end of colonialism and focus on the marginalisation and subordination of populations that formerly lived in colonial contexts. according to sharp (2012:425), ‘[p]ostcolonial work aims to lessen global oppression and increase justice, particularly in concrete lives of women and children, through recognizing the full humanity of all persons’. postcolonial writers such as fanon (1986) and mbembe (2001) are interested in culture and identity, gender and race, and with the sustained attention to colonial relations for a better understanding of the coloniser and the colonised. a key vantage point of these postcolonial scholars is to expose the way in which ‘common sense’ understandings and mainstream scholarship ground the social world in western perspectives, thereby drawing attention to the epistemological basis of western power. according to them, these forms of power must be challenged to bring about political change. mbembe (2001) wrote: africa still constitutes one of the metaphors through which the west represents the origins of its own norms, develops a self-image, and integrates this image into the set of signifiers asserting what is supposed to be its identity. (p. 2) the postcolonial project is therefore mainly one of critique and derives its strength from its positioning outside of the community responsible for policy-making. in this regard, fanon’s (1986:232) appeal towards the end of black skin white masks could be seen as the apex of many postcolonial writings: ‘make of me always a man of questions’. problem statement it is evident from the argument so far that there is a particular need to develop a competency framework that can be incorporated in the master of divinity programme taking the postcolonial context into account. this needs to go beyond simply stating the graduate attributes in general terms. there is a need to actively develop students’ competencies to function as professional practitioners within this postcolonial context. this includes ways to assess students’ competencies in more ways than is traditionally performed. according to ashwin (2012), competencies acquired in higher education are assumed to be specific to a field of study and need to be multidimensional. in this sense, these competencies distinguish themselves from intelligence and general cognitive abilities. the fourth industrial revolution, however, will require transdisciplinary approaches to knowledge creation driven by a solution-oriented mindset. this is the case because there is a gradual shift away from higher education as it is traditionally known towards transdisciplinary education. this is of specific importance for preparing students for ministry. there is also a shift towards programme evaluations based on critical competencies and skills developed, and the related practices. this represents a departure from the emphasis on learning outcomes where knowledge and retention thereof are measured. research question in the light of the argument above, the research question was formulated as follows: what are the central ingredients for developing a competency framework for a master’s degree in theology at a research-intensive university from a postcolonial perspective? aims of research the aim was to develop, implement and evaluate a first iteration of a competency framework to facilitate the assessment of master of divinity students, which could subsequently serve as a framework for the assessment of students more broadly in master of divinity programmes in the african postcolonial context. at a broader level, the aim of the project was to challenge the traditional ways of assessment that mostly concentrate only on cognitive (knowledge) skills. review of relevant literature at su, from 2015, we started a process of embedding the graduate attributes in the curriculum of certain chosen programmes in the 10 faculties of the university (nell & bosman 2017). this initiative was performed to ensure that students acquire the core competencies that move them towards graduate success. there is in our faculty a particular need to develop a competency framework that can be incorporated into the master of divinity programme, in the light of the fact that this is a professional degree required by students who want to go into full-time ministry. this initiative underscored the importance of a framework that goes beyond simply stating graduate attributes in generic terms. a survey of the literature produced the following headings. from graduate attributes towards competencies research by jacobs and strydom (2014) indicated that the development of graduate attributes is enhanced when embedded in a disciplinary framework. in their contribution, entitled ‘from “matie” to citizen’, they look at ways in which graduate attributes as signature learning at su can help students to become well-rounded individuals and engaged citizens. according to jones (2013:592), a further determinant of a well-rounded individual is the notion of teaching and learning that embraces life-wide experiences integrated into the textured and complex lives of our students. this takes place by acknowledging the valuable development that occurs in student-driven spaces beyond the classroom and the formal curriculum. defining competencies there is a voluminous body of literature on competencies, in which competencies are broadly defined as ‘a combination of cognitive, affective, motivational, volitional and social dispositions that form the basis for performance’ (shavelson 2010:43). shavelson presents an approach to measuring and statistically modelling competency measurements by defining competency as a complex ability construct closely related to real-life-situated performance. the intent is to make the construct ‘competence’ amenable to measurement. competencies can thus be seen as trait dispositions that are relatively stable over time and across situations, while changes can be induced by dynamic components. an additional consideration for developing a competency framework is bloom’s taxonomy framework, with its emphasis on scaffolding learning. there is a need for threshold concepts to be purposefully integrated into programmes and activities and to make them part of the competency framework. it is also important to make a distinction between learning outcomes and competencies. learning outcomes are defined in terms of particular levels of knowledge, skills and abilities that a student has attained (adam 2008:9). competencies take this further by describing learning outcomes in terms that define not only what is to be learnt but also the specific levels of performance that students are expected to master (mulder, weigel & collins 2007:67). global competencies it is interesting that when one works through the literature, one finds what is called ‘global competencies’ (bird, osland & lane 2004:57–80; jokinen 2005:199–216). according to the organization for economic co-operation and development programme for international student assessment (oecd pisa) global competence framework (see figure 1), global competence (ramos & schleischer 2018): [i]ncludes the acquisition of in-depth knowledge and understanding of global and intercultural issues; the ability to learn from and live with people from diverse backgrounds; and the attitudes and values necessary to interact respectfully with others. global competence is the capacity to examine local, global and intercultural issues, to understand and appreciate the perspectives and world views of others, to engage in open, appropriate and effective interactions with people from different cultures, and to act for collective well-being and sustainable development. (p. 6) figure 1: the dimensions of global competence. increased demand for generic competencies an interesting contribution is the work of young and chapman (2010), in which they give a description of the historical overview of the development of competency frameworks. according to them, ‘rapid transformations of the world economy over the last three decades have precipitated profound changes to labour markets across the globe’ (young & chapman 2010:2), and through globalisation a shift away from agriculture or manufacturing towards a new knowledge-based global market took place. this necessarily led to the situation that increased levels of necessity for workers able to keep up with changes that the new economy brought also led to the development of a whole new set of broad skills or generic competencies. they provide interesting examples from all over the globe of the development of these generic competencies. competency-based theological education the purpose and task of theological training are to educate and equip prospective leaders with the necessary gifts and competencies to empower other believers to participate in the mission of the church. in this study, the point of departure is that there is a close connection between the quality of theological training and the quality of the candidate arriving for the ministry. competency-based theological education (cbte) takes this challenge seriously. according to the association of theological schools (2018), cbte: [r]epresents a paradigm shift in theological education. it offers an innovative way for seminaries and learning networks to raise a new generation of proven leaders, trained in context, in the knowledge, in the skills, and in the character traits they need to prosper in their callings. (p. 4) compared to the content-transfer model, where the focus is on content and topics of study as the organisational principle, the competency-based model works with fluidity and provides a framework for learning and teaching in a variety of contexts. in the competency model, excellence is mainly measured by the nature of the process and not through knowledge production. the real criterion for excellence in competency-based education is the degree to which the student is ready to function effectively in ministry and show potential for continued theological training (youngblood 1989:29). according to brown (2016), cbte: [i]s an educational model that emphasizes: (1) learning more than ‘seat time,’ (2) the mastery of professionally-oriented competencies, (3) well-planned learning activities or assessments (class-based or not, online or onsite) that students may complete at their own pace, and (4) a community of learning where regular and substantive interaction occurs between qualified faculty and students … one way to compare and contrast cbte with more traditional educational models is that the cbte model holds learning constant while time varies, whereas traditional models hold time constant while learning varies. (p. 2) from this, it is clear that cbte is an approach for developing academic programmes where the focus is on the competencies rather than the time spent in classrooms. students illustrate and demonstrate their skills and knowledge by participating in learning experiences, activities and exercises where there is an alignment with well-defined learning outcomes. mwangi and de klerk (2011) put it as follows: as a curricular model, competency-based learning seeks to develop competencies in persons at different stages of their maturation journey. the competencies encompass the development of the whole person: affect understanding, character, and skills. competency-based learning does not focus on courses and grades but on measuring competencies based on design outcomes. (p. 7) research approach: design-based approach the research involved six sequential steps: develop a better understanding of competency frameworks for teaching and learning in higher education based on a literature review. translate those generic competencies and graduate attributes identified in step 1 to the context of ministerial education. engage lecturers (and students) in terms of the need for and experience of making use of the framework. design teaching and learning activities for the use of the competency framework in the master of divinity programme at su based on steps 1–3. implement the designed framework. evaluate the implementation in step 5 as the final step of a first cycle of design. in the six sequential steps, i made use of design-based research as an appropriate research approach to address the research question. the design-based research approach has been succinctly summarised by reeves (2006) into four phases (see figure 2). figure 2: design-based research. phase 1: analysis of practical problems by researchers and practitioners in collaboration the first phase is focussed on the analysis of a significant educational problem, which in this case is the absence of a well-developed competency framework for the master of divinity programme. teachers and researchers together explore the nature of this educational problem facing students. it is also important for teachers to be involved in this phase so that the full extent of the problem is known, rather than being interpreted solely by researchers. a literature review is also conducted in this phase to refer to the work that has already been performed in the area, or in related areas, and how similar problems might have been addressed. after this initial investigation of the problem, related literature and practitioners’ ideas, it should be possible to provide draft research questions. by the end of this phase, my aim was to have a clear idea of the problem and its educational context, to have read the literature related to the problem area and to have written preliminary research questions. phase 2: development of solutions informed by existing design principles and technological innovations in the second phase, a solution to the problem is proposed that can be implemented in the classroom or educational setting. to create the solution, again, the literature is consulted to find relevant theory that can guide thinking as well as existing design principles that may have addressed a similar problem. phase 3: iterative cycles of testing and refinement of solutions in practice once a learning environment or intervention has been designed and developed (in phase 2), the next phase of design-based research is the implementation and evaluation of the proposed solution in practice. design-based research is not a methodology but a research approach. while both qualitative and quantitative methods may be used, it is worth noting that (van den akker et al. 2006): [d]esign researchers do not emphasize isolated variables. while design researchers do focus on specific objects and processes in specific contexts, they try to study those as integral and meaningful phenomena. (p. 5) phase 4: reflection to produce design principles and enhance solution implementation once a learning environment or intervention has been implemented, evaluated and refined in cycles, the last phase is to produce design principles that can inform future development and implementation decisions. there are potentially at least three outcomes of design-based research: the design principles, designed products or artefacts – the physical representations of the learning environment (e.g. website, cd-rom) and societal outputs, such as professional development and learning. empirical research: methodology the research design for the empirical research that i used works from an interpretive perspective in qualitative research, with its roots in hermeneutics as the study of the theory and practice of interpretation (henning, van rensburg & smit 2004:19–21). the aim of this kind of empirical research is to provide contextually valid descriptions and interpretations of human actions, which are based on an insider’s perspective of people and their world. the research was performed by means of a semi-structured interview schedule (five questions) with five of my colleagues from the faculty of theology. the following interview schedule was used: open ended-interview schedule tell me about your field of lecturing. in relation to what you do, what do competencies mean for you? you know about our graduate attributes framework at the university. do you see a relationship between competencies in our field and the graduate attributes? have you thought about the way in which your field of teaching contributes towards the competencies of the students? if you look at the following competencies, which in your opinion are the most important, and how do you rank them? interpretation of the data in an initial round and to come to an in-depth understanding of what my colleagues understood concerning competencies, i only looked at the answers that my colleagues gave to questions 1 and 2. looking at the data through these bifocal lenses of expertise in lecturing combined with a postcolonial perspective, some interesting data came to the fore. concerning the expertise of each of the colleagues, it was interesting to see in what ways it coloured their way of looking at the competencies. some examples are given as follows: ‘so, my field is theology and development, sometimes termed community development, but for me there is a core theological motivation for the church’s engagement in issues of poverty and inequality. so, that’s the key focus and a lot of my research has been focussed on congregations’ response to issues of poverty and inequality across denominations, across race groups.’ (respondent 1, female, 38 years old) ‘my fields of so-called expertise are called homiletics and liturgy. homiletics in plain language is all about the art and the act of preaching, and liturgy is all about constructing structures for worshipping god, and both of these two fields of my research [have] to do with communication. it’s about the communication of the gospel. so, communication is part and parcel, i would say, actually in the heart of what i try to teach.’ (respondent 2, female, 36 years old) ‘i am a lecturer specifically in practical theology and more so, specialisation in youth work, children and faith formation. so, with that, undergrad, i teach modules like youth work and substance dependency, children’s ministry and child theology. i teach youth culture, planning and organisation of youth work, and i teach faith formation.’ (respondent 3, female, 40 years old) ‘my sub-discipline in practical theology is pastoral care and counselling. so, i have two undergraduate modules that i focus on. the first one is to give students a basic understanding of the basis or to create a basis for pastoral care and counselling, called the introduction to pastoral care and counselling, which gives them sort of an overview of what the subject matter entails. and then a specialised module in hiv/aids care in the third year and then on the postgraduate level, i have the opportunity to zoom into more specific areas…’ (respondent 4, male, 52 years old) ‘mine is just much more in the field of theology of religions and that means the religious plurality and the responses of churches, and therefore you get in the second year a kind of an introduction, an overview to religions in africa and ecumenism or ecumenism and religions in africa. but then applied or demonstrated in terms of two religions and that would be at least christianity and african religion or christianity and african islam.’ (respondent 5, male, 54 years old) from the examples above, one can immediately sense that the fields of expertise will have a direct influence on the way the respondents might approach the different competencies. it cannot but colour their perspectives. concerning postcolonial perspectives, i found some interesting snippets in the data, for example, the following: ‘i think firstly they need to be able to read text and context and the interplay between them. so, for me that’s key. they need to have a framework and […] maybe some normative framework in terms of what theological perspectives relate to issues of poverty and inequality. also, intercessions of powers are some core frameworks that they need to understand. but they also need to interpret, to do social analysis and to see how text and context relate to one another and to be able to read that changing context also and how the text relates to it.’ (respondent 1, female, 38 years old) ‘if you have good communication linked to real integrity or honesty whatever you want to call that, then you have a moment or moments where communication, deep communication, takes place. you could also, on the other hand, […] have all the integrity in the world, but if you are lazy and not making use of the best modes of communication that we have also currently, you know, in terms of technology etcetera, etcetera, then you could also sabotage in a certain sense your integrity.’ (respondent 2, female, 36 years old) ‘i would think of someone who is able to develop their own theological framework or lens. so, you’ve studied a degree in theology. so, at some point, i would think you are able to discern and make decisions around what you believe or don’t believe based on a lens or framework you’ve developed while studying. i think that’s what makes you different from someone studying theology and someone doing ministry without a theology degree. so, being able to make sound theological choices within ministry based on some form of theoretical framework or lens that you’ve developed.’ (respondent 3, female, 40 years old) ‘my understanding of the competencies is to make sure that the students understand that there are smaller competencies or [that] competencies could be required after one module. but then there are life-long competencies in terms of continuous education, which should always still be part of a student’s framework, even while they are busy studying, but also after completion of their studies. that needs to be a reality. the second point is that pastoral care and counselling always works with the existential realities of life, which means that you train young students to deal with the complexities of trauma.’ (respondent 4, male, 52 years old) ‘i would say since they engage in a true realistic context […] they have the appreciative knowledge in terms of cultural and religious diversity. i mean that is the major one. and therefore they should actually as far as the discipline is concerned even begin to map that, depending [on] whether [they are on] the second-year level or the fourth-year level, to map these are the issues that are important because only if you have that kind of knowledge [can] you begin to appreciate the theological and religious and the cultural kind of differences. so, appreciation, it’s a key kind of dimension in it also.’ (respondent 5, male, 54 years old) from the responses, one can see a large number of very different competencies surfaced in the interviews: from competencies to read the text and context, to understanding intercessions of power, to good communication linked to integrity, to developing own theological frameworks, to understanding smaller competencies, to dealing with complexities of trauma and to appreciating knowledge in terms of cultural and religious diversity. when one reads the data through a postcolonial lens, it is obvious that some forms of intersectionality are at play where intersectionality refers to the interaction between race, gender and other classes of differences in social practices, individual lives, cultural ideologies and institutional compositions, and the result of these interactions in terms of power (davis 2008). respondent 1, for example, refers to intercessions of power, issues of poverty and doing social analysis sensitising us to postcolonial critiques and generating possibilities for the transformation of the different competencies that deal with these issues. postcolonial theories can therefore help us deal with structural and material inequalities and force us to ask questions and critique competencies that support sexual, gender, class and race binaries. towards a first attempt in a first attempt, i linked the four basic su graduate attributes to four different types of skills: an enquiring mind to personal skills, a well-rounded individual to people skills, an engaged citizen to applied knowledge skills and a dynamic professional to workplace skills. i further developed five different competencies under each of the skills by making use of literature on master of divinity programmes, inter alia from the association of theological schools in the united states (see figure 3). figure 3: competency framework for the master of divinity. figure 4: example of a competency rubric. assessing the competencies once core competencies required for success in the targeted ministry have been identified, a four-step approach can be set up to help with the improvement of assessing these competencies. it is important to invest the time to write a description, performance standards and indicators for each competency. the competency description is a concise, high-level definition of the concept of competency. it expresses the intent and scope of the competency within the context of the programme. it is a necessary element but does not provide enough detail on its own for consistent assessment. performance standards provide more detail. they describe what mastery of the competency looks like in context; the observable components of the performance that, when combined, fully represent mastery as defined in the description. they articulate what the student is expected to know (cognitive domain), be (affective domain) and do (proficiency domain) with respect to that competency. performance indicators describe observable, measurable behaviours, outputs or circumstances that signal achievement of the performance standards. they quantify criteria a mentor can use to assess whether the student has demonstrated achievement of the performance standard; they describe what evidence of competency achievement might look like in a student. conclusion in this article, i worked with the basic research question: what are the central ingredients for developing a competency framework for a master’s degree in theology at a research-intensive university from a postcolonial perspective? after explaining what i understand under a postcolonial perspective, i reviewed some literature on graduate attributes and competencies and also gave a short description of cbte. i described my research approach as design-based and gave a short depiction of some empirical research i conducted. the interpretation of the data exposed that the participants revealed their understanding of the competencies from the background of their field of interest, and they defined a number of competencies that they see relevant for theological education. finally, a first attempt at a competency framework was undertaken, followed by some concluding remarks on the assessment of the different competencies. acknowledgements this article was delivered at the 14th biennale conference of the international academy for practical theology with the theme ‘(de)coloniality and religious practices: liberating hope’, 04–08 april 2019, faculdades est, sao leopoldo, brazil. competing interests the author declares that no competing interest exists. author’s contributions i declare that i am the sole author of this research article. ethical consideration rec coordinator: stellenbosch university, research ethics committee: human research (humanities) 7856. funding information this research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors. data availability statement data are available from the author upon reasonable request. disclaimer the views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any affiliated agency of the authors. references abraham, s., 2008, ‘what does mumbai have to do with rome? postcolonial perspectives on globalization and theology’, theological education 69(2), 376–393. https://doi.org/10.1177/004056390806900208 adam, s., 2008, ‘learning outcomes current developments in europe: update on the issues and applications of learning outcomes associated with the bologna process,’ paper presented at the bologna seminar: learning outcomes based higher education: the scottish experience, edinburgh. andrews, r., 2018, stellenbosch university co-curriculum office: whole student experiential education, power point presentation, stellenbosch university, cape town, south africa. ashwin, p., 2012, analysing teaching-learning interactions in higher education: accounting for structure and agency, continuum, london. bird, a., osland, j.s. & lane, h.w., 2004, ‘global competencies: an introduction’, in h. lane et al. (eds.), the blackwell handbook of global management: a guide to managing complexity, pp. 57–80, john wiley & sons, hoboken, nj. brown, e.s., 2016, ‘time for a reset’ in theological education: 200 gather to discuss innovation at education models and practices forum, viewed 15 november 2019, from https://www.ats.edu/uploads/resources/publications-presentations/colloquy-online/ed-models-and-practices-forum.pdf burger, c. & nell, i., 2012, ‘ministerial formation in the dutch reformed churches: in search of new paradigms’, in m. naidoo (eds.), between the real and the ideal: ministerial formation in south african churches, pp. 17–32, unisa press, pretoria. davis, k., 2008, ‘intersectionality as buzzword: a sociology of science perspective on what makes a feminist theory successful’, feminist theory 9(1), 67–85. https://doi.org/10.1177/1464700108086364 fanon, f., 1986, black skin, white masks, pluto press, london. henning, e., van rensburg, w. & smit, b., 2004, finding your way in qualitative research, van schaik, pretoria. jacobs, c. & strydom, s., 2014, ‘from “matie” to citizen: graduate attributes as signature learning at stellenbosch university’, the independent journal of teaching and learning 9(1), 63–74. jokinen, t., 2005, ‘global leadership competencies: a review and discussion’, journal of european industrial training 29(3), 199–216. https://doi.org/10.1108/03090590510591085 jones, a., 2013, ‘there is nothing generic about graduate attributes: unpacking the scope of context’, journal of further and higher education 37(5), 591–605. https://doi.org/10.1080/0309877x.2011.645466 keller, c., nausner, m. & rivera, m. (eds.), 2004, postcolonial theologies: divinity and empire, chalice press, st. louis, mo. mbembe, a., 2001, on the postcolony, university of california press, berkley, ca. mulder, m., weigel, t. & collins, k., 2007, ‘the concept of competence in the development of vocational education and training in selected eu member states: a critical analysis’, journal of vocational education & training 59(1), 67–88. https://doi.org/10.1080/13636820601145549 mwangi, j.k., & de klerk, b.j., 2011, ‘an integrated competency-based training model for theological training’, hts theological studies 67(2), 1–10. https://doi.org/10.4102/hts.v67i2.1036 naidoo, m. (ed.), 2012, between the real and the ideal: ministerial formation in the south african churches, unisa press, pretoria. nell, i.a., & bosman, j.p., 2017, ‘integrating graduate attributes into a master of divinity programme at a south african university’, south african journal of higher education 31(1), 175–190. https://doi.org/10.20853/31-1-868 ramos, g. & schleicher, a., 2018, preparing out youth for and inclusive and sustainable world: the oecd pisa global competence framework, viewed 04 march 2019, from https://www.oecd.org/education/global-competency-for-an-inclusive-world.pdf reeves, t., 2006, ‘design research from a technology perspective’, in j.v.d. akker, k. gravemeijer, s. mckenney & n. nieveen (eds.), educational design research, pp. 64–78, routledge, oxford. sharp, m.m., 2012, ‘globalizaton, colonialism, and postcolonialism’, in b. mclemore (ed.), wiley-blackwell companion to practical theology, pp. 422–431, john wiley & sons, hoboken, nj. shavelson, r.j., 2010, ‘on the measurement of competency’, empirical research in vocational education and training 2(1), 41–63. stellenbosch university, 2013, ‘strategy for teaching and learning (2014–2018)’, viewed 14 november 2019, from https://www0.sun.ac.za/ctl/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/su-strategy-for-tl-2014-2018.docx tencer, d., 2017, ‘85% of jobs that will exist in 2030 haven’t been invented yet: dell’, huffpost, viewed 16 november 2019, from https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2017/07/14/85-of-jobs-that-will-exist-in-2030-haven-t-been-invented-yet-d_a_23030098/ the association of theological schools, 2018, resources, viewed 15 november 2019, from https://www.ats.edu/resources uniting reformed church in southern africa (urcsa), 2014, manual for ministerial formation. addendum 3: profile for ministers of the word in the urcsa, viewed n.d., from https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5bb23fabd74562bfe5771ef2/t/5c88c54b4785d36da4e41072/1552467289483/mf+manual+2014.pdf van den akker, j., gravemeijer, k., mckenney, s. & nieveen, n. (eds.), 2006, educational design research, routledge, oxford. young, j. & chapman, e., 2010, ‘generic competency frameworks: a brief historical overview’, education research and perspectives 37(1), 1–7. youngblood, r.l., 1989, excellence and renewal goals for the accreditation of theological education, viewed 18 november 2019, from https://philpapers.org/rec/youear. abstract introduction higher education in mauritius at a glance literature review three case studies data presentation discussion conclusion acknowledgements references about the author(s) hyleen mariaye higher studies cell, mauritius institute of education, mauritius michael samuel school of education, university of kwazulu-natal, south africa citation mariaye, h. & samuel, m., 2018, ‘education hubs and private higher education expansion in small island developing states contexts: the case of mauritius’, transformation in higher education 3(0), a46. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v3i0.46 review article education hubs and private higher education expansion in small island developing states contexts: the case of mauritius hyleen mariaye, michael samuel received: 01 may 2018; accepted: 31 july 2018; published: 16 oct. 2018 copyright: © 2018. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract background: this article is located in the context of governments of small island developing states supporting education hubs in collaboration with local and global partners. whilst current literature on the development of education hubs focuses on the macro policy perspectives looking at how education hub policies are designed and enacted upon at national level, there are relatively few studies on the micro perspective of the institutions. aim: by comparing the agendas, experiences, potential and drawbacks of these institutions, the article explores the sustainability prospects of these variants of education hubs. methods: we selected three case studies: a public distance education university, a local private university and an international branch university within the same broader environmental context to examine how a ‘vision of possibilities’ is played out within three different institutional agendas. results: the case studies reveal that marketisation and privatisation marginalise the pursuit of quality which recedes in preference for securing international economic resources to activate the local developmental agendas and how the exercise privileges skewed power relations which maintain centre–periphery hegemonic hierarchies in the cross-border collaborations. conclusion: the uptake of an education hub as a national target exemplifies how the uncritical and indiscriminate borrowing of policies normalises and is reframed to appear as ‘moments of equity’. but in reality it promotes individual competitiveness at the expense of the common good. introduction the discourse on higher education is increasingly dominated by the language of econometrics, whereby global competitiveness, branding and investment have carved a niche for themselves. this turn in the philosophy and approach which sets up higher education as a private good has been initiated in the leading economies of the north by the downscaling of government’s financial support to public universities, which forced them to import a business model into the domain of higher education (blessinger & makhanya 2018). this paradigmatic shift in state policies regarding higher education was motivated by a critique that higher education accrues benefits primarily to the individual in terms of higher learning prospects and, as such, the burden of finance should therefore rest with the individual rather than the state. however, this change on its own could not have triggered the massive transformation currently being witnessed in higher education the world over. the internationalisation of higher education defined by knight (2004:11) as ‘the process of integrating an international, intercultural and global dimension into the purpose functions (primarily teaching or learning, research, service) or delivery of higher education’ in a large measure, supports the shifts observed. today, two out of every 100 higher education students are studying outside their country of origin either as expatriates or as international students. the trend in student mobility worldwide, coupled with the noted correlation between rise in income and demand for higher education, has assisted to recast higher education as an area of development of its own. research increasingly highlights the benefits to be reaped by promoting all forms of international education, even when it is internationalisation ‘at home’ (knight 2013a). a number of countries have responded by considering the opportunities offered in the emergent global higher education scenario to position themselves as regional and international leaders in the provision of higher education services (knight 2011). asian education hubs such as singapore and hong kong are cited as success stories, illustrating how democratisation of access to higher education and the leveraging of higher quality human resources could activate economic development. whilst the policy of internationalisation of higher education takes diverse forms depending on the priorities, approaches and strategies adopted by governments in response to the economic, political and social realities of national contexts, they are invariably born out of deliberate long-term initiatives of the government to build a critical mass of operators in the higher education sector. the leading countries which have met success in graduating from transnational education to the academic internationalisation of their higher education sector through their foreign staff and student recruitment, policies and programmes are the uae, singapore, malaysia and hong kong. other countries such as botswana, vietnam and mauritius are now also vying to position themselves as regional higher education centres to earn dividends from the internationalisation of higher education in terms of attracting foreign direct investment, building a skilled labour force and earning revenue whilst absorbing the rising local demand resulting from rise in income levels (sharma 2011). the relative importance of these factors varies as per national agendas. for example, middle east countries’ governments invested frontally and massively in building state-of-the-art infrastructure to attract leading universities to build capacity and generate what is referred to as ‘soft power’, or as knight (2013b) puts it, ‘diplomacy’. south east asian countries have been proactively diversifying their portfolio and source markets seeking to take advantage of the increase in demand that is likely to primarily come from china in the next few decades (bayley 2016). these successes have generated an uptake of the policy in a number of countries whose fiscal, legal and work environments have been synchronised to ease off the entry of foreign providers in their higher education sector. however, whilst the success of this policy borrowing is measured exclusively in quantitative terms, namely international student recruitment, league table universities and the number of branch campuses (unirank 2018), dissonant voices highlight the risks associated with the unbridled commercialisation of cross-border education and reflect on the social commitment that public higher education is expected to demonstrate to national development agendas (samuel 2017; see also odora-hoppers 2002). others are concerned with the impact cross-border provisions will have on indigenous systems of higher education and the weakening of the intercultural dimension of internationalisation in the face of economic considerations (chikoko 2016). homogenisation, rendered necessary in the name of equivalence, can result in internationalisation becoming exclusively a process of status-building and acquiring an increasing market share at the expense of the values internationalisation stand for, such as mutual benefits, capacity building and partnerships (knight 2013). whilst there exist in the literature global and general explanations as to how education hubs may hover somewhere between a real innovation with transformative economic and political potential and a rhetoric or fad (knight 2011), there is no documentation of case studies of institutions within the same national context. these are not only valuable because their narratives uncover the ground realities but also conceptually significant as they illuminate how sustainability issues are related to different modes of knowledge, leadership, learning and capacity building (richards 2018). these narratives need to be made explicit in the continued conversation with policymakers to transform a ‘vision of possibilities’ into a ‘threshold’ of change (richards 2018). through the experience of the three case studies representing each a variation in policy enactment, namely a branch campus, a private university and a public university dispensing on distance mode, we address not only the operational question of how is the policy being implemented, but also the question how the macro pillars of internationalisation, privatisation, and marketisation are being integrated into the micro pillars of quality, affordability and infrastructure. whilst the global discourse may focus on the benefits that may arise for encouraging the internationalisation of higher education on the grounds that it can create a more level playing field for all to benefit, we question the power equation involved in pursuit of the privatisation of higher education provisions through education hubs. we interrogate how the expansion of higher education provision simply denotes a change of form in the power relations between centre and periphery, perhaps on similar patterns of the past extractive economies where the centre retains control over quality assurance whilst still benefitting from the use of resources in peripheries. the end point reflective commentary engages in the current debate of the purposes of higher education. higher education in mauritius at a glance the mauritian tertiary education sector has almost a century long history with the setting up of the college of agriculture in 1923. as at 2016, 10 publicly funded tertiary education institutions and 37 private post-secondary institutions are operational. an additional 17 private bodies are registered but they are not considered to be fully operational as they do not have any student enrolment of registered courses (tertiary education commission 2017). the statistics on tertiary education participation rates have plateaued since 2014 and declined further from 47% to 46% in a year with a total of some 38 178 students registered in local institutions and 9911 studying abroad. new admissions have stagnated within the range of 13 000–14 000 since 2007, indicating that the policy initiatives to radically improve uptake both locally and internationally have not yet yielded expected results (tertiary education commission 2017). the university of mauritius slid in its ranking in africa’s top 100 to the 73rd place (unirank 2018). in terms of internationalisation of the student population, the 100 000 students from abroad targeted by the education hub policy paper seems like a lofty target with a current grand total of 1736 (tec 2017), the bulk of whom comes from india, 692 of whom are currently registered in the medical school or courses offered on a mauritian campus. nigeria and south africa also attract some 200 students, but again this is primarily in the medicine, hospitality, engineering and computer science sectors. the freshly set up médine education village from the cane corporate giant, the médine group, hosts a number of international institutions in its 35-hectare unicity and has positioned itself as a key player in the higher education sector. the city aims to welcome 5000 students by 2025, out of which 75% are expected to be international students as compared to its current 1700 students registered in 19 undergraduate courses with eight foreign institutions (médine 2018). the history of an idea: mauritius education hub in context the desire to make mauritius an education hub is almost two decades old, although the idea was formally launched in 2006 with the publication of the sectoral committee report by the human resource development council. basically, it inhabited public discourse for more than a decade before concrete shape was given to it. the document provides the following rationale which underpins till date the opening sections of almost all policy documentation related to education. it was believed that: if mauritius wants to position itself as a knowledge hub and as a key player in the region, considerable emphasis should be laid on the postsecondary education sector, making it of a world-class status, in order to attract international students, reputable institutions of higher learning and highly qualified academics and researchers worldwide. (human resource development council 2007a:10) the strategy was articulated around setting the island post-secondary sector as a regional pole for quality higher education by reinforcing local public universities through international partnerships and by giving tax incentives to foreign providers of higher education. the policy for setting up mauritius as an education hub was further developed in the review of national human resource development plan (2007–2010). recognising the growing role of knowledge in the economy through the growth of knowledge processes outsourcing (kpo) as a major economic activity and the subsequent demands this will place on skill development locally, the document highlights the key role that the knowledge hub will play in positioning the island in the usd 17 billion market that kpo represented in 2010. the strategies stood on eight pillars defining the set of enabling conditions to allow the project to take off. they relate to the setting up of a regulatory framework recognition that is a ‘flexible facilitating framework, which fosters innovation, the fluid sharing of knowledge and the creation of linkages amongst institutions and enterprises’ (hrdc 2007a:14); with proper processes of accreditation; the guarantee of quality of education to ensure the robustness of reputation; the setting up of appropriate infrastructure and the provision of a package of incentives such as land concession rates, double taxation relief and loans to institutions at preferential rates. improving the efficiency of the local feeder system in terms of the output from the secondary school sector was signalled as pre-requisite for ensuring that local demand will be sustained. this was coupled with the adoption of a system of continuing performance. development would ensure that the constant need of professional development would equally generate sustainable local demand for higher education. viewed as a strength that would attract both francophone and anglophone institutions and international students, multilingualism and language competencies were to be given special attention. lastly, because the education hub was expected to also generate new ideas, products and processes, a legal framework for regulating intellectual property rights was to be set up (hrdc 2007b). many of these measures were inspired by the experiences of countries like malaysia which started off their internationalisation process by actively encouraging private providers to set up shop and partner up with foreign universities. however, the policy of the education hub was also driven by the government belief that mauritius is economically, politically and geographically ideally positioned to act as intermediate between african and asian students seeking an international qualification and european universities seeking to expand their activities in new territories (clark 2015). since the official uptake of this policy through the board of investment (boi), national investment promotion agency, partnerships developed and private institutions were set up. the number of international students on mauritian campuses increased to a total of 1736 international students from 69 different source countries – an increase of 13.9% over 2015 figures (tec 2016). this statistic has to be read in conjunction with the targeted aim of a 100 000 foreign students. whilst there is a clear tendency to see the glass as half-full by policymakers, mauritian ambitions have been sobered by problems encountered at the implementation stages that relate to the quality assurance of the awards with no less than 11 institutions as at 2014 losing their authorisation to operate. others, like aberystwyth branch campus, closed operations last year (2017). literature review the emergence of education hubs represents a new generation of cross-border activities allowing for more people, programme and policy mobility. knight (2013a) conceptualises education hubs as: a concerted effort by a country or (city or zone) to build a critical mass of local and international actors to strengthen its effort to build a higher education sector, expand the talent pool or contribute to the knowledge economy. (p. 375) she further identifies three different models of education hubs: the student hub, the talent hub and a knowledge or innovation hub (knight 2013a). although the objectives, scope and impact of each of these differ, the common denominator appears to be the interaction and connectedness amongst local and international actors rather than the geographical location. education hubs are viewed as an important cogwheel in a network society of information flows primarily between urban (or cosmopolitan) and professional centres. richards (2018) argues that the inherent tension experienced by education hubs remains the need to reconcile short-term efficiency and long-term resilience. the experience of south east asian hubs like singapore, where the provision of high-quality infrastructure and an adequately credentialed international staff served to establish reputation, has been cited as an example of a ‘broker’ approach where the hope was for the country to act as an intermediary for western providers of high-quality higher education in the region. the malaysian education hub is, on the contrary, cited as initially one that reflected more of an effort to improve accessibility and affordability of higher education, given the large local demand for higher education (ka ha mok 2011). the policy used in these two cases are diametrically opposed, with one focusing on high-end and elitist provisions for both local and international students and the other adopting a more muddled approach inspired initially by nationalistic ambitions (ka ha mok 2011) to position itself as a regional centre for knowledge and innovation with a focus on high-quality capacity development. irrespective of the model, integrating national capacity development plans into the education hub policy requires a framework that harmonises the micro requirements of infrastructure, affordability and quality with the imperatives of privatisation, internationalisation and marketisation. these vary greatly depending on the obstacles and restraints experienced in each context, as well as on the modes of knowledge, learning and leadership, academic integrity, culture of openness and inclusivity in place (richards 2018). whilst there exist substantial comparative literature on education hubs, these have focused on cross-national comparisons in terms of policy enactment with two or more country-level cases (dou & knight 2014; ka ha mok 2011; knight 2011). it is our view that the lens of these studies focuses on the macro enactment rather than on what richards (2018) terms the ‘corridor of policy emergence’, which is the critical space where macro-level policy and its discourses are understood, interpreted, mediated and translated into action at an institutional level. this is where the present study expects to make a contribution. the purpose of this study is to: develop an understanding of how organisations, within an emergent education hub, integrated internationalisation, marketisation and privatisation with the tripartite imperatives of affordability, quality and infrastructure. analyse whether current institutional enactments of an education hub reflect a model of asymmetric or dialogical economic, cultural and epistemological relationship. the first research question is attended to in the case-to-case presentation section which illustrates how each aspect is uniquely negotiated and integrated in the vision, functioning and challenges of each institution. we respond to the second question in the discussion section. three case studies as highlighted above, the current study falls within the tradition of case study approach in research. this approach has been usually applied in the exploration of education hubs but more at the national levels and often in a comparative mode. country-level studies are useful for policy evaluation in a global stance but do not allow for those at the receiving end of the policy to comment and provide insights as to the issues in policy deployment at the micro level. because our aim was to read the policy from multiple perspectives and from a bottom-up level, we selected three institutions whose organisational objectives and structures are varied enough to produce distinct responses to macro influences. the first one is a public distance education institution which is a major player in the education hub strategy, the second is the longest lasting private higher education institution in mauritius with a full-fledged campus, and lastly, we included a private provider which was consecutively the branch campus of an indian and two british universities in the past decade and which finally closed operations last year. case study methodology we deploy the case study methodology in a bid to reach contextualised explanations. we argue along the same line as welch et al. (2011) that using a critical realist posture can enable theorisation from case studies. the strength of the case study methodology lies in the in-depth knowledge it generates based on multiple sources. in the context of this study three sources were used, namely the website of each respective institute that details out the mission, vision and history, as well as the documents related to the institution such as its strategic plan, external audit reports and newsletters. we also consulted reports and official policy documents in relation to the policy of the education hub. an interview with the head or director of each institution was carried out to discuss the position and experience of their organisation with respect to the policy. we factor in a combination of all these elements and conditions found in each case to produce a ‘configurational’ and ‘conjunctural’ perspective (welch et al. 2011) as the macro and micro factors may operate differently in the unique context of the individual cases. more importantly, one of the authors has been professionally involved with two of the organisations as a member of the accreditation panel for one of their provisions. the fact that higher education in a small island state is a close-knit context makes professional interaction amongst members of different institutions inevitable. the positionality of one of the researchers enabled not only access to the leaders but also professional trust that facilitated an authentic attitude and response to the questions posed. each interview lasted for between 30 min to 1 hour. data presentation we chose a case-by-case presentation and depart from the usual thematic approach. the intention is to capture the uniqueness of each institution as a player within the same broader framework of an education hub (itself a component of a broader knowledge hub), the challenges experienced, the strategic choices and the reflective postures of each head of institution or director on how they envision their role in the emergent hub. we constructed the case around the issues identified in the reflective interviews, which speak strongly to the twin sets of concerns that have been highlighted in the literature, namely marketisation, internationalisation and privatisation, and affordability, quality and infrastructure, although these are not equally present in all the three cases. the documentation drawn from websites, plans and organisational documents available in the public domain have been subject to content analysis, the outcomes of which have been woven in the presentation to support or challenge the points raised in the interviews. from this perspective, the cases are not merely presented but also simultaneously analysed through the authorial commentary that runs throughout. the place of a national distance education university in an education hub: the open university of mauritius the open university of mauritius (ou) was established on 12 july 2012 and absorbed the defunct mauritius college of the air which had been in operation for almost three decades. it is a distance university currently servicing some 3578 students (tec 2017). it offers courses from undergraduate to phd level, having some 180 students registered on postgraduate degree programmes. the human resource model used to staff the university is minimalist with the majority of them being on contract (tec 2015). the data gesture very strongly towards an understanding of the critical role open universities play in achieving two stated agendas of education hubs: expanding local higher education provisions beyond domestic frontiers and contributing to the development of a skilled workforce through the provision of continuous professional development programmes in a variety of domains. as all open universities, its target clientele extends to students whose needs may not be met by the more traditional residential universities and who thus will engage in professional or academic learning using the more convenient and flexible patterns of engagement with studies offered by distance modes of learning. from foundation courses designed to offer a minimum academic requirement to those who need a second chance for pursuing their higher studies up to doctoral level, the university constructs its mission primarily on widening access. the ambitions of ou are aptly captured in its statement of goal number 6 of its strategic plan 2017–2015: ‘ensure that ou is the first choice, locally and regionally, for continuous professional development and lifelong learning’ (open university of mauritius 2017). it also acknowledges the competitive environments created by massive open online courses (moocs) whilst also drawing from the success of similar institutions in larger nations like the university of south africa (unisa) and the indira gandhi open university, india. in its quest for ascertaining reputation and quality, an iso certification has been obtained and been used as a marketing strategy to claim a larger share in the open market (open university of mauritius 2017). with a student population standing at 3578, out of the 9370 mauritian nationals studying by distance mode (tec 2017), the ou currently occupies a third of the total distance enrolments and about 10% of all tertiary enrolments. its strategy of partnering with renowned institutions is not primarily for joint awards but as an inbuilt system of quality assurance. taking the assistance of high-calibre universities in the design and delivery of both award and non-award courses is a strategic branding move as an international player. such moves must be understood in the context of its intention to ‘establish six overseas study centres (rodrigues, kenya, tanzania, uganda, rwanda and botswana) and ensure that all learners of ou have the same learning experience’ (open university [ou] 2017:22). one of the aims of this national university is also to become financially autonomous so as to be able, amongst others, to engage in high-quality research as enunciated in its strategic plan. the issue of finance has been repeatedly mentioned in the strategic plan and in the interview with the head of the institution. the comment regarding the financing and staffing issues being met by the institution was made during the interview indicating how challenging it is at institutional level to navigate the troublesome terrain of policy, discourse and practice. there appears to be a general understanding on the part of policymakers in the ministry of education that public institutions must make do with what they can mobilise as resources whilst still being audited on the entire spectrum of policy goals set by governments. one poignant example given relates to quality recognition and accreditation by foreign partners of the open university courses which had to be eventually dropped as a branding option because of the very high costs involved. although the impact of this setback has not been articulated clearly, it will mean that the institution will have to stand on the strength of its own reputation to attract students from the african continent. whilst its fees are competitive with respect to northern providers, it will clearly be at a disadvantage with providers like unisa and other emergent distance universities on the african continent whose governments are more financially supportive. the use of scholarships was evoked as a strategy to make mauritius known as a higher education destination. fifty scholarships were offered to prospective candidates of the african continent to ‘advertise’ the institution. only 20 scholarships were awarded to candidates from countries like botswana and namibia whilst the remaining 30 were never attributed because there were fewer eligible applicants than expected. indeed, it is the strong belief of the participant that some cohesion must be achieved by all those involved in the sector by federating all higher education providers under one brand. he argued that mauritius needs to ‘catch up’ on south east asian hubs by encouraging local providers to develop expertise in specific fields. research is also flagged as one area of development in the strategic plan of the ou, as outlined in goal 14 (see box 1). box 1: goal 14 effective research, consultancy and innovation. the enrolment on research degrees has reached a total of approximately 800 enrolments, with 171 doctoral candidates. however, the 2015 audit report reveals that: most of the supervisors appointed by ou are not research-active and some of them have no publications in peer-reviewed journals or conferences. for mphil and doctoral supervision, the research proposals of the mphil/phd student should be related to the research fields of the supervisors. more so being given that most of the main supervisors are from outside, it is still more imperative to have the second local supervisor to be in the same field as the research proposal of the mphil/phd students so that he/she can supervise the students on a day-to-day basis … at present several of the local supervisors are not research-active and have not published any research papers for years or have not published at all. (tec 2015:15) the provision of higher research degrees is premised on the ability of the institution to develop research capacities. however, the above comment from the audit panel clearly highlights the capacity issues to effectively provide the supervisory services at this level. although the pathway to establish the ou as a key player on the african continent appears to be clearly defined in the strategic plan and the discourse held, its effectiveness is severely compromised by the financial realities of the institution as well as an underestimation of human resource capacity requirement necessary to guarantee the quality of postgraduate provisions. charles telfair institute: from local private university to branch campus founded in 1999 as the de chazal du mée business school, charles telfair institute (cti) kick-started operations with 232 students reading to become chartered accountants and it engineers. it is now the alma mater of some 9000 graduates and currently housed in a state-of-the-art complex at the centre of the island (cti 2014). being one amongst the first private institutions of higher learning, it enjoys a solid reputation which has been painstakingly constructed over its nearly two decades of existence. part of the process of settling within the higher education landscape was considerably eased by its affiliation to two australian universities, namely curtin university and north and south metropolitan university in western australia. currently, according to their website, 27 courses are offered from certificate to master’s level, with the bulk of student registration at degree level. eleven international students are on the cti campus, indicating that in essence, it is primarily a private local university. cti is one of the success cases of private higher education in terms of longevity and student outcomes, emerging out of a fully local consortium of the private sector that predates the enunciation of the policy of an education hub. in fact, the view expressed by the representative conveys much of the scepticism around whether the policy of the knowledge hub is leading to a coherent, cohesive and federated strategy from the private sector, which, it was argued, appeared to be operating individually in isolation. the creation of a signature for mauritian higher education would be a desirable objective to enable the realisation of the government vision but more strategically integrated moves are required in the same way that perth as a city has been transformed to accommodate higher education students, he argued. the view expressed also seems to suggest that a naive view of the knowledge hub is being enacted. a parallel was drawn with the evolution of mauritius as a tourist hub, whereby stakeholders in the field never acted in synchrony but operated in isolation, promoting themselves rather than mauritius as a destination. the case of the médine education village or uniciti was referred to not as an evidence of unity of strategy and actions but rather as part of a property development project by the ex-sugarcane consortium which wishes to recycle its operation and land freed from sugar plantation into what is perceived as a lucrative business. the branding strategy, though targeting the african continent, suffers from a major weakness. the participant was of the view that mauritius appears to offer very little as an ‘african destination’. ‘we become different things at different times depending on the requirements’. this, he believed, deprived mauritians of an identity. it is claimed that a progressive strategy of development has been adopted, where cti built on its strength and took on in a phased manner the challenges of providing quality in higher education. ‘we have grown from strength to strength building slowly to be able to reach where we are’, commented one of the founding members. the data from the website and the interview corroborate to indicate that partnership, majorly with the university of curtin, was an important factor to allow the institution to improve its quality processes. but, in parallel, the institution wanted to create a signature for higher education and this is what the proponents suggest has been the hallmark of success for cti. ‘we have a high pass rate, almost 85% because we work individually with students’. the reason provided to explain the success rate lies in the pedagogical approach which is individualised and the support given in terms of tutorials. an examination of the website and other online documents reveals that the campus provides some diversity in terms of student experience as well as a voice to students. however, even in the face of these efforts and the current success in local recruitment, cti fares less well on the internationalisation of its student population. despite the declared discourse of success of cti in asserting its presence locally, the setting up of the médine educational village and its host of prestigious european partners with french higher education providers which offer courses at reasonable rates will no doubt make the field even more competitive. the strategic reaction has been to convert cti fully into a branch campus of the university of curtin. this move is constructed as enabling positive conditions for growth and development. it appears that the option of becoming a branch campus was the most viable lifeline, opening up the african continent for prospective students. playing in a more international terrain requires literally being handheld by a stronger more internationally reputed university. the implications of being a branch campus extends well beyond the programmatic requirements of having a course accredited: it involves considerable loss of autonomy and the compulsory adherence to certain administrative, financial, academic and procedural norms set by the international accrediting institution. this is not seen, or at least projected, as an issue for cti. rather, the gains have been highlighted and the move to becoming a branch campus considered as progress because of the institutional upscaling that it entails in terms of quality assurance processes and upgrading of staff research profiles. the latter is mainly achieved through provision of a doctoral learning opportunity for staff who are in majority reading for a phd with the ou. the added advantage is that cti management will sit on the executive board on a large and reputable university like curtin and shape its policy as the gatekeeper to the african continent. more so, autonomy will be retained in terms of staffing the local campus, marketing curtin on the african continent and managing its own finances. it appears, technically, that not an ounce of autonomy is lost, apart perhaps, that cti is now at the service of a product which is no longer its own, as all programmes will be exclusively curtin’s academic courses. this compromise is seen as positive by the managers of cti because students (local and international) see the gaining of a degree qualification as not aiming to serve parochial jurisdictions but rather as an international passport and a prospective economic migration too. the localised indigenous knowledge content of the curriculum offered in other courses not previously accredited by curtin university is not seen as a significant loss. the move to convert cti to a branch campus is set up in the discourse as a deliberate choice by the founding members who are no doubt answerable to the 17 shareholders in terms of making the institution lucrative. only time will tell what is gained and lost in terms of an indigenous higher education project. aberystwyth university branch campus mauritius more than the case of aberystwyth, it is the trajectory of the local partner, the boston institute which is of interest. operating under different names and with a variety of foreign partners such as wolverhampton through the last decade, the private operator made several attempts to provide international programmes to local and foreign students until aberystwyth decided not to enrol any more students this year. the private operator draws funding from a private trust created by a local family currently running a private secondary school in the eastern part of the island. its first attempt to venture in higher education was through a partnership with a private university in sikkim, the eastern institute for integrated learning in management (eiilm). it had already 400 students on campus when the tertiary education commission instructed the branch campus to put an end to recruitment because eiilm did not receive the mandatory clearance certificate from the higher education regulatory body in india, the university grants commission (balan 2015). the second attempt of partnership of the trust was with the university of wolverhampton branch campus in 2012. the course offerings spanned undergraduate and postgraduate provisions in law, sports and education. closure of this satellite campus occurred after nearly 4 years of operation with an intake of only 140 students. in 2014, the vision for the mauritius campus was then expressed in terms of becoming the african hub for wolverhampton and providing an international experience to both staff and students of the university (morgan 2015). the aberystwyth branch campus was set up in 2015 amidst significant controversy in the home country. aberystwyth university hall residences were being closed in wales for want of funding whilst the university incurred a loss of £200 000 in the first year in collaboration with boston campus, the local partnering institution. nevertheless, the branch university operated for 2 years recruiting in the past year some 50 students of whom 11 were foreign nationals. the total number of students was 106 in 2 years of operation on a campus designed to accommodate 2000 students. the courses on offer spanned computer science to law degrees, awarded by an institution that stands in the top five in the united kingdom and thus had considerable appeal to both a local and an international audience. the reflective interview with the head of all these three affiliated branch campuses took the participant back to the initial calculation that led policymakers to adopt the vision of making mauritius a knowledge hub. he commented that at the time, the logic was fairly straightforward. based on the global market figures for higher education and the accelerated growth rate expected from the african continent particularly, it was estimated that the prospects of the island attracting 100 000 international students was considered as achievable, given the political and economic stability of the context, and thus the potential for revenue generation provided the impetus. the claim is made that the parameters defined and clearly articulated in the policy document are not efficiently enacted upon by the various government agencies. actually, he alluded to the fact that the procedural provisions are not investor friendly because accreditation requires for the campus to be completely functional at the time of application for accreditation. the risk, he argues is borne by the investor who could have his application rejected on very minor issues regarding, for example the mandatory size of open spaces on the campus. one way to mitigate these risks was to partner up with universities of high repute in the north, which he did with aberystwyth. the motives of the welsh university to set up a branch campus in mauritius need to be understood in the financially constrained context of the brexit, which meant that alternatives to keep up student recruitment were explored. brexit had the impact of a declining international student enrolment which had to be reversed. because of the advantageous ranking of aberystwyth university in the united kingdom, it attracted the top performers of the secondary school sector in mauritius. the fees were high but this was deemed to be the attraction for students who would still access the best uk universities on mauritius campus using the technological facilities available on the online learning platform, which was considered by the participant as cutting edge. the projection that 200 students enrolled on the campus would make it profitable as the fees were equally shared between boston institute and the home university. the latter was expected to bring its share of student recruitment but never did. the participant referred to the aspect of the policy for which the boi had a leadership role in constructing three state-of-the-art campuses which was to be leased out to external high-calibre providers of higher education. the boi organised road shows to try and sell mauritius as an attractive destination for those universities who were looking to conquer the african continent. yet, two of these full-fledged campuses are being converted, one into a nursing education facility because there have been no takers of the facilities (boi 2018). commenting on the relative success of other branch campuses, the participant is of the view that many of them adapted to the requirements of the market they wished to penetrate offering tailor-made programmes to allow students to quickly upgrade qualifications. as for the local population, the low response rate, according to him is because of a culture of free higher education that has set in since the post-independence era. ‘paying for higher education is something mauritians are not used to!’ he argued, as an explanation for the low mauritian student uptake for quality private higher education that comes with a price tag. the above comment reflects a legitimate question as to whether open privatisation, as the one adopted in the mauritian context is warranted given the culture of free tertiary education that was established in the aftermath of independence. clearly, organisational conceptions of quality and affordability were not coherent with dominant local cultural expectations of private higher education. discussion the combination of ambitious internationalisation, open privatisation and top-down marketisation adopted, enacted and described impacted directly on the micro pillars of quality, affordability and infrastructure. the top-down approach adopted by the government to cash in on what it saw as a rapidly expanding market on the african continent has produced, at the institutional level, two sets of responses. firstly, a purely business response to an opportunity for benefitting from government support in terms of tax reliefs, loan opportunities and quick dividends to set up private higher education institutions. this approach has attracted a number of operators who have scanty understanding of quality assurance processes in higher education and knowledge of the profile, expectations and aspirations of students, the management of teaching and learning, and the more technical processes of accreditation and recognition. they became compliant parties in their relationship with external partners. over time, the leadership role that was initially attributed to the private sector to spearhead the education hub in terms of exemplary infrastructure and setting up of sustainable partnerships with foreign institutions of repute came to a premature end as a number of them exited the system within 3 years of operation. in the second instance, the government constructed its role exclusively in terms of setting up the legal operational framework and three model campuses to be rented by foreign partners. the more technical aspects of setting up the education hub was transferred to an independent agency which was itself learning its role as a regulator of the sector which was intended to be increasingly privatised. more significantly, the top-down model of internationalisation could potentially ensure that proper infrastructure become accessible and a range of opportunities are offered at affordable fees but these do not necessarily guarantee the success of the model if the quality of student (international) learning experiences is not considered as a key ingredient. the notion of quality could be extended to how entrepreneurial higher education institutions can be in developing scholarship and an inclusive academic culture which values dialogue, social openness and cross-cultural inclusivity. the question is whether a top-down approach to internationalisation can include systemic interventions to initiate and support changed practice. the uptake of a top-down approach to marketisation and an open policy on privatisation as internationalisation imperative does pose some challenges as to how quality is constructed and mediated. one set of responses seem to indicate that there are no external referents for the quality of awards and as indicated in one case, the partnering institutions have a great degree of latitude to design curriculum for award courses to meet the candidate at entry point. whilst it could be viewed as an instance of inclusive academic practice for collaborative institutions, it could also be symptomatic of the compulsion to solely sustain recruitment. the other scenario is that the local private university strategically hands over the responsibility for quality assuring its awards to the external partner. the process of quality assurance then also integrates infrastructure-related dimensions. this is a possible marketisation strategy that trumps the affordability card whilst signalling that the high costs are accounted for in the validation processes with the parent university. the institutional accommodations of the policy of the education hub exemplified in the three case studies do not reflect an expanded form of academic, economic, social and political convergence based on the principle of reciprocity and inclusivity. in terms of capacity, mobility and collaboration, little is currently witnessed to give confidence that it is not only the interest of the elite which is served within small island states through education hubs. the narrower definition of internationalisation of education appears to be predominant as borrowed indiscriminately from the successful experience of south east asian hubs. we posit that south east asian hubs like those developed in singapore and malaysia do not necessarily contribute to the global integration model that education hubs are supposed to promote. instead, the alternative of importing knowledge and providers is used in the same way private firms operating in developing contexts resource the units with technical labour from the home country. just as in an economic model where the luxury of using time to develop local capacity is too onerous to afford, education hubs operate independently of local systems of education or even at the cost of local higher education systems if the gap is considered too large. this analysis very much resonates with the experience of the branch campus of aberystwyth whereby the home partner was used primarily as a recruitment agency and to guarantee that technical and physical set up are adequate. the home institution involvement in the curricular aspects is quasi non-existent or are wholly determined and managed by the foreign provider as a means of quality assurance. the register is one of complete conformity that serves to meet the demands of a clientele intent on having exactly the same product as the home market. any difference in curriculum content or approach that is the outcome of discussion between partners is perceived as working against the credentialing of the courses of private institutions. the above described situation is strangely akin to colonial contexts, an antithesis to the ongoing discourse of dialogue, mutual benefit and intercultural sharing that constituted the strong philosophical roots of internationalisation (sanders 2018). the vexing question is whether this epistemological relationship between north and south will follow the same pattern of technological transfer that was experienced in the last century, where products of lower quality were sold on the developing world markets even by the best providers in the developed world. such issues have started to emerge with some of the degrees awarded in mauritius not recognised as a full-fledged uk degree in the home country. although the shutting down of branch campuses is not the exclusivity of small island contexts like mauritius, the experience of the above-mentioned trust in running three branch campuses which were all shut down because of the low levels of student enrolment, does foreground the issue of critical evaluation by policymakers when choosing and determining the type of institutions selected and the terms of reference of partnerships being negotiated. such caution exercised at the time of selection would ensure than both local institutions are encouraged to broaden the parameters of negotiation with their partners to look beyond the purely utilitarian perspective. in a small island state where the odds for economic survival are slim, producing intense competition for a restricted market, it is understandable that any policy which promises to expand markets and possibilities would seduce both government and local private operators. such patterns of indiscriminate compliance work against the local higher education sector, which overlook critical aspects of higher education partnerships such as the development of an agenda for research and capacity building. however, it does seem to us that private sector providers who may not have been part of academia themselves could have been insufficiently informed about the nuances and understandings required to negotiate more productive terms of collaboration. more so, what does the current pattern of paying for scholars and experts to achieve some form of internationalisation reflect in terms of equity issues for those who depend primarily on the local public higher education system? creating the required infrastructure that will service the purpose of private providers means taking resources away from consolidating public higher education sectors. however, within the current discourses of privatisation, any action of the government that is seen to support a more resilient and confident public higher education system is regarded as nationalistic and, as such, a weakness. if the performance of local higher education leaves much to be desired in terms of quality, then perhaps in the first instance, these must be repaired by a more robust support of the quality of teaching and learning within these institutions, achieved by means of partnerships whose mandates may not be caught up in the stranglehold of numbers. in mauritius, such partnerships exist since 1999 and have slowly flourished to produce a range of outcomes based on mutual benefit and collaboration. the histories of such partnerships have been marginalised and are under fire because they look more like boutique provisions that do not sit with the econometric motivation of being an education hub which seeks to homogenise and control the responses and aspirations of actors to fit primarily current demands and expectations. partnering institutions from more developed contexts are equally not nurturing academic relationships that may bring qualitative benefits in terms of staff development and research outputs if these are not supported by strong financial gains in terms of student recruitment. conclusion this study sets out to examine how three higher education institutions in mauritius interpreted, mediated and enacted declared intentions of setting up mauritius as a regional education hub on the african continent. the caveats of this policy as translated in the individual institutional experiences have highlighted the extent to which policy borrowing can serve to undermine emergent local efforts to create a national signature based on developing an indigenous, scholarly, collective, collaborative and culturally open approach to higher education. this would be a stronger foundation for negotiation and authentic partnerships with foreign institutions that could further the research and innovation agenda. the findings also revealed how commercialisation of cross-border provisions has engendered a diversity of responses in both public and private institutions. they are survival responses rather than strategic ones, aimed at preserving financial integrity in the short-term. when faced with a level playing field, public universities, dispossessed of government funding must generate new ways of existence that are antithetical to the very political reasons that saw their establishment. walker (2006), applying sen’s capability theory to the analysis of the development of higher education, is of the view that it should aim at developing new ways of understanding the world and one’s place in it. she contends that the education hub is an example of how knowledge production and knowledge societies have produced a ‘workable’ compromise involving skilling of human resource and intellectual inquiry. walker (2006) further argues that universities’ mission of critical citizenry achieved by means of development of intercultural capability and human solidarity is being discounted. the data reveal that the entrepreneurial agenda of possibilities is a form of prospecting economic exploration and ‘market opportunity’. however, the economic rhetoric may be masked in the declared claims to support the interest in advancing research or knowledge production. this disguise might also be communicated in policy rhetoric of affording expanding access to higher education of previously excluded individuals or groups. the uptake of an education hub as a national target exemplifies how the uncritical and indiscriminate borrowing of policies normalises and is reframed to appear as ‘moments of equity’. just as the national policies of the marine hub and the medical hub were heralded as opening new vistas of possibilities for progress and success for all, the education hub promotes competitiveness at the level of individuals. we argue that, generally, the experience of cross-border provisions reflects narrow and exploitative patterns of relationships between local and international providers. local providers and governments capitulate to the agendas of short-term profit, prestige and status often at the expense of more sustainable forms of progress in both the quality of higher education and participation rates. massive resources in the case of mauritius have been and continue to be invested in an area which requires a concerted effort and more critical realism to allow higher education to be increasingly integrated in the research and development projects of industries. more importantly, at the moment there is scanty evidence even that significant headway has been made in enabling higher education to allow the kinds of connectivities within various sectors of the economy or achieve more equity of access to those who need it either locally or on the continent. more political clarity is needed to imaginatively consider ways in which we can affirm values that relate to the achievement of the common good. acknowledgements competing interests the authors declare that they have no financial or personal relationships which may have inappropriately influenced them in writing this article. authors’ contributions h.m. was the project leader and s.m. conceptualised and edited the article. references balan, g., 2015, ‘mauritius: the rising moon of higher learning’, edubeanz, viewed 12 march 2018, from http://www.edubeanz.com/?p=1337 bayley, c., 2016, ‘international student recruitment analysis and review – emerging opportunities in 2016’, weba world education review, viewed 21 march 2018, from http://webaworld.com/emergingopportunities.pdf blessinger, p. & makhanya, m., 2018, ‘issue no: 491 towards higher education in service of humanity’, university world news, viewed 21 march 2018, from http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=20180130100345559 board of investment (boi), 2018, information on projects, viewed 31 march 2018, from http://www.investmauritius.com/projects/ charles telfair institute (cti), 2014, cti chronicles, viewed 25 march 2018, from http://www.telfair.ac.mu/news/downloads/apr14.pdf chikoko, v., 2016, ‘issues in africanising higher education curricula’, in v. msila & m.t. gumbo (eds.), africanising the curriculum: indigenous perspectives and theories, pp. 71–82, sunmedia, stellenbosch, south africa. clark, n., 2015, ‘established and emerging hubs for international education in africa and the middle east’, strategic internationalization, viewed 18 april 2018, from https://wenr.wes.org/2015/06/established-emerging-hubs-international-education-africa-middle-east dou, l. & knight, j., 2014, ‘emerging hubs: south korea, sri lanka, mauritius, and bahrain’, in j. knight (ed.) international education hubs: student, talent, knowledge-innovation models, pp. 165–182, springer, dordrecht, netherlands. education policy and data center (edpc), 2014, mauritius national education profile, viewed 19 march 2018, from https://www.epdc.org/education-data-research/mauritius-national-education-profile human resource development council (hrdc), 2007a, ‘chapter 9: the education sector: towards a knowledge hub’, national human resource development plan (nhdrdp), viewed 25 march 2018, from http://www.hrdc.mu/index.php/downloads/category/12-nhrdp-1-2007 human resource development council (hrdc), 2007b, ‘report of sectoral committee on emerging sectors’, sectoral committee reports, viewed 12 march 2018, from http://www.hrdc.mu/index.php/publications/sectoral-committee-reports ka ho mok, j., 2011, ‘the quest for regional hub of education: growing heterarchies, organizational hybridization, and new governance in singapore and malaysia’, journal of education policy 26(1), 61–81. https://doi.org/10.1080/02680939.2010.498900 knight, j., 2004, ‘internationalization remodeled: definition, approaches, and rationales’, journal of studies in international education 8(1), 5–31. https://doi.org/10.1177/1028315303260832 knight, j., 2011, ‘education hubs: a fad, a brand, an innovation?’, journal of studies in international education 15(3), 221–240. https://doi.org/10.1177/1028315311398046 knight, j., 2012, ‘concepts, rationales, and interpretive frameworks in the internationalization of higher education’, in d.k. deardorff, h.d. wit, j.d. heyl & t. adams (eds.), the sage handbook of international higher education, pp. 27–42, sage, thousand oaks, ca. knight, j., 2013a, ‘education hubs: international, regional and local dimensions of scale and scope’, comparative education 49(3), 374–387. https://doi.org/10.1080/03050068.2013.803783 knight, j., 2013b, ‘the changing landscape of higher education internationalisation – for better or worse?’, perspectives: policy and practice in higher education 17(3), 84–90. médine, uniciti education hub, viewed 21 march 2018, from http://www.medine.com/our-activities/education morgan, j., 2015, ‘wolverhampton to shut down mauritius campus’, times higher education, viewed 04 april 2018, from https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/wolverhampton-shut-down-mauritius-campus odora-hoppers, c.a., 2002, indigenous knowledge and the integration of knowledge systems: towards a philosophy of articulation, new africa books, claremont, south africa. open university (ou), 2017, strategic planning 2017–2025 abridged version, mauritius, viewed 30 march 2018, from http://www.open.ac.mu/sites/default/files/abridged_ou_strategic_plan_2017-2025_uncontrolled_document-min.pdf richards, c., 2018, ‘higher education privatisation, internationalisation and marketisation: singaporean versus malaysian models of asian education hub policy’, compare: a journal of comparative and international education. https://doi.org/10.1080/03057925.2017.1413638 samuel, m.a., 2017, ‘africanising the curriculum: indigenous perspectives and theories by vuyisile msila & mishack t. gumbo (editors)’, educational research for social change 6, 87–92. sanders, j.s., 2018, ‘national internationalisation of higher education policy in singapore and japan: context and competition’, compare: a journal of comparative and international education 52, 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1080/03057925.2017.1417025 sharma, y., 2011, ‘issue no: 63 asia: countries vying to become education hubs’, university world news, viewed 21 march 2018, from http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=20110318130607540 tertiary education commission (tec), 2015, quality assurance report open university of mauritius, viewed 31 march 2018, from http://www.tec.mu/pdf_downloads/pubrep/oureportfinal_080116.pdf tertiary education commission (tec), 2016, participation in tertiary education 2015, viewed 31 march 2018, from http://www.tec.mu/pdf_downloads/pubrep/participation%20intertiary%20education%202015_130916.pdf tertiary education commission (tec), 2017, participation in tertiary education 2016, viewed 31 march 2018, from http://www.tec.mu/pdf_downloads/pubrep/participation%20in%20tertiary%20education%202016.pdf unirank, 2018, top 200 universities in africa: 2018 african university ranking, viewed 30 march 2018, from https://www.4icu.org/top-universities-africa/ walker, m., 2006, ‘towards a capability-based theory of social justice for education policy-making’, journal of education policy 21(2), 163–185. https://doi.org/10.1080/02680930500500245 welch, c., piekkari, r., plakoyiannaki, e. & paavilainen-mäntymäki, e., 2011, ‘theorising from case studies: towards a pluralist future for international business research’, journal of international business studies 42(5), 740–762. https://doi.org/10.1057/jibs.2010.55 abstract introduction cultural historical background liquidity competences appendix: the gain: psycho-ethical effects of charity in education conclusion acknowledgements references footnotes about the author(s) erik meganck department of spirituality and the social doctrine of the church, international institute canon triest, belguim citation meganck, e., 2018, ‘(re)inserting charity in education’, transformation in higher education 3(0), a38. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v3i0.38 original research (re)inserting charity in education erik meganck received: 14 mar. 2018; accepted: 29 may 2018; published: 08 aug. 2018 copyright: © 2018. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract background: recently, charity (re)appears in cultural discourse. it is no longer confined to (moral) theology. objectives: the aim of this article is to defend the acceptance of charity as a major and fundamental category in the formulation of professional learning goals and in the transformation and development of curricula in higher education, using historical and philosophical arguments. methods: i first offer a philosophical survey of modernity as instrumentalisation and of late modernity as where charity (re)appears. then i translate this analysis into an educational challenge and its promising effects. the transition from a culture that hinges on strict instrumentalisation into one that opens up to charity has not yet been integrated in official pedagogical and didactical directives. results: the philosophical exploration of the cultural field shows the possibility as well as a desirability of integrating charity in (not only) higher education. though the effects of this integration can only be considered forthcoming, a promise without any evidence, this philosophical reflection argues the probability of positive pedagogical results. conclusion: the reappearance of charity in culture urges education to also look beyond its modern formats. one possible initiative is the ‘insertion’ of charity. reflection on a care experience is a pedagogically justifiable form of this insertion. what was deemed irrelevant, private and optional before becomes core educational challenges now. the new meaning of the world, without changing the world, is precisely this: let us keep teaching economy, engineering, law, medicine, etc., but always against the backdrop of charity. introduction the argument for a (re)insertion of charity1 in education hints at the possibility of a transformation, which this journal, transformation in higher education, has chosen from the very beginning, to study in its full complexity (du preez et al. 2016). the transformation i will defend here is not, however, ‘structural’. it does not aspire a change in organisation, financing, pedagogical implementations and so on. and yet it somehow affects all of those elements. you might compare this insertion of charity with the adding of salt to a dish. this does not alter the taste, as when one replaces meat by fish, yet it intensifies the flavour. charity does not replace any current educational system with another – it never does this to or with any system – but it reveals a different meaning of it. within all existing educational systems, the ‘sense’ – all meanings of this word included – shifts. the students who graduate, who ‘emerge’ from its system, are not other people – saints instead of sinners, martyrs instead of people next door, apostles instead of ‘rich young men’ (e.g. mt 19:6–30) – but have become professionals who have acquired a taste for what is not typically or exclusively ‘modern’ is not completely instrumental and accumulative. they should have an eye for a beauty that is not of this world, lend an ear to an ‘other’ that cannot be reduced to myself, mind a truth that is not confined to science. why and how would education have to take these traditional pillars of thought, truth, good and beauty, beyond modernity? and where does charity come in? cultural historical background the rather strange and challenging, perhaps even provoking, title suggests a current lack, a privation that affects actuality. the basic contention of this article will be that modernity as the process of instrumentalisation (and accumulation) has left something valuable behind, has left something out of our educational concern with the future and with those who will inhabit it. this ‘lack’ now becomes visible as such, as urgency and opportunity, as challenge. charity is more than just a pedagogical option but appears in contemporary thought as ‘destined’. the appearance of charity in cultural discourse then becomes the most radical challenge to education. of course, modernity has been known to think about charity (hanley 2017). but its attempts always pointed at sources like affection or reason and ended up reducing charity to sympathy or solidarity, which is definitely something else. i will maintain that charity always enjoys a religious provenance and needs this to keep being articulated. modernity, instrumentalisation and accumulation the question concerning modernity is, as such, too large to be treated here. i will therefore, at the risk of being selective or even arbitrary, isolate three features that are typical of modernity and relevant to education, viz. planning, liquidity and the obsession with competences. these tendencies were, of course, not yet explicitly present and detectable in early modernity. it is only by analysing late-modern society and looking back that we can discern these tendencies as such. planning and growth as is commonly accepted, modernity is marked by a process of instrumentalisation, one of many possible translations of weber’s concept of rationalisation (weber 2004), the social echo of descartes’ methodological focus. those who read and understand heidegger will recognise this as an element of technology, his name for the history of metaphysics (heidegger 1977). many of his students have followed that line of thought (arendt 19582). the process of instrumentalisation can take many forms – let me just give some examples as they occur to me: building a just society (in the ancient greek sense) becomes efficient managing and marketing of social atoms (liberal individualism); politics loses its vision and becomes amoral decision strategy and vote counting; morality reduces to deontology and other forms of applied (‘instrumental’ and ‘utilitarian’) ethics; juridification and formalisation of human relations;3 urbanisation, neutralisation and anonymisation of social space; measuring and predicting, production and consumption as the only way of dealing with ‘things’; reduction of care to cure and of education to didactics; the transition of society into market where social atoms are further reduced to producers and consumers; the existential modesty of acceptance (‘mercy’) became the managerial arrogance of planning (control); the experience of advent (‘wonder’) became the future of extrapolation (disenchanted calculation); charity (the complex phenomenon of gift) became solidarity (investment), etc.4 all these cultural–historical ‘vectors’ – i hope everyone recognises these as indeed typical – of modernity interact (contaminate?) with and confirm each other. education, for one, becomes a didactical market by turning students into clients and parents – and society itself – into stakeholders (weyns 2013). juridification of the pedagogical relation can be discerned in the growing rate of legal action taken by parents against the faculty’s evaluations and decisions – whereas before, parents used to collaborate with schools in the education of their children. applied ethics demands that education meets with detectable and preferably measurable criteria and achieves ‘clear and distinct’ goals – which is why mathematics’ scores are often used to compare schools: it is supposed to be ‘objective’ only in that it is more measurable than, for example history; though the latter perhaps might be considered to contribute more adequately to humanitas than math.5 in belgium, the amount (quantity again) of teaching full time equivalent (ftes) (quantity) a school can employ only depends on the amount (quantity) of students they counted during the former school year. and how about the quality of education? this may be translated into a ‘sales argument’: alleged quality, at least the perception of quality, is no more than an argument for clients and stakeholders to increase the number of students.6 i need to mention a second fundamental trait of modernity here, which shall remain a function of the first one for the sake of the argument of this article. it is the ‘accumulation imperative’, the sanctification of progress. i once accidentally skipped through the financial pages of a respected daily paper where the evaluation of a firm perplexed me. it explained that while, admittedly, the firm was ‘growing’, there was every reason for concern because the growth itself was not growing. i wondered how the necessity of exponential growth can be anything else than short-term suicide. this ‘perversion’ is not only typical of capitalism; capitalism is a typically modern economy because it thrives on this ‘accumulation imperative’. from history as progress and the famous paradigm of evolution – which excludes the ‘event’ – to marketing unnecessary new models of anything and the notion of lifelong learning – which is something else than wisdom – are all effects of this imperative. the history of philosophy as progress (e.g. hegel and comte) is only justified by the typically modern philosophy of history – that only served to ‘prove’ that modernity is the magnificent outcome of history as progress. this means that history in general and progress in particular are self-explanatory and self-justified. late modernity has questioned this ‘proof’ and has revealed the tautological core of the alleged evidence of history – hence the many books and articles that have the overtly paradoxical ‘after history’ in their title. the phenomenon of ‘programmed instruction’7 can be considered typical of the above trends, the pedagogical echo of descartes’ focus on method. education reduced to a technology, to planning. the whole field of humanitas is reduced to a well-defined package of knowledge that everyone is supposed to share, the accumulative acquisition of that package is realised through methods based on conditioning psychologies, whereby the student’s mind is considered a tabula rasa or at least a container that contains precisely the same content – different ‘initial conditions’ can be regulated by studying the social, economic and geographical backgrounds in order to ‘remedy’ and indeed even erase the differences. the differences that cannot be remedied (e.g. religion) have to be considered immaterial (‘strictly private’) and cast out.8 the whole process is again a matter of control and planning. what cannot be translated into the programme is considered superfluous by necessity. the learning and teaching experience is completely free of desire, of a healthy curiosity, of wise authority, in short – of plato’s pedagogical eros. the notion of programmed instruction and the enthusiasm it enticed is typical of the american 1950s. in the post-world war, planning (wiederaufbau) was the main cultural determinant, and since europe was shot to pieces, literally, the united states could take the cultural lead. one may wonder if there would not have been a second world war, would we have had behaviourism, programmed instruction, socioand other metrics. but then again, experimental psychology started halfway the 19th century in … germany.9 liquidity the whole idea of education being programmable is now frustrated by an unexpected effect of modernity – namely the world’s liquidity – as diagnosed by zygmunt bauman.10 the thought behind programmed instruction is the complete integration of a predetermined set of knowledge and competences, the acquisition whereof can be measured, that is supposed to be a necessary asset to adult professional life. the problem that liquidity poses here is that no one has any idea how the world will look like in 2038. our modern ‘institutions’ that have guided modern life during some two centuries are changing increasingly faster. i would illustrate this by taking marriage as an example. since napoleon introduced his famous code, marriage was no longer in the first place a church matter, what it had been for centuries, but became a free contract between a man and a woman. they had to answer some other (modern) criteria: they had to be free, that is, unmarried and not forced by parents or by anyone else; they had to be fully ‘conscious’, that is, rational and informed. once a marriage had been arranged in the city hall, people could ‘upgrade’ their liaison in the church, but not before the marriage was a civil fact. the format of this ‘double contract’ with, firstly, the secular community, and secondly, the faith community, held out for about ten generations. marriage meant the same for our parents as for their parents and so on, all the way back into the early 19th century. but now this format is changing so rapidly that even during one lifespan, within one generation, it changes significantly. in many states, civil divorce has been commonly accepted and now same-sex marriage.11 in some states, same-sex partners can adopt children. all this changes the whole concept of family – which, by the way, according to some, is precisely the ideological anti-christian and anti-traditional strategy underlying this legislation. we can say the same about tax regulation, traffic law, the prices of bread and houses (the ‘trigger index number’ is a tool to make this change acceptable), etc. this asks for a different way of ‘coping’, of ‘relying’ than in (early) modern society.12 i can indeed say ‘modern society’, as liquidity is considered bauman’s qualification of postmodern society. if we confine ourselves to the moral and legal ‘aspects’ of postmodernity, to the normativity in present society, then we can easily discern a major change that renders this society incomparable with all former versions: the rejection of authority. ‘you cannot do that there!’ simply does not work anymore because of a complete lack of unanimity on most socio-ethical matters. when i asked a young boy to remove his dirty boots from a bus seat, he came back with ‘do you own this bus, maybe?’13 there is no moral argument that stretches beyond the individual. but then again, the ‘individual’ in its modern sense does no longer exist, the rational subject has gone. ethics has gone ‘tribal’ (maffesoli 1996). it has become a code that has its validity only within certain subcultures and cannot sustain itself over several generations and become ‘tradition’. liquidity is modern in that it does not even – or no longer – have to reject tradition, it prevents it. this ‘code’ is already something else than the codes that were disposable in the 1960s. then the code was simple: accept (civil code) or reject (hippie code) the one existing code – what united states president nixon called the ‘moral majority’. now there is no longer a default code that one can relate to. this is by no means a youth strategy. communication, to name but one example, has changed so rapidly – through industrial processes during the former generation – that this demands an idiosyncratic moral code (‘netiquette’) that cannot be shared by grandparents who do not have a facebook account. this means that a large part of ‘young morality’ escapes the notice of those who are in charge of education. they simply cannot understand the code that ‘communicates’ that morality within those spheres where this code is evident or valid. nor can they communicate their code as valid, it is simply not accepted. the only way out of this, the only ‘cure’ against liquidity, is authority (verhaeghe 2015). of course, i do not mean dictatorial control, but rather the ‘quiet authority’ of someone who gets all due attention without explicitly having to ask for it. competences our school system (in belgium), and indeed our culture in general, has become obsessed with (technical) competences as the modern compensation for or even alleged emancipation from the more traditional ‘content transfer’. the problem with this is that the schools hand over youngsters to society who are capable of almost everything, but lack the social and moral imperative, let alone the ‘desire’, to actually apply those competences. the reduction of the final end of education, viz. to build a good and just society, to a mere ticking off of external, measurable criteria fails to meet the fundamental requirements and problems of current society. these criteria, moreover, are dictated by current industry, as, e.g. the browne report shows (collini 201214). all that industry requires is indeed a set of competences – industry itself will take care of the content input after the competences have been mastered. the subject that gathers these competences should not be motivated by morality but by the need to survive in society or by plain greed. industry thrives on this. and yet, at the moment when traditional economy and industry are challenged by this (sociological) ‘revolution’, named sharing economy, the same industrial and financial world, in ‘crisis’ because unable to maintain itself according to its own basic principles, commands government, in its turn unable to control the aforementioned world, to force these principles onto education and care institutions. here is some ugly perverse mechanism at work that hampers education – and care. not only did the curriculum shift from content to competence, but the faculty also experienced a similar shift. nowadays, didactic technological skills are considered more important than general cultural content. no teacher or professor is supposed to know who vivaldi or beethoven, breitenbach or coetzee is, what the universal declaration of human rights or the french revolution is all about. teachers have become technicians. cultural embeddedness, however, a source of the aforementioned authority this may be, has (silently and implicitly) been declared obsolete. even religious education prefers pop songs to bach’s passions. and that has also to do with the ‘associative’ method that i tried once, never to call upon it again. this method says you should always start from the experience of the students, their ‘living world’. i found it difficult to lead my students away from their world – though this is what the latin e-ducere means. a completely different method proved to be more fertile: throw them into a completely new world – with this notion of ‘code’ at the back of our thoughts. i took my students to an abbey – a completely different ‘code’. they loved it! not because it was catholic, but because it breathed religion (in its broadest sense) and as such, contrasted favourably with the liberal, neutral, industry-driven, achievement-orientated and individualist-mechanical format of their daily life in modern society. education finds itself therefore confronted with three challenges: facing liquidity, thinking beyond (mere industrial) competence and instrumentalisation, and re-inserting charity. these three challenges mirror the three great metaphysical topics: the true, the beautiful and the good. facing liquidity refers to the heideggerian historical-destinal understanding of truth; thinking beyond instrumentalisation means opening up to what is meaningful without being useful; (re)inserting charity requires a rediscovery of a platonic–augustinian approach in thought. i will come back to this later, when i quote ignace verhack on the challenges to catholic education. late modernity and charity cultural experience in an instrumentalised world, charity is not everything. last year i underwent some heavy surgery when ‘they’ performed a pneumonectomy. now, the first interview with the surgeon was interesting. with gleaming eyes, one hand holding a pen and drawing a lung that looked like a clumsily poached egg and with the other making cutting and stitching gestures, he told me how he would cut me open, spread my ribs, rip out the lung, staple the remains and so on, suddenly pausing to take an inspired note reminding him that he still had to order some blood, in the way one writes ‘milk’ with a circle around it on a shopping list. i remember thinking ‘am i really going to put my life in the hands of this butcher?’ and replying a little later ‘yes, because this is a technical routine for this noble and renowned craftsman!’ and so it turned out to be. a marvellous piece of work. the only charity involved here was that the surgeon worked for 5 h to make it technically perfect without rushing it, realising that he would earn exactly the same enormous amount of money if he did the thing in under 4 h. i am truly grateful that the surgeon completely ignored the symbolic or religious purport of my – or of course any other patient’s – body, which might well have given him stage fright. a problem arises when the instrumentalisation of the body becomes the only way of physical interaction or even intimacy. the ‘pornification’ of the body may well be a symptom of this. once i participated in a relational and sexual education session with 14-year-olds. it was awful. only the technical aspects were treated: how penetration worked and what kinds of contraceptives were available. not a word about the value of sexuality or its place in a solid relationship. the ‘inter-’ in intercourse was purely utilitarian – to distinguish it from masturbation, presumably – and utterly mechanical.15 cartesian sex. in flandres, a centre for personal training offers the following programmes.16 when you are alone, you may benefit from course one – how to meet other people. when this works, you can attend course two – engagement training. suppose you are in love, there is course three – marriage counselling. in case your marriage threatens to fail, you can rely on course four – marriage repair. if your marriage actually fails, turn to course five – successful divorce. and then you can go back to course one. the message of this centre is simple: life requires professional technical instruction. do not trust your own common sense or your nearest and dearest to help you live your life. it is as if we cannot learn anything from tradition, from our parents and our peers that is worthwhile without becoming technological and professional. all this instruction is, of course, well meant and very useful, but there it stops. usefulness as a modern ethical imperative is not questioned here, it is taken for granted.17 this instrumentalisation, the total immersion of culture into technology, has ‘discouraged’ many people, young and old. the absolute priority of use has obscured the desire for sense that motivated thought before (and after?) modernity. as psychoand other therapies took over from religion, something disappeared: the ‘meaning of it all’. the external reference, from the caricature of a god with a long grey beard in a white dress to the most subtle religious imagery, died out – as prophesised in nietzsche’s autopsy of god (nietzsche 1974, §125). modernity – i.e. the victory of enlightenment over its reaction, romanticism – reduced the ‘meaning of it all’ to the scientific explanation of the world. in a not completely fathomable way, science succeeded in positioning itself as the modern evidence. the scientific explanation is better than any other because it is scientific. but if this world ‘encloses’ on itself, around certainty, power and success, society breeds burn out, depression and delinquency. in his lecture at the first academic opening of my project ziezo (organisation of reflection retreats for students), leading youth psychiatrist peter adriaenssens pointed this out.18 he significantly added that education has its responsibility here. if it merely ‘delivers’ young people who are only fitted for industry, if it only serves as an instrument to generate competences and transfer scientific facts, if it forfeits constructive cooperation with society, then education is no more than a machine for varieties on programmed instruction. those responsible for the organisation of curricula should be convinced of the necessity of a ‘humanisation’ that reaches beyond mere ‘instrumentalisation’. his view has been confirmed at a conference organised in 2012 by vsko, at that time the flemish umbrella organisation for catholic education, showing that voluntary work leads to less depression and burnout.19 while governments seem to ‘restyle’ education according to current economic imperatives, (christian) scholars point out that this ‘instrumentalisation’ of society and its youth neglects several fundamental human values. education that narrows itself down to the transmission of competences and the ‘spirit of achievement’ leaves no room for voluntary work as this has nothing to do with competence nor achievement, at least not at first sight.20 there is no scientific evidence for the ‘use’ of voluntary work – only statistical covariance with measurable and definable feelings of satisfaction, comparable with the feelings that paid work yields. one of the notions that lost its cultural ground because of instrumentalisation and the subsequent suppression of educational desire was indeed charity. doing something for others without explicitly expecting something in return became a stupid thing that neither economy could defend nor (social) psychology could explain. neo-marxists even considered charity counterproductive and hypocritical because it was nothing more than a strategy to hide the injustice that was kept alive at the roots of society by precisely those who practiced charity – i.e. christians. the fact remains that no human science, typical product of modernity, can explain or justify charity. even altruism is unmasked as social egoism. this is why charity never really ‘escaped’ from (moral) theology where it was generally agreed to belong. there is even a political motif that shows how and why charity, neighbouring love, remains a marginal value in modern society, even though it is one of the three pillars of modern, enlightened political thought: fraternité, together with liberté and égalité. one can read this in the very first article of the universal declaration of human rights. it proclaims that: all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. they are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.21 this means that liberty and equality are treated as structural evidence, but charity belongs to the moral register. this further implies that, unlike charity, liberty and equality can easily be ‘formalised’, translated into a consistent jurisdiction and a political ideology that have to safeguard them. more and more, society finds itself unable to integrate charity into the mechanisms of the modern nation-state because, while law is obligatory, morals are not. nowadays, political thought only deduces its insights from the two premises of liberty and equality. this yields a society where everyone can be the congenital egoist one is by nature, a social atom, an island that must not harm anyone else and must not be harmed by anyone else. law takes care of that. as modern philosophical political thought has it, since hobbes, the state has to curb natural egoism – homo homini lupus – and that warrants the survival of individuals as citizens in a society (hobbes 2011). a cold, sterile and mechanical society, but still a society. political voices that allow for religious motivation defend another ‘model’. they will have it that, as all religions really aim at peaceful living together, they should inspire a common moral pre-political motivation to that effect.22 the basic requirement here is decency, not power or anything like it. decency can be considered the ‘stepping stone’ to charity. a young fellow who takes the bus to a political meeting but does not give up his seat to an old lady is not a decent member of society. still, charity lives on in our societies. a major study in the netherlands showed how patients and their relatives and friends appreciated charity in (catholic) hospitals but remained almost totally indifferent as to what motivates this charity (dresen 2002:3–14). even capitalist industry thrives on charity, a fact that can be detected during a work-to-rule action. when all employees start doing nothing more or less than what their contract (juridification) and deontology (applied ethics) require, then the firm or institution shows a slowdown or decrease in productivity or fails to maintain a certain level of service. the inability of traditional economy – and also of socio-liberal politics, high level education, sociometrics, etc. – to deal with this ‘moral margin’ is just one more symptom of this instrumentalisation. charity, the ‘favour’ for free, with nothing expected in return, remains invisible in the industrial equations that determine the understanding of labour. this symptom has recently produced another symptom that ‘contaminates’ traditional economy, namely sharing economy, also called peer-to-peer or collaborative economy. it is intrinsically social (regional) and ethical (ecological) but presupposes, as platform economy, high it-performance that requires current cultural ‘digital presence’. what happened to uber and airbnb is of course also symptomatic, not of the instability of traditional industrial models but rather of their persistency. to some, sharing economy is where ethics are (re)inserted in capitalist economy. but still, in the same way as above, someone who takes the bus to a picking farm or a repair café and refuses to give up his seat to an old lady scores zero on the moral scale (comte-sponville 200123). ethics still remain an option here, which is why sharing economy shares the same problem with competence education. philosophical reflection it seems that technology, including scientific explanation, has somehow reached its limits, has exhausted its potential (heidegger 1978:374–377). this is the whole philosophy of the ‘end’ of metaphysics, the ‘end’ not being a historically or scientifically established end. this ‘end’ contains the (re) appearance of charity in thought, in culture. the late-modern interest in charity does not stem from an anachronistic strategy to ‘rewind’ modernity, but on the contrary, to think through modernity by ‘breaking’ the rationalist imperialism. it would indeed be charitable for thought to allow for other than strictly rationalist discourse. by removing the primacy of scientific argumentation from philosophy and maintaining this argumentation as a meaningful narrative amongst others, equally valid in their truth claims and free from the complacent system of objectivity, thought would finally recognise the sense of a movement that has been working its way through western culture since the end of the 19th century.24 in a technological world, it is not wrong or bad or evil to think technologically. this is what heidegger meant with gelassenheit (often translated as ‘releasement’); you can only say ‘yes’ and ‘no’ to technology (heidegger 1966). one can neither reject it nor can one overcome it on one’s own initiative. it is historically destined. we have no choice, the world that has been given to us is a technological world. but we should not succumb to it. the notion that our world is finally and ultimately the only true one has been criticised from all sides, for example by nietzsche, spengler, popper and of course heidegger. it is therefore just possible that each world (or cultural epoch) reveals its own flaws and inner discrepancies at the moment of its crisis. and if there is one word that has come up in french thought, trying to grasp beyond traditional western thought, it unquestionably is ‘other’, the ‘other’ that cannot be totally recuperated and reduced to the ‘same’. if hegel’s system as the total recuperation of anything ‘other’ is typically modern, then late modernity is the denial of this ‘totality’. the ‘other’ resists recuperation, reintegration and reduction to the self. how can this ‘other’ remain truly other in a technological society that hinges on control, planning and extrapolation? when i press the light button of my reading lamp, i do not expect charity from the bulb or from a deity that helps readers. this is technology, as realised through science. the problem is not that we should skip science and technology in a nostalgic or rebellious mood. we should acknowledge that science and technology are not everything in an ultimate sense, that they can perhaps define their own ‘total’, viz. the scientific world, but that this ‘total’ is never a hegelian identity with the one and eternal ‘world’ or ‘truth’ or ‘reality’ – words that all become problematic when we leave the scientific (in the sense of hegel or of science itself) system of objectivity. to give an example that comes from the religious world: holy unction or anointing. what does this mean, even philosophically? it is not a trick where magic ointment will compel god to cure a patient in a miraculous way that would stupefy the medical world and urge the pope to canonise someone. no, the moment when the doctors declare themselves baffled and leave the room, we light a candle and send for a priest. why (meganck 2016a:473–498)? because when technology fails and leaves us in total despair, from another angle or perspective hope rises. hope is despair seen from a non-technological position – following christ up the mountain (mt 5:1). hope is where thought recognises its religious roots. late modernity is precisely the point where thought stops rejecting this recognition. in a refreshing conference, organised by christen forum, on the fundamental challenges to catholic education, ignace verhack (emeritus professor of philosophy at the louvain institute of philosophy) formulated three of them – that turned out to refer to the three traditional themes of metaphysics: truth, good and beauty.25 but he introduced them without the recuperation imperative of traditional metaphysics. instead, he followed the ‘step back’ that heidegger advocated (heidegger 1969:49). catholic education is not just a matter of evangelisation. it should show, point at, open upon the possibility of what lies beyond the world of science, of law, of efficiency. it should turn the world of explanation (quod erat demonstrandum) into a world of appeal (‘listen, israel’ and ‘you have heard … but i tell you …’). it should offer a ‘spiritual vocabulary and grammar’ that at least allows young people to see beyond the world of science, and make a choice. here, for example suffering would be understood as an appeal instead of reduced to a (scientifically established and diagnosed) problem that could and should, but is not being (technically) solved by therapy, and when therapy fails, euthanasia. it was gilles deleuze who famously remarked that plato was an ethical thinker in the first place and that his ontological and epistemological thought derives from that basic inspiration. i would rephrase that insight here as follows. as the basic miracle of the world consists in the fact that we can understand it, philosophy is all about understanding well. therefore, it is our moral duty to safeguard understanding and to keep thought ‘clean’. the way in which plato tried to do this is less relevant here. it is about our moral duty to think and to think well. when modern philosophy deals with ‘thinking well’, it speaks of method and clear concepts, rejecting tradition and prejudice – prejudice entailing also religion.26 but according to plato, understanding was a present of gods, a divine gift.27 therefore, the correct moral attitude re epistemology is not method, but humility and gratitude. this is what plato, of whom whitehead said that all western philosophy can be read as a footnote to his work, has taught us, not that man has a dual nature and the rest of textbook-platonism.28 it should not be considered accidental that both plato, who opened the door to metaphysics without actually stepping through, and heidegger, who opened the same door to allow metaphysics to leave without actually following its disappearance himself, should consider gratitude so essential to thought. augustine, christianity’s own plato, also posited (christian) love (so: charity) inand outside the order of being and knowing, where also plato’s ‘agathon’ is to be (dis)located. charity, augustine says, works its way through thought without being determined by reason.29 to ‘describe’ this (dis)location, one needs poetry instead of logic. anselm came, i think, closest to achieve this. he spoke of god as the highest entity one could think. this is indeed the metaphysical highest being or highest idea. but then, at the same time, he also says that god is greater than all that can be thought. so, god is at the same time the ultimate reference point of the whole thought system and the point where thought ‘loses’ itself. god is also where thought stretches beyond its own boundaries. the strongest element of metaphysics has therefore always been its weakest – and this is a biblical dynamics, no less. god is, metaphysically speaking, the point where metaphysics lets go of its absolute (aristotelean) form, this self-emptying being de-exaltation to the holy name – the name that has no corresponding being and is therefore holy (phlp 2:5–11; meganck 2015:211–224). the point i am trying to make here is that the insertion of charity (gratitude and mercifulness) at the heart of thought, of philosophy – whether the academy is ready for it or not – is a move ‘beyond’ traditional metaphysics that complies with the undercurrent that critique of metaphysics has been following now for over a century. it has become an ‘open’ thought because the cork, namely the absolute, the total, the highest, has worn off. in the words of nietzsches madman, god is dead. and whereas many academic philosophers fulminate against this critique because it threatens to kill thought, the critique replies that it is precisely traditional metaphysics that is suicidal, wanting to enclose the world into its one and final (scientific, logical, conceptual) explanation. the ‘good message’ of philosophy consists in the experience that we do not have to bend the run of history to welcome charity in thought. we can detect traces of an emergence that can only be called promising. firstly, ‘charity’ and similar terms have entered the philosophical discourse without real headstrong resistance. secondly, charity no longer exclusively belongs to (moral) theology anymore. it is gianni vattimo who remarks that charity is now generally accepted as a genuine philosopheme (vattimo 1997:40, 46–47; 1999:64). continental (french) as well as analytic (english) philosophers courageously study charity. it should be noted here that this happens almost exclusively within a tradition that has become known as the critique of metaphysics. leaving aside kierkegaard, who famously launched his criticism of hegel from (more or less) the same christian background that both thinkers shared, we start this tradition with nietzsche. very significant but hardly noticed here is his preface to the second edition of his the gay science. there, he mentions the three theological virtues, but not in connection with god but with the delivery from metaphysics as a salvation to be compared with a physical healing (meganck 2016b:154–170). i contend that this introduction of charity, hope and faith in philosophical thought is all but coincidence, a literary effect or an unhappy metaphorical reference. when thought reaches beyond traditional metaphysics without actually destroying it, it cannot but meet the cornerstones of its very provenance, viz. christianity. the new configuration or constellation where philosophy and theology find themselves in today is more than just an academic, speculative exercise. the ‘theological turn’ (janicaud 2000) of history cannot be ignored as a failed strategy of a handful of devout philosophers, sharing a phenomenological background, in france (jonkers 2005). it has become a cultural event, announced in the work of marcel gauchet. educational experience the possibility of this above-mentioned new configuration is implied by the political question concerning the place of religion and philosophy in public debate. while modernity seems to have decided that these discourses should remain within the private sphere, late modernity obviously no longer holds this to be evident. recently, (non-functional) identity – religious or not – has become an item on the socio-political agenda. catholic education could not prevent, even if it wanted to, the shift of ‘identity’ from evidence to problem. schools found themselves challenged to articulate their ‘catholicity’ (meganck 2018:30–46). this has to do with secularisation, broadly understood. in modern society, every single life span used to take place within one and only one ideological ‘pole’. catholics went to catholic schools, catholic youth organisations, catholic pubs and catholic hospitals, they were a member of catholic unions, catholic health insurance companies, even played in catholic football clubs and ditto brass bands. the same holds for socialists and liberals, respectively. those barriers eventually fell down to make place for a religiously and philosophically indifferent and neutral society. some scholars defend a connection between this indifference and rather disquieting symptoms like depression, burnout and radicalisation. recent study in belgium shows that there is an alarming rise of antidepressant medication intake by children between 11 and 15 years old. a society that ‘removes’ all religious or philosophical safety nets and replaces them by industrial imperatives actually creates the above-mentioned symptoms. the ‘growth model’ that motivates industry lays a heavy burden on the frail shoulders of youngsters. more is never enough. in the financial reports, one can read that firms that achieve growth, but whose growth itself is not growing, that is, who do not achieve exponential growth, fail to meet market requirements. this shows an inner perversion at work at the heart of industry. it is, again, this perverting industrial logic that, through helpless politics, determines education. not only do schools find themselves compelled to organise their institute according to this logic, as noted above, but the same logic is systematically infecting the school curriculum. young adults who should acquire social skills and competences, which are sadly lacking in the curricula, are confronted with levels of achievement that only the very best can ever hope to reach. so, the rest just ‘drops out’. this is all the more sad because every teacher has known pupils who were rotten at math but had a heart of gold … secularisation seems to be the term that connects the promotion of the above logic and the diminution of religious impact on society, including education. in louvain, the jesuits organise an ‘open year’.30 whoever considers taking up university studies can apply. the students are supposed to ‘taste’ some courses, engage in community life (including prayer) and in voluntary work. this formula is very successful. students testify of its positive effect. only the above logic can prevent this formula to become the default first academic year from now on. if one could ignore what i called the ‘industrial imperative’, one would only find arguments in favour of such system. it is high time for education to reflect – also literally curb – this tendency. firstly, instead of allowing government to force schools to apply the perverse industrial logic while reducing funds, school should force government to treat education as its most important investment and leave industry and banks to solve their own problems. but this is not what this article is about. secondly, the curriculum should reverse its ‘industrialisation’ and formulate a new teleology. this teleology should not be elaborated in terms of production or consumption and formal (i.e. liberal) citizenship. educational challenge decades ago, in catholic higher education, students used to go to an abbey and reflect on faith as such. as an effect of what was generally perceived as secularisation, this formula was replaced by other, more socially orientated initiatives. but for one reason or another, these initiatives, once amputated from their traditional and religious – two mutually contagious notions – provenance, soon ‘deteriorated’ into group survival trips or even just plain sport events. this can easily be perceived as a symptom of the above-mentioned secularisation with its – not necessary or intrinsic – implication of (religious) indifference. precisely because of the negative connotation of indifference, a fresh approach to the notion of ‘retreat’ was required. it would have to appeal to students and yet have all the spiritual effect that catholic (or indeed other religious) education is supposed to provide. as the old formula has fallen out of grace, so to speak, education should start from the premise that a retreat should not ‘re-treat’ god but needs to hinge on an existential experience that is strong yet not spectacular. reflection should ‘root’ in the world and ‘grow’ towards god, not the other way around (anymore). this latter, deductive approach has lost its absolute validity. as ignace verhack says in his latest book, christian faith and thought have become impossible without a positive attitude towards the world (verhack 2016). its acceptability depends largely on a world opening up towards god, a world that is no longer deductive in that it derives its meaning from a scholastic understanding of creation. actually, projects such as this have many ‘advantages’. there is of course the mere experience of caring that would serve as the starting point of a spiritual reflection – which will be explained in the appendix below. this is the main target of this initiative. there is also the positive effect of someone who is ‘left out’ of social interaction getting a (voluntary) visitor instead of a (paid, professional and technical) care taker. but it also means that suddenly those ‘marginal categories’ (the ‘poor’) regain their legitimate presence in society, just by being seen and heard again, not because of any (spectacular) achievement. finally, it shows youngsters the hardness of work in the ‘soft sector’ and leads to respect for (professional) care givers. in the 1970s several social developments generated the phenomenon of institutes for the so-called ‘target groups’. this would ensure specific treatment for those who needed it. because of this specificity, the institutes were deemed more human than the households who could only offer a family life that was often unable to function satisfactorily because of the special care some household members required. that care would now be taken over by professionals. despite all the good intentions and the benefits of professional care on specialised sites, this development literally removed those persons that needed special care from the spheres where daily life was lived by ‘normal’ people. government is now taking initiatives to ‘remedy’ this situation, and launches projects that encourage ‘inclusion’, ‘responsibilisation’, ‘socialisation of care’, etc. and indeed, at the surface these projects seem to be meant to give the elderly, the disabled and psychically troubled persons their social rights back, but unfortunately they often are nothing but ‘tighten the belt’ measures. inclusive education is cheaper than special education, responsibilisation and socialisation usually means that next of kin can pay for the extra care someone needs. until further notice, care is still institutional and mentally disabled persons, persons who suffer from dementia or psychic problems, are still ‘strangers’ in our society. there are still lots of work to be done about their ‘stigmatisation’. appendix: the gain: psycho-ethical effects of charity in education youngsters profit from a care experience on several levels (burman 2013). on an affective level, a student ‘meets’ another human being ‘behind’ the label. it is perfectly natural to be lightly nauseated by the very idea of mentally handicapped persons, psychiatric patients or demented elderly people. our society does not breed saints that easily. even st. angela da foligno experienced traces of nausea when washing lepers.31 we are so used to live in a sterile social environment that the sight of someone who is constitutionally unable to keep up with current hygienic standards by himself or herself can only be disturbing for a youngster who has never been confronted with this phenomenon. this new world is strange and this experience is what theology calls a ‘desert experience’ and psychology calls ‘deep water’. it is not what one seeks from oneself, which is precisely the main reason for this project. our experience, however, ensures us that discomfort, fear and even disgust will eventually turn into something beautiful, namely the recognition of an unalienable human dignity. on a cognitive level, students acquire a social awareness, mainly in terms of responsibility – going from merely keeping their appointments with an institution to understanding the fact that someone is actually counting on them to just ‘be there’. also, the students are able to criticise prejudices and caricatures in society and commercial media. they acquires insight in causes, mechanisms and effects of different systems of deprivation (disability, psychiatric problems, poverty, addiction, etc.). this way, they understands that those people are not to blame for needing care and help. on a moral level, one sees voluntary work as meaningful experience and is motivated to apply the social competences above as part of life, to integrate this experience as co-determining life choices (study, profession, relation, vocation) and to recognise religious thought and ditto reflection as proper motivation for charity. important here is the way cognition is integrated in other faculties like disgust, responsibility, empathy and respect. ‘humanity’ as a category is ‘broader’ than mere competence acquisition or content saving. conclusion late modernity is where thought, culture and philosophy explore the limits of instrumentalisation. by weakening the modern imperatives, charity – hitherto confined to (moral) theology – reappears in cultural discourse without resistance. this urges education to also look beyond its modern formats. one possible initiative is the ‘insertion’ of charity. reflection on a care experience is a pedagogically justifiable form of this insertion. what was deemed irrelevant, private and optional before becomes a core educational challenge now – i hope. the new meaning of the world, without changing the world, is precisely this: let us keep teaching economy, engineering, law or medicine, etc., but always against the backdrop of charity. education should come from the heart, as plato would have it. this way we may make liquid society heaven on earth. acknowledgements competing interests the author declares that he has no financial or personal relationships which may have inappropriately influenced him in writing this article. references arendt, h., 1958, the human condition, university of chicago press, chicago, il. burman, m., 2013, ‘de zorgervaring van jongeren die deelnamen aan ziezo; een kwalitatief-hermeneutische exploratie’, dissertation presented in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of master of science in pedagogical sciences, supervision prof. dr. stefan ramaekers; dr. erik meganck. collini, s., 2012, what are universities for?, penguin books, london. comte-sponville, a., 2001, a small treatise on the great virtues, metropolitan books, new york. dresen, g., 2002, ‘oefening van liefde: inhoud en publieke betekenis van een caritas-ethiek’, tijdschrift voor theologie 42(1), 3–14. du preez, p., simmonds, s. & verhoef, a., 2016, ‘rethinking and researching transformation in higher education: a meta-study of south-african trends’, transformation in higher education 1(1), 1–7. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v1i1.​2thejournal.org.za/index.php/thejournal/article/view/2/9 hanley, r., 2017, love’s enlightenment: rethinking charity in modernity, cambridge university press, cambridge. heidegger, m., 1966, discourse on thinking, harper & row, new york. heidegger, m., 1969, identity and difference, harper & row, new york. heidegger, m., 1977, the question concerning technology, and other essays, garland publishers, mi. heidegger, m., 1978, basic writings, routledge & kegan paul, london. hobbes, t., 2011, leviathan (revised edition), broadview press, ontario. janicaud, d., 2000, phenomenolgy and the theological turn: the french debate, fordham university press, new york. jonkers, p. & welten r. (eds.), 2005, god in france: eight contemporary french thinkers on god, peeters, leuven. maffesoli, m., 1996, the time of the tribes: the decline of individualism in mass society, sage, london. meganck, e., 2015, ‘in godsnaam: een filosofisch parcours’, nederlands theologisch tijdschrift 69(3), 211–224. meganck, e., 2016a, ‘spem in aliud … what may i hope for?’, ethical perspectives 23(3), 473–498. meganck, e., 2016b, ‘ratio est fides: contemporary philosophy as virtuous thought’, international journal of philosophy and theology 77(3), 154–170. https://doi.org/10.1080/21692327.2016.1221356 meganck, e., 2018, ‘re-telling faith: a contemporary philosophical redraft of christianity as hermeneutics’, new blackfriars 99(1079), 30–46. https://doi.org/​10.1111/nbfr.12184 nietzsche, f., 1974, the gay science, random house, new york. vattimo, g., 1997, beyond interpretation: the meaning of hermeneutics for philosophy, stanford university press, stanford, ca. vattimo, g., 1999, belief, stanford university press, stanford, ca. verhack, i., 2016, een weg naar god voor deze tijd, betsaida, ’s-hertogenbosch. verhaeghe, p., 2015, autoriteit, de bezige bij, antwerpen. weber, m., 2004, ‘science as a vocation’, in d. owen & t. strong (eds.), the vocation lectures, pp. 1–3, hackett publishing company, indianapolis, in. weyns, w.; estor a.; geudens s. (eds.), 2013, marktisme: kritiek op het berekenende samenleven, pelckmans, kapellen. whitehead, a.n., 1978, process and reality, free press, new york. footnotes 1. charity refers to neighbourly – and, of course, ‘otherly’ – love here, not to donations of any sort. 2. in this study, she famously describes and criticises the historical transition from action through work to labour. this transition affects everything, from art to politics. it can be applied to education also. an elaboration hereof would take us beyond the scope of this article. 3. the basic rights in terms of freedom, like freedom of religion, freedom of speech, etc. are purely formal and totally independent of what one believes, says, etc. what one believes, says, etc. is constitutionally irrelevant. 4. the term ‘reduction’ here is not necessarily morally loaded. 5. actually, as paul van tongeren remarks in filosofie magazine (2016:24[3], 10), the problem is where modern education and care want to ensure quality. but this ‘ensurance’ requires measurable evidence, results. therefore, quality that needs to be ensured is unavoidably replaced by quantity. 6. there is a wonderful episode of the brilliant series yes, minister, ‘the compassionate society’, about a hospital that is fully staffed except for medical staff because there is no money for that. so the hospital runs like a charm, without patients. the core business, healing the sick, is completely absent, but its efficiency is exemplary – it even won a prize for that. (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u01oual9ysq) 7. this method was developed from burrhus skinners notion of ‘operant conditioning’ onward. 8. society can organise initiatives to remedy the lack of social skills (e.g. scouting), of economic potential (e.g. grants), of proximity (e.g. boarding schools, school bus), but cannot not ‘efface’ religious difference. logic operation, managing strategy, political decision does not affect religious obedience or identity. when an indian politician suggested that all pariahs should convert from hinduism to buddhism in order to escape from social rejection, they bluntly refused. i cannot imagine anyone refusing a grant or a school bus ride on the ground of social or economic identity. 9. in 1879, wilhelm wundt ‘opened’ the first laboratory for experimental psychology at leipzig university, which was supposed to move psychology as a hard core science away from philosophy (and theology). 10. zygmunt bauman, liquid modernity (2000), liquid love (2003), liquid life (2005), liquid fear (2006), liquid times (2006) and finally liquid evil (2016). 11. i remember, when i was young, there was this joke that went ‘last sunday, two men got married in our church.’ ‘what?’ ‘yes, one at 10 o’clock and then another one at 11 o’clock’ and that was considered funny. now, you can only make conservative christians cry with this ‘joke’. 12. of course, not all of these changes are ideologically motivated, like the legislation concerning marriage – although the way divorce has been facilitated lately can be seen as an ideological attempt to undermine the (christian) notion of the family as the cornerstone of society. but legislation that concerns bioethical matters, like abortion and euthanasia, certainly is. also, one could see how the way the financing of mental health care significantly shifts from residential to ambulant might hide a strategy to diminish the impact of catholic congregations who have been engaging in resident care for ages. 13. when i was their age, we knew it was ‘not done’ to place dirty boots on a bus seat, and we expected elderly people to reprimand us; otherwise the act would lose its character of ‘rebellious statement’. now, it seems just a matter of complete indifference. 14. this british report from 2010 states ‘higher education matters because it drives innovation and economic transformation. higher education helps to produce economic growth, which in turn contributes to national prosperity’. see www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/422565/bis-10-1208-securing-sustainable-higher-education-browne-report.pdf (visited 14 march 2018). the link www.independent.gov.uk/browne-report, mentioned in this pdf-document, does not work. 15. the school doctor was surprised when she told the 14-year-old children that doctors were no longer obliged to notify the parents when a girl of their age asked for a ‘morning after’ pill and i told the class that i utterly regretted this, since i was convinced that in such situations the parents, after an understandable moment of frustration and anger, would only turn out to be the only possible support. i do not consider ignoring the parents in such situations a victory, as the school doctor initially did. later on, she agreed with me. 16. for reasons of discretion, i will not mention the name of the organisation. 17. this utilitarian ethics has recently developed into an ethics of sterility. in an illustrated weekly, a respected journalist wrote that a hand shake is no longer accepted, since you actually rub each other with bacteria. even a high five has become dubious. we should all follow the example of former president obama and confine ourselves to a ‘fist bump’. in an academic journal, i read of a doctoral student in medicine who could not understand how parents still allowed their children to blow out candles on a birthday cake, since that was no less than injecting bacteria into the cream. sterility beats tradition. 18. 3 october 2012, keizersberg abbey, louvain. 19. unfortunately, as vsko does no longer exist, the documents are no longer to be found on the internet. 20. the care experience implies a total absence of technical or professional activity. there is no goal or result that has to be achieved and that is not the experience (of bliss?) itself. 21. see www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights 22. it is fundamentally wrong to state that religion and violence always go together. we can follow rené girard where he discovers the violent roots of religion and we also follow those who point at the relation between actual violence and religion. inasmuch as that relation is genuine, it always turns out to be a perversion of that religion. let us not forget, for instance that muslim terrorists barely know the coran and who they, once welcomed into isis, only receive military training and no more religious indoctrination. 23. politeness, he suggests, and decency are themselves perhaps not real virtues, but they certainly are the indispensable conditions of virtuousness. without them, ethical virtues remain empty. 24. i refer to the famous methodenstreit, kierkegaard’s and nietzsche’s criticism of hegel, the appearance of psychoanalysis and quantum mechanics, the tradition that heidegger ‘started’, etc. 25. unfortunately, i am unable to find the exact date of this conference. 26. as gadamer famously remarked, typical of modernity is its prejudice against prejudices. 27. he used theos, theoi as well as theios to denote the divine arrival of thought in man. perhaps this might have been his real problem with the sophists, not that they used rhetoric, but that they should consider themselves the owners, the makers of truth instead of recognising a more religious source of thought, of truth. 28. ‘the safest general characterization of the european philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to plato’ (whitehead 1978:39). 29. augustin said ‘love, and then do whatever you want’. no harm can ever come from real love. now, within the sphere of logic, ‘anything follows’ only applies to a false proposition (a contradiction). so, in order to prevent charity from becoming the contradiction at the core of christianity – more or less in the way freud called christian charity a perversion, a sort of psychological contradiction – and thereby perishing in what is called a ‘deductive explosion’, we should think of it beyond the reach of logic. 30. https://www.kuleuven.be/studentenvoorzieningen/kot-leuven/residenties-cerab/dondeynehuis/project 31. when she caught herself being nauseated, she actually ate a piece of leper skin floating in the tub, as punishment, but was then blessed with the sensation of receiving the body of christ, in the consecrated form of a host of flesh. most students do not go that far as this mystic nun. abstract introduction political and historical context being a black person is a phenomenon of a capricious imagination? black reason and black studies being a black person as a social and existential imperative blackhood and the self blackhood for black studies acknowledgements references footnotes about the author(s) m. john lamola department of philosophy, university of fort hare, south africa citation lamola, m.j., 2018, ‘blackhood as a category in contemporary discourses on black studies: an existentialist philosophical defence’, transformation in higher education 3(0), a55. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v3i0.55 original research blackhood as a category in contemporary discourses on black studies: an existentialist philosophical defence m. john lamola received: 14 aug. 2018; accepted: 04 oct. 2018; published: 03 dec. 2018 copyright: © 2018. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract background: an era and academic milieu that clamour at post-racialist and globalist theoretical frameworks juxtaposed with evidence of growing anti-black dehumanizing racism, and the persistence of psycho-social alienation of black learners in multi-racial educational institutions. aim: to engage in a critical philosophical–phenomenological and political review of the experience of being-black-in-the-world as a factor that justifies the establishment and maintenance of black studies programmes. the article seeks to contribute to the debate on the vagaries accompanying the institutionalisation of culturo-epistemic exclusive spaces for socially suppressed selfhoods in a postmodern academy. setting: racialised social environments as affecting higher education, with post-apartheid south africa as a case. methods: existential philosophy, black consciousness and paulo freire’s philosophy of education. results: the category of blackness as derived from a fanonian existential phenomenology and steve biko’s perspective, contrasted against achille mbembe’s semiological–hermeneutic and cosmopolitan treatment of blackness, is an existential–ontological reality that should function as a cardinal category in educational planning, justifying specialised learning and knowledge-exchange spaces for the re-humanisation of black existence. conclusion: the experience of black existential reality, conceived from blackhood as an external recognition and an internally self-negotiated consciousness within the social immanence of whiteness, justifies the institutionalisation of learning spaces and programmes that are aimed at nurturing antiracist black self-realisation, namely black studies. introduction we are engulfed by a zeitgeist (the spirit of the time) of globalisation and globalism. our thinking is dazzled with imaginaries1 the ‘global community’, ‘global village’ and the concomitant ideal of cosmopolitanism. we are ethically impelled to aspire for the social ontology of a cosmopolitarian being, the ‘world citizen’ who is not ‘colour conscious’.2 writing in the year 2000 as a philosopher studying the impact of this fundamentally and rapidly changing world on discourses on race and colonialism, in his our heritage: the past in the present of african-american and african existence, tsenay serequeberhan (2000) proclaimed: we are, at the close of the twentieth century, at a point in time when the dominance of the universe of european singularity is being encompassed or engulfed by the multiverse of our shared humanity. the colonizer, self-deified imperial europe, is dead! (p. 52) nearly 20 years since this proclamation of the death of the epistemic emperor, europe and his eurocentric universalism, and nearly 30 years since appiahs’ critique of african ‘nativistic consciousness’ in his in my father’s house: africa in the philosophy of culture (1992:47–72), in this putative era of the global village and multiversalism, african modes of self-knowledge and expression are still battling for space in the mainline academy, including in universities on the african continent. equally, the idealised global culture and ethic is proving to be laced with an ever-increasing western paranoid nationalism, border politics, antiblack racism and the tendency to treat africans as a surplus people.3 with our minds, as black africans, suffocating, we gasp and scream out with amina mama, who at a symposium organised by the nordic africa institute under the theme identity and beyond: rethinking africanity, protested ‘we are being asked to think “beyond identity”, when for many of us identity remains a quest, something in-the-making’ (mama 2001:9). emanating from this crisis and confusion, or rather in a quest to situate the dilemma of african existence in this self-reconstituting world, appiah’s post-racialism (1992) and cosmopolitanism (2007), together with achille mbembe’s afropolitanism and racial relativism,4 have gained prominence as the conceptual frameworks in tune with this zeitgeist of a globalising world. we are cautioned that to focus our academic research and teaching on matters african, and particularly to promote academic programmes that are specifically concerned with the condition of black people in this multiculturising and post-racialising world, is to indulge in a parochial social anthropology, racial essentialism and jingoistic race-based provincialism (see eze 2014). in fidelity to this task, in a 2006 article titled ‘on the postcolony: a brief response to critics’, mbembe (2006) laments the rise of anticolonial african postcolonial theory with these words: by insisting too much on difference and alterity, this current of thought has lost sight of the weight of the fellow human (le semblable) without whom it is impossible to imagine an ethics of the neighbour, still less to envisage the possibility of a common world, of a common humanity. (p. 153) the contradiction of an intellectual climate that is uncomfortable with ethnically specific knowledge bases and the unquenchable quest for a restorative african consciousness as expressed by amina mama is a grave challenge for the modern postcolonial african academy. voices such as austin channing brown’s i’m still here: black dignity in a world made for whiteness (2018) haunt our postmodern consciousness. when we later add references to the psycho-social experiences of black students in white-majority or white-dominated educational institutions, this article will explicatively argue that the task before the academy is more than pedagogic and may be beyond the theme of ‘transforming higher education’. we aim to demonstrate that it is acutely existential, as this situation constitutes the epistemico-ontological antagonism of a people whose selfhood is constrained, oppressed. our theme will develop as a thread linking education, freedom and the attainment of being-human as, incidentally, postulated by paulo freire in the pedagogy of the oppressed, where he writes that ‘at all stages of their liberation, the oppressed must see themselves as women and men engaged in the ontological and historical vocation of becoming more fully human’ ([1970]2005:65). specifically, the task at hand is about the quality of the self-understanding that is gained through education, by persons who happen to be encountered in terms that degrade their humanity as they happen to have a darker skin pigmentation or any of the biological traits that tend away from europeanity.5 therefore, besides the theoretical embroilment into the meanings of various nuances of racial consciousness that we will unavoidably have to delve into, a consideration of the academic condition of black people drives us to advocate that the healing, nurturing and unleashing of black african excellence requires institutional spaces that are organised for and focused on the complications and possibilities of lived-black-experience-in-a-white-racist-world. we deduce the philosophical import of the socio-pedagogical complications that justify, for instance, the production of resource tools such as moore, marguerite and penick-park’s (2018) the guide for white women who teach black boys. in his contribution to what white looks like: african-american philosophers on the whiteness question, taylor (2004) helpfully distils whiteness, whiteliness and whitely thinking as racially discriminative and hegemonic social and epistemic practices (2004:229–230). this delineation discursively lifted the discourse on racial experience away from the biological–metaphysical plane to the hermeneutical–phenomenological level. it is noteworthy that the common thread to the meanings of all these designations of white social ontology is how the privileges and way of thinking that is taken for granted by white people is being routinised as representing what is ‘normal’ in a racialised world. in his study of racism in australia, gassan hage demonstrably adds to taylor’s heuristic that ‘the core element of australia’s colonial paranoia is a fear of a loss of europeanness or whitenes, and of the lifestyle and privileges that are seen to emanate directly from that’ (hage 2003:49). the congruence of whitelines as a commitment to and a rationalisation of the privileges that are self-appropriated and enjoyed by people of european descent,6 and whitenes as the idealised human lived experience, together with whitely thinking as the mainstream epistemology of the modern world, adumbrate the frustration and subjugation of black being as a lived experience. this includes a suppression and an erasure of expressions of knowledge production, which eventuates in constricting possibilities of self-knowledge. this, existentialist phenomenologists will say, is to deny the very being, the being-in-the-world (dasein), of black people. according to martin heidegger, human being is facilitated through enabled cognitive capacity; existenz7 is enabled by understanding (verstehen) (heidegger 1962:67). and according to jean-paul sartre, the authentic self-creating person, the ‘for-itself’, is a result of an intentional and self-dependent consciousness (sartre 1992:541). a consideration of the hegemonic power of whiteness and whiteliness against the quest for the redemption (renaissance?) of the black african self in the neo-colonial juncture leads to the view that, left to itself, the mainstream whitely hegemonic academy is at best indifferent and at worst inimical to the cause of enriching black existential reality. to expect this academy to recognise black humanity is one thing; to expect it, as a bastion of whiteliness, to promote the black african self borders on the absurd, as noted at least from hage’s definition of the modus vivendi of whiteness in australia. in her ‘how do i live in this strange place’ (meaning as a white person in post-apartheid south africa), vice (2010) in a widely reviewed paper, after cautioning that she is not proposing ‘a discipline called whiteness studies’ (p. 324), suggested that white people must ‘minimize our whiteliness’ (p. 334) by going quiet (silent) on the consequences of their ‘unavoidable whiteness’, their being intractably embedded into a world of historical privileges (p. 335). freire (2005), thus, recorded the obvious: [t]he pedagogy of the oppressed cannot be developed or practiced by the oppressors. it would be a contradiction in terms if the oppressors not only defended but actually implemented a liberating education. (p. 54). against this dehumanising reality of whiteness and its whiteliness, we introduce blackhood as a countervailing recognition of black selfhood that is posited to frustrate the operationalisation of whiteness, specifically in the educational arena. blackhood, we aim to demonstrate, is an appreciation of blackness as a phenomenon vested with socio-historical ramifications. principally, it is an understanding of the psycho-epistemic and political obligations emanating from these ramifications without necessarily claiming a biological essence for this blackness. it is about the experience of being black in a hegemonic white racist world and the meaning(s) of this experience. it has nothing to do with racial essentialism. as we explain further on, it is about the political realism and phenomenological challenge of authentic existence, the existentiality of persons we recognise as black. blackhood, therefore, is not a metaphysical but an existentialist–phenomenological construct. this will become clearer as we later differentiate it from mbembe’s abstract semiotic–hermeneutic treatment of blackness in his critique of black reason (2017). thus refined, we will argue that blackhood must be the cardinal (cardinale, ‘guiding rule’) category in justifying, designing and maintaining black studies programmes. based on the foregoing, we make a distinction between black studies and african studies. whilst african studies is an ‘area study’ about africa, black studies, as our article aims to demonstrate, is a socio-ontologically delimited field of research, engagement and learning that is seized with questions arising from the past and present experiences of being-black-in-a-white-world. black studies thus incorporates african studies only in respect of those instances and aspects when it is studies by africans about africa, in other words, about themselves (see mazama 2001). the correlative of african studies is the burgeoning field of european studies, despite the fact that from our perspective, in the main, the structure of our education in neocolonial africa is simply european studies. our history major graduates know more about the history of europe and next to nothing about the history of africa. we proceed by first establishing the historico-political context and background against which our argument for black studies is derived. then, as a first step into the theoretical disputations of our disquisition, we review aspects of mbembe’s critique of black reason (2017), drawing out the implications of the thesis of this treatise on the merits or otherwise of our argument for black studies. as we elaborate on the gist of our proposition, we grapple with the meaning of blackhood against the shadow of the prevalent post-racialist cosmopolitarian critique of race-based thinking. this constitutes our leitmotif and flows into the concluding section of the article. political and historical context although a majority of countries in continental africa are not as racially heterogeneous as south africa and do not have the immediate black–white problem that south africa is emblematic of, the template of our analysis and argument, whilst informed by south africa, is derived from the view of whiteness and the challenge of blackhood as a globally manifesting phenomenon. we maintain that every contemporary black african is not only susceptible to the objectifying euro-white gaze but that she or he is a subject of the grand narrative that holds black people in general as a priori ‘still uncivilised’ or ‘still developing’. at the conclusion of this article, it will appear as an awkward curiosity that whilst it is estimated that in the usa there are more than 100 black studies degree programmes offered at a variety of universities and colleges (rojas 2007:10), there is a near paucity of such programmes in continental africa. our basic argument that the black ‘human condition’ (arendt 1958) justifies the promotion of institutional academic programmes that are focused on this state of ‘blackness’ recalls the agitation and efforts of w.e.b. du bois at the dawn of the 20th century. he monumentally decided that the vehicle for the revalorisation of the de-valorised black selfhood would be through his founding, in 1897, of the american negro academy. this was borne out of his discernment on how a black person in a white racist society lived in a ‘world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world’ (du bois [1903]1997:38). the consequence of this was a ‘double consciousness’, which he explicated thus: it is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity … (du bois [1903]1997:38). afforded no true self-consciousness, which is the existential condition of being, and with a cultivated (by the mainstream education system8) double consciousness in a white racist country, black americans needed to find educational means of crafting their own singular black consciousness and to force the world (social sciences) to accept that black is normal. du bois’s approach, of course, we may be cautioned, belongs to a dead era; it belongs to the museum of african history, according to appiah and mbembe (see serequeberhan 2000:22–23). it is therefore noteworthy that because of pressures from this race-sensitive spirit of the times, there is in the usa an incipient shying away from the term black studies, in preference of the ‘post-racial’ african-american studies. in addition, criticisms of the quality of black studies programmes, and the charge that they are ghettoising black intellection, abound (see brock, nix-stevenson & miller 2016). notwithstanding, the publication of the african american studies reader (2007), an 850-page anthology with 73 essays edited by nathaniel norment jr, stands as a compelling testimony that the question of the reality of black educational experience and its ontological imperatives is a veritable scientific concern. in a recent south african research paper in transforming higher education entitled ‘social identities and racial integration in historically white universities: a literature review of the experiences of black students’, bazana and mogotsi (2017) expose how ‘institutional cultures in historically white universities alienate and exclude black students’ identities’ (2017:1). they found that ‘these students’ sense of social identity, which includes culture, heritage, language and traditions, and consequently self-esteem and self-concept, is altered in these institutions’ (bazana & mogotsi 2017:1). writing as psychologists, they lay bare, empirically, the trauma and sense of non-belonging of these black students in these obstinately white (whitely?) university spaces (2017:4). in their conclusion they endorse steve biko’s argument and cautionary warning against racial integration and non-racial alliances that incorporate the uncured racial complexes of white superiority and black inferiority (see biko 1970a:20–28). at the same time, the black scholar: journal of black studies and research published a special focus issue on south africa. according to the editors, ‘the issue [was] meant to inaugurate a conversation on what the place of black studies and studies of blackness have in post-apartheid and post-mandela south africa [sic]’ (modisane, collis-buthelezi & ouma 2017:4). in a lead article by one of the guest editors, collis-buthelezi (2017), entitled ‘the case for black studies in south africa’, it is highlighted that one of the blind spots of the post-mandela era had been that to talk openly and frankly about race was ‘extremely dangerous’ until the recent upsurge in social media reports of racial incidents and the spate of ‘service delivery’ protests owing to the continuation of racially structured economic inequalities (collis-buthelezi 2017:18). this new reality check, it is reasoned, requires structured academic discourse such as that possible in and around a black studies programme. none of the articles in the special issue (modisane et al.) addresses the philosophical–psychical issues we probe in this article. nevertheless, they represent a useful historical and political background to our philosophical reflection. incorporating the results of bazana and mogotsi (2017) and their reference to biko, we believe that, at the least, elective course programmes that are focused on reversing the educational lens in a direction that affirms black pride and self-assertion should be offered to enable black learners to re-enter the multicultural, albeit eurocentric, educational system with an epistemic attitude that is imbued with their black consciousness and afrocentric perspectives that they can articulate with confidence. other modalities of black studies that could be pursued within this spectrum will be left for the conclusion of this disquisition. being a black person is a phenomenon of a capricious imagination? two archetypes on the conceptions of blackness in african scholarship are of relevance to us: those of mbembe and appiah. in the interests of brevity, we shall not return to appiah, for his overly autobiographical cosmopolitanism adds little to the specific intricacies of philosophising about black ontology. mbembe is poignantly relevant to the discourse that constitutes black studies. in critique of black reason (2017) he sets out in what promises to be a distillation of contemporary insights on racism from his analysis of the history of the racialisation of black skin. ‘the black man’, he writes, ‘is the only human in the modern order whose skin has been transformed into the form and spirit of merchandise – the living crypt of capitalism’ (2017:6). from there his reflective analysis devolves into a conception of this history of the racialisation and instrumentalisation of the african as being merely le imaginaire, that is, an act of the imagination and invention of blackness by the european colonial discourse on africa. the apogee of this postulation is that: [if] there is one space in which the imaginary relationship and the economy of fiction undergirding it existed in the most brutal, distinct, and obvious form, it is in the sign that we call blackness and as it ricochet [sic], in the seeming outer zone that we call africa, both of which are fated to be not common nouns, or even pronouns, but rather mere indicators of an absence of achievement. (mbembe 2017:12; [author’s own emphasis]) blackness, according to mbembe, is a semiotic sign, a mere indicator of something else. the term ‘black people’, lé négre, a word of iberian origin, he explains, was captured and deployed by european slave merchants and colonists for purposes of subjection and exploitation of the ‘black man’ (p. 20). blackness is an opportunistic and neurotic invention of the european racialising mind (p. 113). it should therefore be inferred, he insists, that ‘blackness does not exist as such. it is constantly produced’ (p. 18). consequently: the term [blackness] first designates not a significant reality but a field – or better yet, a coating – of nonsense and fantasies that the west (and other parts of the world) have woven and in which it clothed people of african origin long before they were caught in the snares of capitalism as it emerged in the fifteen and sixteenth centuries. (mbembe 2017:39) he then categorically concludes that ‘we uphold the idea that neither blackness nor race has ever been fixed … they have, on the contrary, always belonged to a chain of open-ended signifiers’ (p. 6). for completion, he would hasten to: ‘add that whiteness in turn was, in many ways, a fantasy produced by the european imagination, one that the west has worked hard to naturalize and universalize’ (p. 43). race for mbembe (2017) is a fiction of a once-upon-a-time colonial conspiracy that turned peoples found in africa into objects of exploitation: for it to operate as affect, impulse and a speculum, race must become image, form surface, figure, and – especially – a structure of the imagination … it is an operation of the imagination, the site of an encounter with the shadows and hidden zones of the unconscious. (p. 32) upon closer analysis it becomes apparent that mbembe’s conceptualisation of blackness (he methodically capitalises the word to denote that it is an abstract construct) is ultimately driven by a commitment to de-essentialise being black, that is, the concept of race in its generality. in the process, however, this blackness is turned into a hermeneutic of some contemporary social–historical phenomenon. he claims that: across early capitalism, the term ‘black’ referred only to the condition imposed on peoples of african origin … now, for the first time in human history, the term ‘black’ has been generalized. this new fungibility, this solubility, institutionalized as a new norm of existence and expanded to the entire planet, is what i call the becoming black of the world. (mbembe 2017: 5, 6) blackness is now a norm of existence that applies to the entire planet, which is becoming black! this is tantamount to an erasure of black-lived experience as a verifiable social ontology of people recognised in today’s world as ‘black africans’. to further buttress his relativisation of blackness as blackness, he revels in narrating how during the atlantic slave trade, not all black people in the new world were slaves. ‘they served not only as servile labourers but also as ship’s crewmen, explorers, officers, settlers, property owners, and, in some cases, freemen who owned slaves’ (mbembe 2017:15). so, blackness, in his argument, cannot be absolutised as a condition of suffering that solely emanates historically from european racial subjection. human exploitation and violence are de-essentialised as behavioural traits that are not the monopoly of white people as a technique to denude the grievance of brutalisation that is inherent in the definition of black existence. in the preface to the wits university press edition of the book, he volunteers the fact that his thoughts on blackness are formulated within his broader objective of the construction of the social ontology of afropolitanism. this afropolitanism is defined as pan-african and non-racial consciousness that rejects all pretensions to victimhood associated with the colonial past. this epistemically advocates an african consciousness that is open to the world and is briskly trading culture with the rest of the world. ontologically, it aims for a supra-african consciousness that projects itself in the world without regard for the pain and humiliations of africa of yesterday and today, living out the eschaton of a non-racial future.9 blackness, according to mbembe and those who agree with him (see eze 2016), is only a representation in the sense of the semiological hermeneutics of paul ricoeur;10 it can therefore be socio-historically ephemeralised as a cosmopolitan afropolitan ontology. in contradistinction, going beyond fanon’s exposition on the power of the gaze in the formulation of the consciousness of the negro colonial subject, biko would hold that socially grounded black self-affirmation and self-definition in the face of the denial of the black self by the white racist environment is crucial. it is an ontological imperative towards freedom. he declared: merely by describing yourself as black you have started on a road towards freedom, you have committed yourself to fight against all forces that seek to use your blackness as a stamp that marks you out as a submissive being. (1971:52) to deny, wish away and erase blackness is to pull the carpet out from under the march of the black-aggrieved towards self-rehumanisation. black reason and black studies all theoretical notions, definitions and debates on blackness considered, given the critical pedagogical and revolutionary task at hand, we would assert with freire (2005): the central problem is this: how can the oppressed, as divided,11 unauthentic beings, participate in developing the pedagogy of their liberation? (p. 48) does the globalisitic semiotic hermeneutics with its afropolitanism and the denial of the existential value of black experience draw or defend a space for the cultivation of an emancipatory educational system that addresses the current conditions as well as aspirations of black people in a world governed on the basis of white racial supremacy? to address this question, one only needs to interrogate the title of mbembe’s treatise: ‘critique of black reason’. what is black reason? and why does it warrant a critique? mbembe informs his readers that ‘black reason consists of voices, pronouncements, discourses, forms of knowledge, commentary, and non-sense, whose object is things or people “of african origin”’ (2017:27). this definition, obviously, has consequences for the subject of our article. mbembe does not stop there, though; he continues: black reason names not only a collection of discourses but also practices – the daily work that consists in inventing, telling, repeating, and creating variations on the formulas, texts, and rituals whose goals was to produce the black man as a racial subject and sight of savage exteriority, who was therefore set up for moral disqualification and practical instrumentalisation. (p. 28) stripped of its instrumentalist lamentations against what europeans did to africans at the start of the colonial era, critique of black reason is a denunciation of the anticolonial intellectual heritage that informs the need for institutions such as black studies and even much of the current syllabi and agenda of african studies. in fact, given mbembe’s abstractive rendition of black, the very title of the book has a deliberate derogatory ring. it is a parody of a ‘coloured’ reason. how can reason be black? in its purpose, the book is part of a campaign of what chielozona eze has pronounced as the mission of afropolitanism in his mbembe-praising article ‘we afripolitans’ (eze 2016), namely to ‘disrupt’ black thinking on race and identity and ‘to rescue black scholarship from oppositional conceptions of identity’ (eze 2014:234). granted the requirement for scientific and philosophical critical scholarship, given the current milieu of contestations on race and transformation, as well as the historical power disequilibrium between white and black people, is it not disingenuous to point a critique onto the self-formulations of the disempowered historical victims of white racism? does this not debilitate them at a juncture when what they sorely need is vitalisation of their struggle-to-be? why a ‘critique of black reason’ wherein black reason is admittedly an anticolonial and antiracist discourse? is it because its only sin is that it does not realise the colourless cosmopolitanism dreamed of by mbembe and his school (see appiah 2007; appiah & gutmann 1996)? has postcolonial scholarship exhausted its exploration and ‘critique of white racist reason’? white reason is whiteliness, a systemic justification, obfuscation and silence on ‘whiteness’. as an ideology of white supremacy that justifies the taking for granted of the whitely way of things, it has what is only a predatory relationship with blackness. this, as is now well known, stems from the synonymification of black people or blacks with africa. africa is a field of extraction for the european, both psycho-philosophically and economically. in its abjection, africa props up the european’s ego in his self-conception as the paragon of being-human. africa’s perpetual pauperisation through the manner in which her natural wealth continues to be exploited by forces of market liberalism has sealed her eternal dependency on external political sovereignties. mutatis mutandis; as the whitely educational space is defined and delimited by whiteness and whiteliness, must black children consume white education-culture into eternity, whilst attempts at countervailing this academic whiteness are subjected to globalistic rationalisations that deny the reality of black existence and lampoon their intellection and emancipatory programme as ‘black reason’? being a black person as a social and existential imperative black existentiality – the meanings reverberating from existing (understanding oneself) as a black person who is conscious of his or her blackness in a world that has formed views about persons with black skin – is the kernel of our disquisition. the latter reference to the import of black skin in defining black existentiality recalls biko’s (1971) definitive assertion that: black consciousness is in essence the realisation by the black man of the need to rally together with his brothers around the cause of their oppression – the blackness of their skin – and to operate as a group to rid themselves of the shackles that bind them to perpetual servitude. (p. 53) biko’s thinking was influenced by frantz fanon’s grapple with the phenomenological existentialism of jean-paul sartre, as well as maurice merleau-ponty’s phenomenology of embodied consciousness, within the hubris of the politics of the négritude movement. the point of departure of this thinking is the appreciation of the relationship between the material experience of the human agent and the quality of her or his self-consciousness. for example, the following quotation from merleau-ponty’s phenomenology of perception by fanon is strategic: for a being who has acquired consciousness of himself and of his body, who has attained to the dialectic of subject and object, the body is no longer a cause of the structure of consciousness, it has become an object of consciousness. (fanon 1986:175) consciousness of the body is a legitimate ingredient of self-awareness. asserting this somatic reality of the black colonial subject in black skin, white masks ([1952]1986), fanon makes a countervailing reflection on sartre’s observations in anti-semite and jew on how the jew is in fact a product of the mental representation of the anti-semite. sartre is quoted by fanon: they [the jews] have allowed themselves to be poisoned by the stereotype that others have of them, and they live in fear that their acts will correspond to this stereotype … we may say that their conduct is perpetually overdetermined from the inside. (fanon 1986:87) fanon retorts: ‘i am the slave not of the “idea” that others have of me but of my own appearance’ (fanon 1986:87). being a black person is not merely an idea of the othering subject or a representation of a capricious colonial mind. it is a material reality of being, a facticity whose social ontology has to be self-negotiated. of vital importance, though, is that for fanon, especially as articulated in his later the wretched of the earth (fanon [1961]1991), this awareness and theoretic deployment of his somatic appearance was consistently conceptualised from an existential–phenomenological perspective. he does not engage in the metaphysics or eugenics of ‘the black skin’; equally, he does not reduce the lived reality of the black colonial subject (‘the negro’), his being-in-the-world, into some hermeneutic sign, as mbembe would. from his very early encounter with the négritude movement, he was never obsessed with blackness, for blackness sake, but with the lived political actuality of black existence as deformed by colonialism. this he monumentally outlined in chapter 5 of black skin, white mask, ‘the fact of blackness’ (fanon [1961]1991: 82–108; see also serequeberhan 2000:1–12). following this fanonian existential phenomenological thinking, biko, whilst holding to what we quoted earlier on black skin as the cause of oppression, would thus assert that ‘[b]eing black is not a matter of pigmentation – being black is a reflection of a mental attitude’ (1971:52). this politically inspired understanding of how skin colour and racialism are experienced led to fanon’s agonised and revolutionary inclusivity of the very last sentence in the wretched of the earth: ‘for europe, for ourselves, and for humanity, comrades, we must make a new skin, develop a new thinking, and try to set afoot a new human being’ (fanon [1961]1991:315).12 the same mental disposition is resonated in the conclusion of biko’s (1973) analysis of the nature of the racial structures of apartheid south africa in his essay ‘black consciousness and the quest for true humanity’: we have set out on a quest for true humanity, and somewhere on the distant horizon we can see the glittering prize. let us march forth with courage and determination, drawing strength from our common plight and our brotherhood. in time we shall be in a position to bestow upon south africa the greatest gift possible – a more human face. (p. 108; see also biko 1970a:27) blackhood and the self our frequent references to existence, black existence, will need to be understood within the context of what we will call ‘existentiality’ as a function of human consciousness. existentiality derives from both an ‘inflectional’ and ‘exflectional’ perspective, or interiority and exteriority, meaning that it denotes both intrasubjective consciousness as well as external institutional impositions on one’s self-consciousness, including the mere gaze of others. the given fact of existence as a black person, as a conscious being, is therefore about self-understanding (and self-negotiation) as a black person in constant confrontation with externally imposed definitions and categorisations of black personhood. it is in this sense that this self-negotiated selfhood is blackhood. the word ‘self-negotiated’ is here introduced to denote the intrasubjective (what biko identified as the ‘inward-looking process’; biko 1970b:31) struggle to situate oneself against the generally hostile exteriority. to the laboured reflections on the ‘other-as-a-look’ by sartre in being and nothingness,13 fanon objected that this apparently harmless conception of alterity, the objectifying othering as formulated by the others’ gaze, has different implications when applied to the encounter between the european coloniser and the negro or colonised black people. for the black person, the framing looker, the other, is the little white boy with his mother, screaming, ‘look, a negro! … mama the negro’s going to eat me up’ (1986:84). the negro is different, frightening, wicked, inferior, some exotic human–savage, an object of curious attention and fear. to deny that, well into the 21st century, black presence in a white world is still a magnet of a gaze that is a priori wrapped in either pity, spite, amused contempt or a fear that induces neutralisation is to be in ‘bad faith’, as sartre would say. it is to lie to oneself. this affective phenomenon of pity, degradation and fear corroborates the hypostasis of blackhood, which becomes the antithesis of this racist affective complex. this converse, or counter-push, is what fanon claimed was absent from the negroes, the antilleans, he observed. they displayed no countervailing ontological resistance to the screaming little white boy as they were trapped in the ‘zone of non-being’ (1986:83). the ontological disequilibrium at play here, as in the master and slave dialectics, is the breakdown of blackhood. they had not self-negotiated the way they were viewed, encountered, recognised and treated by white racism; their selfhood was nullified. similar to the black folks of fanon’s antilles in the neocolonial black african subject, we do not have a being-for-itself, a combatively self-creating self, as a given. admittedly, we have the in-itself, a socio-material being that is noted, observed, treated and related to by others. however, it is not the ‘for-itself’. it is not the ens casui su [a being that causes itself], in the sense that sartre would say that ‘[m]an is nothing else but that which he makes of himself’ ([1946]2007:23). the ontology of a black african in a white racist world is quintessentially a being-through-others as well as being-for-others, until it is counter-self-negotiated. others tell and teach her who she is, pricking and shaping her self-consciousness. she is not her own. she is in a ‘zone of non-being’. human being-in-the-world, if not actively engaged as a self-consciousness, is always a being-for-others, framed by ascriptions imposed by others as well as the ruling ideas and conventions of the day. however, it gets more serious and critical than this. when linked to how learning and education involve basic cognitive self-understanding that makes existenz14 and being-in-the-world possible (heidegger’s dasein), as well as the intentional authenticity (being-for-itself) of sartre, selfhood, from both a phenomenological and social perspective, is a reflection of the state of one’s humanness. it is about the quality of consciousness as a reflection of the ontological quality of ‘being human’ that can be contrasted with the state of an animal that does not possess a capacity for ‘self-consciousness’. this point is best elucidated by freire (2005) in these words: unable to decide for themselves, unable to objectify either themselves or their activity, lacking objectives which they themselves have set, living ‘submerged’ in a world to which they can give no meaning, lacking a ‘tomorrow’ and a ‘today’ because they exist in an overwhelming present, animals are ahistorical … in contrast, the people – aware of their activity and the world in which they are situated, acting in function of the objectives which they propose, having the seat of their decisions located in themselves and in their relations with the world and with others, infusing the world with their creative presence by means of the transformation they effect upon it – unlike animals, not only live but exist; and their existence is historical … humans exist in a world which they are constantly re-creating and transforming. (pp. 98, 99 [author’s own emphasis]) are we human? human phenomenological ontology, the ever-present danger of dehumanisation in a racialistically dehumanising world, demands black consciousness. this self-awareness of the meaning of being black, demands a nurtured positive cognition and learning that affirms and enriches one’s sense of being black. within the immanence of whiteness, this justifies spaces for learning and intellection as black people. it is only by owning and controlling their self-learning and education that black people can recover, maintain and defend their humanity. it is only through teaching herself, about herself, in her own space, and at her own pace, that a postcolonial black subject would attain the state of ens casui sui, ‘a being that causes itself’ and transforms its world. justifying this exclusive pedagogical space for black self-realisation, biko (1973), incorporating freire’s connection of pedagogy with freedom, explained: on his own, therefore, the black man wishes to explore his surroundings and test his possibilities – in other words to make his freedom real by whatever means he deems fit. at the heart of this thinking is a realisation by blacks that the most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed … if one’s mind is so manipulated by the oppressor as to make the oppressed believe that he is a liability to the white man, then there will be nothing the oppressed can do to scare his powerful masters. (pp. 101–102) biko’s explication that is infused with the motif and goal of freedom, especially freedom of the mind (consciousness) as the very purpose of this exclusive pedagogical space, addresses the possible charge that the last statement in our previous paragraph sounds like a verwoerdian philosophy of separate development. the goal of apartheid’s segregation in education was inferiorisation and subjugation; the goal of the black studies programmes proposed here is for the black self-realisation that breaks the fetters of the black inferiority complex, denies the racial supremacist of a black inferiority complex that props him up, thus leading to freedom of both from false consciousness, pointing to a south africa with ‘a more human face’, (biko 1973:108), a ‘country where colour will not serve to put a man in a box’ (biko 1970a:27). blackhood for black studies selfhood, we can now conclude, is the self pre-reflexively understanding and situating itself within time and place as human being in relation with others; it is situated self-awareness. it is the self, the ego, in the world. as such it reveals itself and can be observed and experienced or related to as an expression of an embodied self. it is an inert state that is only given a standing by the meaning we imbue in it, through recognition (and miscognition). our disquisition has been about how black selfhood, the givenness of ‘being black’, reveals itself to ‘us’, is received and manifests in the world, that is, is given meaning, as blackhood. it is in this vein that fanon in black skin, white mask wrote of ‘negrohood’ (1986:153) and deployed the following statement from hegel’s phenomenology of mind: self-consciousness exists in itself and for itself, in that and by the fact that it exists for another self-consciousness; that is to say, it is only by being acknowledged or recognized. (in fanon 1986:168) we are black because, unavoidably, so we are recognised. blackness therefore matters. it is not some historical imaginary propounded by colonising europeans, as mbembe opines. blackhood is about the social (recognition) ontology of being african and black in a world that is conscious of, or ‘hails back’ to, the existence or phenomenon of black bodies (mearlau-ponty). as such, blackness (the qualia) as a self-revealing reality has to be conceived of as a component and an expression of being as well as a historical reality. blackness is the given, like a rock or a chair; blackhood is blackness as it appears to the mind laden with meaning, an object-as-intended. blackhood is consciousness of blackness as it manifests with its epistemic (to the black, self-negotiating, knowing-subject) and socio-political ramifications (to the recognising-other). it is only coterminous with selfhood to the degree that the self objectified in the world is always recognised, be it negatively or positively. black consciousness, on the other hand, is the name of the internal, intrasubjective process. it is the self reflectively affirming itself, negotiating and negating the malicious externally imposed distortions, misrecognitions, of the black self (blackhood!) by others. it is the defence mechanism of blackhood. it is an assertive self-realisation, an ‘attitude of mind’ (biko 1973:101), that intentionally re-creates, antithetically, black selfhood. blackhood, as a positive self-recognition of blackness, is constructed through black consciousness. the matter of blackhood, therefore, relates to both ‘existentiality’, as a philosophical–ontological category, and ‘existential reality’, as a socio-political category. existentiality raises the ontological question, ‘how to be black in a white racist world that denies or proscribes the humanity of black bodies?’, and existential reality is about the question, ‘how do black people live in this racialised world?’ from this phenomenological perspective, it is noted that the very demand for and existence of spaces that support the proper recognition (humanity) of the black self is a revolutionary act in itself. to question, to ask about being (seinsfrage – heidegger) is to be. it is an expression of being ‘ek-sistent’, of ‘standing out’ from the world of mere things (heidegger 1987:17–21).15 in the context of our academic challenge, this ‘standing out’ involves grabbing opportunities for possibilities to ‘come into consciousness’ (biko). black studies, or structured black-themed spaces, will ensure that even within the immanent and stifling mainstream whiteness, black existentiality resolves itself as a threatened-but-defiant existence, an ontology of struggle, a combative ontology. a space in which we can ‘write what [we] like’16 and have ‘frank talk’17 without the censoring master peering over our shoulders. the white brothers and sisters can then tiptoe around, as sartre dramatically advises in the preface to fanon’s the wretched of the earth: europeans, you must open this book and enter into it. after few steps in the darkness you will see strangers gathered around a fire; come close, and listen, for they are talking of the destiny they will mete out to your trading posts and mercenaries who defend them. they will see you, perhaps, but they will go on talking among themselves, without even lowering their voices. (fanon [1961]1991:11) acknowledgements the original draft of this article was presented at the 4th international symposium of the dakar institute of african studies, senegal july 06–07, 2018 ‘bridging the gap: black studies across social, geographical, epistemic, and linguistic lines’. the author acknowledges with gratitude the influence of the critical engagement of the participants on the article. competing interests the author declares that he has no financial or personal relationships that may have inappropriately influenced him in writing this article. references appiah, k.a., 1992, in my father’s house: africa in the philosophy of culture, oxford university press, oxford. appiah, k.a. & gutmann, a., 1996, colour conscious: the political morality of race, princeton university press, princeton. appiah, k.a., 2007, cosmopolitanism: ethics in a world of strangers, norton, new york. arendt, h., 1958, the human condition, university of chicago press, chicago, il. bazana, s. & mogotsi, o.p., 2017, ‘social identities and racial integration in historically white universities: a literature review of the experiences of black students’, transformation in higher education 2, a25. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v2i0.25 biko, s., 1970a, ‘black souls in white skins?’, in a. stubbs (ed.), 2004, i write what i like, pp. 20–28, picador, johannesburg. biko, s., 1970b, ‘we blacks’, in a. stubbs (ed.), 2004, i write what i like, pp. 29–35, picador, johannesburg. biko, s., 1971, ‘the definition of black consciousness’, in a. stubbs (ed.), 2004, i write what i like, pp. 52–57, picador, johannesburg. biko, s., 1973, ‘black consciousness and the quest for a true humanity’, in a. stubbs (ed.), 2004, i write what i like, pp. 96–108, picador, johannesburg. brock, r., nix-stevenson, d. & miller, p.c. (eds.), 2016, the critical black studies reader, peter lang, frankfurt. brown, a.c., 2018, i’m still here: black dignity in a world made for whiteness, convergent books, new york. collis-buthelezi, v.j., 2017, ‘the case for black studies in south africa’, the black scholar: journal of black studies and research 47(2), 7–21. https://doi.org/10.1080/00064246.2017.1295349 du bois, w.e.b., [1903]1997, the souls of black folk, d.w. blight & r. gooding-williams (eds.), bedford books, boston, ma. eze, c., 2014, ‘rethinking african culture and identity: the afropolitan model’, journal of african cultural studies 26(2), 234–247. https://doi.org/10.1080/13696815.2014.894474 eze, c., 2016, ‘we afripolitans’, journal of african cultural studies 28(1), 114–119. https://doi.org/10.1080/13696815.2015.1100065 fanon, f., [1952]1986, black skin, white masks, transl. c.l. markmann, pluto press, sidmouth. fanon, f., [1961]1991, the wretched of the earth, evergreen edn., grove weidenfeld, new york. freire, p., [1970]2005, pedagogy of the oppressed, transl. m.b. ramos, the continuum, new york. hage, g., 2003, against paranoid nationalism: searching for hope in a shrinking society, the merlin press, london. heidegger, m., [1927]1962, being and time, transl. j. macquarie & e robinson, blackwell, oxford. heidegger, m., 1987, an introduction to metaphysics, transl. r. manheim, yale university press, new haven, ct. james, p. & steger, m.b. (eds.), 2010, globalisation and culture, vol. 4, sage publications, london. mama, a., 2001, ‘challenging subjects: gender and power in african contexts’, in h. melber (ed.), identity and beyond: rethinking africanity, pp. 9–18, nordiska afrikainstitutet, uppsala. mazama, a., 2001, ‘the afrocentric paradigm: contours and definitions’, journal of black studies 31, 387–405. https://doi.org/10.1177/002193470103100401 mbembe, a., 2006, ‘on the colony: a brief response to critics’, african identities 4(2), 143–178. https://doi.org/10.1080/14725840600761096 mbembe, a., [2001]2015, on the postcolony, wits university press, johannesburg. mbembe, a., 2017, critique of black reason, transl. l. dubois, wits university press, johannesburg. modisane, l., collis buthelezi, v.j. & ouma, c. (eds.), 2017, ‘introduction: black studies, south africa, and the mythology of mandela’, the black scholar: journal of black studies and research 47(2), 2–6. https://doi.org/10.1080/00064246.2017.1295348 moore, e., marguerite, a.m. & penick-parks, w., 2018, the guide for white women who teach black boys, corwin/sage publications, thousand oaks, ca. norment, n. jr. (ed.), 2007, the african american studies reader, 2nd edn., carolina academic press, durham, durham, nc. rojas, f., 2007, from black power to black studies: how a radical social movement became an academic discipline, john hopkins university press, baltimore. patterson, r., 1993, ‘collective identity, television and europe’, in p. drummond, r. patterson & j. willis (eds.), national identity and europe, pp. 1–7, bfi publishing, london. sartre, j.-p., [1943]1992, being and nothingness: an essay on phenomenological ontology, transl. h.e. barnes, routledge, london. sartre, j.-p., [1945]2007, existentialism is a humanism, transl. c. macomber, yale university press, new haven, ct. serequeberhan, t., 2000, our heritage: the past in the present of african-american and african existence, rowman & littlefield, new york. stubbs, a. (ed), [1978]2004, i write what i like: steve biko, a selection of his writings, picador, johannesburg. taylor, p., 2004, ‘silence and sympathy: dewey’s whiteness’, in g. yancy (ed.), what white looks like: african-american philosophers on the whiteness question, pp. 227–242, routledge, new york. vice, s., 2010, ‘how do i live in this strange place?’, journal of social philosophy 41(3), 323–342. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9833.2010.01496.x žižek, s., 2014, absolute recoil: towards a new foundation of dialectical materialism, verso, london. footnotes 1. see james & sterger (eds), globalisation and culture (2010:xii–xv). 2. from the title of the book colour conscious: the political morality of race (appiah & gutmann 1996). 3. images of black deaths in the mediterranean sea, anti-african immigration into europe; hage’s (2003) study of racism in australia; police killings of black people in the usa; persistence of socio-economic discrimination against black livelihood in post-apartheid south africa and so on. 4. mbembe, critique of reason (2017:11) ‘in fact, race does not exist as a physical, anthropological, or genetic fact. [it is] just a useful fiction, a phantasmagoric construction, or an ideological projection’. 5. on europeanism and identity challenges of defining ‘a european’ since the fall of the berlin wall see patterson 1993, in national identity and europe. 6. whiteliness tends to involve a commitment to the centrality of white people and their perspectives … the way they see the world just is the way the world is, and the way they get around in the world just is the right way to get around. (taylor 2004:229) 7. contrasted with merely to ‘live’ which implies only survival; to ‘exist’, as used here by heidegger, implies a deeper involvement in the process of ‘becoming’. it means to ‘stand out’ from and against the what is. 8. see the guide to white women who teach black boys. 9. for a definition and an apologia on afropolitanism that supports mbembe, see eze (2016). 10. mbembe elaborates this semiological theoretical framework in his on the postcolony ([2001]2015, ad passim) and defends it in ‘on the colony: a brief response to critics’ (mbembe 2006). 11. in paolo freire’s ontological thesis, there is a divided ‘existential duality of the oppressed, who are at the same time themselves and the oppressor whose image they have internalised’ (2005:61). 12. we are using the translation utilised by serequeberhan (2000:12). 13. it is in its effort to choose itself as a personal self that the for-itself sustains in existence certain social and abstract characteristics which make of it man (or woman) … each for-itself is responsible in its being for the existence of a human race … for it is by choice that he [the for-itself] will apprehend the other as the-other-as-subject or as the-other-as-object. inasmuch as the other is to him the other-as-a-look, the for-itself experiences itself as an object in the universe beneath the other’s look. (sartre 1992:541) 14. heidegger used the term existenz with a peculiarity that signifies the transcendental nature (‘supra-physis’) of being-in-the-world (heidegger 1987:67). 15. it is sadly ironic, as raised by one peer reviewer, that our dissertation has to use what heidegger had intended for the revolutionary being of nazi germany. on this, we take solace in slavoj žižek’s absoluter gegenstoss [absolute recoil] – what the enemy had meant for our ill has turned to our good! (žižek 2014:117–147). 16. title of biko’s column (i write what i like) in the south african students organisation (saso) journal, now the title of an anthology of his essays (edited by stubbs [1978]2004). 17. the pseudonym steve biko used for his articles published in the saso student press. abstract introduction social context of south africa historically white universities black students and some documented social identity challenges decolonisation and transformation in higher education understanding the identity of black students social identity and academic achievement social identity theory and acculturation model artificial integration in historically white universities conclusion and recommendations acknowledgements references about the author(s) sandiso bazana department of psychology, rhodes university, south africa opelo p. mogotsi department of psychology, rhodes university, south africa citation bazana, s. & mogotsi, o.p., 2017, ‘social identities and racial integration in historically white universities: a literature review of the experiences of black students’, transformation in higher education 2(0), a25. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v2i0.25 original research social identities and racial integration in historically white universities: a literature review of the experiences of black students sandiso bazana, opelo p. mogotsi received: 05 july 2017; accepted: 02 oct. 2017; published: 17 nov. 2017 copyright: © 2017. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract south african government has been promulgating pieces of legislation aimed at ensuring racial integration, especially in higher education, and indirectly enforcing acculturation in historically white universities. studies have proven that institutional cultures in historically white universities alienate and exclude black students’ identities. these students’ sense of social identity, which includes culture, heritage, language and traditions, and consequently self-esteem and self-concept, is altered in these institutions. research has been scant regarding the shape and form that black students’ identity assumes when they get to these spaces. using tajfel and turner’s (1979) social identity theory and berry’s (2005) theory of acculturation, this article explores the experiences of black students in negotiating their social identities in historically white universities. evoking steve biko’s analysis of ‘artificial integration’ (1986), we hope to illustrate how the ‘integration’ narrative sought to discard the identity of black students and psychologically enforce a simulation of black students into white-established identities. the study has implications for policy development as we hope to sensitise theoretically the historically white universities to, apart from mere opening of spaces of learning, understand the social identity challenges of black students in these institutions. introduction this paper seeks to explore existing literature to understand the social identities of black students in historically white universities (hwu). the authors of this study agree with barroso (2015) that available literature on the identity of black students in south africa is scant. moreover, the focus has been on self-identity and cultural identity (goldschmidt 2003; mnguni 2000), and rarely social identity. self-identity has been described as traits and characteristics that define who one is (leary & tangney 2012), while social identity according to tajfel and turner (1979) refers to an individual’s self-concept as a result of them belonging to a group they identify with and are part of. while some studies have shown that black students have positive identities (barroso 2015), there was evidence of difficulties with negotiating social identities. this would imply that a positive self-identity does not necessarily result in a positive social identity, therefore making the question around social identity applicable. the social context of south africa is discussed in this study. the authors sought to explore the effects of apartheid and colonialism and demonstrate how they contributed to racial segregation in the post-apartheid south africa. through the apartheid regime, racial segregation was legalised and people were provided with identification labels (goldschmidt 2003). recent research has shown that there is still racial segregation both nationally (the south african reconciliation barometer survey 2010) and in institutions of higher education (barroso 2015; pattman 2007; moodley 2013). racial segregation in universities is concerning as it hints at lack of real integration and possible social identity challenges for black students who are becoming a majority in these universities in terms of numbers. colonialism and apartheid led to both social and economic inequalities. these inequalities have left most black south africans in marginal communities with high rates of poverty (withnall 2016). this low economic status is discussed in this study with regard to how it affects black students’ social identity in hwu. adjustment issues are reported to be worse for students whose culture is too different from the culture in these universities (bojuwoye 2002). the well-being of black students in these universities remains a concerning factor (young & campbell 2014). the paper explores hwu and recognises the colonial foundations of these universities. the study will however focus more on the apartheid era socio political occurrences. using literature review, this paper seeks to explore the existing literature to understand the social identities of black students in hwu. the history of these universities is briefly discussed, once again demonstrating the effects of apartheid and colonialism. the movement towards decoloniality and transformation in these universities is discussed, including their pitfalls according to the available literature. the culture in these universities is discussed as contributing to the social identity challenges of black students. hwu are reported to be alienating for black students (hook 2004) contributing to racial segregation even in the post-1994 south africa. frantz fanon’s ideas were used to understand the experiences of black students. a recent study by barroso (2015), who also used fanon’s ideas to understand black identities in hwu, was used to guide the section in understanding the identity of black students in a historically white university. while understanding these identities, it was also noted that identities of black students are heterogeneous and fluid. a middle-class black identity is highlighted as different and in most cases acceptable compared to identities of black students from lower socio economic status. the social identity theory (sit) by tajfel and turner (1979) and berry’s (2005) acculturation theory were used to understand the social identity of black students in a historically white university. steve biko’s artificial integration was also discussed to highlight and demonstrate times when this integration is one-sided and therefore artificial. this study therefore aims to explore the available literature to explore the social identities of black students in hwus in south africa. it is relevant to conversations around decolonising higher education in south africa. as universities are opening access and coming up with policies to transform higher education (matthews 2015), they should also be aware of the shape and form that the social identities of black students assume when they get to these universities. the main recommendation from this study is that higher education should consider the social identity of black students as they formulate and review and implement transformation policies as well as policies towards decolonisation of higher education. higher education should be careful that transformation and decolonisation policies do not perpetuate the historical oppression of black students. social context of south africa as universities are said to mirror societal experiences (mnguni 2016), the historical and resulting current social context of south africa is relevant to understanding the social identity of south african black students in hwu. south africa is diverse both linguistically (with 11 official languages) and ethnically and culturally (embracing many cultures and customs) (berg 2012; mckinney & soudien 2010). south africa is also diverse racially with african or black people as the majority in numbers (africans or black people consist of 80.5% of the population while white people are 8.3% and mixed race and indian people are 8.8% and 2.5%, respectively) (statssa.gov.za). the cultural diversity of the post-apartheid south africa prompts a move towards multiculturalism (berry 2005), which archbishop desmond tutu termed the ‘rainbow nation’ (habib 1997). as much as a movement towards multiculturalism or the concept of a rainbow nation is appreciated, some inequalities of the past cannot be undone by merely referring to the country as ‘multicultural’ (matthews 2015) or a rainbow nation. some of these inequalities were perpetuated by cultural superiority sentiments, which have shaped current south africa, where white culture has become ethnocentric. as a result of apartheid practices, black identity was flooded with negative connotations that contributed to the inferiority of black people (barroso 2015). being a white person was promoted as being the ideal identity and skin colour was of hierarchical importance (barroso 2015). the white race remains the dominant and powerful race culturally and economically because of privileges of the past (matthews 2015). in fact, the economic status of the white race translated to cultural capital that became the quest of the colonised (mda 1995). apartheid in south africa is therefore an undeniable political period that shaped social interactions (foster 1991). racial segregation affected relationships among different race groups, mostly black relationships and white relationships and as a result people formed culture-based interactions and social groups (foster 1991). apartheid formed a basis for racial identities, ‘black-us’ and the ‘white-other’, through legislation that enforced racial segregation (barroso 2015). ‘by imposing identification labels, the government provided its people with an identity’ (goldschmidt 2003:205). ‘black identity embodied inferiority, submissiveness and dependency on and servitude to whites’ (barroso 2015:40). as bhabha (1963) argues in the foreword of the wretched of the earth that: colonialism, not only physically disarms the colonized subject but robs her of a ‘pre-colonial’ cultural heritage – and the cultural specific enclaves created by the apartheid government allowed the colonized to regroup on basis of their pre-colonial identities which had arguably been contaminated by the emergence of middle-class status within their ‘midst’?, as the colonized group. (p. xx) in fact starting from colonialism, cultural specific identities were crafted, but the economical upper hand that came through conquest positioned the culture of the colonisers as superior and, therefore, ethnocentric (crais 1992). biko as cited in hook et al. (2004) observed the destruction of the black person’s ability to imagine and apply ‘his’ logical convictions, because of 300 years of oppressive rule. according to biko, the most potent weapon that a black person could use to remain ‘sane’ was taken away from him (1986). this potent weapon according to biko is the mind. the decolonisation project thus far has not free(d) black people from their complex past that not only affected socio-economic status but also their sense of identity (barroso 2015). this is critical in understanding the social identity of black students in historically white institutions (hwi) and will be explored later. the enclaves that were created by the apartheid regime referred to as homelands contributed to the detachment of ‘black’ groups from other race groups in the country. this created a situation where ‘blacks’ in those enclaves recurved identities that were informed by first their experiences of economic deprivation, exclusion from the broader south africa and, most importantly, regrouping based on cultural values (khunou 2009). this created nervousness and anxiety among black people who dared to step out of their comfortable ‘cultural zones’ into white-dominated spaces, which is presently required of black students in hwu and south africa as a whole. the south african reconciliation barometer survey found that 42% of south africans ‘rarely’ or ‘never’ speak to someone of a different race group while 60% ‘rarely’ or ‘never’ socialise with people of a different race group (lefko-everett et al. 2010). although possibly outdated, the above results suggest racialised social interactions in the post-apartheid south africa. racialised interactions have also been observed in universities (schrieff et al. 2010). in a study at rhodes university, social interactions with white students were out of necessity and were found to be associated with discomfort and unease (barroso 2015). in a different study in the university of kwazulu-natal, students were reported to distance themselves from other races (pattman 2007). a study in cape town also showed racialised interactions (moodley 2013). racialised interactions in the general south africa and universities may indicate unresolved anxieties, as already mentioned, that affect social relations even in hwu. according to finchilescu et al. (2007), the lack of racial integration is concerning as it hints at a lack of transformation and unity of people of different races. racialised interactions may affect the social identity development of black students and the way in which they manage or negotiate their social identity in hwu. the lack of integration in universities has been associated with non-acceptance of black students and it is reported to be alienating (moodley 2013). it can then be concluded, as the outline above suggests, that the historical context of south africa and the resulting social context may contribute to the challenge of black students in negotiating their social identity as well as racial integration in hwu. historically white universities the history of racial segregation in higher education in south africa is important to understand institutions of higher education, especially predominantly white institutions where some black students attend. firstly, higher education and institutions of learning form a part of the colonial project, and thus these institutions are a symbol of colonialism (heleta 2016). the national party came into power in 1948 and made a decision to offer higher education to black students in separate educational institutions (stellenbosch and potchefstroom did not accept black students, rhodes university did the same with exceptions to certain postgraduate classes, while universities of cape town and witwatersrand accepted black students) (united nations 1967 as cited in greyling 2007). the extension of university education act in 1959 proposed to have separate universities for black students and white students (united nations 1967). because of the bill, white institutions were prohibited from accepting black students. according to cutten (1987), the bill was an extension of apartheid policy that excluded people according to race. ‘a major task of south africa’s new government in 1994 was to promote racial equity in the state education system’ (fiske & ladd 2006:2). racial equity in educational systems would highlight a racially blind system or a system where there is no exclusion based on race, which prompted the democratic government to make education accessible to all students regardless of their race (fiske & ladd 2006). meier and hartell (2009) state that a racially blind educational system may lead to ignorance of diversity of students in terms of cultural background and the implications of these on learning. a racially blind educational system may also result in an assimilationist approach where ‘learners are expected to adapt to the existing character of the school and curricula that have been implemented for a different learner population’ (meier & hartell 2009:181). black students and some documented social identity challenges according to collins and millard (2013), hwu were created for a white student population; this results in a dominant white culture that is exclusive of black students (hook 2004). studies have proven that institutional cultures in hwu alienate and exclude black students (steyn et al. 2014). these universities ‘culturally alienate outsiders, from the type of activities that are done in residences to the content of the curriculum that is taught’ (mnguni 2016:18). approaches to theoretically understand the institutional culture in hwu show the underlying factors that contribute to the othering and exclusion of black students from the dominant culture (phoenix 2009). these students’ sense of social identity, which includes culture, heritage, language and traditions, and consequently self-esteem and self-concept, gets altered in these institutions. historically, education contributed to a conflict of cultures (biko 1986; steyn et al. 2014). values, customs and practices of the black community were negated in educational institutions (biko 1978) and continue to be negated in hwu through institutional cultures that favour a white culture. the institutional culture which favours white cultures, and disadvantages black students, may lead to adjustment difficulties (steyn et al. 2014). educational systems are said to prioritise white culture through an institutional culture that alienates specific groups of black students and makes them uncomfortable (barroso 2015). white culture in this sense can be defined as the types of materials and discourses (vincent 2015) in hwus before racial equity in educational systems (fiske & ladd 2006). the character of the university points to institutional culture, which was defined by vincent (2015) as the tangible (material) as well as intangible (discourse) way of doing things in an institution. disadvantaged students are vulnerable to adjustment difficulties (petersen 2006), especially when the institutional culture is different from their own (bojuwoye 2002). this may apply to students whose social, economic and cultural background had little or no direct influence of white culture. for instance, dining halls with high tables and the use of forks and knives in rhodes university dining halls have been observed and questioned in terms of their applicability to black students from rural areas (macupe 2016). education in hwi is said to enforce an assimilationist perspective where black students are assimilated into the existing white culture; this involves the use of the english language, westernised concepts as well as resources for learning (pilane 2014). the use of english has been implicated in problems with learning (moodley 2013). black students are assumed to readily assume this ‘culture’ and integrate into the existing system of learning that was historically created for white students, argue collins and millard (2013). language has been identified as a potential barrier to performance. participants in moodley’s (2013) study indicated that with their first language being non-english, being taught by white lecturers could be a challenge. participants also added that african accents were associated with ‘stupidity’, leading to reluctance to participate in class discussions even if they added to one’s course mark (moodley 2013). in another study in cape town, black clinical psychology students reported their struggle with feeling pressured to ‘talk white’ and ‘write white’ during their training (kleintjes 1991). using the english language is said to increase one’s sense of belongingness (gibson 2012), which makes failure to speak or use english alienating for black students. a negative connotation associated with african accents as well as challenges experienced with writing and speaking in english can lead to black students feeling alienated in south africa’s higher education but especially in hwu. in a study in the witwatersrand university, rafaely (2014) makes us aware of the impact of the proficiency in english in selection into the master’s in clinical psychology programme. students who are more proficient in the use of the english language are said to be better able to express themselves and make contributions to discussions (rafaely 2014). students who find it easy to express themselves in english are mostly white students and black students who attended private schools before coming to university. this therefore makes a link between english proficiency and socioeconomic status (raefely 2014). only socioeconomically advantaged black students were reported to stand a chance to be accepted into the postgraduate psychology programme (raefely 2014). in moodley’s (2013) study, white students were associated with privilege. white students were reported to use laptops and ipads, while some black students needed to use school computer labs. access to laptops is said to have a positive impact on learning (righi 2012). black students without laptops may therefore be academically disadvantaged. it was also highlighted that because students from underprivileged communities are not familiar with or cannot afford supportive resources such as seeing a psychologist, they may perform poorly academically (moodley 2013). poor academic performance has already been mentioned as a consequence of adjustment problems (steyn et al. 2014), which black students may experience because of several factors that have already been discussed above. in fact, the national planning commission reports that ‘race remains a major determinant of graduation rates in our higher education institutions’ (npc 2011:16). furthermore, the completion rate for black students is less than half of the completion rate of white students and the figures are particularly low where first generation students are involved; only one in five graduated in the required time (npc 2011). steyn et al. (2014) associated this scourge of low throughput rate with unique social, educational, cultural and economic background experiences of ‘black’ students, which this paper seeks to understand. if the institutional culture in hwi is unwelcoming of black culture and the identity of black students, then it continues to reproduce the discourses of an ‘inferior black’ and an ‘ideal white’. a black man whose identity has not been freed from negative connotation and inferiority (barroso 2015) will surely be challenged in a space that fosters a white culture, devaluing blackness. any attempt to deinstitutionalise hwi should consider this. a historical culture that contributes to the inferiority of blackness plus an unwelcoming institutional culture in hwi encourages mimicry and the dilemma that comes with it. moore (2005) refers to this as a mental conflict that can be anxiety-provoking for a young black student. ‘as the historically white universities have widened access, the focus has inevitably been on academic throughput rather than on psychological wellbeing’ (young & campbell 2014:362). however, resulting historical disadvantages can hinder the psychological well-being of black students (young & campbell 2014). an unwelcoming institutional culture in hwu (steyn et al. 2014), as well as the resulting consequences on the psychological well-being of black students (young & campbell 2014), makes the question of social identity relevant in hwi of higher learning in post-apartheid south africa. decolonisation and transformation in higher education the challenges of black students in hwi have led to the movement towards decolonising the curriculum in higher education, following the rhodes must fall protests in 2015 (heleta 2016). professor of genetics (brenda wingfield) in the university of pretoria defined decolonisation of education as the independence of a nation in producing and acquiring knowledge, values and skills (wingfield 2017.). while wingfield (n.d.) gave evidence for local research in science and technology (african epistemology), she also gave insights into decolonising education. according to wingfield (n.d.), decolonising knowledge does not mean removing all knowledge that is western but it means supplementing it with, and recognising, african knowledge. supplementing and recognising african knowledge is still a challenge in hwi (matthews 2015). ‘while all universities have had new policies and frameworks that speak about equality, equity, transformation and change, institutional cultures and epistemological traditions have not considerably changed’ (heleta 2016:2). universities of higher education are reported to be western in that the methods and the ways of teaching still reflect the eurocentric epistemology (mbembe 2016). in an interview with one of the students at the university of cape town during protest, evans (2016) sought to understand what decolonisation is and why universities should be decolonised. the interviewee reported that the curriculum ‘dehumanizes black students’ in that it required them to use western epistemology as a standard way of thinking and looking at the world (evans 2016). higher education is not only based on eurocentric epistemology, it is also reported to be colonial (heleta 2016). a eurocentric, colonial curriculum is one that disregards and patronises african views while reinforcing western views (heleta 2016). ‘there is something profoundly wrong when, for instance, syllabuses designed to meet the needs of colonialism and apartheid should continue well into the liberation era’ (mbembe 2016:32). ‘whereas political freedom was achieved in 1994, many structural imbalances, inequalities and injustices remain stumbling blocks for the emancipation of black south africans’ (heleta 2016:1). in addition to challenges in transforming and decolonising higher education, white men remain dominant in these universities (sahr report 2016). transformation of the demographics of academic staff in hwu remains a challenge because the number of black professors and mixed race professors is still insufficient (sahr report 2016). keeping the history of apartheid in south africa, the ‘dominance of the white race’ in hwu can perpetuate the view of a superior other and an ‘inferior black race’. racism and unfairness towards black students by white lecturers was also reported to be a problem in lecture rooms (department of education report 2008). it can be deduced from the above that transformation of higher education is a complex, multifactorial endeavour that clearly involves the curriculum, demographics of academic staff as well as institutional cultures, which remain colonised. understanding the identity of black students identities are the traits and characteristics, social relations, roles, and social group memberships that define who one is. identities can be focused on the past-what used to be true of one, the present-what is true of one now, or the future-the person one expects or wishes to become, the person one feels obligated to try to become, or the person one fears one may become. identities are orienting, they provide a meaning-making lens and focus one’s attention on some but not other features of the immediate context. (leary & tangney 2012:69) hogg and abrams add that identity also includes how one relates to the other (1988). the main definition that this paper adopts is that of deng (1995:1): ‘the way individuals and groups define themselves and are defined by others on the basis of race, ethnicity, religion, language, and culture’. this definition is supported by jenkins (1996:4), who defines identity as ‘the ways in which individuals and collectivities are distinguished in their social relations with other individuals and collectivities’. it can be deduced from the above definitions and description that identity reflects the image (social systems, language, culture, folklores, values, etc.) of a certain group of people. in addition, south africa, at least, after the apartheid experience was thought of as a ‘rainbow nation’, meaning that it has a unique, yet colourful cultural and racial identity or identities. this adheres to bloom’s conceptions of national identity as ‘that condition in which a mass of people have made the same identification with national symbols – have internalized the symbols of the nation’ (bloom 1990:52). however, as a follow-up on bloom’s (1990) assertions on national identity, fanon (1963) had something to say about bloom’s notion of ‘national identity’, especially in a ‘post’-colonial nation, like south africa. according to fanon (1963), as important as national identity is, in a ‘post’-colonial society: it (national identity) inscribes an essentialist, totalizing, fetishized, often middle-class specific understanding of ‘nation’ rather than encouraging a nuanced articulation of an oppressed people’s cultural heterogeneity across class line. p.175 in other words, although the concept of ‘nation’ unfairly characterises colonised subjects as historically unified in their ‘primitiveness’ or ‘exoticness’, the term’s promise of solidarity and unity often proves helpful nonetheless in their attempts at ‘political amelioration’. the ‘political amelioration’ is arguably what led to mr mandela and mr tutu’s insistence on the concept of a ‘rainbow nation’, without a thorough and consciously coordinated strategy to ensure proper ‘integration’ to fully proclaim and appreciate the beauty of the rainbow. this political amelioration has instead kept intact the cultural homogeneity of different groups, a phenomenon that has affected race relations, ‘post’-apartheid south africa – whose effects could be observed in hwu. to understand the social identity of black students in hwu, we first need to understand the identity of black students. in a study with postgraduate students, black identity was associated with a dark skin colour, culture (lifestyle and practices), language, financial deprivation or poverty (barroso 2015). when trying to understand students’ identities in south africa, pattman (2007) discovered that students in university of kwazulu-natal classified themselves according to racial groups and participants significantly pointed out race as a marker of identity. other factors such as ethnicity, gender, religion and class contribute to the formation of the identity of black students (pattman 2007). regardless of the demographics of the participants, varying socioeconomic statuses, for example black people, was seen as being inferior to white people (barroso 2015). formal abolition of racial discrimination and segregation ‘did not undercut the existential experience of blackness’ (barroso 2015:69). being a black person is then associated with shame and struggle. different views however exist; some participants reported associating being a black south african with pride as they reflect on surviving the struggle of apartheid (barroso 2015). pattman (2007) reported that some students reported feeling privileged to be at university adding that some black young people do not get an opportunity to go to university. frantz fanon’s definition of the identity of a black man is noted as applicable to understanding experiences of black university students (barroso 2015). black identity according to frantz fanon (1952) is said to be characterised by mimicry, double consciousness and inferiority. w.e.b. du bois (1903) in the souls of black folk refers to this notion of double consciousness as ‘a peculiar sensation’. du bois elaborates that ‘this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity’ (p.15). it is this double consciousness that makes racial or cultural integration almost impossible, as the paper shall demonstrate later. with white identity classified as the ideal identity, black students would feel inferior to white students, and mimicry then occurs as a result. mimicry refers to an aspiration to be white; it encompasses trying to attain the ‘white culture, white language, white dress and white governance’ (barroso 2015). in pattman’s (2007) study, some black students were reported to be ‘trying too hard to be white’ (p. 481). the said black students are reported to use english among same ethnic group students and dress in a way that was seen as ‘white’”. mimicry is sometimes unavoidable and could also illustrate the fact that the coloniser’s culture can be performed – in that case, mimicry could be used to undermine the ‘gains’ of the colonial agenda (bhabha 1994). there are white influences that cannot be avoided, such as using the english language (barroso 2015). in pattman’s (2007) study, some black students are reported to have used english as a universal language to communicate with others from different ethnicities. barraso (2015) highlights the importance of assimilation into a white culture in that one needs to be socialised into the western world to make any sense and to be taken seriously. being socialised into the white world is said to lead to one compromising to assimilate (barroso 2015). black students would then have to compromise their customs, language and beliefs in order to function in the white world. mimicry is described to be more complex for the elite black person who is constantly torn between the need to succeed (associated with being a white person) and longing for black sameness with fellow black men (barroso 2015). with specific regard to black students in hwi, identity is mitigated by not only institutional culture in hwi, but black people in the wider south africa as well (barroso 2015). going to university is associated with aspiring to be a white person (barroso 2015). the act of being torn apart between aspiring to be a white person and the need to fit into one’s society and culture is termed double consciousness (du bois 1903; fanon 1952). double consciousness places students in an awkward and uncomfortable positions both at the university and at home (barroso 2015). they receive disdain when they associate with white people’s sense of being both at school and in their respective black communities. participants reported being called ‘coconuts’, which is a derogatory term referring to a black person who acts like a white person and has lost what it means to be a truly black person (barroso 2015). double consciousness brings about discrimination, isolation and frustration and may further result in black-on-black racism, especially if one is a foreigner (barroso 2015). double consciousness results in recognition that there are variations between the institutional culture and societal culture at home. institutional culture is depicted by how things are done, especially in hwu (vincent 2015). anticipation of a struggle of having to negotiate one’s identity when at home may affect how one then negotiates one’s identity in hwi. double consciousness creates anxiety-provoking experience for black students where they do not belong anywhere: they are a ‘coconut’ but not a white person, and not ‘black enough’ because of their level of education which is associated with being a white person (barroso 2015). the above discussion indicates identity struggles for black university students: heterogeneity of black students is also a contributing factor to their identity; these differentiating factors include family background, experiences, etc. (goldsmith 2003). family background is said to fuel perceptions of the white ‘other’ because of socialisation through apartheid stories that depict the ‘bad’ white ‘other’. alternative stories can be assumed to have different impacts on the identity development of black students, hence their experience of negotiating their identities in hwi. (barroso 2015) experiences are mainly interactions with the white ‘other’ (whether directly or indirectly) that form a basis for one’s perceptions of being a black person (barroso 2015). in barroso’s (2015) study, one participant reported that she becomes aware of her blackness when she is around white students or when she has to speak english. perception of the ‘white-other’ because of experiences and family background is said to be fluid and open to change and could be further reshaped by understanding the ‘white-other’ that changes one’s perceptions of their identity as a black person (barroso 2015). because identities are constructed against each other, it can be then assumed that the change in perception of the ‘white-other’ will change one’s perception and identity of being a black person. the black student from upper-middle-class socioeconomic background heterogeneity of black students also has to do with varying socioeconomic statuses and social exposure to different races. according to soudien (2007), racial mix is only seen in affluent institutions; township schools still consist of mainly black students and black teachers. black students from lower socioeconomic class may then have to interact or come into the picture of a ‘rainbow nation’ when they get to universities. middle-class black people are said to be more socially and economically privileged (barroso 2015). students from middle-class backgrounds are able to access private schools at pre-university level (franchi & swartz 2003). varying socioeconomic status within black students then creates a hierarchy. black students from lower socio-economic class are then construed as particularly less desirable when compared to black students from middle-class families (barroso 2015). prior interactions with the white students by middle-class black students would mean prior chances to negotiate one’s social identity around varying cultures, which might influence the way one then negotiates one’s social identity in hwu and that might impact one’s academic performance. peltzer (2002) refers to this exposure to a westernised world through interaction with others as a westernised personhood. according to peltzer (2002), an african with a westernised personhood has been integrated into a western way of life. this person is different from a traditional personhood who has no direct influence of the western world, and a transitional personhood who is in the process of integrating to a western culture. some black students from rural communities may have to manoeuvre their way from the traditional personhood through the transitional personhood to the westernised personhood in order to fit into the institutional culture in hwu. as already mentioned, prior exposure to western culture would be an added advantage for some students in hwu – because they turn to be more accepted, especially when they relinquish their ‘real’ identities and embrace the acceptable middle-class ‘transformed’ black student identity – which is an assimilation into the culture of the ‘other’(see bulhan 1980 dialectic of cultural-inbetweenity). hierarchies within black students because of differences in class – hence exposure and access to private school – may contribute to a good command of the english language. a good command of the english language is reported to help one integrate better in hwu where english is the medium of communication (barroso 2015). language is critical as it can identify one’s accent as either aspiring to be white (because of fluency in speech) or inferior because they are not fluent in english (barroso 2015). a black person who approximates the identity of a white man, for example speaks ‘better’ english, will see himself or will be seen by others as better than his fellow black men (fanon 1952). steve biko provides an example of this in the collection of writings: i write what i like. biko (1986) writes: they have been made to feel so long that for them it is comforting to drink tea, wine or beer with whites who seem to treat them as equals. this serves to boost their own ego to the extent of making them feel slightly superior to those blacks who do not get similar treatment from whites. these are sort of blacks who are a danger to the community. ( p. 23) other hierarchies are reported to be based on skin colour. being light skinned is reported to be seen as being beautiful and better than having a darker skin (barroso 2015). the lighter the skin, the closer to being a white person. being dark skinned is considered foreign. a very dark skin is associated with other african countries, hence indicating that one does not belong. black-on-black racism has been reported based on a darker skin colour (barroso 2015). drawing from leary and tangney’s (2012) definition above, identities of black students seem to be focused on the past – the legacy of racial oppression during apartheid; the present – the realities of post-apartheid south africa reflecting a ‘rainbow’ nation, encouraging racial integration; and the future – the wish to succeed (associated with being a white person) with a fear of losing one’s culture and heritage. identities are a journey of self-discovery for black students, challenging both at home and at school, sometimes feeling that one does not belong anywhere, having to prove one’s blackness at home and one’s whiteness in hwi (barroso 2015). identities are fluid and not concrete and they change given different situations (barroso 2015). in light of the above discussions, one may conclude that the historical context of south africa contributes to the identity development of black students. social identity and academic achievement in their study with students to understand the effects of social identity on learning, bliuc et al. (2011) found that a strong identification with the social group ‘university student’ was associated with deep approaches to learning. according to bliuc et al. (2011): it seems plausible that high identifiers with the social category university student would be more likely to be motivated to pursue learning at a deeper level, rather than just complete tasks in order to meet the requirements for the course. (p. 571) one participant in barroso’s (2015) study mentioned that because of language barriers, one would avoid participating in class even if it means losing some marks. this example highlights instances where black students go through a social identity challenge and its possible impact on educational achievement as described by bliuc et al. (2011). in a different study by fearon (2012), ethnic identity was linked to academic achievement. this study further reinforces the idea that students need some form of social identity, including academic identity to achieve academically. according to the sit, belonging to a group and having emotional ties with the group boost one’s self-concept. it is therefore understandable that students who find it difficult to fit into a social identity of the ‘university student’ perform poorly because of the assumed low self-concept. the social context of south africa and the current identities of black students in hwu have been discussed. these factors play a role in whether the students feel welcome and are part of the social group ‘university student’ in an environment that has been discussed to be alienating and unwelcoming of black students. these environmental factors, and other factors as well, can be assumed to act as a barrier for black students to find their social identity as students, in other words, their identity as university students. perceptions of an unwelcoming institutional culture may further affect the well-being of black students in hwu. bizumic et al. (2009) explain that the way students perceive the institutional culture will affect their psychological well-being. in this study, social identification was significantly linked to depression, anxiety, stress aggression, self-esteem and victimisation. ‘social identification as a member of the school emerges in this research as a central and significant variable in explaining individual psychological well-being’ (bizumic et al. 2009:188). fordham and ogbu (1986), as cited by vilella (2011), communicated an important point around black students’ academic performance and identity. according to ogbu, students may refuse to adapt to the mainstream culture while trying to assert their cultural identity. this is termed ‘oppositional culture’ and is said to explain the difference in academic achievement of black students and white students (ogbu 1986). black students are said to have a fear that they will be accused of being white (ogbu 1986). this fear of being called ‘white’ and a need to defend one’s cultural identity have been observed in south african black university students through the use of derogatory terms such as ‘coconut’ which have already been explained in this paper (barrosso 2015). a black student has been reported to go through a dilemma of achieving academic excellence and maintaining their culture, which du bois (1903) and later fanon (1952) termed ‘double consciousness’. social identity theory and acculturation model in this paper, sit will be used to understand the experiences of black students in negotiating their social identities in hwu. sit by tajfel and turner (1979) is a social psychology theory that attempts to explain group behaviour (trepte 2006). social identity is described as someone’s self-concept in relation to a group that the person belongs to and values (trepte 2006). a group is seen as two or more people belonging to the same social category and emotionally connected to each other (trepte 2006). given its focus on intergroup behaviour (trepte 2006), sit will be useful for understanding the social experiences of black university students. different theories and models have been used to understand the identities of black students. these include fanon’s idea of the colonised mind (fanon 1952) and biko’s black consciousness movement (biko 1978; dodd 2013). given the illustrated weight of history on the development of identity in the south african context, these approaches are important for understanding the historical development of the identity of black students. different studies have used these approaches and demonstrated their applicability to understanding the identities of black students in south africa (mnguni 2000; pattman 2007; barroso 2015). as much as these approaches provide a historical illustration of the development of the identity of black students, they do not provide a full picture of the shape the identities of black students assume when they get into social spaces, especially in hwu. there is a distinction between self-identity and social identity. in barroso’s (2015) study, participants were reported to have ‘positive and reaffirming identities’ (p. 86), but the study still showed that students struggled to socially interact with others. positive identity development therefore does not necessarily indicate a positive social identity development. the focus of the sit on intergroup behaviour hence provides a clearer picture of the shape that the identity of black students assumes when they get into social spaces in hwu. given its lack of focus on the historical development of identity (or at least not directly), the sit provides a space to consider that not all identities will be based on and aligned with the historical legacy of south africa. the model of acculturation by berry (2005), similar to sit, illustrates different approaches to negotiating one’s social identity in a multicultural environment. in addition, unlike the sit, the model of acculturation provides a basis for understanding a possible positive social identity beyond the factors discussed that may already render a negative social identity development for black students. according to sit, people strive for a positive social identity, which in turn enhances their self-esteem (tajfel & turner 1979). membership to groups is associated with negative or positive connotations, which can lead to positive or negative social identity (tajfel & turner 1979). a positive social identity is because of feeling that one’s group is distinct from the comparison group and it is valuable (trepte 2006). negative social identity results from comparison with the out-group where one feels that one’s group is inferior or insubordinate to the comparison group (tajfel & turner 1979). there are several solutions to feeling inferior; these include leaving the group to join a group of higher status, comparing one’s group to the out-group on a different dimension, changing values attached to the group and changing the comparison group (trepte 2006). as already discussed, black identity has been historically associated with negative connotations that may still exist in the post-apartheid south africa. these negative connotations may make black students feel devalued in hwu. this is then worsened by an illustrated unwelcoming institutional culture. studies have demonstrated the inferiority of black students in hwi (mnguni 2000; pattman 2007; barroso 2015). black students demonstrated a sense that they do not belong to and are different from the underlying institutional culture in hwu. different factors that have already been discussed may contribute to the development of a negative social identity. the historical context of south africa, the resulting social segregation because of apartheid and the unwelcoming culture in hwi can all contribute to a negative social identity of black students. these factors are imposed on black students leading to a negative social identity. however, one may still consider the possibility of a positive social identity development regardless of a negating history and present alienating culture of hwi. students may still positively negotiate their social identity despite the imposed negation of their identity. the social identity theory therefore does not explain a situation where a group of black students, despite their feelings of being weak or insubordinate, have accepted the privilege of white students and do not seek to challenge or join any perceived powerful group. the above description is consistent with what berry (2005) terms integration in response to multiculturalism. integration is described as the appreciation of different cultures while still keeping one’s cultural identity (berry 2005). integration would mean that a black student is open to learning other cultures but is still able to maintain their own values, customs and principles. failure to do so would mean that the student assimilates, separates or marginalises other cultures. assimilation involves interactions with other cultures while one loses their cultural identity, separation involves avoidance of interactions with other cultures while trying to maintain one’s original culture and marginalisation refers to little interest towards other cultures. studies have shown that students assimilate, separate and marginalise other cultures, mainly the white culture (mnguni 2000; pattman 2007; barroso 2015). integration as already mentioned has been indicated to be the ideal response to cultural differences. however, it has been noted that integration is only effective if it is done by both parties. black students in moodley’s (2013) study indicated that they were the ones expected to integrate in hwu. this one-sided integration was envisaged and described by steve biko as artificial integration (biko 1978). artificial integration in historically white universities the ‘rainbow nation’ narrative in south africa is predicated on the integration idea – berry’s idea of integration (2011). the rainbow nation narrative encourages the idea of the ‘new’ south africa as an inclusive society. when proclaiming south africa as a ‘rainbow nation’, tshawane argues that tutu sought ‘a universal vision of inclusive humanity which transcends the barriers of race, class, tribes, ethnicity, religion and other forms of sectarianism’ (2009). ‘integration’ is putting together parts of elements and combining them into a whole (integrated | define integrated at dictionary.com, n.d.). the ‘rainbow nation’ notion when used in the ‘integration’ narrative means the coming together of different race groups and cultures in a multicultural and multiracial country. integration would lead to acculturation; however, according to biko, in south africa, cultural or racial integration only took place between the boers and the english (biko 1978), and all other race and cultural groups have been forced into assimilation on terms defined by white people. archbishop desmond tutu’s campaign of advancing the rainbow nation notion and calling on south africans to celebrate diversity has fallen into deaf ears. there are certain important days in the democratic order of south africa such as freedom day, heritage day, etc. all these days are celebrated by one group of the south african population: the black group (segalo 2015) – arguably, this is one of the signs of lack of racial integration and social cohesion and, therefore, an indicator of a failed ‘rainbow nation’. viewing universities as microcosm of the broader society, berry’s racial integration phenomenon becomes vivid in hwu. because of the national government social change policies, the hwu have had to open their doors to students from black social groups. however: instead of aiming to shift the ruling symbolic, structural and intergroup traditions within universities, certain notions of integration, whether based on race, gender, class, sexuality or ability, assume transformation to be assimilation of blacks into an already established set of the white patriarchal regime within universities, especially hwu (authors’ emphasis). (ratele 2015:2) biko referred to this kind of integration as ‘artificial’. according to biko, the talk about ‘integration’ in south africa is artificial in that ‘it is a response to conscious manoeuvre rather than to the dictates of the inner soul’ (biko 1986:21). biko (1986) goes further to argue that: the people forming the integration complex have been extracted from various segregated societies with their in-built complexes of superiority and inferiority and these continue to manifest themselves even in the non-racial set up of the integrated complex. (p. 21) according to bourdieu: the cultural reproduction of knowledge and values of the economically and culturally dominant groups in society … validate and reinforce the cultural capital that students whose cultural traits and characteristics are subordinated and/or excluded from mainstream norms experience alienation in school cultures. (nieto 1996:284) hence, black students have no choice but to assimilate if they are to succeed in the hwu. according to fanon (1952), if a black person is overwhelmed by the ‘desire to be white, it’s because he lives in a society that makes his inferiority complex possible, in a society that proclaims the superiority of one race over another’ (p.80). in other words, there is no racial or cultural integration; there is an assimilation that makes integration false and unrealistic, hence ‘artificial’. this is due to the fact that blacks who were stripped of the ‘self’ have not attained that envisioned self beyond and above the terms of cultural and physical dominance as conditioned by apartheid (hook 2004). moreover, white people superiority complex is still intact (biko 1986) and universities are the bastion of white supremacy, especially hwu (ratele 2015). writing in the 1970s, biko criticised integration that makes a white person a ‘perpetual teacher and black a perpetual pupil’. biko denounced the idea that white people are ‘divinely appointed pace setters in progress’ (biko 1986:25). biko argued that a country in africa ought to reflect such african values, and if the majority is africans in that country, that majority should determine the ‘broad direction taken by the joint culture of that society’ (biko 1986:26). owing to decades of oppressing and white racism, real integration can be achieved when black people have managed to assert themselves to a point that mutual respect has been shown’ (biko 1986:26). from such ‘mutual respect for each other and complete freedom of self-determination there will obviously arise a genuine fusion of the life-styles of the various groups’ (biko 1986:22). therefore, higher education institutions, as it has been indicated above, reflect the social conditions of the broader south africa, and instead of seeing black students maintaining their identities, they have assimilated, and failure to assimilate leads to social alienation. this might impact on academic performance, high dropout rate and other forms of delinquency (kozol 1991). the ‘blind’ education system and institutional culture of hwi serve the ‘class education’ that chancellor williams referred to in his classic of 1974 entitled the destruction of black civilization. williams (1974) argues that this education system makes these black students foreign to their traditional communities – it replaces their identities with those of their superior masters, the white identity. it was on this basis that biko decried a one-sided view of integration. according to biko (1986), this meant blacks need to assimilate into ‘white’ society and embrace white values in order for them to be acceptable as human beings. integration as such, argued biko, positions ‘whiteness’ as a norm or standard. this form of integration, argued biko, has to be destroyed and replaced with an aspiration for a more human content. the human content would bring about true integration where one’s humanity is respected, and that is ‘true integration’ (biko 1986). biko asserts that: true integration is the provision of each man, each group to rise and attain the envisioned self (1986). each group must be able to attain its style of existence without encroaching on or being thwarted by another. ‘out of this mutual respect for each other and complete freedom of self-determination there will obviously arise a genuine fusion of the life-styles of the various groups. (biko 1986:22) this means in order for the hwi to provide inclusive education experience for black students whose identities are less represented in these structures, these institutions must develop a greater appreciation of diversity and how this diversity could be effectively managed. it is important to mention that, even though some have criticised and dismissed diversity management, south africa is a multiracial and multicultural society, and black domination would be an abomination. the process of decolonisation should be accepted as it means the unmasking of the colonial without denying the existence of other race and cultural groups. as mentioned above, the modern south african university is part of the colonial project as such; decolonisation that means eradication of other race and cultural groups from the surface of south african society would engender an injustice that replicates the colonial and apartheid agenda of racial and cultural exclusion. this paper advocates for a carefully planned and honest acknowledgement and celebration of diversity coupled with structures in place to address any feelings of alienation and exclusion. these universities need to go beyond the legislative prescripts of inclusivity as it relates to numbers and engage seriously and meaningfully with diversity management. affirmative action must be acknowledged as the process that creates diversity that must then be managed. norris (cited in havenga 1993) explains this process of diversity management by asserting that: diversity starts with a realization of diverse interests … unlike affirmative action which is a process for creating diversity, that the very essence of the institution and its culture must be renegotiated and re-conceptualized from a perspective other than the dominant culture. (norris 2001:219) it is important for universities to deal with this because as studies have proven, the current structures in hwi contribute to black students’ social alienation and academic progress or lack thereof. it then appears as if berry’s (2005) integration is difficult to negotiate and most students find themselves assimilating or avoiding contact with other cultures. it also appears that what instead we have in hwi is the ‘artificial integration’ that biko referred to, where cultural convergence towards a dominant ‘white’ identity is encouraged (biko 1978). the question then is: what can universities do to help students with the integration process? conclusion and recommendations the social identities of black students have been discussed in this paper. available research on black south african university students has highlighted social identity challenges especially in hwu. the social context of south africa that suggests racial segregation especially in rural areas (where some black students come from) and the institutional culture in hwu have been proved to harbour issues that affect the social identity of black students. hwu have been described to be unwelcoming and alienating of black students’ social identities, contributing to the challenge of social identity negotiation. several studies have linked social identity to academic performance. these studies highlight that students have to identify socially with the identity of ‘university students’ for them to perform well academically. adjustment issues, including identity negotiating, have been highlighted to affect the psychological well-being of students. given the effect of social identity issues on both the academic performance and psychological well-being of black students, it is important for hwu to be sensitive to such issues. based on vincent’s (2015) definition of institutional culture as both the material and discourses in a university, universities should make an effort to be sensitive to the issues surrounding the identity of black students and how they approach learning because of these, both on a material and a discourse level. historically white universities should also assist in breaking discourses around an ‘inferior black’ and the ’ideal white’. such discourses have a heavy historical component that situates black students as the stranger in hwu. open conversations around such issues should be facilitated in order to hear from black students what assistance they need to make spaces hwu welcoming. vilella (2011) suggested implementing cultural awareness programmes that allow students to learn about each other’s cultures and practices. this involves creating less-threatening spaces where students can interact with and learn about each other. this is said to assist in disconfirming some of the assumptions about other races that contribute to racial segregation (vilella 2011). existing transformation policies should also be revisited and evaluated in terms of their feasibility and how they can be presented in a way that is sensitive to issues around identity and the continuation of discourses of an inferior black student. in moddley’s (2013) study, racial admissions as part of transformation policies in cape town contributed to black students feeling ‘othered’ by white students and ‘othering’ white students as a result. black students are reported to have further felt they have only been admitted on the basis of their race and therefore are not deserving to be in the university (moodley 2013). this study highlighted possible challenges with available transformation policies that will need to be evaluated. universities, especially hwu, which are discussed in this article should ‘stop and question’ available policies, programmes and course structure, reviewing whether they are inclusive or exclusive of black students’ identity challenges. policies that continue to alienate black students’ identities should be questioned and revised. upon revising of available policies, there should also be implementation of programmes designed to help black students adjust to a different environment in hwu (bliuc et al. 2011). such programmes should be designed to help students who may experience culture shock and adjustment problems upon enrolling into hwu. other than evaluation of discourses, materials within hwu also need to be assessed. another task by hwu would be to identify specific materials within the institutional culture that contribute to the alienation of black students. factors such as the use of fork and knives hint to possibilities of creating certain spaces within the university to be welcoming and inviting for students from different backgrounds and cultures. hwu should ask questions such as the following: where in this university can a black student from a rural area be comfortable to sit and feel at home? further research on the identity of black students is recommended specifically on what makes the black student thrive in hwu. research that compares the identity of black students who perform well with those who perform poorly will help identify protective factors that will inform programmes to help integrate black students into hwu. research also helps to direct policy and programme development (fearon 2012). acknowledgements competing interests the authors declare that they have no financial or personal relationships which may have inappropriately influenced them in writing this article. authors’ contributions s.b. was the supervisor of the study and wrote some sections of the study. he also submitted the paper and responded to some reviewers’ comments. p.m wrote most of the parts of the literature review. she did most of the responding to the reviewers’ comments and suggestions. references badat, s., 2010, ‘the challenges of transformation in higher education and training institutions in south africa’, paper commissioned by the development bank of southern africa, viewed 13 june 2016, from https://www.ru.ac.za/…/the%20challenges%20of%20transformation%20in%20high barroso, a.k.m., 2015, a critical fanonian understanding of black student identities at rhodes university, south africa, rhodes university, grahamstown. berg, a., 2012, connecting with south africa: cultural communication and understanding, 1st edn., texas a&m university press, college station, tx. berry, j.w., 2005, ‘acculturation: living successfully in two cultures’, international journal of intercultural relations 29(6), 697–712. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijintrel.2005.07.013 bhabha, h., 1994, the location of culture, routledge, london. biko, s., 1986, i write what i like, harper & row, san francisco, ca. bizumic, b., reynolds, k.j., turner, j.c., bromhead, d. & subasic, e., 2009, ‘the role of the group in individual functioning: school identification and the psychological well-being of staff and students’, applied psychology 58(1), 171–192. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1464-0597.2008.00387.x bliuc, a.m., ellis, r.a., goodyear, p. & hendres, d.m., 2011, ‘the role of social identification as university student in learning: relationships between students’ social identity, approaches to learning, and academic achievement’, educational psychology 31(5), 559–574. https://doi.org/10.1080/01443410.2011.585948 bloom, w., 1990, personal identity, national identity and international relations, cambridge studies in international relations. (no. 9), cambridge university press, cambridge. bojuwoye, o., 2002, ‘stressful experiences of first year students of selected universities in south africa’, counselling psychology quarterly 15(3), 277–290. https://doi.org/10.1080/09515070210143480 bulhan, h., 1980, ‘dynamics of cultural in-betweenity: an empirical study’, international journal of psychology 152, 105–121. https://doi.org/10.1080/00207598008246986 collins, k. & millard, m., 2013, ‘transforming education in south africa: comparative perceptions of a south african social work learning experience’, educational review 65(1), 70–84. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131911.2011.648168 crais, c.c., 1992, white supremacy and black resistance in pre-industrial south africa the making of the colonial order in the eastern cape, 1770–1865, cambridge university press, uk. cutten, m., 1987, natal university and the question of autonomy, 1959–1962, natal university, durban, south africa. deng, f.m., 1995, war of visions: conflict of identities in the sudan, brookings, washington, dc. department of education, 2008, report of the ministerial committee on transformation and social cohesion and the elimination of discrimination in public higher education institutions, final report, department of education, pretoria. dodd, n. & snelgar, r., 2013, ‘core self-evaluations and black consciousness in post-apartheid zululand, south africa’, the journal of psychology 4(2), 101–107. du bois, w.e.b., 1903, the souls of black folk, a.c. mcclurg & co., chicago, il. evans, j., 2016, what is decolonised education?, viewed 22 august 2017, from http://www.news24.com/southafrica/news/what-is-decolonised-education-20160925. fanon, f., 1952, black skin, white masks, transl. r. philcox, grove press, new york. fanon, f., 1963, the wretched of the earth, grove press, new york. fearon, d.d., 2012, identity correlates of academic achievement: how influential are self, academic and ethnic identity statuses among college students?, viewed from https://baylor-ir.tdl.org/baylor-ir/handle/2104/8541. finchilescu, g., tredoux, c., mynhardt, j., pillay, j. & muianga, l., 2007, ‘accounting for lack of interracial mixing amongst south african university students’, south african journal of psychology 37(4), 720–737. https://doi.org/10.1177/008124630703700404 fiske, e. & ladd, h., 2006, ‘racial equity in education: how far has south africa come’, perspectives in education 24(2), 95–108. fordham, s. & ogbu, j.u., 1986, ‘black students’ school success: coping with the “burden of ‘acting white’”’, the urban review 18, 176–206. https://doi.org/10.1007/bf01112192 foster, d., 1991, ‘“race” and racism in south african psychology’, south african journal of psychology 21(4), 203–209. https://doi.org/10.1177/008124639102100402 franchi, v. & swart, t.m., 2003, ‘from apartheid to affirmative action: the use of “racial” markers in past, present and future articulations of identity among south african students’, international journal of intercultural relations 27(2), 209–236. https//doi:10.1016/s0147-1767(02)00093-7 gibson, n.c., 2012, ‘what happened to the “promised land”? a fanonian perspective on post-apartheid south africa’, antipode 44(1), 51–73. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8330.2010.00837.x goldschmidt, m.m., 2003, ‘identifying labels among university students in the new south africa: a retrospective study’, journal of black studies 34(2), 204–221. https://doi.org/10.1177/0021934703255314 goldsmith, p., 2003, ‘race relations and racial patterns in schools sports participation’, sociology of sport journal 20, 147–171. greyling, s., 2007, ‘rhodes university during the segregation and apartheid eras, 1933 to 1990, unpublished master’s thesis, rhodes university, south africa. habib, a., 1997, ‘south africa-the rainbow nation and prospects for consolidating democracy’, african journal of political science/revue africaine de science politique 2(2), 15–37. hannaway, d.a.m., 2012, ‘the influence of ecosystemic factors on black student teachers’ perceptions and experiences of early childhood education’, med dissertation, university of pretoria, pretoria. havenga, a.j., 1993, ‘beyond affirmative action there is diversity’, pro technida 10, 9–17. heleta, s., 2016, ‘decolonisation of higher education: dismantling epistemic violence and eurocentrism in south africa’, transformation in higher education 1(1), 1–8. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v1i1.9 hogg, m. & dominic, a., 1988, social identifications: a social psychology of intergroup relations and group processes, routledge, london. hook, d., mkhize, n., kiguwa, p. & collins, a., (eds,), 2004, critical psychology, university of cape town press, cape town. hook, d., 2004, lse research online, viewed from https://www.researchgate.net/profile/derek_hook2/publication/30521167_frantz_fanon_steve_biko_‘psychopolitics’_and_critical_psychology/links/5517fedd0cf2d70ee279775a.pdf. integrated, define integrated at dictionary.com, viewed 17 october 2016, from http://www.dictionary.com/browse/integrated jenkins, r., 1996, social identity, routledge, london. khunou, s.f., 2009, ‘traditional leadership and independent bantustans of south africa: some milestones of transformative constitutionalism beyond apartheid’, per: potchefstroomse elektroniese regsblad 12(4), 81–122. kleintjes, s.r., 1991, black clinical psychology interns at a ’white’ university: their experience of colour during training, university of cape town, viewed n.d., from https://open.uct.ac.za/handle/11427/13536 kozol, j., 1991, savage inequalities: children in america’s schools, crown, new york. leary, m.r. & tangney, j.p. (eds.), 2012, handbook of self and identity, 2nd edn., guilford press, new york. lefko-everett, k., lekalake, r., penfold, e. & rais, s., 2010, sa reconciliation barometer survey report 2010 (an annual publication of the institute for justice and reconciliation), african minds, viewed from http://www.ijr.org.za/uploads/sa_reconciliation_barometer_10th_round_report_web_final.pdf nieto, s., 1996, affirming diversity: the sociopolitical context of multicultural education, 2nd edn., longman, white plains, ny. macupe, b., 2016, make blacks feels at home [newspaper website], viewed from http://www.sowetanlive.co.za/news/2016/03/06/make-blacks-feel-at-home matthews, s., 2015, ‘being at home: race, institutional culture and transformation at south africa higher education institutions’, in p. tabensky & s. matthews (eds.), white privilege and institutional culture at south africa higher education institutions, pp. 72–95, university of kwa-zulu natal press, pietermaritzburg. mbembe, a., 2016, ‘decolonizing the university: new directions’, arts and humanities in higher education 15(1), 29–45. https://doi.org/10.1177/1474022215618513 mckinney, c. & soudien, c., 2010, 2010 ialei country report: multicultural education in south africa, viewed from http://website.education.wisc.edu/inei/wp-content/uploads/documents/np-sa.pdf mda, z., 1994, ‘the role of culture in the process of reconciliation in south africa’, paper presented at the centre for the study of violence and reconciliation, seminar no. 9, 30 november. meier, c. & hartell, c., 2009, ‘handling cultural diversity in education in south africa’, south african journal of education 6(2), 180–192. mnguni, m.m., 2000, ‘the role of black consciousness in the experience of being black in south africa: the shaping of the identity of two members of azapo’, unpublished masters thesis, rhodes university, grahamstown. mnguni, l., 2016, white privilege at the heart of battle [newspaper website], viewed from http://www.sowetanlive.co.za/news/2016/03/02/white-privilege-at-heart-of-battle moletsane, r., hemson, c. & muthukrishna, a., 2004, ‘educating south african teachers for the challenge of school integration: towards a teaching and research agenda’, in nkomo, m, mckinney, c & chisholm, l. (eds.), reflections on school integration: colloquium proceedings, pp. 61–77, hsrc press, pretoria. moodley, j., 2013, she broke my identity into invisible pieces: transformation and black students in higher education, university of capetown, viewed from http://www.careers.uct.ac.za/sites/default/files/image_tool/images/117/joy.moodley.pdf moore, t.o., 2005, ‘a fanonian perspective on double consciousness’, journal of black studies 35(6), 751–762. https://doi.org/10.1177/0021934704263839 national planning commission (npc), 2011, diagnostic overview, the presidency, republic of south africa, pretoria. norris, b.d., 2001, ‘transformation, diversity and organizational change within institutions of higher education’, south african journal of education 21(4), 219–222. pattman, r., 2007, ‘student identities, and researching these, in a newly “racially” merged university in south africa’, race ethnicity and education 10(4), 473–492. https://doi.org/10.1080/13613320701658480 peltzer, k., 2002, ‘personality and person perception in africa’, social behavior and personality: an international journal 30(1), 83. https://doi.org/10.2224/sbp.2002.30.1.83 petersen, i., 2006, psychosocial factors and academic performance among first-year financial aid students: testing adjustment as a mediator variable, university of cape town, cape town. phoenix, a., 2009, ‘de-colonising practices: negotiating narratives from racialised and gendered experiences of education’, race ethnicity and education 12(1), 101–114. https://doi.org/10.1080/13613320802651053 pilane, p., 2014, does a lecturer’s race matter to university students?, viewed from http://www.thedailyvox.co.za/does-a-lecturers-race-matter-to-university-students/ rafaely, d., 2014, ‘transforming psychology: english language in practice’, new voices in psychology 10(2), 28–42. ratele, k., 2015, ‘is university transformation the assimilation of black into an already established set of white patriarchal capitalist traditions?’, paper presented at the university of pretoria’s critical conversation on transformation, pretoria, 13 august. righi, r.a., 2012, the impact of laptop computers on student learning behaviors as perceived by classroom teachers, university of toledo, viewed from http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=toledo1333741245 schrieff, l.e., tredoux, c.g., finchilescu, g. & dixon, j.a., 2010, ‘understanding the seating patterns in a residence-dining hall: a longitudinal study of intergroup contact’, south african journal of psychology 40(1), 5–17. https://doi.org/10.1177/008124631004000102 segalo, p., 2015, ‘gender, social cohesion and everyday struggles’, psychology in society 49, 70–82. https://doi.org/10.17159/2309-8708/2015/n49a6 soudien, c., 2007, youth identity in contemporary south africa: race, culture and schooling, new africa books, cape town. south african human rights commission, 2016, transformation at public universities in south africa, sahrc report, south african human rights commission, cape town. steyn, m.g., harris, t. & hartell, c.g., 2014, ‘institutional factors that affect black south african students’ perceptions of early childhood teacher education’, south african journal of education 34(3), 1–7. https://doi.org/10.15700/201409161107 tajfel, h. & turner, j., 1979, ‘an integrative theory of intergroup conflict’, in w.g. austin & s. worchel (eds.), the social psychology of intergroup relations, pp. 33–48, brooks-col, monterey, ca. the south african reconciliation barometer survey, 2010, sa reconciliation barometer survey report, institute for justice and reconciliation, viewed 29 september, from https://sabarometerblog.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/sa-reconciliation-barometer-10th-round-report-web-final.pdf tshawane, n.j., 2009, ‘the rainbow nation: a critical analysis of the notions of community in the thinking of desmond tutu’, unpublished doctoral dissertation, university of south africa. trepte, s., 2006, ‘social identity theory’, in j. bryant & p. vorderer (eds.), psychology of entertainment, pp. 255–271, lawrence erlbaum associates united nations, mahwah, nj. vilella, a., 2011, the relationship between ethnicity and academic achievement october 19th, 2011, viewed from http://www.ccsj.edu/news/ncate/standard4/4exhibits/diversityreflec.pdf vincent, l., 2015, ‘being at home: race, institutional culture and transformation at south africa higher education institutions’, in p. tabensky & s. matthews (eds.), tell us a new story: a proposal for the transformatory potential of collective memory projects, pp. 21–71, ukzn press, pietermaritzburg. williams, c.w., 1974, the destruction of black civilization: great issues of a race between 4500 b.c. and 2000 a.d, third world press, chicago, il. wingfield, b., n.d., what “decolonised education” should and shouldn’t mean, viewed 22 august 2017, from http://theconversation.com/what-decolonised-education-should-and-shouldnt-mean-72597 withnall, a., 2016, ‘black south africans hit out at suggestion rise in white poverty means “now there is equality”’, the independent, viewed from http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/south-africa-white-poverty-rising-inequality-black-townships-apartheid-a7347116.html young, c. & campbell, m., 2014, ‘student wellbeing at a university in post-apartheid south africa: a comparison with a british university sample using the gp-core measure’, british journal of guidance & counselling 42(4), 359–371. https://doi.org/10.1080/03069885.2013.779638 abstract introduction and context theoretical perspectives the history of die vlakte the project methodology findings and discussion conclusion acknowledgements references about the author(s) elmarie costandius department of visual arts, stellenbosch university, cape town, south africa neeske alexander department of visual arts, stellenbosch university, cape town, south africa citation costandius, e. & alexander, n., 2019, ‘exploring shame and pedagogies of discomfort in critical citizenship education’, transformation in higher education 4(0), a73. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v4i0.73 original research exploring shame and pedagogies of discomfort in critical citizenship education elmarie costandius, neeske alexander received: 29 may 2019; accepted: 26 july 2019; published: 30 sept. 2019 copyright: © 2019. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract background: social transformation in south africa is a sensitive issue because of the historical realities of segregation and past injustices. aim: to address transformation, visual communication design students were asked to design an exhibition, event, sculpture or garden to memorialise the forced removals that took place on the site of the current arts and social sciences building of stellenbosch university and to thereby contribute with their own ‘voices’ to an event or exhibition. setting: the focus of the project was to memorialise the forced removals that occurred on the place known then as die vlakte. the aim was to investigate the reactions of students and community members to explore how a visual communication project prepared them or failed to prepare them for dealing with social injustice. methods: a case study research design was applied, and inductive qualitative content analysis was used in processing and organising data. the theoretical framework included critical citizenship education, social justice, pedagogy of discomfort, shame and white shame. results: critical citizenship education may form part of pedagogies of discomfort, and shame may be used positively as we ask students to negotiate emotionally charged subjects through visual communication. conclusion: as the case studies have shown, students are capable of identifying sources of discomfort and growing from them to perceive a local historic event in a more sensitive and inclusive way. keywords: critical citizenship education; shame; pedagogies of discomfort; community engagement; group work. introduction and context in south africa, policies for higher education institutions show tremendous progress towards transformation. in 2013, the south african department of higher education and training (dhet) stated that mandatory and credit-bearing anti-racism and citizenship education programmes should be developed in all public colleges and state-supported universities in the future (dhet 2014). however, despite the policies that advocate social justice and transformation, personal transformation within people, including lecturers and students, has proved to be slow. social transformation in south africa is a sensitive issue because of the historical realities of segregation and past injustices. south africans still struggle to find closure on issues relating to the past because of what ramphele (2008:355) calls the ‘difficulty acknowledging the depth of our trauma’. current issues in the south african society include injustices that are underpinned by factors such as class, poverty, racism and gender discrimination. these inequalities affect the teaching and learning environment where unequal opportunities further contribute to injustice. the stellenbosch university transformation strategy and plan (su 2013:6) emphasises that progressive policies, guidelines, approaches and objectives do not ensure a transformational impact unless they facilitate integrated and active processes. attempts at promoting transformation and social justice therefore require moving beyond policy to practical projects within higher education contexts. the struggle within higher education is a complex one that touches on various emotional aspects that often have their roots in the colonial and apartheid past. one such emotional aspect is the possibility of experiencing feelings of shame by those who have benefited and continue to benefit from non-transformative practices. shame has long been viewed as destructive by politics and pedagogy and has been avoided or even erased, but now the potential for challenging the opposition between self and other is being explored (zembylas 2008:265). particularly, a ‘pedagogy of discomfort’, which uses feelings of shame to teach social justice, may be used to encourage active engagement with it by its students and teachers (zembylas & mcglynn 2012:41). the research was led by the following question: how can a project memorialising the forced removals of die vlakte be used to investigate the reactions of students and community members and to explore how this project prepared them or failed to prepare them for dealing with social injustice? using critical citizenship education and pedagogies of discomfort, we found that shame may be used positively as we ask students to negotiate emotionally charged subjects through visual communication. students were capable of identifying sources of discomfort and growing from them to perceive a local historic event in a more sensitive and inclusive way. theoretical perspectives incorporating critical citizenship and social justice into teaching and learning is challenging when writing policies and curricula. this challenge is further increased when confronting everyday experiences and interactions between students, lecturers or community members in post-colonial, post-apartheid south africa. critical citizenship and social justice pedagogies are, however, useful guidelines in understanding these issues in a teaching and learning environment. five theoretical perspectives – critical citizenship education, social justice, pedagogy of discomfort, shame and white shame – are discussed below. the working definition of critical citizenship is formulated from johnson and morris (2010): critical citizenship is based on the promotion of a common set of shared values such as tolerance, diversity, human rights and democracy. as an educational pedagogy, it encourages critical reflection on the past and the imagining of a possible future shaped by social justice, to prepare people in diverse societies to live together in harmony. this definition was used as a guide when developing critical citizenship projects for students. critical pedagogy is a concept that links particularly well to critical citizenship. the term ‘critical pedagogy’ refers to a set of education principles and practices closely related to critical thinking, which was a main concern for the frankfurt school of thought that started practising critical thinking, and resonates strongly with freire’s (2015) pedagogy of the oppressed. critical pedagogy encourages educators to develop context-specific educational strategies where both staff and students use dialogue to open up a critical consciousness that involves citizenship issues (johnson & morris 2010). critical citizenship education in south african higher education is aimed at working against the perpetuation of existing perceptions and attitudes that stem from a colonial and apartheid past. when past traumatic events are remembered in such a way that they gain hegemonic power, it creates great challenges for educators to critically evaluate narratives of historical trauma and suffering (zembylas 2007). understanding citizenship through the lens of emotion can provide educators with critical tools for deconstructing the affective meanings embedded in citizenship discourses and the structures of feelings that are produced, reproduced and circulated (zembylas 2009). re-claiming forgotten connections with others involves acts of compassion, self-criticality, resistance to the status quo and a desire for social justice (zembylas 2009). fraser (2009) defines social justice in three dimensions: distribution of resources, the politics of recognition and the politics of representation and belonging. according to fraser (2009), all three dimensions should be included to enhance social justice. fraser (2009:165) uses the phrase ‘no redistribution or recognition without representation’. teaching for social justice begins with the idea that every human being is of equal value, entitled to decent standards of justice, and that violation of these standards must be acknowledged and fought against (ayers 2004). social justice education incorporates that which is included in the curriculum as well as the manner in which the lecturer practises social justice. importance lies not only in what is taught, but also how it is taught and the results of teaching and learning. as mentioned earlier, pedagogies of discomfort may be utilised to bring home the concept of social justice to students, by using feelings of shame. a pedagogy of discomfort invites educators and students to think critically about their deeply held assumptions of themselves and others by positioning themselves as witnesses to social injustice (zembylas 2010; zembylas & mcglynn 2012): a pedagogy of discomfort, as an educational approach, emphasises the need for educators and students alike to move outside their ‘comfort zones’. pedagogically, this approach assumes that discomforting emotions play a constitutive role in challenging dominant beliefs, social habits and normative practices that sustain social inequities and in creating possibilities for individual and social transformation. (zembylas & mcglynn 2012:41) this practice remains appropriate as long as it generates ‘critical self-reflection’ and is implemented alongside debriefing sessions in which students may engage with any difficult emotions they may have experienced (zembylas & mcglynn 2012:56). zembylas (2010) concludes that pedagogies of discomfort may transform the emotional lives of educators and students and that this process should be marked by compassion, tolerance, caring, empathy and criticality. jennifer biddle (1997) notes the physical effects of shame: hot blush on the skin, dropping of the eyes, drooping of the eyelids, withdrawing to avoid the naked, exposed, alienated feelings of shame—these are effects tangible, evident, witnessable. (p. 227) shame represents an impossible and compelling ambivalence – it both seeks to be hidden and to be recognised/confessed (biddle 1997). shame usually involves the exposure of a vulnerability and sense of inadequacy (madianou 2011). a working definition of shame within this research includes shame as humiliation or distress caused by the consciousness of having or being wrong, that is being implicit in wrongdoing both as an individual and as part of a group, particularly with regard to past injustices in south africa. people tend to feel ashamed about shame, and it is seen as offensive, but shame has an everyday function in life (scheff 2003). in sedgwick and frank’s (1995:500) reading of silvan tomkins, shame is positioned as part of our basic set of affects, and is further placed at one end of the affect polarity of ‘shame-interest’. affect is often loosely defined as emotion, but it entails more. according to massumi (1995), affect is a matter of autonomic responses that occur below the threshold of consciousness and cognition, which are rooted in the body. the affective influence of shame is very powerful and while it can be viewed as negative, it also holds potential for transformation. shame is understandably associated with negative outcomes, which is a powerful motivator for avoidance. according to waghid (2011), shame may stigmatise students and cause them to become disillusioned with the education process. he argues that the promotion of democratic citizenship in students requires caring engagement and humane learning – not shame. shame can traditionally be seen as paralysing, negative and destructive (zembylas 2008). however, a rehabilitation of the political and ethical value of shame challenges the opposition between self and other, and this can be beneficial in educational settings (zembylas 2008). shame has the potential to drive transformative action, but must be understood in terms of its meaning and implications in education. if we can consider shame to be more complex than its initial discomfort, we may begin to see the potential of using shame for reflection. through identification, awareness may develop, and from awareness, criticality in the form of empathy and reconciliation (zembylas 2007:214). shaming creates an opening that is necessary for self-criticism, self-reflection and ethical, political and educational deliberation (tarnopolsky 2004, as cited in zembylas 2008:265). shame is therefore an important part of dealing with shameful histories. probyn (2004) identifies two angles of white shame. the one is emotional, cognitive, to do with morality and easily shifted onto different things depending on the context. this emotional shame is based on the facts and asks for absolution. the other angle is much more difficult to name; the shame that is in the habitus: affective, ancestral shame. this shame cannot be relieved by an apology because it forms part of the white body/identity. emotional shame and ancestral shame overlap (probyn 2004). managing a shameful identity can result in either acknowledging a sense of shame or denying it (leeming & boyle 2013). white shame is reflected in settler perspectives. tuck and yang (2012:9) describe some settler perspectives that relate to white shame. settlers are disturbed by their own settler status and try to escape the complicity of ‘having harmed others just by being oneself’ (tuck & yang 2012:9). this shame is accompanied by a strong desire to ‘disappear the native’ (tuck & yang 2012:9). the disappearance of the native is seen in the execution and past records of the die vlakte removals. the new records seek to remember the removals, but may also be a strategy to relieve white shame. settler ‘moves to innocence’ are popular because of the uncomfortable reality settlers experience when they realise that they are directly and indirectly benefiting from colonial structures and systems (tuck & yang 2012:9). these moves to innocence are strategies that attempt to relieve the settler from guilt and responsibility without making any great sacrifices such as giving up land, power or privilege. ignorance and indifference could also be used as coping mechanisms for white shame. in summary, the theoretical perspectives of critical citizenship, social justice, pedagogies of discomfort, shame and white shame are used to form a theoretical platform for this inquiry. critical citizenship is useful for encouraging critical reflection on the past and for imagining a possible future shaped by social justice. social justice is an integral guiding principle when planning and executing education for transformation. it also helps to guide researchers when analysing the way research is conducted and the possible effects research has on participants. pedagogies of discomfort can be used to highlight social justice issues to students, by using feelings of shame. shame has the potential to drive transformative action and it creates an opening that is necessary for self-criticism, self-reflection and ethical, political and educational deliberation. shame should be considered when shameful histories are examined, such as in the case of this research. managing a shameful identity can result in either acknowledgement or denial (leeming & boyle 2013). white shame is reflected in settler perspectives such as moves to innocence and these should be critically addressed when investigating transformation in south africa. the history of die vlakte during the 20th century die vlakte was home to a mixed but mostly mixed race community in stellenbosch. ‘die vlakte’ referred to an area that was geographically demarcated by muller street, van ryneveld street, banghoek road, smuts street, merriman avenue and bird street. over the weekend of 27 and 28 july 1940, clashes between students of stellenbosch university (su) and members of die vlakte led to violent fights that subsequently become known as the battle of andringa street. more than 20 years later, on 25 september 1964, 3700 members of the community were forcefully removed from their homes because of the declaration of die vlakte as a white group area. the removal took place under the group areas act of 1950 and six schools, four churches, a mosque, a cinema and 10 businesses were affected. many buildings on the current su campus are built where die vlakte used to be (grundlingh 2015). one of these buildings is the arts and social sciences building in merriman street. over several decades, the official history of stellenbosch has, however, failed to include any of the happenings surrounding the battle of andringa street or the removals from die vlakte. the events were only transcribed in 2006 and 2007 with the publishing of in ons bloed (biscombe 2006) and nog altyd hier gewees: die storie van ’n stellenbosse gemeenskap (giliomee 2007). however, in recent years various steps have been taken by su to restore its relationship with the previous inhabitants of die vlakte. the most recent of this is an exhibition installed in the arts and social sciences building in 2015, which showcases the history of die vlakte, student projects and personal experiences of the remaining people of die vlakte. other efforts by su include the publishing of in ons bloed (biscombe 2006), the rededication of the old lückhoff school to the people of die vlakte and the installation of an onsite permanent photo exhibition. the meeting at the late prof. russel botman’s house between students and members of the affected communities, the apology given by student leaders of dagbreek residence and the opening of the memory room in the wilcocks building can also be seen as important steps taken by su to promote reconciliation and inclusivity (su n.d.). the project critical citizenship education was incorporated into the visual communication design (vcd) course from 2010. critical citizenship education aims to promote tolerance, diversity, human rights and democracy. the dean of the faculty of arts and social sciences at the time, prof. johan hattingh, appointed a committee to look into creating a permanent exhibition that would memorialise the forced removals that took place on the site of the current arts and social sciences building. it was then decided that this project should become part of the vcd curriculum because it links very well with previous critical citizenship projects. the honours students from the department of english joined the project. students were to participate in the memorialising of the forced removal process to contribute with their own ‘voices’ to the event or exhibition. the brief to the vcd and english students was to design an exhibition, event, sculpture or garden to memorialise the forced removals that took place on the site of the current arts and social sciences building. the aim was to make students and lecturers aware of and allow them to reflect on the history of the building and the current consequences of that history. the exhibition, event, sculpture or garden could have included an occasion, happening, manifestation or festival. a complex range of aspects were involved, such as interdisciplinary interaction, community interaction, group work, research, interviews with students from the faculty of arts and social sciences, reflective writing, conceptualising the memorial, and visual and oral presentations. the project was called ‘memorialising forced removals in the arts and social sciences building’. methodology for this research project, an interpretative approach (cf. klein & meyers 1999) was followed. this requires reflection on how data are socially constructed and a sensitivity to contradictions, interpretations, distortions and biases of the narratives generated (klein & meyers 1999). a case study research design (creswell 2003) was applied, as this explored the value of the project in terms of the negotiation of social transformation. reflections from community members and students were the main source of data – at the start of the project, during and at its completion. students’ memorial proposal documents and observation through the course of the project were complementary data sources. dialogue opened up the process of dealing with negative emotions for students and served as a debriefing technique. this dialogue also served to validate the data as a member-check and participants could, during the duration of the project, return to and revise their reflections. it allowed them to engage with difficult topics, and encouraged growth from previous perceptions. some students also appreciated the opportunity to express their opinions and reflections in an educational setting. this may also encourage greater ease in channels of communication among students and lecturers, not to mention among surrounding communities. group interviews were conducted with a research sample of community members, students and one of the lecturers involved. because of the type of project and the risk of uncontained emotion, a psychologist was available for further discussions outside the class. the authors of this article do not have any information on whether such discussions took place, as it was meant to be confidential. ethical clearance for this research project was obtained from the research ethics committee: human research (humanities) of su. five community members and 26 students participated in the project and research. the coding used is as follows: cm1–5 = community members and numbers and s1–26 = students and numbers. data were collected in english and afrikaans and afrikaans data were translated into english by the researchers, who are bilingual. inductive qualitative content analysis was used in processing and organising the data while using the theoretical framework as a guide. the purpose of inductive content analysis is to arrive at features of meaning by scrutinising the data qualitatively, to look at how the participants see and understand certain issues. this involved repeated reviewing of themes as we moved back and forth between coded data, the complementary data sources and the developing themes. ethical considerations ethical clearance has been obtained from the research ethics committee of stellenbosch university, reference number 493/2011. findings and discussion the findings presented below are centred on the community members’ and students’ emotional experiences and resulting reflections during and at the end of the ‘memorialising forced removals in the arts and social sciences building’ project. students were sensitive to the project’s potential for inducing shame, and many resorted to strategies of avoidance or showcased reluctance, as is expected of negative emotions (zembylas 2008:265). themes relating to affect, ignorance and disinterest, desensitisation and indifference, as well as growth and reconciliation, and forgiveness surfaced from the data. affective responses affective responses are autonomic, visceral, powerful and felt in the body (massumi 1995). the affective responses of community members (cm) affected by the removals could be expected, but the students also encountered strong affective experiences. the responses of students (s) may be linked to the shame they felt. community members spoke of the pain and anger that surfaced when the removals were discussed as well as the deep hurt that remains. ‘there are not many people who want to talk about it because it is just too painful and people become angry when they have to think about it again.’ (cm2, male, 62 years old) ‘it hurts, no doubt about it. i am 77 and it still hurts. it requires swallowing hard to keep it [the sadness] back. … it has left a wound that one cannot heal with medication.’ (cm3, male, 77 years old) many students described the affective experience of the project: ‘as a whole i have found this project to be very emotionally and physically draining.’ (s7, male, 21 years old) ‘this news and background of the ‘battle of andringa street’ probably made more of an impact upon my emotions about stellenbosch than any other history that i have learnt.’ (s13, female, 20 years old) ‘it made a huge impact on me. of course it is difficult to relate to them and to understand what each of them had to go through. yet it brought strong emotions to the fore.’ (s26, male, 21 years old) students also felt something of white shame (probyn 2004) and guilt as well as confusion. these affective responses form a key part of practising pedagogies of discomfort. participants mourned for the tragedy of apartheid. some students felt sympathy for and even empathy towards the community members’ experiences. ‘i felt tragically privileged to have not had to go through what they did, based on something as futile as race. i felt ashamed for the way that my neighbours, essentially, had been treated and the circumstances that the unjust allegations were based upon, and the lingering discontent that still hangs in the air. … my day was filled with a lot of sadness and mourning for what had happened.’ (s12, male, 20 years old) if i had to put myself in their shoes and have had all that i had worked for and the name i had built up for myself disregarded, merely to classify me on nothing but my racial status, my spirit and heart too would be broken. (s9, female, 21 years old) ignorance and disinterest this project helped to expose more people in stellenbosch to their local history, with the hope that it would facilitate awareness and possibly even growth in perceptions of the past events. this exposure is in line with the goals of critical citizenship education to foster values such as tolerance, diversity, human rights and democracy. we hoped that this exposure and resulting dialogue would encourage critical reflection on the past and the imagining of a possible future shaped by social justice. however, most students were ignorant of the forced removals and when they were informed, many were disinterested. ‘i frequently attended lectures last year in the wilcocks building and passed by the memory room completely oblivious to it. this sense of obliviousness can also be aptly used to describe the way in which i have often walked in the vicinity of van ryneveld street, banghoek road and merrimen avenue without knowledge of the tragic effect.’ (s11, female, 20 years old) ‘[a] vast majority of su students interviewed on both their knowledge and opinion on that matter were very much uninformed on the matter and not too bothered to learn about it, as they deemed it “past and forgotten”.’ (s4, male, 20 years old) a community member also pointed out that we cannot assume awareness, and must tell the story to others: ‘a remark [from a student] such as “now i truly know what it’s all about” … convinced me once again that exposure is very important … we may not take for granted that everyone knows what this is all about.’ (cm1, female, 67 years old) disinterest was evident among many students. when conducting their own interviews for their proposals, students frequently mentioned coming across a reluctance to engage with local history, as it was perceived as having no relevance to the present and being of no consequence to those not living in times of apartheid. students are quoted as saying: ‘why do we want to memorialise these kinds of events? what will we benefit from making people aware of these events, why would we want to do this? why do we always tend to end up stuck in south africa’s past, over and over again?’ (s12, male, 20 years old) ‘[w]hen someone of my peer and social group is confronted with the word apartheid: dread. with a sigh i think, “here we go around the same block again”.’ (s23, male, 20 years old) feelings of disinterest may be a natural reaction to feelings of shame, possibly as a way of protecting the psyche from negative emotions. student 8 noted: ‘sometimes we distance ourselves from situations that are even slightly emotional and call for self-reflection or sympathy or digging deeper in order to feel a sense of what the victims of the forced removals must have felt.’ (s8, female, 20 years old) desensitisation and indifference using social justice theories to guide the project, there was an awareness by participants of the social injustice created by the forced removals. when we encounter injustice, emotions such as anger, outrage and sadness are usually evoked. yet, our emotional response to injustice and our response to justice are different (zembylas & mcglynn 2012). students felt desensitised towards south africa’s history and many students felt indifferent towards the forced removals of the people of die vlakte. ‘this is a feeling that is shared with most other people my age, “what has it got to do with me?” being the exasperated question we all ask (myself included) when confronted with anything apartheid-themed. in the defence of my generation, we have had south africa’s tragic past drilled into us repeatedly throughout our school education to the point where we are desensitised and disinterested. i often wonder how south africans are supposed to move forward into a brighter future when we are constantly reminded of our dark past.’ (s11, female, 20 years old) this may be the answer as to why the topic of local history was not favourably received. awareness cannot be undervalued, and the importance of teaching local history is not disputed, but the term s11 used to describe the experience of it is problematic. to be ‘desensitised’ may not be conductive to learning, and even less so to engaging with complex issues such as social justice. desensitisation leads to indifference. south africa’s past is one that does not inspire pride. however, shame may not be accessed completely by young people born after the end of apartheid. the feeling of absolution is prevalent, as apartheid had no direct connection with them (or so it is felt), as one student explained: ‘most students interviewed didn’t really care about the removals, because it was in the past. … students felt that they struggled to feel bad about what happened because they are not informed about it and because they were not part of it.’ (s20, female, 20 years old) there was a sense of avoidance, shame and insensitivity regarding south africa’s past. white shame and settler perspectives were evident. ideas such as ‘i don’t want to be reminded’, ‘move on’ and ‘fight against more important things’ devalue the traumatic experiences of those who suffered from the forced removals. it may also be an avoidance tactic and a ‘move to innocence’ (tuck & yang 2012:9), since students do not want to be reminded of the violent past because they directly benefit from it. ‘there were students who reacted differently than how i’d hoped. [they said], “i don’t want to be reminded every day of what a bad person i am”. and “if this event was important, we would have already heard about it”.’ (s10, female, 21 years old) ‘i understand the generations’ pain and fury that [are] passed on, but is it not time for change? isn’t it time for us as a nation to unite and fight against more important things like crime, violence, poverty, etc.? the past is not something you just shake off and forget, but in order to move on you have to forgive the past and move toward the future with hope in your heart.’ (s19, male, 20 years old) ‘[the forced removals] contributed greatly to the formation of apartheid. would i choose to change the past? my personal opinion – no! these specific choices shaped the university into the success that it is today.’ (s26, male, 21 years old) contrary to the above, some students felt that it is necessary to continue to engage with aspects of painful history because they have not been adequately dealt with. pedagogies of discomfort resulted in these students reflecting critically both about their positionality and the feelings that emerged as a result of the project. student 2 noted the difficulty of being white and trying to work with community members and students regarding the sensitive topic of the past. student 11 reflected on how his or her own disinterest moved towards sympathy (and hopefully empathy) through engaging with the issue of the forced removals from die vlakte. ‘i felt extremely self-conscious, especially because of the fact that i am white. i was also very focused on the people i interviewed and realised that some of them were a bit uncomfortable because of the topic of conversation. for me this was when i realised why we have to commemorate, why we still ‘stagnate’ on these events why we can’t move forward without working through the past, we might think that we have worked through it all, but in fact, as clearly illustrated, we still have a lot to do.’ (s2, female, 20 years old) ‘[w]hat shocked me was that the majority of people, when i asked how they felt about these unjust evictions, said that it did not bother them, as it was “not [their] people”. these words were terrible for me to hear but at the same time i could understand their disinterest, which i too had felt at the beginning of this project. only after a period of serious reflection and repositioning of myself in a similar context could i fully sympathise with their past.’ (s11, female, 20 years old) growth and reconciliation students showed growth after engaging with the project and they also spoke of reconciliation. this may be because of the effects of shame. it is argued earlier that shame has the potential to induce self-critical thought that may also change previous thought patterns. students are quoted as being positively influenced by the project, and as having a more sensitive perception of local history. ‘as the project grew, so did i, in terms of humility, opinion and hopefulness, coming from a starting point of feeling primarily sad or negative feelings from the roots of this project, sprung a shining hope and determination. … i felt myself becoming more and more attached and rooted with this lost community.’ (s4, male, 20 years old) ‘i personally struggled a lot with engaging in conversation with people about the history of die vlakte, for it made me extremely uncomfortable and self-conscious, but after conversation, interviews, presentations, and a lot of writing, i now acknowledge and realise the power of confronting and really dealing with an uncomfortable situation.’ (s2, female, 20 years old) as the project progressed, students generally became more positive about the influence of history and the effectiveness of such projects. ‘my view of the past has been changed drastically because of this project. it was a privilege to speak to some of the victims of the attacks on die vlakte. even though i do not have first-hand experience, i now find it easier to relate to the past.’ (s18, female, 20 years old) ‘i never knew about the battle of adringa street and the history behind the forced removals of the coloured community. it is incredible to learn this new information. it gives us as students of [stellenbosch university] an understanding not only of this town, but of the town’s communities and social standings.’ (s17, female, 21 years old) students mentioned reconciliation and noted that it is a difficult task, but that the past should be acknowledged. student 4 felt that doing something about socially unjust ways in which histories are recorded can make people feel as though they are working towards reconciliation. ‘i am ashamed of how little i know about the history that played out on the very campus i now call my own. our reactions to reconciliation are often negative, i find that this is because reconciliation is facilitated not only through apologising for wrongs of the past but also through a sincere admission of guilt that is not always easy to give.’ (s19, male, 20 years old) ‘the true path to reconciliation is not to bury the past, nor to blame one another for it, but rather to acknowledge it, learn from it, to be thankful for being past it and by doing everything in one’s power to prevent it from being repeated.’ (s6, female, 20 years old) ‘[the project] made me realise that informing fellow students of our history is an important part of the reconciliation process.’ (s9, female, 21 years old) a community member had the following to say regarding reconciliation: ‘see, i want to tell this story as widely as possible, not so much because of being in a revenge mode, but more because it is enriching … it cheers the spirit … i do not believe in breaking down, but in building up!’ (cm5, male, 70 years old) new identity in historical memory and the redefinition of previously devalued identities were suggested as methods for promoting reconciliation. these suggestions echo the values of critical citizenship and social justice. student 13 felt that young south africans should take up the responsibility for reconciliation even though they were born after the end of apartheid. this responsibility, however, comes with pressure and challenges. pedagogies of discomfort and feelings of shame, when used in visual art education, can therefore lead to new understandings of promoting social justice and transformation. ‘a theme that struck me … is one of finding a new identity in historical memory. there lies a great sense of hope for reconciliation and for truth in the notion that identities can be redefined, loss can be memorialised, healing can be facilitated through sincere connection.’ (s19, male, 20 years old) ‘it is also not fair for us, as the born free generations, to have to be punished for the mistakes of the past, we did not participate in the horrible occurrences of the past, and i do not believe that we hold any responsibility for them. however, that being said, we as a young generation do need to take responsibility for the way in which we reconcile those occurrences, and avoid reoccurrences at all costs. i believe that this reconciliation starts with education; without this we are simply unaware of what it is that we are reconciling. this [reconciliation] is our responsibility, and doing projects such as this one forces us to take this kind of responsibility on, but with responsibility comes pressure, and feeling the pressure of transforming the ideologies of the past, and correcting the mistakes that sprouted from them [are] challenging, and at [it] times feels almost unfair.’ (s13, female, 20 years old) forgiveness community members and students felt that forgiveness is a relevant issue when one engages with these past events. the term ‘to forgive and forget’ is not something that can be done. how can the descendants of die vlakte residents forget the traumatic events? it was the purpose of this project to seek to remember those hidden histories in socially just ways and to try to find a way to bring forgiveness without forgetting. many of the houses were sold for next to nothing and many of the people had to use that money to build new houses in idas valley or cloetesville. your life savings and your plans for the future had come to nothing. … we are still struggling to get it right and we are still being told to forgive and forget and that everything was not to be blamed on apartheid. — benno langeveldt, borcherd street (in ons bloed) ‘i believe that the struggles of the past continue to plague many members of the coloured stellenbosch community, and that to a large extent will make them weary to forgive and forget.’ (s14, female, 20 years old) students felt that this project opened up spaces to deal with issues such as compassion, caring and forgiveness: ‘i feel that what we have tried to do in this project has definitely brought a bit more peace and forgiveness to the situation. definitely for those people who volunteered to come and chat to us about their sufferings. i feel that it must have been a massive thing for them to do this but i also feel that it benefited them because they now realise that there are many people out there who are willing to listen and who do care about the incident.’ (s5, female, 20 years old) two community members described this particular part of history as an opportunity for forgiveness and moving forward, and touched on a positive outcome for changing perspectives: ‘after having resided at 47 merriman avenue for 28 years, we had to move to idas valley. very sad, no choice. our beloved home since our birth had to be deserted. never again would we play as happily, having everything in town so conveniently close. so stellenbosch where i grew up became a student town. at that specific place something good happened: education of students for a better society.’ (cm4, male, 72 years old) ‘to me, it is no accident that these events of the past took place … it is all part of a greater plan … we as the human species must recreate our world/perspective because it is the nature of evolution and language … the story of the vlakte creates such an opportunity.’ (cm1, female, 67 years old) conclusion as south african students are faced with continual social readjustments, the ability to think critically and fully engage with complex topics is very important. critical citizenship education may form part of pedagogies of discomfort, and shame may be used positively, such as when we asked students to negotiate emotionally charged subjects in visual communication. as the case studies have shown, students are capable of identifying sources of discomfort and growing from them to perceive a local historic event in a more sensitive and inclusive way. this was achieved through dialogue and exposure to group work. pedagogies of discomfort may have potentially caused some students to avoid emotional aspects of the project, making them reluctant to engage with the subject matter. others also experienced more difficulty with the group aspect of the project, and failed to achieve the desired outcomes. differing opinions, communication difficulties, time constraints and reluctance to explore uncomfortable feelings of shame may have made the task more problematic for some. students experienced dialogue as the site of the most extensive development. the desire to be ‘forgiven’ underlies most responses from students, and this may have morphed into aggression and even reluctance when faced with emotionally charged topics. this desire for absolvement is showcased in protestations of their own involvement. many students want to feel they have been ‘forgiven’ so as to absolve their shame. however, if pedagogies of discomfort are used in group settings, this desire may be used as a driving force for conceptual learning of social justice, as dialogue and intergroup dynamics shape and direct creative thought. the future may remain uncertain, and social unrest may continue to disrupt educational practices in south africa, but through pedagogies of discomfort, especially those relating to the past, and continued work on creating awareness throughout communities, students and community members may develop the skills necessary to overcome social injustice through the promotion of tolerance, diversity, human rights and democracy. acknowledgements competing interests the authors have declared that no competing interests exist. authors’ contributions e.c. conducted the research and facilitated the project, while n.a. helped her to analyse the data and write the article. funding this research received funding from the national research fund of south africa. data availability statement data sharing is not applicable to this article as no new data were created or analysed in this study. disclaimer the views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any affiliated agency of the authors. references ayers, w.c., 2004, ‘social justice’, in c. kridel (ed.), encyclopedia of curriculum studies, pp. 791–792, sage, thousand oaks, ca. biddle, j., 1997, ‘shame’, australian feminist studies 12(26), 227–239. https://doi.org/10.1080/08164649.1997.9994862 biscombe, h., 2006, in ons bloed, sun press, stellenbosch. creswell, j.w., 2003, research design: qualitative, quantitative and mixed methods approaches, sage, london. department of higher education and training (dhet), 2014, white paper for post-school education and training: building an expanded, effective and integrated post-school education system, government notice 11, 15 january, pretoria. fraser, n., 2009, scales of justice: reimagining political space in a globalizing world, columbia university press, new york. freire, p., 2015, pedagogy of the oppressed, bloomsbury, new york. giliomee, h.b., 2007, nog altyd hier gewees: die storie van ’n stellenbosse gemeenskap, tafelberg, cape town. grundlingh, a., 2015, unpublished text for the faculty of arts and social sciences exhibition to memorialise forced removals in die vlakte in stellenbosch. johnson, l. & morris, p., 2010, ‘towards a framework for critical citizenship education’, the curriculum journal 21(1), 77–96. https://doi.org/10.1080/09585170903560444 klein, h.k. & meyers, m.d., 1999, ‘a set of principles for conducting and evaluating interpretive field studies in information systems’, mis quarterly 23(1), 67–93. https://doi.org/10.2307/249410 leeming, d. & boyle, m., 2013, ‘managing shame: an interpersonal perspective’, british journal of social psychology 52(1), 140–160. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.2044-8309.2011.02061.x madianou, m., 2011, ‘news as a looking-glass: shame and the symbolic power of mediation’, international journal of cultural studies 15(1), 3–16. https://doi.org/10.1177/1367877911411795 massumi, b., 1995, ‘autonomy of affect’, cultural critique 31, the politics of systems and environments, part ii, autumn, pp. 83–109. probyn, e., 2004, shame in the habitus, blackwell, oxford. ramphele, m., 2008, laying ghosts to rest: dilemmas of the transformation in south africa, tafelberg, cape town. scheff, t.j., 2003, ‘shame in self and society’, symbolic interaction 26(2), 239–262. https://doi.org/10.1525/si.2003.26.2.239 sedgwick, e.k. & frank, a., 1995, ‘shame in the cybernetic fold: reading silvan tomkins’, critical inquiry 21(2), 496–522. https://doi.org/10.1086/448761 stellenbosch university (su), n.d., the memory room, viewed 15 march 2016, from https://www.sun.ac.za/english/entities/archives/exhibitions. stellenbosch university (su), 2013, stellenbosch university institutional intent and strategy, 2013–2018, viewed 13 february 2014, from https://www.sun.ac.za/english/management/src/documents/archive/institutional%20intent%20and%20strategy%202013-2018.pdf. tuck, e. & yang, k.w., 2012, ‘decolonization is not a metaphor’, decolonization: indigeneity, education & society 1(1), 1–40. waghid, y., 2011, ‘initiating debate: teacher education and “a politics of humanity”’, south african journal of higher education 28(8), 1477–1482. zembylas, m., 2007, ‘the politics of trauma: empathy, reconciliation and peace education’, journal of peace education 4(2), 207–224. https://doi.org/10.1080/17400200701523603 zembylas, m., 2008, ‘the politics of shame in intercultural education’, education, citizenship and social justice 3(3), 263–280. https://doi.org/10.1177/1746197908095135 zembylas, m., 2009, ‘affect, citizenship, politics: implications for education’, pedagogy, culture & society 17(3), 369–383. https://doi.org/10.1080/14681360903194376 zembylas, m., 2010, ‘teachers’ emotional experiences of growing diversity and multiculturalism in schools and the prospects of an ethic of discomfort’, teachers and teaching: theory and practice 16(6), 703–716. https://doi.org/10.1080/13540602.2010.517687 zembylas, m. & mcglynn, c., 2012, ‘discomforting pedagogies: emotional tensions, ethical dilemmas and transformative possibilities’, british educational research journal 38(1), 41–59. https://doi.org/10.1080/01411926.2010.523779 abstract introduction overdeterminism of decolonial analysis discourses the dilemma relating to african education developmental agendas post-independence closing the gap between academic achievement and the people bracketing the focus and scope of my article rejigging the caged colonial mentality and the decolonial curriculum historical language production as viewed through a western lens the locale of an african voice in ‘development appropriateness’ discourse setting free those trapped within the african caged colonial mentality decolonising the african colonial caged mind embedding matrices of shifts in decolonial projects decolonising african curricula by de-caging the mind challenges of post-colonial states lack of utopian african education a reimagined, humanised andragogy and pedagogy critical rationale for decolonial literacy and competency acquisition understanding inclusion the concept of cultural diversity decolonising equity pedagogy in curriculum change recommendation conclusion acknowledgements references about the author(s) jabulani nyoni department of educational leadership and management, university of south africa, pretoria, south africa citation nyoni, j., 2019, ‘decolonising the higher education curriculum: an analysis of african intellectual readiness to break the chains of a colonial caged mentality’, transformation in higher education 4(0), a69. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v4i0.69 original research decolonising the higher education curriculum: an analysis of african intellectual readiness to break the chains of a colonial caged mentality jabulani nyoni received: 07 apr. 2019; accepted: 22 may 2019; published: 26 june 2019 copyright: © 2019. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract background: forging ‘new’ decolonial education curriculum policy reform with ill-conceived intents may lead to both socio-political and economic pathologies and failure. aim: the aim of the social sciences meta synthesis done was to consolidate gathered evidence from published scientific articles on decolonial curriculum reform policies. it was critical during the process of synthesising to acknowledge the fact that africans continue to experience multifaceted socio-political and economic shifts of being as influenced by a variety of global ideologies. concerted decolonial efforts should be made to manage these matrices of material social constructs such that the contamination and decapitation of true african educational curricula, identities, cultures, values, ethos and principles are curtailed. setting: the critical exploration of meta-data underpinned by a critical-dialectical perspective attempted to dig beneath the impact of coloniality of power on the conscious mind of an african intellectual. the critical social research analyses how the african colonised mind can effectively decolonise african university curriculum given their colonially captured mind. method: an extensive search, guided by selected key words, yielded about 35 articles on decolonisation but were trimmed down to 15 as determined by my main focus thus: decolonial curriculum reform in post-colonial nation states. results: findings indicate that african scholars, political pundits and researchers tend to rely on the mentally embedded notion of caged colonial mentality (ccm) in advocating for decolonial curriculum reform, with little regard for the multifaceted seismic shifts that impact on the socio-politico-education life of post-colonial african existential beings. conclusion: i strongly advocate for the dismantling of systemic ccm and embrace those seismic shifts that incorporate contemporary decolonial projects when crafting the architecture for decolonial curriculum designs that build on appropriate knowledge, competences, skills, values, beliefs and practices from around the globe to buttress multiplicities of identities, while nevertheless retaining africa’s interests at the centre. keywords: multifaceted seismic shift matrix; architecture for decolonial curriculum designs; multicultural hybridity; decoloniality of power; caged colonial mentality; ccm; afro-communalitarian theory. introduction an african society, in my view, should be composed of beings who are accorded the rights to values such as freedom, social justice, equality, human dignity and choice of education curricular paradigms. african collective communal projects have in their design invariably been conceptualised for the survival and sustenance of their participants, irrespective of status, class and gender. however, one of colonial rulers’ policy was the desire to control educational projects. they found it necessary to impose curriculum changes as experienced in the 1960s. from about the 1980s, migration patterns from other parts of the world, africa included, into some european countries and north america compounded by imposition of segregatory laws by colonial powers, invoked discourses of cultural diversity and inclusion in colonial states. discourses among others centred around issues of curriculum decolonialism and how africa, caribbean islands, asia, black americans and other first nation peoples would be impacted by envisaged changes, including the west itself. the journey of becoming has gained traction, intensified by the disruption demand for decolonised forms of education in african universities. critical curriculum decolonisation is used among african indigenous intellectuals around the globe, where a variety of models of decolonial education have emerged. decolonial thinking about education is rooted in the violent occlusion of ‘ways of knowing’ and being among indigenous civilisations in africa within the imposition of a new world order post imperial order. the conquest of africa meant the demolition of indigenous, political, education and economic systems. universities’ generation of post-colonial knowledge and epistemologies need to be agile and accommodate waves or demands of curriculum transformation and change to accommodate afrocentric developmental projects. curriculum projects are neither final nor static but are instead a journey. decolonial education curriculum is an expression of the changing geopolitics of knowledge where the modern epistemological framework for knowing and understanding the world is no longer interpreted as universal and unbound by geohistorical and bio-graphical contexts (mignolo 2011). thus, the african critical thought on decolonial education curriculum reform should endeavour to address questions of genuine decoloniality and transformation, such as how radical education curriculum reform at the academic, cultural and psychological levels can contribute to the processes of deimperialisation in institutions of higher learning. the challenge for professoriates and lecturers is to learn how to teach or facilitate beyond the distorted cultural and/or historical imaginary and impoverished subjectivity of the modern horizon of thought where everything is hierarchically ranked according to eurocentric concepts, standards and assumptions. the african content should be one of the multiples of global centres of epistemological origins and underpinnings of social reconstruction of reality and dissemination. overdeterminism of decolonial analysis discourses in brief, decolonisation is the disruptive endeavour to end colonialism; it is the liberation and de-caging of the colonised, caged mind by shifting the focus away from western perspectives as the centre for development. deconstructive decolonisation discourse envisages acknowledging africa as one of the regional centres of epistemology generation, with its own developmental intricacies, and as such worthy of being viewed as an equal global partner. africa must be allowed to reassert its own native knowledge and socio-political and economic systems. this requires the dismantling of the colonial government and its entire social fabric, upon which control and exploitation are based. for decolonisation to have a profound effect, the process of destroying the colonial pathogens that have kept the black mind chained must be instituted. fanon (2008 [1952]) writes: ‘the juxtaposition of the black and white “races” has resulted in a massive psycho-existential complex’ (2008 [1952]:xvi). his book, black skin, white masks, ‘is meant to liberate the black man from the arsenal of complexes that germinated in the colonial situation’ (fanon 2008 [1952]:14) – in other words, fanon underscores the need for the black person to overcome the psychological or mental effects of colonialism. another interpretation is that the colonial context affected the way in which people learnt to think about themselves and others, and that this way of thinking is not necessarily changed through political change alone. afro-communalitarian theory seeks to explain the understanding of the native person in relation to the afro-humanisation of pedagogy and show how this application of a concept rooted in africa to the issue of pedagogy can provide new, deconstructed insights into and fresh perspectives on the issue (heleta 2016). it seeks to proudly urge africans to use their culture, language and knowledge in constructing afrocentric curricula and thus reasserting their own organic epistemological centre. the dilemma relating to african education developmental agendas post-independence the focus of this article is on african education curricula, which remain largely eurocentric and continue to reinforce white and western dominance and privilege and at the same time are laced with stereotypes, prejudices and patronising views about africa and its people. africa must completely rethink, deconstruct, reframe, reconstruct the eurocentric and colonial curricula as well as teaching methods at universities. decolonisation of higher education is ‘about justice that addresses the epistemic violence of colonial knowledge and colonial thought’ (pillay 2015). decolonisation is a project that many have rightly interpreted as an act of defiance against all eurocentrism. derrida (1982) states that, ‘this act of “defiance” is deconstruction itself’. it therefore matters little if one is labelled academically dissonant and dissident, if africa is locating or claiming its own indigenous or native centre for knowledge production and dissemination. there is an urgent need to radically decolonise curriculum change and research projects. the adopted radical approach should be aimed at managing racial undertones, promoting gender equality and other forms of ‘isms’ that breed discrimination, cultivating the need to achieve qualitative throughput rates at african universities in line with appropriate and fit-for-purpose afrocentric developmental trajectories. closing the gap between academic achievement and the people african epistemology and underlying philosophies should underpin afrocentric developmental endeavours as the focus as well as project africa as one of the centres of knowledge generation. what is needed in this complex decolonialisation endeavour is the analysis of african intellectual voices through texts, and their conceptualisation of the decolonisation of afro-centred knowledge generation and dissemination despite the embeddedness of conflictual caged colonial mentality (ccm). the article analyses challenges faced by a caged african colonial mentality critical intellectual in effectively deimperialising embedded education legacies, global values and epistemological superiority. bracketing the focus and scope of my article i began my research by carrying out a meta synthesis of the literature on decolonial curriculum reform in higher education (he). this revealed that although some research relating to decolonial education has been conducted, no effort has been made to investigate the decolonisation of the ccm of the scholar who is expected to spearhead african organic decolonial intellectualism. texts relating to the focus of my article included the works of scholars such as grosfoguel (2007); mignolo (2007); mazrui (1986); ndlovu-gatsheni (2013); mashau and mangoedi (2015); dei (2018); ngugi wa thiong’o (2009); fanon (2008 [1952]); derrida (1982); maldonado-torres (2015); quijano (2007); bhabha (1994); mbembe (2016); du bois (1999) and spivak (1990). however, i acknowledge the fact that some of the listed authors who are sampled write about decolonisation in other settings or contexts, not necessarily about the african continent. rejigging the caged colonial mentality and the decolonial curriculum it is possible to argue that decolonial conversations violate informal rules by going against what are construed as western formal ‘ways of doing things’. the west has, for centuries, developed a body of knowledge that the rest of the universities (including those from former colonies) must copy in compliance with western standards. one of the misconceptions held is that reading decolonial literature will not be adequate to make critical scholars trapped within ccm frame of mind become experts in the architecture of decolonial curricular projects at universities. for example, south african universities continue to dither about or tinker with decolonial curricular reform because lead professoriates lack decolonial ontological and epistemological requisite competences for the project to succeed. professoriates and students should learn to recognise the power relations intertwined with african contextual epistemology, or how knowledge disciplines are embedded within the body and geopolitics of the modern world order. however, decolonial discourses and efforts to decolonise curriculum began after independence particularly in independent countries such as ghana, kenya and uganda, to name but a few. despite the many advancements in the study of psychoanalytic theory since sigmund freud introduced his theory in the early 1900s, the basic tenets of freudian thought continue to exert a significant influence on thinking about the human mind. experiences by nature are acquisitions of skills, competences and knowledges gained through practices over a period. empirical knowledge refers to knowledge gained through practical experience. to know how (commonly known as procedural knowledge rather as propositional knowledge) is the notion of experience. human beings’ experiences are products of their environments, and the knowledge gained is embedded in their consciousness. content of consciousness is a part of beliefs, emotions and largely thoughts gained by non-conscious process that lie in the human brain. indeed, from this point of view, our minds are not merely a flow of immediate experience, but a huge repository of hidden depths: beliefs, attitudes, motives, suspicions, hopes, fears and much more acquired over time. for centuries an african mind has been fed eurocentric imperial education experiences that denigrated and subjugated african cultures, civilisation, language, rituals and traditions through the policy of containment and control. to break the debilitating cycle of ccm, african intellectuals should not continue referencing foucault, rousseau, hegel, heidegger, newton, galileo, darwin, gramsci, chomsky, socrates, aristotle, marx, and other authors who may not relate culturally to african discourses but invariably counterbalance their views with authors who come from africa to advance african epistemologies. the richness and success of the african ‘beings’ is not dependent on what western critical seminal authors make of it but is dependent on what the critical african scholars offer as effective leadership in decolonial projects. for example, some african critical scholars conceptualise civilisation, modernisation and exposure as defined in terms of a total disconnect from african culture but the west. the material process of disruptive deconstruction, of deimperialisation and the destruction of western-inspired educational pathogens includes taking painful steps towards the rejigging and reorienting of an african ccm. historical language production as viewed through a western lens history became the product of the west in its actions upon others. at the same time, it displaced those actions through the idea that modernity was endogenous to the west, and therefore removed the very notion of the ‘other’ in history. in so doing, it also naturalised and justified the west’s material domination of the ‘other’, and in this way suggested complicity between orientalism as scholarly discourse and as imperial institution. as said (1995 [1978]) suggests, it was no accident, then, that the movements for decolonisation from the early twentieth century onwards were to provoke a fundamental crisis within orientalist thought: a crisis that fractures the complacent rendering of the ‘other’ as passive and docile and that challenges the assumptive conceptual framework underpinning such depictions (said 1995 [1978]). bhabha (1994) contends that there is no singular event of modernity and there are no moderns (that is, those who have lived through modernity); rather, modernity ‘is about the historical construction of a specific position of historical enunciation and address’, and much can be learnt through examining the spatial contours given by theorists to the time of modernity. the insistent location of modernity in the french and industrial revolutions, for example, reveals the power of centralisation of knowledge generation and custodianship. the locale of an african voice in ‘development appropriateness’ discourse as africans continue to experience multifaceted socio-political and economic shifts of being as influenced by a variety of global ideologies, their voices continue to regurgitate western epistemologies consistently and impactful decolonisation efforts remain negligible and mentally captured. concerted decolonial efforts should therefore be made to manage shifts in these matrices of material social constructs such that contamination and decapitation of true african education curricula, identities, cultures, values, ethos and principles are prevented. african voices should be allowed to correct the toxic, western-inspired nuances and narratives underpinning western-induced education curricula. thus, knowledge production is crucial to developmental aspects of the third world such as peaceful coexistence, self-determination, economic prosperity and many other ‘concrete manifestations of freedom’ (gordon 2011:101) that can serve as markers of the emergence of a truly ‘decolonised world’. the question that emerges from this understanding of decolonialism, rather than colonialism, is: does the manner in which historical knowledge production takes place within what is today dubbed post-colonial africa reflect and accommodate the worldviews and aspirations of all who live there, or does it present only eurocentric perspectives on african history? this question is critical because during colonial encounters between africans and imperialists, the voice of the european settler, and particularly that of the literate missionary, constituted the major source of the historical deconstruction of african history (ndlovu-gatsheni 2011:93). disruptive efforts are critical in achieving decolonial projects and socio-political agendas, yet the pushback emanating from western commentators and empathisers is huge. the power balance is heavily skewed against the genuine call for decolonial thrusts. setting free those trapped within the african caged colonial mentality in his speech to the 1960 pan-african congress, patrice lumumba, the first indigenous leader of the republic of the congo, called for mental decolonisation, urging africans to ‘rediscover our most intimate selves and rid ourselves of mental attitudes and complexes and habits that colonization … trapped us in for centuries’ (nyoni 2013:86). one might surmise that post-colonial african state craft has consistently been framed within ccm. a cage is an enclosed structure in which birds or other animals are confined or restricted behind bars, wire or netting. in this article, ccm refers to mental self-confinement by african intellectuals who restrict their technocratic and intellectual craft competences, craft literacies and ideological thought within narrow western traditional prescripts. caged colonial mentality restricts african mental power from functioning critically outside the box in accommodating african indigenised contexts. for example, the partitioning of africa was an illegal act of occupation, carving up, and subsequent colonisation of african territories by western powers during the time of partitioning, between 1881 and 1914. africans continue to mimic imperialist politics in both character and architecture by design and application to date. the so-called african democratic structures embrace imperialist choreographies and architectures in social structures such as education, health, police, defence and home affairs, following on from the colonial past. on the other hand, ccm also affects those intellectuals, both black and white, who resist any attempt to confront western-inspired skewed ideologies and beliefs. to them, western values and perspectives represent best practices in african-developmental agendas. both sets of protagonists (both black and white intellectuals) remain captured in their western-valued niceties and propensities, as neither knows how a truly emancipated independent african intellectual mind should think in order to craft appropriate african decolonial epistemological projects. the most frightening irony in decolonial projects is that intellectual experts with no decolonial craft literacy and competency are expected to drive processes of curricular reform and knowledge generation. biko (1987) reiterated the need for africans to tackle the challenge of ‘mental slavery’. a ccm has produced a colonised approach to development and instruction. in discussing africa’s maladjusted development trajectory, mazrui (1986) cited the example of japan in order to demonstrate how, by contrast, african elites failed to choreograph their western education with their african values in both their own intellectual development and the continent’s progress. african intellectuals need to think first from the point of view of an african value-based system with the enabling aspects of colonial legacies and global values, and then intellectually link these to the wider world of scholarship and science. decolonising the african colonial caged mind multifaceted seismic matrix of shifts in african mind-set capturing and caging caged colonial mentality refers to mental self-confinement by african political elites and scholars who restrict their technocratic competences, craft literacy and ideological thought within narrow western prescripts. failing to acknowledge that ‘freedom has dawned in africa’, african elites continue to restrict their mental power to operate critically outside the box to accommodate african contexts. the unfrozen mind (seismic shift) can design decolonial curricular constructs that build on the best knowledges, competences, skills, values, beliefs and practices from around the globe to buttress their causal multiplicities of identities (see figure 1). figure 1: multifaceted seismic matrix of shifts in african mind-set capturing and caging. in post-colonial africa, the caged colonial mentality continues to influence structures of leadership and curricular reform. the coloniser’s mind (colonial mind-set) sees nothing wrong with current african university curriculum. the colonisee’s (african colonised mind-set) feels curriculum has to transform (see figure 2). the status quo remains (conflictual divergence). the conflictual divergence has an impact on decolonial curriculum at african universities. figure 2: two opposing ideological standpoints (minds) that diverge from a central point. social overdeterminism (so) is a socio process that was evidently displayed by the south african #decolonialeducation student protests in post-apartheid south africa. in context, social so denotes a single observed effect; #decolonialeducation for example is determined by multiple causes, thus, any one of which would be adequate to determine the effect. it will mean therefore that there are more causes in existence than necessary to cause the effect (freud 2010). freud (2010) was among the first seminal theorists who conjured up the logic of overdeterminism. the critical thinking behind the theory was to replace the idea that social structures that were always in a state of flux were capable of being altered progressively in many ways. the following can be some of the social causes of discontentment that we must also acknowledge: the fatalities of western colonialism projects when embarking on our own decolonial education curricular reform. that africa is no longer composed of insular monocultural societies, but in response to shifts over time has become hybrid in its configurations of being and composition. that africa still battles with social homogenisation, ethnic foundation and cultural delimitation – the foundations of xenophobic outbursts. that the functions of africa’s post-colonial states remain steadfastly caged within debilitating political and economic limitations that inhibit genuine reforms – restrictive bureaucratic borderisation and ring fencing, colonial education curricula and state power debacles, and many more. that the africa of today is characterised by multiculturality, interculturality and intraculturality. embedding matrices of shifts in decolonial projects disruptions that represent a matrix of shifts akin to those that have shaped african socio-economic and geopolitics at key moments over the past 1000 years need to be accommodated in contemporary decolonial curricular reforms. it is the narrative of african social disruption of nations, disruption of economic projects, and disruption of african body politics, of social cohesion projects and of education from cradle to grave. the west’s disruption of african constructs caused african beings to undergo a traumatic matrix of shifts in compliance with the imperial social order of existence. these included the dilution or disruption of the cultural ethos (or both) owing to forced displacements, disruption of political systems, forced social disintegration at places of work (the migrant labour system), disruption of communitarian settlements and the subsequent creation of new patterns of settlements, disruption of language of communication and the partitioning of africa through the introduction of new borders that separated families. the colonial projects of capturing and caging the african mind began during the period of conquest and dispossession and the west’s quest to monopolise the economic resources of the known african continent. the embeddedness of the western policy of capture and control emphasised the view that the west was or is the regional centre for knowledge in the global contest and conquest. in contrast, decolonial projects must accommodate multiplicities of knowledge systems, provided africa remains one of the regional centres in the global village. never should there be only one centre for knowledge generation. decolonising african curricula by de-caging the mind although universities in africa enjoy academic freedom, their curricula continue to promote western thought and ideas that maintain the hegemonic status quo as regards knowledge, teaching, learning and research. governance systems, academic agendas and curriculum design reflect western influences. the eurocentric body of knowledge continues to encourage students to enter the marketplace, but they are not adequately prepared to make fundamental changes to the status quo in society and the economy. quintessentially, decolonisation should aim to engage with the diverse experiences and perspectives present in every culture and part of the world instead of blindly following western ‘universalism’ and the notion that europe and the west are the centre of all knowledge. an african intellectual should promote afrocentric developmental agendas and not look to the west to proffer solutions for africa. a hybridity of ideas should be mobilised to contribute towards the african centre of development and advancement. challenges of post-colonial states early critical thought on decolonisation attempts began in the period between 1940s and 1950s in the united states by scholars such as martin delany, alexander crummel and many others. such decolonial ideas influenced pan africanist member of the name of kwame nkrumah of ghana. the african critical thought at that time was to fight influences of ccm with the aim of shifting political and educational paradigms away from imperial capture and control. kwame nkrumah and his pan africanist friends believed that decolonisation should aim at extinguishing all colonial rule in african and other colonised peoples of the world and advocated for africans to unite politically and economically. pan africanists’ ideas resonated with other african leaders who were fighting for liberty, freedom and independence wherein in 1963 the organisation for african unity (oau), which is known as african union (au) currently, was established in addis ababa, ethiopia. the struggle of decolonisation saw the establishment of other ancillary political formations such as economic community of west african states (ecowas), southern african development community (sadc), frontline states, common market for eastern and southern africa (comesa), to name but a few. however, as ccm will dictate, african post-colonial states experienced challenges in forging economic opportunities and political stability. infrastructural development projects stagnated, state apparatus and its technocrats were inexperienced, and social challenges ballooned to a state of decay. moreover, the political system that african leaders inherited was captured to benefit the evolving ruling classes, with little regard for the needs of the people and economic development. there were few real efforts beyond the political speeches of kwame nkrumah – first president of ghana, who held office from 1957 to 1966 – and the words of the founding charter of the oau, encouraging members to look beyond the accepted borders towards pan africanist or even regional confederations, were constrained by a ccm. african political, social and economic progress was dependent upon western-controlled funders such as the world bank and the international monetary fund (imf). lack of utopian african education utopians view teaching experiences not as a means of imparting knowledge, but as a process of ‘creating attitudes by shaping desires and developing the needs that are significant in the process of living’ (dewey 1934:139). the utopian approach entails designing environments to foster interest, allowing children to pursue unique lines of individual development. the structure of schooling in utopia follows the way in which learning occurs naturally in social life, that is, as a function of increasing participation in culturally meaningful activity. dewey had been making this point for 30 years by the time he gave his utopia speech; in his pedagogic creed of 1897 he wrote: ‘the most formal and technical education in the world cannot safely depart from’ the general process by which individuals appropriate ‘the social consciousness of the race’; that is, learning as a feature of participation in social activities (dewey 1934:133). the purpose of education (dewey 1934) was clear: functionalism was the main guiding principle. african society regarded education to an end, not as an end in itself. education was generally intended for immediate induction into society and preparation for adulthood. african education emphasised social responsibility, job orientation, political participation, and spiritual and moral values. children learnt by doing, and children and adolescents engaged in participatory ceremonies, rituals, imitation, recitation and demonstration. a reimagined, humanised andragogy and pedagogy humanising pedagogy and andragogy will encourage engagement with western material, if it is with the understanding that africa, and african students, have a valuable perspective to contribute alongside what is found in the western canon. freire (2000:90) posits that: [t]rue liberators’ practices reject humanitarianism and approaches that view someone experiencing oppression as a passive object; instead, they embrace what he called humanization, which focuses on one’s own power and agency in the personal and collective struggle for freedom. dogmatic approaches to content knowledge and dissemination can play no part, as they stifle the critical thinking needed to indigenise problem-solving skills and competences. in african settings, different meeting practices are followed with ritual precision and follow protocols. for example, in traditional historical african societies, gatherings were held to make decisions and to discuss issues that affected the community. almost 17 million people, or a third of the population of south africa, reside in the former homelands, which the post-apartheid government calls ‘communal areas’, according to forms of communal tenure. cousins (2008:129) articulates a similar notion of communal tenure, describing communal tenure as inclusive and ‘socially embedded’; ‘land tenure was [and is] both “communal” and “individual” and can be viewed as a “system of complementary interests held simultaneously” by different people. in other words, communal tenure systems are based on the idea that individuals and families hold relative rights to the same residential and agricultural land. these relative rights may even overlap. decolonised communal practices and cooperative efforts are largely influenced by afro-communalitarian theoretical underpinnings. afro-communalitarian theory (afro-communalism) seeks to explain traditional socio-economic and political structures that define the characteristics of communally shared natural resources, knowledge and wisdom, infrastructure and so on. the traditional lekgotla [a meeting called to discuss strategic planning for a village etc.], for example, has been used for centuries for village assemblies and village leaders’ meetings. there is also the indaba [an important meeting called by a chief or headman of a village], historically an important conference held by the principal men of a communal area or with representatives of other communities, and the imbizo [a gathering], a forum for policy discussion. as a result of pressure from within kalkfontein, over time women also became part of the dikgotla [several meetings held at different places] that make decisions about land, meaning that women’s claims on land were also being weighed up in relation to men’s and other women’s interests (claassens & gilfillan 2008). there are no doubts many more variations on approaches to meetings, based on a wider range of perspectives. failure to unchain or de-cage the ‘caged’ mind will mean that decolonial efforts will do nothing more than offer patently cosmetic changes that remain marooned within western knowledges and practices. reading through the literature, i noticed with some distress that scholars tend to conflate concepts such as multiculturalism, diversity and equity with decolonialism (day 2004; nyoni 2013). cultural diversity is a strategy for ‘embracing, or accommodating or engaging differences’ (naidoo 2015:3). multiculturalism is based on the principle and concept of nation state which emphasise regional, linguistic and cultural union. it has been accepted in response to the management of nation state by including the cultural diversity within in the political community (journet 2009). decolonisation is disruptive process of exposing and dismantling the obvious and hidden aspects of those institutions, linguistic and cultural forces that had maintained the imperialist power and that remain even after attainment of independence. critical rationale for decolonial literacy and competency acquisition the term ‘decolonial literacy’ in this article refers to an innovative approach that provides a framework for combining character development with decolonial education in order to raise a generation that is mentored to become conversant with decolonial imperatives that underpin developmental agendas for africa. the term ‘decolonial competency’ embraces a range of competence skills that a decolonial expert can apply in analysing, interpreting and applying expert knowledge when tackling decolonial projects. while decolonial experts attain the necessary understanding of decolonial literacy and competence during workshops, conferences and other forums, they are mentored to work as teams within their family and community structure to implement this knowledge in their daily decolonial lives as well as the lives of others around them. the following are some of the concepts that are embedded within decolonial literacy and competence. understanding inclusion there is a huge fallacy by other scholars that tend to define ‘inclusion’ as an academic effort by an educator to cater for differently gifted learners. nothing can be further from the truth! in this article, inclusion refers to catering for different groups of ordinary people individuals within an organised society organisation, such as university, where a variety of culturally diverse people, religions, races, ethnic, languages, colours or creeds endowed with diverse knowledge, skills and competences are treated equally. the plurality of differences among peoples of diverse cultures makes it more challenges for institutions of higher learning in africa to decolonise practices as their intents are hampered by ccm to a certain extent. despite the challenges one believes that benefits of decolonial inclusion are immense. university students, for example, feel accommodated in all academic spheres, respected and are part of decolonial projects. but for all this to materialise, there should be a mind-set shift on the part of institutions of higher learning and culture of practices thereof. curriculum reform must speak to students’ cultural diversity, experiences and africa’s developmental agendas. there should be a balancing act exercise regarding national origin, age, race and ethnicity, religion and/or belief, gender, marital status and socio-economic status of students. inclusion is a sense of belonging. inclusive cultures make people feel respected and valued for who they are as an individual or group. people feel a level of supportive energy and commitment from others that enables them to do their best at work. inclusion often means a shift in an organisation’s mind-set and culture that has visible effects, such as participation in meetings, how offices are physically organised or access to facilities or information. the concept of cultural diversity the concept of cultural diversity embraces tolerance, acceptance and respect. decolonial education policy designs should address matters of cultural diversity with a prime focus on the ethnic multiculturalism, religious belief systems, race, gender, sexual orientation, socio-politico and economic, differently gifted people and other ideologies. decolonial efforts must help build more intercultural and inclusive societies irrespective of geo-political position in the globe. quite frankly it must make use of raw human and material resources to improve organic teaching and learning experiences that contribute to more complete human development and to transform cultural diversity into realms of understanding, pluralism and social cohesion. the social justice model evolved next and extended the idea that individuals outside the dominant group should be given opportunities within the workplace, not only because it was instituted as a law, but because it was the right thing to do. kevin sullivan, a former vice-president of apple inc., said that ‘diversity initiatives must be sold as business, not social work’. this model still revolved around the idea of tokenism, but it also brought in the notion of hiring based on a ‘good fit’ (bala 2013). according to the deficit model, it is believed that organisations that do not have a strong diversity inclusion culture will invite lower productivity, higher absenteeism and higher staff turnover, which will result in higher costs to the company. this very general discussion prepares the way for a mention of the cultural hybridity debate. hybridity, as it is understood in post-colonial theory, is perceived as having the potential to go beyond the sort of modern binaries from which, beck (2005) suggests, contemporary social imaginaries must find a way out. according to pieterse (2001:238), ‘hybridity is to culture what deconstruction is to discourse: transcending binary categories’ (pieterse 2001:238). yet, as is pointed out in many works discussing cultural hybridity, the term and the vast array of concepts it encapsulates have raised long-running discussions and debates. the term ‘hybridity’ refers notably to discourses and ideologies of racism (nyoni 2013). derived from the latin, the term was until the 19th century rarely used except in biological or botanical descriptions. however, young points out that it had also previously been used in the context of race mixture (and especially in relation to human fertility). he further relates the definition found in the oed to other, previously used terms such as ‘mixed’ or ‘intermediate races’. the significant point in young’s account of the increasing use of the terms ‘hybrid’ and ‘hybridity’ (and their eventual inscription) in the 19th century is that it ‘marks the rise of the belief that there could be such a thing as a human hybrid’ (young 1995:6) – the belief, in other words, that there are objective different human races (or ‘species’). one of the major contemporary theorists recently associated with cultural hybridity is homi bhabha. in most of his works, bhabha (1994) considers the interrelations and interdependence between the colonisers and the colonised. through the colonial experience, the social categories exerted on the colonised (the ideas of superior and inferior human races and cultures, for instance) imprint an imaginary that collides with their own, ‘displacing’ or ‘disjuncting’ it. this ‘encounter’ eventually creates new ‘hybrid’ expressions (of culture, of belonging), which in turn challenge the beliefs and experience of the colonisers. bhabha (1994) argues that these colonial – and postcolonial – cultural systems and statements are constructed in a ‘liminal space’: the ‘third space of enunciation’ (bhabha 1994:209). hybridity, according to bhabha (1994), opens what he calls ‘a third space’ within which elements encounter and transform each other (papastergiadis 2000:170; young 1995). it is, concurrently, the site of struggle and resistance against imperialist powers (kraidy 2002:316). with the goal of abolishing the distinctions between centre and periphery, and other forms of binarism, this post-colonial interpretation of cultural change is a significant departure from the linear diffusion model of ‘the west to others’. decolonising equity pedagogy in curriculum change equity pedagogy exists when facilitators use techniques and methods that facilitate the academic achievement of students from diverse racial, ethnic and social class groups. equity pedagogy consists of a review of selected studies of approaches, theories and interventions designed to help university students who are members of low-status population groups to improve their academic achievement (delpit 1988; ogbu 1990; shade 1989). in education, the term ‘equity’ refers to the principle of fairness. while it is often used interchangeably with the related principle of equality, equity encompasses a wide variety of educational models, programmes and strategies that may be considered fair, but not necessarily equal. it has been said that ‘equity is the process; equality is the outcome’, given that equity – what is fair and just – may not, in the process of educating students, always reflect strict equality – what is applied, allocated or distributed equally. multicultural education prescribes what actions should be performed in order to ensure equitable accessibility and treatment for diverse groups in schools and in society. some authors equate multicultural edu-cation with a ‘renewed and refined version of liberal education, education for freedom and celebration of the inherent plurality of the world’ (banks 2001:28). banks (2001) distinguishes three dimensions of multicultural education definition: multicultural education as an idea, educa-tional reform movement and a changing educational system structure process. the purpose of multicultural education is to equalise educational opportu-nities for culturally different students. fundamentally, academic failure of students from certain minority ethnic groups whose university performances continue to stay behind national norms can be linked. cultural diversity offers a plethora of possibilities when looked at with a different lens. for africa’s post-colonial education systems, the question of how to decolonise he curriculum is still relevant today. some university professoriates find it extremely difficult to address issues of decoloniality owing to profound impact of ccm. the prevailing tendency at these institutions of he is to simply make insignificant tweaks of the curriculum reforms. there lies the danger of being alienated by the society or being re-visited by student protests and failure to contribute towards effective development and economic emancipation. one would argue that titanic shifts are needed in curriculum change in order to make visible dents in decolonial projects. recommendation in seeking to unmask and challenge colonial logic that underpins homogenising education constructs across disciplines and to affirm the anti-colonial theoretical foundations of epistemic resistance rooted in indigenous spirituality, ways of knowing and being, this contribution offers vital conceptual tools and pedagogica or andragogical possibilities for advancing the global struggle to humanise knowledge production and anti-racist education practice. afro-communalitarian theory seeks to explain the understanding of the person in relation to the concept of afro-humanisation of pedagogy and show how this application of a concept rooted in africa to the issue of pedagogy can provide new, deconstructed insights into and fresh perspectives on the issue. one might therefore recommend that aspiring education curriculum reform practitioners can participate in decolonial studies, colloquia and development programmes to acquire appropriate skills and competences as these relate to decolonial practices and praxis. conclusion ill-conceived disruption of ‘new’ decolonised education curriculum reconstruction and reform by those uniformed about decolonial craft skills and competences may lead to the production of both socio-political pathologies and education failure. it is important to emphasise, however, that african decolonial deconstructionists and curriculum reformers struggle to de-cage their theories, undergirded by ccm, from the comfortable web of colonial educational and political niceties. concerted decolonial efforts should be made to manage decolonial shifts in the matrices of material social constructs such that the contamination and decapitation of true african education curricula, identities, cultures, values, ethos and principles are curtailed. ccm stems from the fact that african political, educational, economic and social systems are structured based on past colonial technocracies. it is unfortunate but natural that african critical thinkers should alternate between conscious and subconscious minds when faced with the task of decolonising curricula. when merely superficial efforts at curriculum change are made, authentic decolonial efforts fail. acknowledgements my sincere gratitude to the university of south africa for having allowed me to contribute towards decolonial discourse as well as transformation in higher education for publishing my article. competing interests the author declares that no competing interest exists. authors’ contributions i declare that i am the sole author of this research article. ethical considerations all ethical considerations and processes were complied with in terms of standing legal requirements. funding funding for this study was obtained from the university of south africa. data availability statement data sharing is not applicable to this article as no new data were created or analysed in this study. disclaimer the views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any affiliated agency of the author. references bala, i., 2013, ‘the psychological contract: the changing nature of employee-employer expectations’, international journal of management & information technology 3(1), 62–70 https://doi.org/10.24297/ijmit.v3i1.4642 banks, j.a. (ed.), 2001, handbook of research on multicultural education, jossey bass, san francisco, ca. beck, u., 2005, power in the global age: a new global political economy, polity press, cambridge, uk. bhabha, h.k., 1994, the location of culture, routledge, london. biko, s., 1987, ‘our strategy for liberation’ in a., stubbs (ed.) i write what i like, biko, s., a selection of his writings (heinemann, oxford). claassens, c. & gilfillan, d., 2008, ‘the kalkfontein land purchases: eighty years on and still struggling for ownership’, in a. claassens & b. cousins (eds.), land, power and custom: controversies generated by south africa’s communal land rights act, pp.138–153, uct press, cape town. cousins, b., 2008, ‘characterising “communal” tenure: nested systems and flexible boundaries’, in a. claassens & b. cousins (eds.), land, power and custom: controversies generated by south africa’s communal land rights act, pp. 109–137, uct press, cape town. day, b., 2004, ‘from frankfurt to ljubljana: critical theory from adorno to žižek’, studies in social and political thought 9(1), 1–20. dei, g.j.s., 2018, ‘“black like me”: reframing blackness for decolonial politics’, educational studies 54(2), 117–142. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131946.2018.1427586 delpit, l.d., 1988, ‘the silenced dialogue: power and pedagogy in educating other people’s children’, harvard educational review 58, 280–298. https://doi.org/10.17763/haer.58.3.c43481778r528qw4 derrida, l., 1982, margins of philosophy, trans. a. bass, university of chicago press, chicago, il. dewey, j., 1934, ‘dewey outlines utopian schools’, in j.a. boydston (ed.), john dewey, the later works, volume 9, 1933–1934, pp. 136–140, southern illinois university press, carbondale, il. du bois, w.e.b., 1999, the souls of black folk. authoritative text. contexts. criticisms, edited by h.l. gates jr. & t.h. oliver, w. w. norton & co, new york. fanon, f., 2008 [1952], black skin, white masks, grove press, new york. freire, p., 2000, pedagogy of the oppressed, transl. m.b. ramos, continuum international publishing group, new york. (original work published in 1970). freud, s., 2010, the interpretation of dreams, transl. j. stratchey, basic books, new york. gordon, l.r., 2011, ‘shifting the geography in an age of disciplinary decadence. transmodernity’, journal of peripheral cultural production of the luso-hispanic world 1(2), 95–103. grosfoguel, r., 2007, ‘the epistemic decolonial turn’, cultural studies 21(2–3), 211–223. https://doi.org/10.1080/09502380601162514 heleta, s., 2016, ‘decolonisation of higher education: dismantling epistemic violence and eurocentrism in south africa’, transformation in higher education 1(1), 1–8. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v1i1.9 journet, n., 2009, evrenselden özele kültür [la culture: de l’universel au particulier], i̇z yayıncılık, i̇stanbul. kraidy, m.m. 2002, ‘hybridity in cultural globalization’, communication theory 12(3), 316–339. https://doi.org/10.1093/ct/12.3.316 maldonado-torres, n., 2015, ‘forthcoming. “decolonial turn”’, in j. poblete (ed.), twenty-five years of turns in latin american studies, culture, power and politics, critical ethnic studies, pp. 435–462, duke university press. mashau, t.d. & mangoedi, l., 2015, ‘faith communities, social exclusion, homelessness and disability: transforming the margins in the city of tshwane’, hts teologiese studies/theological studies 71(3), art. #3088, 1–9. https://doi.org/10.4102/hts.v71i3.3088 mazrui, a.a., 1986, the africans: a triple heritage, bbc publications, london. mbembe, a. 2016, ‘decolonising the university: new directions’, arts & humanities in higher education 15(1), 29–45. https://doi.org/10.1177/1474022215618513 mignolo, w.d., 2007, ‘introduction’, cultural studies 21(2–3), 155–167. https://doi.org/10.1080/09502380601162498 mignolo, w.d., 2011, ‘i am where i think: remapping the order of knowing’, in f. lionnet & s. shih (eds.), the creolization of theory, pp. 159–192, duke university press, durham. naidoo, m., 2015, ‘transformative remedies towards managing diversity in south african theological education’, hts teologiese studies/theological studies 71(2), 1–7. https://doi.org/10.4102/hts.v71i2.2667 ndlovu-gatsheni, s.j. 2011, ‘colonial modernity and the african worldview: theorizing and historicising religious encounters in south-western zimbabwe’, eastern african social science review 27(2), 91–114. https://doi.org/10.1353/eas.2011.0009 ndlovu-gatsheni, s.j., 2013, empire, global coloniality and african subjectivity, berghahn books, new york & oxford. ngugi wa thiong’o, 2009, re-membering africa, east african educational publishers ltd., nairobi. nyoni, j., 2013, ‘decolonial multicultural education in post-apartheid south africa’, international journal for innovation education and research 1(3), 83–92. ogbu, j.u., 1990, ‘overcoming racial barriers to equal access’, in j.i. goodlad & p. keating (eds.), access to knowledge: an agenda for our nation’s schools, pp. 59–89, the college board, new york. papastergiadis, n., 2000, the turbulence of migration: globalization, deterritorialization, and hybridity, polity press, cambridge, uk. pieterse, j.n., 2001, ‘hybridity, so what?’, theory, culture and society 18(2), 219–245. https://doi.org/10.1177/02632760122051715 pillay, s., 2015, ‘decolonising the university’, africa is a country, viewed 16 june 2016, from http://africasacountry.com/2015/06/decolonizing-the-university/. quijano, a., 2007, ‘coloniality and modernity/rationality’, cultural studies 21(2–3), 168–178. https://doi.org/10.1080/09502380601164353 said, e.w., 1995 [1978], orientalism: western conceptions of the orient with a new afterword, penguin, london. shade, b.j., (ed.), 1989, culture, style, and the educative process, charles c thomas, springfield, il. spivak, g.c., 1990, ‘the political economy of women as seen by a literary critic’, in e. weed (ed.), coming to terms: feminism, theory, politics, pp. 218–229, routledge, london. young, r.c., 1995, colonial desire: hybridity in theory, culture and race, routledge, london. abstract introduction meta-study research reflections on research findings: preliminary considerations of nomadic thought as an intellectual activity and practice for advancing the field acknowledgements references footnotes about the author(s) shan simmonds curriculum studies, education and human rights in diversity (edu-hright) research unit, faculty of education, north-west university, potchefstroom, south africa lesley le grange department of curriculum studies, faculty of education, stellenbosch university, stellenbosch, south africa citation simmonds, s. & le grange, l., 2019, ‘research in curriculum studies: reflections on nomadic thought for advancing the field’, transformation in higher education 4(0), a76. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v4i0.76 original research research in curriculum studies: reflections on nomadic thought for advancing the field shan simmonds, lesley le grange received: 07 sept. 2019; accepted: 12 oct. 2019; published: 21 nov. 2019 copyright: © 2019. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract background: key to sustainability and expansion of any field is the intellectual works of its scholars who engage in their field as in-becoming and who continually strive towards its advancement. for researchers of curriculum studies this involves being knowledgeable and conversant of the underlying discourses framing and challenging the field. aim: in south africa, field of curriculum studies has been critiqued for being a quick-fix solution to social problems by merely approaching the curriculum as a ‘dumping ground’ and for its over-emphasis on curriculum as a schooling matter. the intent of this article was to exemplify other, more current, challenges and accomplishments of the research constituting the field. setting: the publications of south african national research foundation-rated researchers specialising in curriculum, because their scholarship is deemed central to building societal knowledge through quality and high-impact research. methods: a meta-study was conducted to determine trends in a particular cluster of publications to identify the ways that researchers are advancing in the field of curriculum studies in south africa. results: four pertinent findings were evidenced. firstly, strong localism/nationalism of the field. secondly, the higher education context as highly researched. thirdly, the multidisciplinary nature of south african curriculum studies research. fourthly, strong impetus from sociological work in the field. conclusion: we reflect on nomadic thought as a starting point central to the pursuits of researchers in advancing the field of curriculum studies as an intellectual activity and practice of complicated conversation. keywords: curriculum studies; complicated conversation; nomadic thought; meta-study research, national research foundation-rated researchers. introduction research in the field of curriculum studies curriculum studies is an academic field comprising scholars who conduct research to understand curriculum. in other words, curriculum studies is an intellectual practice and enterprise in which curriculum is made the object of study. pinar (2014) points out that although contemporary curriculum research may have originated in the usa, it has become recontextualised worldwide in nations with distinctive histories and cultures. pinar’s (2014) contention is important because it highlights the political dimension of curriculum studies, as decentring of the field is an antidote to globalisation. the situated and reconstructed character of curriculum studies offers a challenge to standardisation and homogenisation that is associated with globalisation. the two editions of the international handbook of curriculum research (pinar 2003, 2014) show that the distinctiveness of national histories and cultures continue to structure the curriculum as it is enacted in classrooms in specific local contexts. moreover, curriculum research in many nations has focussed on curriculum policy-making and implementation. it is in the context of these particular national interests that scholars of curriculum in south africa have been engaged in, making it possible for us to speak of the distinctiveness of south african curriculum studies and reflect on its advancement. the first attempt to capture some of the intellectual history and present circumstances of the field in south africa is published in a collection of essays edited by pinar (2010). this collection of essays (pinar 2010) and the later chapter on ‘curriculum research in south africa’ authored by le grange (2014) tell us that this field in south africa has remained divided because of the country’s apartheid history and that curriculum research is mainly focussed on school curriculum. although pinar (2010) and le grange (2014) provide readers with some sense of the field’s history and present circumstances, they do not enable us to postulate architecture of the field in south africa. the latter would require a broader survey of the field. as mentioned, situatedness characterises curriculum studies worldwide and the locatedness of curriculum research potentially counteracts imperialisms associated with globalisation. however, the situatedness of curriculum research can also give rise to narrow nationalisms/localisms and one danger here is the thwarting of the field’s advancement. in order to challenge the provincialism that localism can invite, in the most recent international handbook of curriculum research, pinar (2014) commissions four introductory chapters to challenge accounts presented by authors from different nations, which we briefly outline here. our assumption is that parochial localism hinders the advancement of the field. in the first chapter, autio (2014) highlights the moral dimensions of education, and makes the point that it is the morality that makes education educative. autio’s (2014) use of ‘moral’ is not in a moralistic sense but more akin to ethics, a commitment to engage in an ongoing basis the worthiness of knowledge – about the worthiness of what is included/excluded in teaching/learning programmes. moreover, it is this sense of the ‘moral’ that informs our ‘profession’s ethics, our commitment to study, and teach as we engage in academic research to understand curriculum’ (pinar 2014:2) and to understand curriculum as a complicated conversation that occurs among scholars of the field and between scholars and students. the first aspect that this meta-study could comment on is the loyalty of south african curriculum scholars to the profession’s ethics. in the second chapter, mccarthy, bulut and patel (2014) discuss the reconfiguration of power that globalisation accelerates, with a particular focus on race. they point out that race cannot be viewed in isolation but needs to be understood in contemporary times as ‘structured through contradictory processes of globalisation, localisation, migration, and technologies of surveillance’ (pinar 2014:2). by the latter, mccarthy et al. (2014) are referring to biometric technologies of information, face scanning, finger printing, dna sampling etc. the authors’ focus on race could, of course, be extrapolated to other forms of discriminations that globalisations and new technologies quicken or reconfigure. so, the second aspect that this meta-study might comment on is what attention south african curriculum researchers are giving to issues of race, gender, sexual orientation et cetera, and whether in such deliberations attention is given to the contradictory processes involved in the construction of various discriminations, including through technologies of surveillance. in the third article, smith (2014) discusses the influence of neoliberalism on education that entails, among other things, privatisation, standardised assessments and the use of technologies to make teaching/learning more efficient. he asks a pertinent question, about how education might be reimagined given the pervasiveness of neoliberalism when the latter is bringing into question the very assumptions that education has been based upon. smith (2014) suggests that neoliberalism needs to be analysed on an ongoing basis, so as to work through it, and that inspiration for this ongoing examination could be found in the wisdom traditions, which may be indigenous, religious or philosophical. the third aspect that this meta-study might therefore comment on is whether curriculum researchers in south africa are focusing on issues associated with neoliberalism and whether their research offers responses to smith’s question or suggestion. in the fourth chapter, wang (2014) focuses on the issue of non-violence, which she elaborates as an embodied sense of interconnectedness among humans, which affirms compassion and a positive affiliation with others. in other words, she argues for an embodied sense of affirming our common humanity. she finds support for her argument from several philosophical, religious and ethical traditions, including the african notion of ubuntu, the chinese notion of tao and indigenous peace-making traditions in north america. wang’s (2014) ideas could be extended to all efforts that affirm our common humanity (our humaneness) which may be human rights discourses, dialogues on sustainable human futures et cetera. the fourth aspect that this meta-study could comment upon is whether south africa researchers are writing about ways of affirming our common humanity through building solidarities (even though complicated) in intra-national and transnational spaces. with these international discourses in mind, we set out to explore what curriculum studies discourses have been researched by south african scholars in the field. a meta-study was conducted to engage with the following question: in what ways are national research foundation (nrf)-rated researchers advancing in the field of curriculum studies in south africa? meta-study research four common purposes of a meta-study are: to contribute to knowledge development in the field; inform policy decision-making processes; synthesise findings and/or determine trends in a particular cluster of studies (paterson et al. 2001; pope, mays & popay 2007). well-known researchers in health sciences, education and other social sciences have also started to acknowledge the value of conducting research in this way (du preez & simmonds 2014; simmonds & du preez 2014). meta-study research supports the need to capitalise on the ‘analysis of the theory, methods, and findings of [existing] research and the synthesis of these insights into new ways of thinking about phenomena’ (paterson et al. 2001:1). the global increase in knowledge production too has created a need for research to be synthesised and packaged in less relativist ways so that more trustworthy generalisations could be made (pope et al. 2007:3). it is dynamic, iterative and therefore requires tailored methods and approaches based on review questions posed (dixon-woods et al. 2005:49; pope et al. 2007:12). although tailored (unique in purpose and operandi), to ensure validity and reliability, each study must be explicit about how the sample is derived, what needs to be analysed and how (paterson et al. 2001; pope et al. 2007). in the meta-study conducted for this article, the authors opted to determine trends in a particular cluster of publications so as to identify the ways that researchers are advancing in the field of curriculum studies in south africa. the nrf of south africa (an independent statutory body) has a rating system that identifies researchers who are counted among the leaders in their fields of expertise and gives recognition to those who constantly produce high-quality research outputs (nrf 2019). the nrf rating processes are coordinated by academics of specialist committees who evaluate the international and national peer reviewers’ reviews on the quality and impact of researchers’ research over an eight-year period. researchers receive rating within categories (a, b, c, y or p), with each category having sub-categories to further specify recognition according to factors such as the national/international significance, impact and quality of research et cetera. we drew our sample of publications from the research of nrf-rated researchers because we regard this research as valuable to recognising publications that are building societal knowledge through quality and high-impact research. how did the authors arrive at their sample would be elaborated on as level 1 in the meta-study design. however, firstly a schematic representation of the meta-study process (figure 1). figure 1: a schematic representation of the meta-study process. level 1: design and organisation we set out to identify the population, sample and corpus of documents. the population comprised nrf-rated researchers. we were able to identify the population on nrf website through publically accessible information stipulating the names of rated researchers (see documents provided at https://www.nrf.ac.za/rating). a document listing approximately 3900 names, disclosed each researcher’s surname, initials, title, rating, institutional affiliation and specialisation. from this list we arrived at 40 researchers’ (n0 = 40) profiles who listed curriculum as one of the areas of specialisation. by consulting the websites of the institutions that researchers were affiliated with, we learned that all curriculum researchers were affiliated with south africa’s higher education institutes, except four who were based at international institutions in new zealand, the uk and hong kong.1 these profiles also revealed that all but two of the researchers were based in faculties/departments/schools of education or centres for teaching, learning and programme development. the two researchers who were not based in traditionally education-driven fields were based at the departments of architecture and physiotherapy. this emphasises that curriculum researchers are predominantly aligned with the broad academic field of education. we then developed working procedures to establish initial inclusion and exclusion criteria so that a sample could be identified and the corpus of documents (publications) could be selected. the criteria included accessing (1) each researcher’s scientific publications in the last 8 years, including 2019 (2010–2019), (2) only scientific publications that took the form of articles in accredited journals, chapters in academic books and edited/authored academic books and (3) publications that referred to curriculum and/or curriculum-related concepts. we decided to use this timeframe because it correlates with the nrf rating system, which evaluates a researcher’s past 8 years of scientific research output. to update the sample as much as possible, we included 2019 publications that were available during the data collection period (april and may 2019). we opted only to include publications listed above in criterion (2) because we could then ensure that a peer review process had been undertaken, strengthening the contributions that made to curriculum. we excluded other works such as: conference proceedings, study guides, textbooks and editorials. reference to curriculum and/or curriculum-related concepts was an obvious criterion considering that the focus of this article is to identify the ways by which researchers are advancing this field. whether the publications were single or co-authored was not taken into consideration because we acknowledge the significance of sole and collaborative research. between april 2019 and may 2019 we worked together with our institutional librarians to search different databases (researchgate, academia.edu; google scholar and institutional websites) to identify the publications meeting our criteria. to check the completeness and accuracy of the publications that we were able to access online, the scholars whose curricula vitae (cvs) we did not have were asked to voluntarily email a cv of their publications (2010–2019). this led us to a sample of 813 publications (n). we had to obtain full texts of these publications to ensure that they all met the inclusion criteria. although this was a lengthy process, especially when the texts were not openly available as pdf and when texts had to be requested through interlibrary loans, still we persisted, as this was crucial for a complete, valid and reliable database. we then refined our initial selection criteria by choosing the seven highest cited publications of each researcher. having a sample of the most cited publications, we believed that this could be used as a measure of research’s impact, a signal towards research exemplifying the best practice and ultimately an indicator of the advancement of curriculum studies. this refined sample selection was done by consulting the google scholar profiles of each researcher. in the case researchers did not have a profile, we searched google scholar for their publications per title to retrieve an indication of the number of citations. the seven most cited publications that met the criteria were then selected. only two authors did not have seven publications that met the criteria, which lead us to reach a sample of n = 273 (consisting of 14 books, 16 book chapters and 243 articles), constituting 34% of the population (n = 813). this sample was deemed sufficient to ensure data saturation and external validity because it was a representative of all the publications in the defined criteria and allowed for generalisation based on the phenomenon being studied (see bless, higson-smith & sithole 2013; fox, hunn & mathers 2009). the data were analysed using descriptive statistical methods so that patterns could be arrived at. descriptive statistics are simple quantitative measures such as percentages or mean values that are used to summarise data (kaliyadan & kulkami 2019). in this study, we used percentages to summarise the quantitative data. to ensure validity and reliability during analysis, an audit trail was kept. each publication was referenced and analysed on one excel sheet according to the accompanying word folder comprising full texts. the research employed a consistent approach to the analysis to ensure that all publications were analysed and captured in exactly the same manner. the percentages summarising the data findings were calculated and checked by the authors to ensure their accuracy. level 2: deep analysis and trends the research question posed by this article is: in what ways are nrf-rated researchers advancing the field of curriculum studies in south africa? in order to engage with this question, we firstly established review questions that would drive the analysis of the publications in our sample. publications have common constituencies that are contextual, methodological and theoretical in nature. it were these more deductive constituencies that led us to our review questions as they enabled a detailed account of the research conducted to frame our inquiry and provide the foundation needed to reach more informed understandings of the ways in which researchers were advancing the field of curriculum studies in south africa. the following seven review questions framed our analysis: where is curriculum referred to in the text? in what context was the research conducted? in which country/countries was the research conducted? what was the methodological design? which theory was engaged in research? is the research multidisciplinary? if so, how? is the curriculum contribution claimed by the publication theoretical or practical in nature? each review item measured the findings as they emerged from predetermined categories stipulated by the review questions. using descriptive statistics, the findings were recorded on an excel document so that calculations and measurements per finding could be arrived at. see table 1 for an illustration of the findings. table 1: research findings from the review questions. below the table, a motivation for the item in each review question, followed by the inductive findings that emerged and related measurements are given. each publication was first analysed in terms of the curriculum terminology used. we perused this to identity whether and where researchers explicitly used the term curriculum. it became evident from the publications that only 35 (13%) did not make explicit reference to the term curriculum, they relied rather on curriculum-related concepts such as teaching, learning, pedagogy and instruction. although 55 publications (20%) used the term in their titles, 67 (25%) in the abstracts and 108 (40%) in the keywords, most researchers (235 publications, 86%) did refer the term in the body and/or references of publications. this states that the majority of researchers sampled made explicit use of the concept in their research. as for the second review question, we deemed it important to determine where the research was conducted as a way of establishing the contexts of the research and the stakeholders with whom curriculum research was generated. the ‘context’ of higher education (128 publications, 47%) was the most researched topic. publications that focussed on researching teaching methods, learning approaches, assessment practices, teaching–learning materials programmes, lived experiences (students/lecturers), researchers, academic staff development and institutional transformation were common in this context. schooling (primary and secondary) was the second most researched field with 75 publications (27%) researching principals, teachers, learners, classroom practice, teaching–learning and assessment related to basic schooling. publications addressing national and/or departmental education contexts (27 publications, 10%) and policy (25 publications, 9%) were less researched. fifteen (5%) publications referred to research outside education, in community, public and corporate contexts. the least researched context was that of further vocational training (namely technical and vocational education and training [tvet]/vocational education)2 with only three publications (1%) referring to this field. in3 correlation with the context, the third review question analysed the publications to recognise the location of the conducted research. the vast majority (228 publications, 84%) of the research was conducted in south africa. twenty-two publications (8%) included the research conducted in south africa in comparison with other countries, and for 23 publications (8%), the research was conducted in countries such as zimbabwe, hong kong and eritrea, with no reference to south africa. the methodological design of the research conducted was analysed as the next review question. this also correlates with the context and location as it further elaborates on how the research was designed. research was designed by conceptual studies such as literature reviews in 120 publications (44%). empirical methodologies were employed by 111 qualitative design publications (41%), 25 quantitative (9%) and 17 mixed-methods research (6%). case study, ethnography, document research and narrative inquiry were common qualitative designs. quantitative research included experimental and non-experimental designs, and mixed-methods included both explanatory and exploratory designs. the fifth review question required that the publications be analysed to reveal the theory engaged so that we could identify the theoretical base drawn by researchers. majority of the publications (138 or 51%) employed curriculum-orientated theories. from maximum to minimum, these were theories pertaining to: teaching–learning (73 publications or 27%); curriculum development/design (22 publications or 8%); curriculum history (20 publications or 7%); assessment (19 publications or 7%) and curriculum as a field (4 publications or 1%). theories on sociology of education were also dominant as 79 publications (29%) engaged with theories pertaining to gender, race, socio-economics, politics, knowledge, democracy, identity, inclusivity, leadership and other sociological aspects influencing curriculum. professional development and philosophy of education theory was also engaged by 44 (16%) and 12 (4%) publications respectively. the last two review questions required analysing the publication in its entirety, more holistically to determine the disciplinary focus and the claimed contribution. only 48 publications (18%) were not multidisciplinary/interdisciplinary/transdisciplinary as they focussed only on curriculum in different sections of publications: the background, intellectual conundrum, theory, methodology and discussion. the rest of the publications were multidisciplinary/interdisciplinary/transdisciplinary in one or more sections of research. a total of 108 (40%) publications applied or integrated their research with sociology of education in terms of gender, race, class, culture, ethnicity, identity, human rights values, disease, disability, ability, social justice, inclusivity, diversity, democracy, violence, transformation, spatiality, economics, politics, leadership, management, unions, decolonisation, africanisation and indigenisation. fifty-five (20%) were interdisciplinary with the following fields of study: early childhood development, technology, language, history, doctoral education, life sciences, natural sciences and philosophy. forty-three (16%) were interdisciplinary with school-based subjects of national curriculum (mathematics, history, natural science, life sciences and language). nineteen (7%) were multidisciplinary with non-education fields (health sciences, theology, architecture, engineering, human and social sciences such as management and journalism). lastly, when analysed to identify the curriculum contribution claimed by the research, we opted to distinguish whether the contribution was practical or theoretical. a practical contribution is procedural and often situational, making the knowledge contribution pragmatically laden, whilst the theoretical is conceptual and abstract (cf. shay 2016). although they differ, both forms of contributions are deemed important because advancing the field of curriculum studies is both a practical and theoretical endeavour. in the publications analysed, in 154 publications (56%), contributions were practical in nature as the research initiated novel curriculum designs, research methodologies, policy enactments, teaching styles, learning strategies and professional development approaches. we drew on two publications to provide examples of practical contributions. through a comparative study (cited for approximately 97 times), the book edited by carnoy, chisholm and chilisa (2012) compares student learning in primary schools to make recommendations to policy makers to improve student performance in mathematics. by researching characteristics of teachers and teaching, how curriculum could be designed and developed is put forth with the aim to contribute to successful student learning. msibi (2012) also makes a practical contribution with his research (cited for approximately 136 times) that learns from the lived experience of sexually marginalised black high-school students to raise awareness in schools and initiate greater support for non-normative sexualities. problematising and conceptualising the possibilities of hidden curriculum, school culture and re-education of teachers on pertaining to non-normative sexualities are novel contributions towards pragmatic change. contributions of other 119 publications (44%) were theoretical in nature as the curriculum research lead to theory-building, meta-levels of theorising through problematisation, critique and evaluation to make abstract, and conceptual and normative propositions for curricula. two examples are provided here. the paper by young and muller (2010), with approximately 355 citations to its credit, makes a theoretical contribution that advances the field of curriculum studies. it confronts and problematises the view that ‘access to powerful knowledge is a right for all not just the few’ and puts forth a theory coined as ‘three futures for education’ to propose scenarios of powerful knowledge, how it is acquired and the crucial role of formal education in this process (young & muller 2010:24). brown and czerniewicz (2010) provide another example of a publication that made a theoretical contribution to curriculum studies in their article that has received approximately 320 citations. this publication interrogates the pervasive discourse of the concept of ‘digital native’ as an exclusionary dichotomy that discriminates students and their learning. this leads to a type of digital apartheid, which the authors propose, instead, be framed by a new discourse that they have conceptualised as a theory of digital democracy. both these publications stimulated normative (rather than descriptive) conceptualisation, innovative reasoning and abstract thinking to generate new theory. level 3: meta-themes and main findings a meta-study by nature takes a broad rather than in-depth view of a topic. so, in this section we discuss the findings based on the review questions this study attempted to answer. our comments on the findings are broad and necessarily have to be followed-up by in-depth studies into the themes constructed in this article. a prevalent observation based on the findings of the meta-study is that the nrf-rated south african curriculum researchers surveyed in this study are seriously engaging in research with the aim of understanding curriculum. their commitment to doing so is evident by the proliferation of research on curriculum produced, even if they are doing so in disagreement and in isolation (confined to particular communities) and in their noteworthy advancements of the field through the nature of the emanating contributions as both theoretical and practical. we can, in some sense, infer that curriculum scholars in south africa are engaging on an ongoing basis with questions concerning the worthiness of knowledge – autio’s (2014) sense of ‘moral’. there is an understanding of professional ethics of this field. however, there is not much evidence of complicated conversations occurring among south african scholars, with the exception of a few key publications over the last eight years (2010–2018), for example pinar (2010) and samuel, dhunpath and amin (2016). complicated conversations among south african scholars from different research communities (divided ideologically) is a necessary condition for the advancement of the field. the present decolonial moment in south africa might be the spur for such complicated conversations (le grange 2018). the first theme that the findings illuminate is the strong localism/nationalism of the field. this is expected given the fact that the field of curriculum studies is influenced by distinctive histories, cultures and interests of particular nations. as mentioned in the introduction, localism is an important counter-force to the homogenisation and standardisation associated with globalisation. however, as intimated, there are dangers to narrow localisms/nationalisms that could thwart the advancement of the field. tentatively, we suggest that some south african curriculum scholars have mitigated this threat to the field’s advancements by engaging in critical conversation with scholars from abroad. exemplars of this are found in pinar (2010) and samuel et al. (2016). the second theme that emerges from the findings of this study is that the context of higher education is highly researched by south african curriculum scholars. this is surprising, given the strong focus on school curriculum internationally and in south africa, including in the first decade of the 21st century. as le grange (2006) wrote: when the word curriculum is invoked it is generally understood as applying to school education, that is, to the prescribed learning programmes of schools or more broadly to the learning opportunities provided to school learners, rather than to higher education. a survey of articles published in prominent curriculum journals such as journal of curriculum studies and curriculum inquiry, for instance, shows that very little space is given to articles on higher education. ironically, the term was first used in relation to higher education rather than school education. (p. 189) it remains true that specialist curriculum journals and handbooks reporting curriculum research continue to place emphasis on schooling rather than higher education. however, evidently there has been a shift in focus over the past decade in south africa. this might be so because there has been a growing interest in understanding higher curriculum in the past two decades. internationally, the growing interest is evident in several books published, including barnett (2018), barnett and coate (2005), leask (2015), margolis (2001) and wolf and hughes (2007). in south africa, this growing interest in higher curriculum is obvious in published works such as bitzer and botha (2011) and samuel et al. (2016), and more recently jansen (2019). the shift in emphasis from curriculum research to higher education context is influenced, among other things, by growing inequality in the world; a global environmental crisis; academic freedom and institutional autonomy that is under threat in the neoliberal university; rapid growth of new technologies (impacting knowledge production and exchange); an emerging fourth industrial revolution; mobility of students; and calls for the decolonisation of university curriculum. the upshot of this is a need to ask critical curriculum questions, such as the perennial curriculum question, ‘what knowledge is of most worth’ (spencer 1884); ‘whose knowledge?’ (harding 1991); and ‘[is] knowledge enough …?’ (le grange 2019). although more in-depth studies are needed, this shift in emphasis towards higher education might be an indicator of the advancement of the field of curriculum studies in south africa. the third theme is the interdisciplinary/multidisciplinary nature of south african curriculum studies. scholars of the field have invigorated lines of connection in multiple ways, connecting curriculum studies with other foundational disciplines of education such as philosophy of education (le grange 2012) and sociology of education (young & muller 2010) connecting with the fields outside of education (fisher, lange & nkambule 2017), and even connecting with indigenous knowledges (lotz-sisitka 2011). what we are witnessing here is the deterritorialising of curriculum studies, which is where its transformative potential lies. as le grange (2011) states: [t]he assemblage of disciplinary knowledge may be understood as movements that constitute them as territories and fields of interiority but also having points of deterritirialisation and lines of flight along which the assemblages of disciplinary knowledge are fragmenting and losing coherence giving rise to transdisciplinary knowledge networks. (pp. 749–750) if the field is to productively engage challenges (local and global) of our time, then multiple vectors of connection need to be invigorated, including the connections that smith (2014) and wang (2014) suggested, as discussed in the introduction of this article. in this way, the field of curriculum studies in south africa is constantly growing, unbeknown and captivated in the wonderment of what it can do or become. the fourth theme is the strong focus on sociological work in curriculum studies. there could be several reasons for this. one is a strong focus on the work of the late british sociologist, basil bernstein by some scholars from former english medium universities, which has given rise to a community of bernsteinian scholars (le grange 2014). examples of works produced by nrf-rated scholars that draw insights from bernstein are bertram (2012), blignaut and au (2014), hugo and wedekind (2013) as well as luckett and naicker (2019). although, this community remains largely insular, we have seen critical engagement with their works (see, e.g. zipin, fataar & brennan 2015). another reason for a strong focus on sociological work could of course be related to legacies of south africa’s apartheid history of racial discrimination and how race, class, ethnicity and gender, for example, intersect. this has been researched by some of the nrf-rated scholars sampled in this article: chisholm (2012); de lange et al. (2010); du preez and simmonds (2011); hoadley (2017); msibi (2012); and perumal (2016). advancing the work in this area is important for the field but could be enhanced by taking into consideration the insights of mccarthy et al. (2014) on the reconstitution of racial identities in an age of biometric technologies of information and other related technological advancements. reflections on research findings: preliminary considerations of nomadic thought as an intellectual activity and practice for advancing the field the main findings reveal key directives for researchers of curriculum studies to consider in their current and future advancements of the field. these include the following: complicated conversations among south african scholars from various research communities are a necessary condition for the advancement of the field. in-depth research on intellectual work (both theoretical and practical), such as the transformative potential of deterritoralising curriculum studies, is needed as a means of being conscious and explicit of the strong localism/nationalism of the field. engaging discourses of globalisations and continuously changing technologies in terms of their ethical and moral bio-technological advancements and challenges would enable a deeper discourse to problematise, enhance and transform the field of curriculum studies. in our reflections on these directives a heightened awareness to recognise the importance of considering the intellectual activity and practice of the field became paramount. owing to strong localism/nationalism of the field, juxtaposed its interdisciplinary/multidisciplinary nature and strong sociological focus, we were attracted to the conceptualisation of what braidotti (2011, 2013) posits as nomadic thought. as an intellectual activity and practice, ‘nomadic thought amounts to a politically invested cartography of the present condition of mobility in a globalized world’; it is the ‘materialistic mappings of situated, i.e. embedded and embodied, social positions’ (braidotti 2011:4). as cartography, it is both an analytical and exegetical tool, aspiring for the critical thought and creativity needed to (re)imagine theoretical alternatives towards socially relevant knowledge rather than the neoliberalist, data-mining productions of theory for its own sake (braidotti 2013). as a nomadic subject, the researcher has a heightened moral and ethical compass in its critiques of dominant, phallocentric, relativistic and dualistic versions or visions of the subject, identity and knowledge and recognises ‘a creative alternative space of becoming that would fall not between … but within’ the constituencies being engaged with (braidotti 2011:7–8). in another way, ‘the paradoxes, power dissymmetries, and fragmentations of the present historical contest rather require that we shift the political debates from the issue of differences between … to differences within’ (braidotti 2011:8). the political acts on the discursive and material to draw multiple connections, so ‘what is political is precisely this awareness of the fractured, intrinsically power-based constitution of the subject and the active quest for possibilities of resistance to hegemonic formations’ (braidotti 2011:64). nomadic thought is not intellectual activities and practices that are constantly in unconscious motion, or fluid without borders, instead it possesses ‘an acute awareness of the non-fixity of boundaries’ (braidotti 2011:65). for braidotti (2011:65), ‘the nomad is a post-metaphysical, intensive, multiple entity, functioning in a net of interconnections.’ imagined in this way, the post-human predicament cannot be negated because it raises important questions of how human researchers (as nomadic thinkers) navigate the ‘complexity of contemporary science, politics and international relations’ (braidotti 2013:2). this promotes nomadic thought as transformative becoming (braidotti 2013:167) through nomadic interventions that encourage counter-discourses to mobilise untapped resources and traditions of thought that were never mainstreamed with the intent to foster thinking about the processes rather than the concepts themselves, so that the impetus is not on the content but about the terms of the conversation (braidotti 2011:14). for research in curriculum studies to advance the field, mere participation in its complicated conversations is not enough. as advocated by nomadic thought, the terms of the conversation (or the field) need to be acknowledged, challenged and reimagined through engaging multiple vectors of connection, as embedded and embodied, so as to advance the field from within. as a starting point, scholars should engage the key directives for curriculum studies that have been proposed by this article through nomadic thought. acknowledgements competing interests the authors declare that they have no financial or personal relationships that may have inappropriately influenced them in writing this article. authors’ contributions both authors contributed equally to this work. ethical consideration this article followed all ethical standards for a research without direct contact with human or animal subjects. funding information this research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors. data availability statement data sharing is not applicable to this article as no new data were created or analysed in this study. disclaimer the views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any affiliated agency of the authors. references autio, t., 2014, ‘the internationalization of curriculum research’, in w.f. pinar (ed.), international handbook of curriculum research, 2nd edn., pp. 17–31, taylor & francis, new york. barnett, r., 2018, the ecological university: a feasible utopia, routledge, new york. barnett, r. & coate, k., 2005, engaging the curriculum in higher education, society for research into higher education and open university press, maidenhead. bertram, c., 2012, ‘bernstein’s theory of the pedagogic device as a frame to study history curriculum reform in south africa’, yesterday and today 7, 01–11. bitzer, e. & botha, n. (eds.), 2011, curriculum inquiry in south african higher education: scholarly affirmations and challenges, sunmedia, stellenbosch. bless, c., higson-smith, c. & sithole, s., 2013, fundamentals of social research methods: an african perspective, juta, cape town. blignaut, s.e. & au, w., 2014, ‘curriculum policy and pedagogic practice in a south african classroom: a bernsteinian analysis’, international journal of educational sciences 6(3), 395–406. https://doi.org/10.1080/09751122.2014.11890151 braidotti, r., 2011, nomadic subjects: embodiment and sexual difference in contemporary feminist theory, 2nd edn., columbia university press, new york. braidotti, r., 2013, the posthuman, polity press, cambridge. brown, c. & czerniewicz, l., 2010, ‘debunking the “digital native”: beyond digital apartheid, towards digital democracy’, journal of computer assisted learning 26(5), 357–369. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2729.2010.00369.x carnoy, m., chisholm, l. & chilisa, b., 2012, the low achievement trap: comparing schooling in botswana and south africa, hsrc press, pretoria. chisholm, l., 2012, ‘apartheid education legacies and new directions in post-apartheid south africa’, storiadelledonne 8(1), 81–103. de lange, n., mitchell, c., moletsane, r., balfour, r., wedekind, v., pillay, d. et al., 2010, ‘every voice counts: towards a new agenda for schools in rural communities in the age of aids’, education as change 14(1), 45–55. https://doi.org/10.1080/16823206.2010.517916 dixon-woods, m., agarwal, s., jones, d., young, b. & sutton, a., 2005, ‘synthesising qualitative and quantitative evidence: a review of possible methods’, journal of health services research & policy 10(1), 45–53. https://doi.org/10.1177/135581960501000110 du preez, p. & simmonds, s., 2011, ‘understanding how we understand girls’ voices on cultural and religious practices: toward a curriculum for justice’, south african journal of education 31(3), 322–332. https://doi.org/10.15700/saje.v31n3a536 du preez, p. & simmonds, s., 2014, ‘curriculum, curriculum development, curriculum studies? problematising theoretical ambiguities in doctoral theses in the education field’, south african journal of education 34(2), 1–14. https://doi.org/10.15700/201412071140 fisher, r.c., lange, m.e. & nkambule, m.e.n., 2017, ‘cultural hybridity in the teaching of architecture within a decolonised society’, paranoá 18. https://doi.org/10.18830/issn.1679-0944.n18.2017.01 fox, n., hunn, a. & mathers, n., 2009, sampling and sample size calculation, the nihr rds for the east midlands/yorkshire & the humber, nottingham. harding, s., 1991, whose science? whose knowledge?: thinking from women’s lives, cornell university press, new york. hoadley, u., 2017, pedagogy in poverty: lessons from twenty years of curriculum reform in south africa, routledge, london. hugo, w. & wedekind, v., 2013, ‘six failures of the pedagogic imagination: bernstein, beeby and the search for an optimal pedagogy for the poor’, southern african review of education 19(1), 139–157. jansen, j. (ed.), 2019, decolonisation in universities: the politics of knowledge, wits university press, johannesburg. kaliyadan, f. & kulkami, v., 2019, ‘types of variables, descriptive statistics, and sample size’, indian dermatology online journal 10(1), 82–86. https://doi.org/10.4103/idoj.idoj_429_18 leask, b., 2015, internationalizing the curriculum, routledge, london. le grange, l., 2006, ‘curriculum: a neglected area in discourses on higher education’, south african journal of higher education 20(2), 189–194. https://doi.org/10.4314/sajhe.v20i2.25566 le grange, l., 2011, ‘sustainability and higher education: from arborescent to rhizomatic thinking’, educational philosophy and theory 43(7), 742–754. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-5812.2008.00503.x le grange, l., 2012, ‘ubuntu, ukama and the healing of nature, self and society’, educational philosophy and theory 44(2), 56–67. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-5812.2011.00795.x le grange, l., 2014, ‘curriculum research in south africa’, in w.f. pinar (ed.), international handbook of curriculum research, 2nd edn., pp. 466–475, taylor & francis, new york. le grange, l., 2018, ‘decolonising, africanising, indigenising and internationalising of curriculum studies: opportunities to (re)imagine the field’, journal of education 74, 5–18. https://doi.org/10.17159/2520-9868/i74a01 le grange, l., 2019, ‘the anthropocene: becoming-imperceptible of (environmental) education’, on education: journal for research and debate 2(4), 1–6. lotz-sisitka, h., 2011, ‘teacher professional development with an education for sustainable development focus in south africa: development of a network, curriculum framework and resources for teacher education’, southern african journal of environmental education 28, 30–71. luckett, k. & naicker, v., 2019, ‘responding to misrecognition from a (post)/colonial university’, critical studies in education 60(2), 187–204. https://doi.org/10.1080/17508487.2016.1234495 margolis, e. (ed.), 2001, the hidden curriculum of higher education, routledge, new york. mccarthy, c., bulut, e. & patel, r., 2014, ‘race and education in the age of digital capitalism’, in w.f. pinar (ed.), international handbook of curriculum research, pp. 32–44, 2nd edn., taylor & francis, new york. msibi, t., 2012, ‘“i’m used to it now”: experiences of homophobia among queer youth in south african township schools’, gender and education 24(5), 515–533. https://doi.org/10.1080/09540253.2011.645021 national research foundation (nrf), 2019, nrf rating, viewed 03 july 2019, from https://www.nrf.ac.za/rating. paterson, b., thorne, s., canam, c. & jillings, c., 2001, meta-study of qualitative health research: a practical guide to meta-analysis and meta-synthesis, sage, thousand oaks, ca. perumal, j., 2016, ‘enacting critical pedagogy in an emerging south african democracy: narratives of pleasure and pain’, education and urban society 48(8), 743–766. https://doi.org/10.1177/0013124514541466 pinar, w.f. (ed.), 2003, the international handbook of curriculum research, lawrence erlbaum, mahwah, nj. pinar, w.f. (ed.), 2010, curriculum studies in south africa: intellectual histories, present circumstances, palgrave macmillan, new york. pinar, w.f. (ed.), 2014, international handbook of curriculum research, 2nd edn., taylor & francis, new york. pope, c., mays, n. & popay, j., 2007, synthesizing qualitative and quantitative health evidence: a guide to methods, open university press, maidenhead. samuel, m.a., dhunpath, r. & amin, n. (eds.), 2016, disrupting higher education curriculum: undoing cognitive damage, sense, rotterdam. shay, s., 2016, ‘curricula at the boundaries’, higher education 71(6), 767–779. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-015-9917-3 simmonds, s. & du preez, p., 2014, ‘the centrality of the research question for locating phd studies in the global knowledge society’, south african journal of higher education 28(5), 1606–1623. https://doi.org/10.20853/28-5-419 smith, g., 2014, ‘wisdom responses to globalisation’, in w.f. pinar (ed.), international handbook of curriculum research, 2nd edn., pp. 45–59, taylor & francis, new york. spencer, h., 1884, what knowledge is of most worth, university of michigan, mi. wang, h., 2014, ‘a nonviolent perspective on internationalising curriculum studies’, in w.f. pinar (ed.), international handbook of curriculum research, 2nd edn., pp. 67–76, taylor & francis, new york. wolf, p. & hughes, j.c. (eds.), 2007, curriculum development in higher education: faculty driven processes and practices, wiley, san francisco, ca. young, m. & muller, j., 2010, ‘three educational scenarios for the future: lessons from the sociology of knowledge’, european journal of education 45(1), 11–27. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1465-3435.2009.01413.x zipin, l., fataar, a. & brennan, m., 2015, ‘can social realism do social justice? debating the warrants for curriculum knowledge selection’, education as change 19(2), 9–36. https://doi.org/10.1080/16823206.2015.1085610 footnotes 1. scholars who hold permanent positions at universities outside south africa could qualify for nrf-rating if they are associated with a south african university by means of appointments such as extraordinary professors and research fellows. 2. the term ‘curric’* was searched for in full texts to account for all possible variances, for example curriculum, curricular and curricula. 3. for publications that did not provide an abstract, the introduction was analysed. abstract on undifferentiating higher education in south africa on the underbelly of transformation transformation as disruption and violence? transformation as an enactment of democratic engagement acknowledgements references about the author(s) nuraan davids department of education policy studies, stellenbosch university, south africa citation davids, n., 2016, ‘on extending the truncated parameters of transformation in higher education in south africa into a language of democratic engagement and justice’, transformation in higher education 1(1), a7. http://dx.doi.org/10.4102/the.v1i1.7 note: some of the research and writing of this article is based on work previously published by the author. please see links to published work: http://link.springer.com/book/10.1007%2f978-94-6209-476-5; http://www.journals.ac.za/index.php/sajhe/article/downloaded/554/142 original research on extending the truncated parameters of transformation in higher education in south africa into a language of democratic engagement and justice nuraan davids received: 16 june 2016; accepted: 13 aug. 2016; published: 22 nov. 2016 copyright: © 2016. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract universities, in their multiplex roles of social, political, epistemological and capital reform, are by their constitution expected to both symbolise and enact transformation. while institutions of higher education in south africa have been terrains of protest and reform – whether during apartheid or post-apartheid – the intense multiplex roles which these institutions assume have metaphorically come home to roost in the past 2 years. not unlike the social-media-infused rumblings, coined as the ‘arab spring’, the recent cascades of #mustfall campaigns have brought to the fore the serious dearth of transformation in higher education and have raised more critical questions about conceptions of transformation, and how these translate into, or reflect, the social and political reform that continues to dangle out of the reach of the majority of south africans. what, then, does transformation mean and imply? how does an institution reach a transformed state? how does one know when such a state is reached? these are a few of the concerns this article seeks to address. but it hopes to do so by moving beyond the thus far truncated parameters of transformation – which have largely been seeped in the oppositional politics of historical advantage and disadvantage, and which, in turn, have ensured that conceptions of transformation have remained trapped in discourses of race and racism. instead, this article argues that the real challenge facing higher education is not so much about transformation, as it is about enacting democracy through equipping students to live and think differently in a pluralist society. on undifferentiating higher education in south africa prior to 1994, the differentiated higher education system comprised 26 public universities, 15 technikons (polytechnics), 120 colleges of education, 24 nursing colleges and 11 agricultural colleges, which all differed in terms of quality of academic provision, adequacy of infrastructure and facilities, and the level of state investment and funding (hesa 2014:9). with the advent of constitutional democracy in 1994, and the subsequent promulgation of the government’s white paper 3: a programme for the transformation of higher education by the then department of education (doe) in 1997, the higher education system was subsequently completely overhauled as an integrated, ‘single, national co-ordinated system that would ensure diversity in its organisational form and the institutional landscape, mix of institutional missions and programmes commensurate with national and regional needs in social, cultural and economic development’ (doe 1997:2.3). to badat (2010:3), the social purposes that higher education was intended to serve, as identified in the white paper 3, resonate with the core roles of higher education of disseminating knowledge and producing critical graduates, producing and applying knowledge through research and development activities and contributing to economic and social development and democracy through learning and teaching, research and community engagement. the white paper 3 (doe 1997) was followed by the higher education amendment act (doe 1998), which, in turn, was followed by the national plan for higher education (doe 2001). motivating these education policy initiatives has been a committed drive, on the one hand, to differentiate post-apartheid higher education from its widely disparate past, and, on the other hand, it attempts to satisfy utilitarian demands in the service of the government and the public. consequently, one finds that the national plan for higher education (doe 2001) proposes the achievement of 16 outcomes which range from increasing student access, particularly of black communities into the university sector, to enhancing their (students’) cognitive abilities with respect to technical and professional competences that would not only ensure greater competitiveness in an ever-evolving labour market economy but also increased participation as democratic citizens in service of the ‘public good’. by 2001, the colleges of education were either closed or incorporated into the universities and technikons, and the 36 higher education institutions (heis) were either merged, unbundled or incorporated to form 11 traditional (research) universities that offer largely degree programmes, 6 comprehensive universities (one distance education institution in the form of the university of south africa [unisa]) and 6 universities of technology. in addition, 2 institutes of higher education were established in provinces without universities, namely the northern cape and mpumalanga – 2 of 9 provinces in the country – in 2013. thus, it was envisaged that the post-1994 institutional restructuring would engender a differentiated, diverse and articulated higher education system that resonated with the knowledge and development needs of south africa and the imperative of achieving social justice (hesa 2014:10). as acknowledged by higher education south africa (hesa), a new, differentiated higher education institutional landscape has not adequately and justifiably addressed the past inequities, more specifically as they relate to the educational, material, financial and geographical elements of the (white) advantaged and the (black) disadvantaged (2014): the continued under-developed institutional capacities of historically black institutions must be emphasized; providing access to rural poor and working class black students, inadequate state support for the historically black institutions to equalize the quality of undergraduate provision compromises their ability to facilitate equity of opportunity and outcomes. (p. 11) this view is corroborated by the department of higher education and training (dhet) in their green paper of 2012: [a] diverse university system steeped in inequality is the product of apartheid education policies, and that reality still confronts us today. while our leading universities are internationally respected, our historically black universities continue to face severe financial, human, infrastructure and other resource constraints. universities of technology are in some instances experiencing mission drift, losing focus on their mission of producing technicians, technologists and other mid-level skills at undergraduate level. this problem is also evident in the comprehensive universities. (p. 11) following on the above, it is, of course, important to make sense of why this new differentiated higher education institutional landscape has not adequately and justifiably addressed the past inequities. one set of explanations resides in the reality that higher education in south africa has certainly not been immune to the types of transformation practices that have largely been couched in languages of corporatisation. the corporatisation of higher education, state aronowitz and giroux (2000:333), has reformulated social issues as largely individual or economic considerations, cancelling out democratic impulses by either devaluing them or absorbing such impulses within the imperatives of the marketplace. in their opinion, as corporate culture and values shape university life, corporate planning replaces social planning, management becomes a substitute for leadership and the private domain of individual achievement replaces the discourse of public politics and social responsibility. in a climate of increasing justification of expenditure and the demonstration of ‘value for money’, explains deem (1998:47), those who run universities are expected to ensure that such value is provided and their role as academic leaders is being subsumed by a greater concern with the overt management of sites, finance, staff, students, teaching and research. in turn, peters (2007:160) explains that, as in anglophone countries, higher education in south africa has transformed from a universal welfare entitlement into a human capital private investment, which has prompted the higher education sector to adapt its educational leadership commensurate to its commitment to free market principles. firstly, states peters (2007:160), the university sector introduced new forms of corporate managerialism and the emulation of private sector management styles. secondly, the corporatisation of the university system with its emphasis on accountability and efficiency resulted in new forms of delegated authority. thirdly, with the introduction of corporate or strategic planning for the university sector to reduce its alleged financial risks, more bureaucratic forms of university governance were instituted at the cost of discrediting democratic governance (peters 2007:160). the other set of possible explanations, which is the focus of this article, is located in the language of transformation itself. on the underbelly of transformation badat (2010:7) observes that there has been an intractable tension between a number of values and goals of higher education. the extent to which government and universities have sought to pursue social equity and redress and quality in higher education simultaneously, continues badat (2010:7), has resulted in difficult political and social dilemmas. primary among these dilemmas is inadequate public finances and academic development initiatives to support under-prepared students, who tend to be largely black and/or of working class or rural poor social origins. badat (2010) explains that: an exclusive concentration on social equity and redress without adequate public funding and academic development initiatives to support under-prepared students has negative implications for quality, compromises the production of high quality graduates with the requisite knowledge competencies and skills, and adversely affects economic development. conversely, an exclusive focus on economic development and quality and ‘standards’, (especially when considered to be timeless and invariant and attached to a single, a-historical and universal model of higher education) results in equality being retarded or delayed with limited erosion of the racial and gender character of the high-level occupational structure. (p. 7) what the aforementioned shows, says badat (2010:7), is that the transformation agenda in higher education embodies paradoxes, which not only necessarily raise social and political dilemmas but also create the types of responses characterised through the #mustfall campaigns. in 2015, higher education in south africa has come to resemble exactly the ‘distortion, upheaval and fragmentation that marked the sector at the start of the 1990s’ (jansen 2004:293). the upheaval, according to hall (2016), began in the north, at tshwane university of technology, when students were prevented from registering because of outstanding fee debts. this, he explains, was exacerbated by the inability of the state loan and bursary agency – the national student financial aid scheme (nsfas) – to meet its commitments. confrontations spread to other campuses, explains hall (2016), and next to act were students in the south. while students at the university of cape town took issue with the legacy of colonialism, symbolised by the memorial to cecil john rhodes, students at stellenbosch distributed a powerfully evocative film – ‘luister’ (listen) – that documented black students’ daily experiences of racism and discrimination (hall 2016). while the #rhodesmustfall campaign might have been perceived as a call for the removal of a statue, the campaign was, in fact, intricately embedded in deeper demands for the decolonisation of higher education, which are tied not only to achieving racially balanced institutions – as facilitated through access – but are also about the perceived ‘whiteness’ of higher education spaces. in this regard, the 2012 statistics revealed that in spite of the whites constituting only around 8% of the population, white academics constituted 53% of full-time permanent staff, of which 55% were male (hesa 2014). although gradually shifting, the poor representation of black academics in higher education is exacerbated by the insufficient cohort of phd graduates. in this regard, south african universities, according to the hesa report (2014), are confronted with two challenges. the first pertains to the production and retention of the next generation of academics. and the second challenge relates to transforming the social composition of the academic work force through measures that advance social equity and redress for black people and women. following #rhodesmustfall’ came the #feesmustfall campaign in october 2015 – initiated by students at the university of witwatersrand in response to student fee increases for 2016. in addition to the demand for the suspension of fee increases and upfront payments, students also demanded concessions for financially impoverished students, and that out-sourced services be in-sourced. thanks to the reach of social media, the hashtags #rhodesmustfall and #feesmustfall soon garnered tremendous support across political and social spectrums – from students, and academics, to university workers and politicians. in response, the ministry of higher education and training convened a ‘transformation’ summit in mid-october 2015 attended by key stakeholders. not surprisingly, the summit was followed by large-scale, and increasingly violent, protests and clashes with police at a number of universities, as well as at parliament. no doubt, the violent and destructive nature of the protests – with university buildings, libraries and hostels being destroyed – played a huge role in president zuma’s announcement that there would be no student fee increases in 2016. however, as badat (2016:13) points out, the ‘transformation’ summit’ offered no direction on how higher education would be adequately funded to address various needs, including student demands related to fees and financial aid. to badat (2016:3), the economic dimension of the #feesmustfall campaign is evident in the fact that, on the one hand, south african higher education is inadequately funded by the state. he continues that the block grant to universities has declined in real terms as has, therefore, the per capita contribution per student, thereby forcing universities to make up the shortfall through increasing tuition fees, seeking third-stream income and reducing costs through mechanisms such as outsourcing. on the other hand, states badat (2016:3), the level of state funding for financial aid for students who are academically eligible for admission to universities and meet the criteria of the largely state-funded nsfas is inadequate to support all deserving students at appropriate levels for undergraduate and postgraduate study. to this end, badat (2016) maintains that: it is not that the state is unaware of the challenges or the measures that are required to ensure that higher education addresses effectively equity, quality, and development problems, or that the higher education budget has not increased, or that funds have not been provided to address important issues and areas. the simple reality is that state funding has been inadequate to support universities to discharge their critical purposes of producing knowledge, cultivating high quality graduates, and engaging meaningfully with diverse communities, to play the diverse roles they must to help realize environmentally sustainable economic development, equity, social justice, and a vibrant democracy, and do all this in a way that ensures that the necessary transformations related to equity, the nature and quality of learning and teaching, research, and institutional culture also occur simultaneously within higher education. (p. 4) du toit (2000:93) states that adding to the challenges of insufficient funds for tuition, subsistence and accommodation is the prospect of large debt, high drop-out rates, poor throughput rates, inadequate facilities and accommodation, largely unreconstructed epistemologies and ontologies, questionable quality of learning and teaching to ensure meaningful opportunities and success, and alienating and disempowering academic and institutional cultures that are suffused by ‘whiteness’, and are products of the historical ‘legacies of intellectual colonisation and racialization’. transformation as disruption and violence? in light, then, of the aforementioned discussions, it becomes evident, as expressed by badat (2016:19), that the 2015–2016 student protests serve as a dramatic reminder of unfinished business in higher education. these protests have forcefully placed key issues on the agenda: the decolonisation of the university; the social composition of academic staff; institutional culture; the inadequacy of state funding of higher education; the level and escalation of tuition fees; student debt; and the question of free higher education. and, perhaps, the key word in badat’s analysis is ‘forcefully’ – in that one cannot ignore that inasmuch as protests have united students across race, class and ideologies, the protests, as macgregor (2016) observes, have been notably characterised by violence, wanton destruction to property and arson. violence at south africa’s universities, states hall (2016), has escalated from damaging statues and artworks and confrontations with security staff and police, to the burning of buildings and brutal clashes between student factions. underlying these violent clashes – which the government has recently estimated in excess of r350 million – says hall (2016), are the legacies of racial discrimination and colonialism, high levels of unemployment and pronounced and increasing income inequality. in this regard, hall (2016) submits that the university crisis has shown how race and history continue to permeate almost every aspect of south africa’s public life. in agreement with hall (2016), suttner (2016) states that key features of the structural architecture of south african society have remained the same, despite gains that have been made. to this end, says suttner (2016), the experiences of most black people in south africa remain troubling continuities of the apartheid era and its racism. to suttner (2016), the #feesmustfall and #rhodesmustfall campaigns may raise wider questions that go beyond the educational realm and offer a prism through which we can look at post-1994 south africa and ask troubling questions about the nature of this society. primary among these, which i will now focus my attention on, is what suttner (2016) describes as the ‘readiness of some to resort to violence or the rhetoric of violence-as-solution’. historically, and particularly in relation to disadvantaged institutions, sites of learning (universities, schools) in south africa have always been sites of protest and violence. like schools, universities have young, impressionable and volatile youth – characteristics that bode well for political activism – as perhaps, most vividly encountered in the 1976 soweto uprisings against the imposition of afrikaans as a medium of instruction. such was the impact of the soweto uprisings that it seemingly legitimised the use of education and educational institutions as a weapon against perceptions and experiences of oppression, inequality and exclusion. of course, there is nothing unique about the relationship between sites of learning/students and violence. it was a tunisian university graduate (mohamed bouazzizi), for instance, who, through self-immolation, set in motion the political cascade, which became commonly known as the ‘arab spring’. similarly, pro-mohamed morsi students protested at several universities across egypt in 2014, resulting in clashes with security forces (barsoum 2014). lange’s (2012:190) contention, therefore, that educated individuals are more likely to commit violent acts than those who are uneducated is an unsurprising one. this is because educated individuals have skills, access to resources, as well as the oratory ability to mobilise both educated and uneducated individuals to join them in their endeavours (lange 2012:190). in turn, sanborn and thyne (2011:2) contend that the more students pursue higher levels of education within contexts of social and economic insecurity and inequality, the more knowledgeable they become about the world around them, and the more, therefore, they seek to distinguish themselves with profitable skill sets, and are more likely to push for political change, of which they have become aware through education. if we agree on the potential role that protest and violence might play in bringing about reform and transformation – as it has, thus far, in transitioning apartheid south africa to a democratic society – then it might be worthwhile to consider mouffe’s (2000:130–131) argument that not only is violence an accepted part of human nature, but it is part of something called the ‘dimension of the political’. for mouffe (2000), the political nature of democracy necessarily means that while some are included, others will be excluded. according to mouffe (1992), inasmuch as we need to be upfront about these exclusions – as a means to understand why they have been excluded from the political community – we need to understand ‘rivalry and violence, far from being the exterior of exchange, are therefore its ever-present possibility. reciprocity and hostility cannot be disassociated, and we have to realise that the social order will always be threatened by violence’ (mouffe 2000:131). she continues that the rationalist view of human nature, which denies the negative traits within society – such as violence – is not the necessary basis for democracy, but is instead its weakest point. ‘by foreclosing the recognition that violence is ineradicable, it renders democratic theory unable to grasp the nature of “the political” in its dimension of hostility and antagonism’ (mouffe 2000:132). to mouffe, politics is not something that happens inside the political community; rather, politics constitutes the political community. this means that, when a conception of ‘we’ is constructed – as south africa has been attempting to do since its first democratic elections – then the political community requires the correlative idea of the common good – that is, ‘something to which we must constantly refer but that can never be reached’ (mouffe 1992:30). of significance for post-apartheid south africa is that, in such a view, the common good functions, as a ‘social imaginary’, meaning that the ‘very impossibility of achieving full representation gives to it the role of a horizon that is the condition of possibility of any representation within the space that it delimits’ (mouffe 1992:30). mouffe (1992:30) stresses that, in constructing a ‘we’ that is necessarily based on acts of exclusion (and possible violation), the condition of possibility of the political community is at the same time the condition of impossibility of its full realisation. the argument here is not that violence ought to be legitimised, or justified; it simply means that agonism and agonistic forms of engagement are a necessary part of any political community, and a necessary condition for democratic engagement. mouffe (2007:3) considers ‘agonistic’ struggle as the very configuration of power relations around which a given society is structured. higher education, as powerful sites of learning – in a foucauldian sense – will never be without resistance. as giroux and samalavicius (2016) emphasise, it must be made clear to a larger public that higher education is not simply about educating young people to be smart, socially responsible and adequately prepared for whatever notions of the future they can imagine, but that higher education is central to democracy itself. currently, he continues, universities are suffering from a crisis of legitimacy and a crisis of agency. consequently, if universities are to regain their role as a public good, faculty, students and other groups outside of the university are going to have to engage in a range of acts of civil disobedience extending from occupying classrooms to mobilising larger populations in the street to force the hand of corporate power and its allies. in his interview with samalavicius, it is giroux’s (2016) argument that: without the formative culture that makes democracy possible, there will be no critical agents, no foundation for enabling people to hold power accountable and no wider foundation for challenging neoliberalism as a mode of governance and political and ideological rationality. the struggle over higher education and its democratic misuse cannot be separated from the struggle to undo the reign of markets, neoliberalism and the ideologies informing this savage market fundamentalism. (giroux & samalavicius 2016) what, then, are the implications for ‘transformation’ in higher education in south africa? what would a transformed university look like if it cannot be understood in terms of institutional merging and re-shuffling in an attempt to redress historical imbalances and inequities, or reductionist games of numbers (of black students)? transformation as an enactment of democratic engagement i am of the opinion that mouffe’s (1992:30) notion of a ‘social imaginary’ – that is, the condition of possibility of the political community is at the same time the condition of impossibility of its full realisation – offers particular considerations for transformation in higher education in south africa. firstly, as badat (2016:7) makes us aware, higher education is constrained by wider economic and social policies, which place major constraints on the pursuit of ambitious transformation goals. to this end, one would need to consider that not only does transformation not speak to all people in the same language but that understandings of transformation cannot be limited to goals. instead, transformation has to be conceived as being embedded in the democratic engagement that continually gives meaning to be part of a democratic society. in this regard, mouffe (1992:29) argues that the political community should not be seen as an empirical referent, but rather as a discursive surface. this means that the political community is constituted by a multiplicity of beings, expectations and demands – which means that there will always be those on the inside and those on the outside; those that are included, and those who are not. contrary to what neo-liberal ideologists would like us to believe, states mouffe (2007:2), political questions – like those, related to transformation – always involve decisions which require us to make a choice between conflicting alternatives. while there are numerous liberalisms, some more progressive than others, states mouffe (2007), the dominant tendency in liberal thought is characterised by a ‘rationalist and individualist approach which is unable to grasp adequately the pluralistic nature of the social world, with the conflicts that pluralism entails; conflicts for which no rational solution could ever exist, hence the dimension of antagonism that characterizes human societies’. in this sense, transformation is necessarily underscored by tensions – tensions, which often, will remain irreconcilable. consider, for example, the recent flurry of social media rants – all from ‘educated’ people – defined by vitriolic racism. consider in particular a post by a postgraduate student, who vented racial slurs at the south african minister of sports for prohibiting three sporting codes from hosting major international events, owing to their failure to meet transformation targets (feltham 2016). transformation, therefore, has the inherent potential to both unite and divide. as such, it has to be considered in relation to what it awakens in people, and hence society. to associate or conflate conditions of transformation with that which is visible only – as in numbers or the removal of statues – is to only institutionalise it. transformation is about changing the way one thinks, about the way one sees and engages with others, so that one changes what one does. in terms of the agonistic model, explains mouffe (2007:3), the public space is: [t]he battleground where different hegemonic projects are confronted, without any possibility of final reconciliation … according to the agonistic approach, public spaces are always plural and the agonistic confrontation takes place in a multiplicity of discursive surfaces. i also want to insist on a second important point. while there is no underlying principle of unity, no predetermined centre to this diversity of spaces, there always exist diverse forms of articulation among them … transformation, therefore, is about being self-reflective inasmuch as it concerns acting as a critical agent in relation to institutional hegemonies. this is the social imaginary to which mouffe (1992) refers, since it should never be realised. this is because the very realisation of transformation is in itself an end, since it implies that a certain condition or goal has been reached, and once that happens, transformation ceases. in this sense, the realisation of transformation both reveals and conceals that which is not immediately visible. this is not to say that transformation targets are irreconcilable with notions of democratisation. indeed, transformation has to be made visible through concrete achievements of, for example, student access, the appointment of demographically representative academics or the decolonisation of university spaces. finally, given that understandings of higher education are always located, and hence defined by the political, social and economic contexts in which it finds itself (badat 2016), and given that higher education is not simply about educating young people, but is central to democracy (giroux & samalavicius 2016), one needs to consider that the particular challenges facing higher education are about societal challenges. whatever transformation is being called upon within higher education is reflective of the type of transformation needed within society. democracy, argues giroux (2004), ‘cannot function without educated citizens capable of being autonomous, making knowledgeable judgments, and bringing what they learn to bear on understanding and shaping civic culture’. this means, he continues, firstly, that higher education cannot be separated from the imperatives of an inclusive democracy, and secondly, that the crisis of higher education must be understood as part of the wider crisis of politics, power and culture (giroux 2004). and, if higher education cannot be separated from the imperatives of an inclusive democracy, then higher education has to, as giroux (2004) maintains, remain a site of resistance. moreover, higher education has to be about the continual questioning of the boundaries of the political. to this end, it becomes the responsibility of higher education to hold to account the society in which it finds itself. it seems most appropriate, therefore, to conclude with derrida’s (2004:148) contention that the public role of the university is ‘the responsibility of a community of thinking’. to derrida (2004:91), responsibility is equated with ‘a summons requiring a response’ (2004:91). that is, when people are summoned or called to act in a particular way by responding to a situation, they are said to act responsibly. when derrida describes the university as ‘the responsibility of a community of thinking’ (2004:148), he is alluding to both its reason (to be) and its justification (for being). if the public role, therefore, of the university is to serve as a ‘community of thinking’, then such a community can never reach a transformed state, since such a state would bring into disrepute its capacity to both think and transform. for universities to become a ‘community of thinking’ would necessarily imply that they ought to engage with students’ voices. such engagement expands a ‘community of thinking’ to include all voices, and hence all conditions – even in its agonistic forms. if higher education is about continual questioning of the boundaries of the political, then such questioning has to include engagement with the issues of student access, fees and the decolonisation of spaces and curricula. in this regard, the responsibility of a university’s ‘community of thinking’ is made visible through engaging with student debates and protests. in this article, i have recognised that higher education, in its multiplex roles of social, political, epistemological and capital reform, is to both symbolise and enact transformation. by looking at current forms of transformation in higher education in south africa – that is, political and institutional – i have raised questions about the criticality of protest and violence in relation to transformation. i have also argued that a notion of transformation, which is only focused on visible outcomes – such as racial demographics in relation to student access, funding and the removal of statues – is limited. in considering what transformation might look like as an instance of democratic engagement, i have argued that transformation cannot be a goal within itself. rather, that as a ‘community of thinking’ (derrida 2004), higher education has a moral responsibility to not only present resistance but also to continuously aver towards transforming. in this regard, and in conclusion, transformation is like democracy – that is, it is an unending and unpredictable process. acknowledgements competing interests the author declares she has no financial or personal relationships that may have inappropriately influenced her in writing this article. references aronowitz, s. & giroux, h.a., 2000, ‘the corporate university and the politics of education’, the educational forum 64, 332–339. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00131720008984778 badat, s., 2010, ‘the challenges of transformation in higher education and training institutions in south africa’, paper commissioned by the development bank of southern africa, viewed 13 june 2016, from https://www.ru.ac.za/…/the%20challenges%20of%20transformation%20in%20high badat, s., 2016, ‘deciphering the meanings, and explaining the south african higher education student protests of 2015–16’, viewed 15 june 2016, from wiser.wits.ac.za/…/saleem%20badat%20%20deciphering%20the%20meanings,%20a barsoum, m., 2014, ‘cairo university engineering students begin strike to protest violence on campus’, viewed 26 may 2014, from http://english.ahram.org.eg/newscontent/1/64/97138/egypt/politics-/-cairo-university-engineering-students-begin-strik.aspx deem, r., 1998, ‘“new managerialism” and higher education: the management of performances and cultures in universities in the united kingdom’, international studies in sociology of education 8(1), 47–70. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0962021980020014 department of education (doe), 1997, education white paper no. 3: a programme on the transformation of higher education transformation, government printers, pretoria. department of education (doe), 1998, higher education amendment act, government printers, pretoria. department of education (doe), 2001, national plan for higher education, government printers, pretoria. department of higher education and training (dhet), 2012, green paper for post-school education and training, government printers, pretoria. derrida, j., 2004, eyes of the university: right to philosophy 2, transl. j. plug, stanford university press, stanford. du toit, a., 2000, ‘critic and citizen: the intellectual, transformation and academic freedom’, pretexts: literary and cultural studies 9(1), 91–104. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/713692703 feltham, l. 2016. ‘mathew theunissen’s racist rant goes viral’, viewed 25 july 2016, from mg.co.za/…/2016-05-03-twitter-erupts-after-matthew-theunissen-racist-ra giroux, h.a., 2004, ‘an educator’s reflections on the crisis in education and democracy in the us: an interview with henry a. giroux by michael alexander pozo, 25 september 2004’, viewed 1 august 2014, from www.dissidentvoice.org giroux, h.a. & samalavicius, a., 2016, higher education and neoliberal temptation: a conversation with henry giroux, viewed 15 june 2016, from http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2016-05-04-giroux-en.html hall, m., 2016, south africa’s student protests have lessons for all universities, higher education network, viewed 15 june 2016, from https://www.theguardian.com/higher-education-network/2016/mar/03/south-africas-student-protests-have-lessons-for-all-universities higher education south africa (hesa), 2014, ‘south african higher education in the 20th year of democracy: context, achievements and key challenges’, hesa presentation to the portfolio committee on higher education and training in parliament, cape town, 5 march, viewed 18 september 2015, from http://www.hesa.org.za/hesa-presentation-portfolio-committee-higher-education-and-training jansen, j., 2004, ‘changes and continuities in south africa’s higher education system, 1994 to 2004’, in l. chisholm (ed.), changing class: education and social change in post-apartheid south africa, human science research council press, pretoria. lange, m., 2012, educations in ethnic violence: identity, educational bubbles and resource mobilisation, cambridge university press, cambridge. macgregor, k., 2016, ‘the human costs of student tumult – an untold story’, university world news, issue no. 414, 21 may 2016. mouffe, c., 1992, ‘citizenship and political identity’, the identity in question 61, 28–32. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/778782 mouffe, c., 2000, the democratic paradox, verso, london. mouffe, c., 2007, ‘artistic activism and agonistic spaces’, art & research 1(2), 1–5. peters, m.a., 2007, knowledge economy, development and the future of higher education, sense publishers, rotterdam. sanborn, h. & thyne, c., 2011, ‘learning democracy: education and the fall of authoritarian regimes’, viewed 19 may 2016, from vmi.academia.edu/howardsanborn/papers/1149456 suttner, r., 2016, ‘op-ed: student protests, an indictment of “post-apartheid” south africa’, viewed 14 june 2016, from www.dailymaverick.co.za/…/2016-02-11-op-ed-student-protests-an-indictment-of-po abstract introduction brief literature review research design results and discussion conclusion acknowledgements references about the author(s) sandiso bazana department of psychology, rhodes university, south africa logan mclaren department of psychology, rhodes university, south africa trust kabungaidze department of psychology, rhodes university, south africa citation bazana, s., mclaren, l. & kabungaidze, t., 2018, ‘transforming while transferring: an exploratory study of how transferability of skills is key in the transformation of higher education’, transformation in higher education 3(0), a35. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v3i0.35 original research transforming while transferring: an exploratory study of how transferability of skills is key in the transformation of higher education sandiso bazana, logan mclaren, trust kabungaidze received: 07 dec. 2017; accepted: 23 apr. 2018; published: 26 july 2018 copyright: © 2018. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract the importance of skills within the transformation of higher education is a crucial factor that has been insufficiently considered. transformation in terms of higher education forms a fundamental part of the post-apartheid south african society. this transformation movement seems to exclude the possible role and contributions of the older generation of academics. using a social constructionist viewpoint, this qualitative study sought to bring to the debate of transformation of higher education the important question of skills transferability between older generation academics and the new generation. from interviewing five retired white academics, the study found that institutional culture and implementation of labour legislation through the human resources department by the university in question affect the transferability of skills and that proper programmes of voluntary mentorship should be put in place as to allow the growth of both the older generation and new generation academics. the use of new generation academics’ perspectives could yield more results and findings that can further this area of study, as well as allow a more diverse and richer understanding of the perception of skills transferability within the transformation of higher education institutions. this further understanding for research is needed to emphasise the importance of knowledge production through the integration of both young academics’ as well as older academics’ perspectives. this is to be achieved by engaging with other universities and academics, so that a broader analysis of skills transferability within higher education can be understood. introduction cloete et al. (2004) describe universities as being the storehouses for informed, critical and inquiring scholars and intellects that have natural talent and that, even though universities are still in the process of restructuring, they are irreplaceable. this statement is important to understand and review as it speaks to the fact that universities play a critical role in producing graduates with high intellect and knowledge. what this, however, fails to acknowledge is the key issue of where these graduates are drawing their knowledge from and whether this knowledge is adequate. the 2015 higher education summit (hesummit) highlights that approximately 27% of academics with doctorates are about to retire and that more than 50% of these professors are the most highly qualified (hesummit 2015). these retirements are associated with the country’s retirement age of 65. these are some of the country’s most productive researchers. however, this production of knowledge is not being transferred to the new generation of academics by those who have the expertise and skills of teaching and learning as well as research and community engagement. the human resource development council (2015) states that the gap between supply of graduates and the demand for skills can significantly be reduced if there is a relationship between the business and higher education. the question that bothers the authors of this article is how south africa plans to utilise skilled and knowledgeable academics before their retirement. according to mccracken et al. (2017), the human capital theory is made up of human, social and structural capital. this understanding of the human capital theory directly emphasises the importance of skills transferability. mccracken et al. (2017) further states that human capital forms the basis for intellectual capital as it is part of knowledge development, the facilitation of knowledge as well as the sharing of knowledge, all through internal relationships. these factors within the human capital theory allow us to understand the reasoning as to why skills transferability is vital within the transformation of higher education. it is also important to realise that knowledge that is not shared further hinders the process of establishing collaborative approaches for human capital development (mccracken et al. 2017). this is a key disadvantage of the human capital theory. however, it provides us with an indication as to why knowledge production can be difficult, and that is because of the fact that either individuals with key skills and knowledge can choose not to transfer their skills or that they have had limited opportunities to do so. using the human capital theory to emphasise the importance of knowledge and skills of a workforce (mccracken et al. 2017), this study aims to highlight issues in terms of institutional culture and race as well as establish and highlight the problematic issue of skills transferability within higher education between academics. key to this realisation will be in looking at the acts, particularly the employment equity act (eea) of 1998 and skills development act (sda) of 1998 as well as the new generation of academics programme (ngap), and providing guidance on how to better implement such interventions to establish an environment of shared knowledge and experience, that will aid in the transformation of higher education. brief literature review ‘skills’ are defined as the knowledge and capabilities one has to perform certain tasks and abilities according to expertise and competencies (amos et al. 2008). the hesummit highlights the notion that a new generation of academics needs to be produced and trained to create a better and more effective knowledge generation of quality (hesummit 2015). they further emphasise the importance of this by stating that the failure to invest in a new generation of academics will have consequences to the extent that social equity and the scope of deracialising and degenderising of the workforce will be directly affected (hesummit 2015). another crucial factor stated by amos et al. (2008) is the notion that a minority of a country’s skills are produced through qualifications and that the largest share of skills development is from the physical workplace. the human capital theory emphasises that investment into education and skills with continuous development proves to be beneficial (nufakho, hairston & brooks 2004). although this theory looks at the need for human resource development to play a key role in organisations, this is not always possible because of the misguidance of policies and procedures that aim to integrate this theory into policy implementation. during the post-apartheid reform and reshaping of higher education, there was immense pressure on the need to redress the equity of employment and skills between white academics and black academics (cloete et al. 2004). this was also emphasised in the eea, which was created to redress the injustices and discriminations of the past through achieving a diverse workforce, creating equal opportunities and promoting the constitutional right of equity (government gazette 1998). the term ‘transformation’ within higher education is widely debated, but it mainly refers to an ongoing and rooted process that aims to reconstitutionalise and develop universities so that they represent and reflect the apparition of a democratic society (hesummit 2015). this further emphasises the need for universities to remove any forms of discrimination while simultaneously looking at creating an educational environment that promotes the talents and abilities of all south africans – particularly in relation to those from designated groups (hesummit 2015). within the efforts to create and transform south african universities, badat (2010) highlights some crucial aspects that were to be addressed in terms of their achievements thus far, as well as possible issues and concerns that they may face. these key issues included mediating competing goals, post-school education, differentiation and diversity, the diverse purposes of higher education, adequate state funding, intellectual spaces, current postgraduate output levels, creation of new generation academics, remuneration of academics as well as access, opportunity and success in higher education (badat 2010). within the white paper that was approved by cabinet in 2013, the main policy objectives were to address the areas surrounding education and social justice, encouraging a single and coordinated system of institutions, expanding access, improving quality, increasing diversity and addressing the objectives of education and work as well as responsiveness (dhet 2013). particularly, badat examines the importance of deracialisation and decolonisation of institutions when looking at these core issues and how, in doing so, the injustices of the past can be addressed (badat 2010). these core aspects of transformation are fundamentally important and should be strongly evaluated and incorporated into higher education systems, as this lays the foundation for majority debates within the discourse surrounding transformation. however, there is an observed sentiment of racialisation of the needed transformation in higher education sector, and in the process the contributions of the older generation of academics, specifically acknowledging those who have expert knowledge and skills regarding their field of study, tend to be overlooked (badat 2010; boughey 2002). this observation needs to be addressed using effective and well-reasoned intervention strategies, so that the transformation of higher education can be more effective in yielding positive results. badat (2010) raises the concern that certain trade-offs are being made between quality and accountability in terms of redressing injustices of the past and adhering to policies and government requirements. he states that new generation academics should mainly include women and black academics, but that these academics need to possess the intellectual and academic capabilities related to teaching, learning, research and community engagement – that is, the skills necessary to be an academic (badat 2010). in this regard, individuals who possess the job need to be able to perform the tasks and duties that are required of them. this is an important concept to grasp, as without skilled labour there can be no quality of results (akojee & nkomo 2007). this perpetuates the need for human capital to be a criterion in terms of staffing academics within an institution. badat (2010) argues that these academics need intellectual and academic capabilities, but he does not consider where these capabilities will come from. the idealism that designated groups will be placed into a position of power according to their individualistic or biological characteristics, which make them suitable candidates, needs to be addressed. the human capital theory emphasises the fact that the understanding and learning of individuals within organisations needs to be invested in (mccracken et al. 2017). this article suggests that the older generation of academics must be utilised effectively for badat’s suggestion to be realised. yes, there has been criticism of the knowledge that these academics possess, with some arguing that it is disconnected from their context and therefore undesirable (cloete et al. 2004); however, the study still maintains that sharing of skills, knowledge and experience remains central to an effective transformation of higher education. in fact, this is what has led to racialisation of the need for transformation. older white academics have been viewed as protectors of loosely defined ‘white privilege’ and ‘whiteness’ (vincent 2015) and therefore protectors of the status quo, which needs to be changed. the development and collaboration between those with the skills and capabilities and those in the process of acquiring them is crucial in the process of higher education transformation. policies and regulations seem to be reiterating the idealism of meritocracy, as also acknowledged by cloete et al. (2004), who argue that policy outcomes were hardly ever the same as policy intentions within the process of policy implementation. cloete et al. (2004) further signify that there was a decrease in white male academic staff and an increase in black academic staff as well as women (both white women and black women). the increase in black academic staff and women within higher education positions is both beneficial and a success in redressing past injustices. however, academic integrity was severely tested because of the need for institutions of higher learning to redress programmes and procedures, as this meant an increase in job losses that may occur (cloete et al. 2004) and the jobs were those of older white academics. this could result in the skills of older generation academics being ignored as it becomes more important to redress imbalances and adhere to policies such as the eea rather than to involve these academics in improving new generation academics’ understanding and expertise. this will help them to build on their knowledge and gain more experience and qualifications as required by the sda (boughey 2002). the pressures of south africa joining a rapidly globalising economy has put emphasis on south africa producing a skilled workforce, but this often contradicts the notion of achieving equity within the workforce itself – especially with regard to access to higher education (boughey 2002). cloete et al. (2004) further state that there is a widening gap between politics and political programmes on one side and the dynamics of the public sector, higher education included, on the other and that, because of this gap, policy outcomes will hardly portray policy intentions. this misguidance of policies and procedures within the transformation process is an important realisation as the need for a skilled workforce within south africa, particularly higher education institutions, is a necessity to produce quality graduates and for knowledge production (akojee & nkomo 2007). akojee and nkomo (2007) further argue the importance of quality and that this needs to be known if one is to redress the imbalances of the past and to realise that quality should be understood through the ideas of redress, equity and access. akojee and nkomo (2007) state the same factors of the human capital theory in that quality access cannot be achieved with limited resources and that, through a diversified combination of people and resources within an educational institution, there will be greater potential for high quality information, research, scholarships and community service. society and higher education universities are viewed as microcosms of society. as such, any socio-political transformation in a particular society directly influences the nature of higher education institutions. transformation in terms of higher education forms a fundamental part of south african society post-apartheid, as badat (2010:2) states that ‘there has been a wide array of transformation-oriented initiatives seeking to effect institutional change’. during the increasingly changing global context and within 6 months of the first democratic election, president nelson mandela established the national commission of higher education, whose central mission yielded two important tasks (cloete et al. 2004). the first task was to remove any abnormalities within higher education that were caused by apartheid, and the second was to modernise higher education by combining it with international experience and best practices (cloete et al. 2004). the accomplishment of these tasks could prove beneficial to the workforce of south africa as well as the economy of south africa, as the human capital theory states that the training and education of people have a direct impact on organisations and societal operations (mccracken et al. 2017). this theory, as with the systems viewpoint theory, suggests that no two environments can work independently of one another and that they influence each other constantly (mccracken et al. 2017). this is important for higher education institutions as well as governments and societies to realise, as the success of transformation in one environment will affect the operations of the other. this then also contributes to the reform of institutional culture that must take place to make way for new and inclusive changes in higher education institutions. this is a difficult task, or better yet, ideal to accomplish within the context of south african higher education. this is because of the indiscretions of the past as well as individual differences, explicitly looking at race and ethnicity, within the context of a rapidly changing workforce and social environment (cloete et al. 2004). at rhodes university, a survey was conducted to best understand the values and understandings staff members had regarding transformation of the institutional culture (rhodes university 2014). similar surveys were conducted at other universities such as university of cape town (uct) in 2007; university of johannesburg in 2012 and nelson mandela university (nmu) to name a few. the rhodes survey found that between 50% and 53% of staff members considered rhodes to be dedicated to transformation and redressing the injustices of the past (rhodes university 2014). the survey states that, although there is a need for transformation, as only 37% of white staff members agreed with this statement (rhodes university 2014). this is a troublesome figure with further research showing that, although 90% of african staff agreed with the need for transformation, they were the least convinced that rhodes was instigating transformation within the university operations (rhodes university 2014). the racial tensions become obvious also in the way students’ demands for transformation are expressed and the emphasis on employment of equity candidates. this survey further emphasises the need for transformation to be successfully and noticeably implemented within higher education institutions, as this speaks to the racialising sentiments of students that aggravate tensions and resistance to transformation, which then imbues the debate with the ‘blacks in, whites out’ discourse. within the early stages of transformation, equity became a core focus of higher institutions, as it was perceived as their duty to redress past imbalances that occurred within ‘white institutions’ (boughey 2002). however, there has been a shift from equity to efficiency in terms of skills because of the implementation of the skills development act of 1998, which was designed to produce a workforce needed for economic growth (boughey 2002). race in higher education in south africa transformation in south africa started as a highly racially charged debate. institutional culture is central to the understanding of race dynamics in higher education (vincent 2015). to correctly understand the importance of institutional culture and recognise its importance in terms of the role it plays within the transformation of higher education, there is a need to identify the key areas that institutional culture directly affects. vincent (2015) states that institutional culture is the lived experiences of every individual who populates the institution, be they student, academic staff, management, support staff or community member with some connection to the institution. it is further stated that this culture must then encompass the practices and policies of those who are part of the university past and present (vincent 2015). however, within institutional culture, there is a perception of what is normal – the perception of ‘cultural whiteness’ and the privileges associated with this term (vincent 2015). in south africa, because of apartheid, the majority of academic knowledge has been produced largely by white men; to address this, special initiatives and measures need to be considered that allow for previously excluded social groups to be introduced into the production of knowledge (badat 2010). the human capital theory (mccracken et al. 2017) further acknowledges this need for more individuals within the workforce, as new employees who have different mindsets and skills could greatly benefit the production and growth of the organisation. however, regarding higher education institutions, those who have the expertise and skills of teaching and learning as well as research are not transferring this production of knowledge to the new generation of academics, as it is perceived that those with the skills are majority white academics – and therefore uncooperative individuals. institutional culture according to vincent, institutional culture expresses itself in the discourses and material conditions of the university (vincent 2015). institutional culture has been identified as being resistant to change. looking at both the usa and south africa, which both have histories of racism, not only is there a need to overcome discrimination with regard to access to higher education, but also the racial dynamics at the core of the institution need to be addressed (gordon 2015). this is not only in the case of access for students to higher education but academics as well. vincent (2015) further argues that although laws and policies may change, the social and cultural structures, practices and habits remain the same. this is true within south african universities, as many were built on a foundation of white supremacy, and according to waghid (2002), still perpetuate patterns of injustice. this realisation within a post-apartheid south africa brings about the need for structural and social change amongst how higher education institutions operate. thus, there is a need for cultural change in order to incorporate the diverse beliefs, understandings and values of the entire south african society and not just a minority group – vincent (2015) asks whether it is possible to achieve excellence under exclusionary and discriminatory circumstances, because this limits the possibilities of knowledge and exchange of experience. vincent (2015) further states that institutional culture is one of the main obstacles to transformation in higher education because of the high resistance to change. this poses a threat to institutional transformation, as change is not only observed from the viewpoint of new generation academics, but older generation academics as well. the full report of the rhodes institutional culture survey was done in 2014 to gain a broader understanding of how culture affects the environment in which rhodes staff operate and how the culture of the university could be improved. the report showed that only an average of 56% of all staff members were satisfied with the equity and fairness of rhodes university, with the lack of fairness and equity being felt according to race and seniority amongst staff members (rhodes university 2014). another concern in this report was that all other races, other than white staff members and indian staff members, felt less valued within rhodes university (2014). this indiscretion is detrimental to the operations of the university, as the human capital theory states that a person’s learning capabilities are comparable to other resources used when producing goods and services (mccracken et al. 2017). this suggests that, if a person feels devalued and that they are not being treated with fairness, their work ethic as well as quality of work produced will decrease, as they are not motivated to produce the best results. the differentiation of age within the university is also addressed in terms of how valued each age group feels within the university (mccracken et al. 2017). the survey suggests that the under-26 category felt negatively valued compared to the older generation, who felt more valued, but there was an overall low agreement rate with the notion of being valued at rhodes university (mccracken et al. 2017). the implication of how age affects a person’s capabilities is further looked at within this study and will be a contributing factor of looking at the institutional culture of rhodes university and the operations of academic sustainability. the sustainability is further emphasised by the human capital theory, as this article argues that the gain of knowledge and resources in terms of training is an investment in human resources (mccracken et al. 2017). intervention strategies south africa is faced with a situation of a trade-off between two crucial aspects of development as well as redress and to rectify this, there is a need for collaboration between these two policies of the eea and the skills development act within higher education if transformation is to be achieved effectively. this is also important, as adherence to the policies in the most beneficial way to address issues of developing a more skilled workforce as well as creating a more diverse workforce, is a crucial aspect to take into consideration. the redress of both acts is important for the procedures of change within the south african workforce; however, the need is great for both acts to be re-evaluated, and perhaps even combined or changed, for the effective redress of past injustices as well as the effective implementation of skills development programmes. the ngap involves the recruitment of highly capable scholars as new academics looking carefully at balanced equity measures considering areas in the greatest need (dhet 2015). this programme is one of the biggest implemented by the staffing south africa’s universities framework, with the first intake having more than 125 posts advertised in the mail and guardian as well as the sunday times newspapers during may 2015 (dhet 2015). the programme aims to run over 6 years, the first 3 being a development programme funded by government and then a 3-year induction period thereafter (dhet 2015). this programme aims to develop long-term staffing plans – looking at growth and equity, anticipated retirements of staff as well as attrition rates beyond retirement (dhet 2015). the ngap launched at rhodes university in 2001 and helped to refine this programme for the past 15 years; it aims at providing a rigorous application process for top black women academics whose research and teaching development is built on in the programme (dugmore 2016). this programme allowed academics to take part in a 3-year programme under the guidance of a mentor identified by the university and in collaboration with the centre for higher education, research, teaching and learning (dugmore 2016). this programme allowed academics to acquire knowledge in the working environment as well as incorporate their own ideas and knowledge into the institution, as they were given some autonomy in their decision-making and ways of teaching (dugmore 2016). however, hlengwa (2015) argues that, although this programme has helped improve equity within the institution, there is a consensus that the university acquired ‘safe bets’ when filling these positions. these safe bets are so-called privileged individuals who meet the equitable requirements of the institution and who, because of their educational background and middle-class status, would not challenge (nor be alienated by) the culture and operations of the university (hlengwa 2015). hlengwa and five other participants took part in a study that found that majority of the participants ‘fitted in’ in terms of their cultural capital, but one participant went on to say that ‘i do not see myself fitting in to rhodes university at heart, never into the whiteness of the culture’ (hlengwa 2015:153). deducing from hlengwa (2015), in part, the ngap can be seen as an important strategy to capacitate the beneficiaries (black people and women) – however, in terms of transforming the institutional culture, the ngap takes a moderate approach. this is a problematic statement, as this can mean that these academics are not necessarily contributing to the change in transformation at higher education institutes (hlengwa 2015). this is challenging because it does not foster a change in institutional cultures that reflects the diversity of south african cultures. as minister naledi pandor opines, ‘institutional culture is embedded at many different levels and requires both changes in structure as well as in attitudes and consciousness on the part of academic staff and administrators’ (makgoba 2004). therefore, hlengwa’s assertions about the so-called safe bets is an indication of the universities’ unwillingness to change. aim and research questions the main focus was on the role that transferability of skills could play in the development of a successful and transformational environment of higher education. the study asks the following questions. how would this realisation of the importance of skills transferability affect the ways in which transformation takes place? is there a difference in the quality of education between older generation academics and new generation academics because of different skills within their respective teaching abilities and knowledge production? are the skills and competencies of older generation academics being valued and integrated into their field once they retire, or are they deemed useless and unimportant concerning the new generation of academics? how could collaborative effort between these two different academic generations help in transferring skills and aid in the transformation of higher education institutions? research design this research study took the form of an explanatory study, as the aim was to explore and gain new insights and ideas about certain phenomena (van bruggen 2001). qualitative measures were used to gather information and sampling was performed using the method of snowball sampling, where a certain participant who was relevant to the study was purposively contacted and then, through this participant, contacts with others who would participate in the study as well were established (bryman et al. 2014). the study used the insights of five participants who had retired from a historically white institution (hwi) and were over the age of 65. the small sample size was used because of the thematic nature of the methodology for this research, as the aim was to gain extensive insight from these participants and use their knowledge and answers to determine themes and critical issues that would address the research questions (braun & clarke 2006). this older age group was used because the knowledge and experiences they have are vital to consider for their research fields within academia. the human capital theory supports the need for skills and experience to be part of the training and development process of new staff, and this study helps emphasise this need (mccracken et al. 2017). a social constructionism viewpoint was taken when conducting and analysing information because social constructionism looks at experience and understanding through social structures (neuman 2014). in-depth interviews were used to gain the information needed; this is an interviewing technique of data collection that is used when specific topics are being discussed (berndt & petzer 2014). questions were asked in a semi-structured way so as to allow flexibility of answers. procedure of data analysis the data from the interviews were processed and analysed using a thematic breakdown to identify the prevalence and importance of specific ideas that were mentioned in the interviews (braun & clarke 2006). a thematic analysis aims to interpret various aspects of the research topic and identify themes in the data gathered (braun & clarke 2006). an inductive and latent thematic analysis was used to determine the underlying meaning of the data gathered and to identify similarities in responses (braun & clarke 2006). thematic analysis helped provide insight as to how underlying meanings shape certain themes and assumptions not previously researched (braun & clarke 2006). the steps outlined by braun and clarke (2006) were also used when analysing our data from the interviews. these include the following: (1) familiarising ourselves with the data by reading and rereading transcriptions; (2) generating initial codes by looking at data that may show initial meaning; (3) finding themes by sorting and grouping codes together; (4) reviewing and refining themes to ensure coherence and validity; (5) defining and naming themes by ensuring they answered the research question; and (6) producing themes in the report and ensuring they were justified by referring to our extracts and interview data (braun & clarke 2006). the steps of braun and clarke (2006) were important to consider when analysing and making sense of the raw data gathered in the form of the interviews. these steps are guidelines within thematic analysis and help ensure the rigour and trustworthiness of the data (braun & clarke 2006). the main research question was on the role that transferability of skills could play in the development of a successful and transformational higher education environment. the participants interviewed were all between the ages of 65 and 75. table 1 outlines the demographics of the participants as well as the pseudonyms used when discussing their results. table 1: demographics of the participants’ identities. pseudonyms were used as this allowed for complete anonymity of the participants. once this was done, the transcribed interviews were collated by first identifying codes and words that were deemed important and related to the research questions and then grouping the codes according to their similarities in meanings. once this was achieved, the three themes then emerged, with each having two sub-themes. they can be outlined as follows: ‘the formal message’ ‘by order of the pension fund’ academics – one’s true value transforming an institution ‘the buzzword’ the alienation of institutional culture a collaborative approach to mentoring the gap in ngap the informal of the formal results and discussion each of these themes holds significant insights into the need for skills transferability within transformation of higher education. to understand this, each theme will be looked at in detail; using extracts taken from the interviews, this article aims to highlight the importance of this gap of skills transferability within the discourse of transformation in higher education. ‘the formal message’ this theme was the most common theme that emerged during the interviews, where participants reached the same conclusions as to what their age meant to the procedures and labour policies of the university as well as which characteristics they possessed were deemed more important in terms of the university’s expectations. this main theme allowed two sub-themes to emerge and each discussed the ‘formal message’ that the university seems to portray to the older generation of academics. ‘by order of the pension fund’ the pension fund of this university (2015) stipulates that all academics must retire at the age of 65 and that one can retire later but not beyond the age of 68. this was stated by the participants in a manner that suggested that the university regards them as disposable at this age. participant m said: ‘uh … ya. i sat with a bit of hesitation because [in] part of the contract it was kind of assumed that one retires at 65, even though many of the other universities and the government itself says that there is no mandatory retirement age.’ w elaborated on this general understanding and went on to state that the university may hire a retired academic back on contract but that whether this action is taken or not, any academics at the age of 65 must retire. ‘oh yes, i mean the (university) … pension fund is a private fund, um, and that is statutory in terms of the rules of the pension fund. ya … ya, so you have to retire in the year in which you turn 65. the university is free to give you an extended contract or whatever, but you have to be taking your pension. you can’t, your posts are no longer pensionable beyond the year in which you retired.’ (participant w, male) another participant, r, also suggested this and elaborated on his reasoning for retirement to be because of the fact that he was over the regulatory retirement age of 65: ‘well ya, it has regulations in [the university] and ah and i suppose in a way it was and um … i had already, you know, exceeded the – the um, retirement age by quite a lot of years.’ (participant r, male) the participants expressed the fact that the university did have a mandatory retirement age and that this age was one of the main reasons for their retirement, not unwillingness to stay within the university. the hesummit (2015) states that approximately 27% of academics with doctorates are due to retire and that more than 50% of these professors are the most highly qualified. this is concerning for universities as the skills of these academics are needed to further develop their fields, but is the importance of these skills recognised by these universities or is the mandatory retirement of the academics more important? the retirement reform fund suggests that retiring workers need to be given retirement annuity options and that only after the employee makes a choice can the organisation categorise the retired employee into this annuity (national treasury 2004). rhodes university has given these options to their staff as this is a mandatory requirement from the national treasury (pension fund of rhodes university 2015); however, this is a monetary value that is placed on the academics and has no relation with the skills and work that they have done within the university. the retirement reform policy further states that its objective is to ensure that retired employees are able to save adequately through retirement funds and that the employer is liable for any failure to transfer collected retirement contributions into a retirement fund (national treasury 2004). this seems to be an adequate and helpful policy for retiring employees, yet human resources only applies this fund as a monetary expense to the institution and therefore still does not recognise the academic for their skills. this policy is therefore needed to help aid academics in terms of their retirement, but the human resources department must ensure that the implementation of this fund be communicated to staff as an acknowledgement of their hard work within the university and not just a final pay-off to ensure they are finally gotten rid of. academics – one’s true value an unnerving theme that was discovered within the participants’ transcripts was that they seemed to know how to overcome the mandatory age of retirement and that they needed to become as indispensable as possible. this speaks to how participants perceived the university and, specifically, the human resources department as opposed to the academic faculty in which they worked. one of the main findings that emerged was that the human resources department was very abrupt towards these older generation academics, with many of them voicing the opinion that human resources was disinterested and abrupt towards them. for instance: ‘ya, i really was forced and that particularly this year where instruction came from hr – xxx will not appoint in any capacity xxx. it was as blunt as that … um and i don’t think my particular contribution has ever been properly valued by this place.’ (participant m, male) in his statement above, m expressed that the human resources department was quite adamant that he should retire and this shows in how he stated that the university had not recognised his contributions. this is also important to realise, as the human capital theory states that all skills and knowledge should be invested in (mccracken et al. 2017). therefore, the university not recognising these contributions shows a lack of regard for the importance that m could play in the transferability of skills and the growth of other academics within his field of expertise: ‘no, none whatsoever and, in fact, last year when they were wanted to get my contract renewed, i had very, very poor treatment from hr. my case, and look, i don’t stand on ceremony or anything like that, but i do think i’m a senior professor.’ (participant s, female) although participant s did not regard herself as superior, she did speak to the fact that she should be respected and that the human resources department had no respect for her, as her contractual renewal was deemed unimportant and simply passed down for someone else to handle: ‘and the whole thing was delegated to a fairly junior person in hr and i got a letter form hr that, that i quite resented. so i haven’t found their input at all impressive.’ from the above extract, it is clear that participant s also showed dejection for the human resources department, which also suggests that the university did not value her. this dejection and contempt was also described by participant w in the extract below, as he also pointed out that the human resources department did not seem the least bit interested. amos et al. (2008) state that the human capital of the business is one of the most important factors to consider if the organisation wishes to remain effective. this does not seem to be of interest to the human resources department, as participant w also stated that the humanisation of the university was not considered – especially in relation to the staff: ‘hr – they didn’t seem the least bit interested. i said, you know, the university considering the people … so, and i said you know, considering that some people put their whole working lives into this. the least you could do is offer some counsel or maybe even just a support group. i mean i don’t like to cast myself as the victim and i may sound like i’m coming across as the victim, um, but i do think that here, for a university that – liberal arts college, humanities, blah, blah, blah. there’s this new thing about being more human – humanising the institution. what about the bloody staff?’ (participant w, male) this disinterest and disregard for who the older generation academic was, also caused staff to become more aware that they were not valued in terms of who they were, but rather for the input they put into the university – which goes against the principles of human resources. the pension fund of rhodes university (2015) goes on to state that staff may be hired on contractual basis after retirement; however, this is not a guarantee for academic staff who wish to be reappointed. this stipulation perpetuates the idea that the university only appoints those who are indispensable and who are still needed by the university for the research output they produce and not for the transferability of their skills. this was particularly true with regard to participant s and participant w, who were needed in terms of their skills: ‘and they’ve kept me on, on contract for one very specific reason, that is that i have an extremely scarce skill within the department. um, i’m the only person in the department who has a phd in xxx and, um, so there is just no one to replace me.’ (participant w, male) participant s further went on to say that she was happy to be employed back into the university and that she dreaded the day that she would have to retire and would no longer be needed. this is a harsh realisation for some, as they have devoted the majority of their careers to helping students and furthering the development of their particular fields of study. participant w further emphasised the seriousness of this harsh reality: ‘so that was why i was open to being asked to go on, and approaching retirement i found myself a little deliberately teaching the old stuff that nobody wanted to teach. i wanted to kind of make myself as indispensable as possible all right.’ this act of making oneself as indispensable as possible further highlights the reason why academics are forced to retire at some stage, as the university no longer deems them useful. this is very critical to consider as, according to amos et al. (2008), employees are supposed to be incentivised to stay by human resources, not to incentivise human resources to allow them to stay. this incentivised approach also suggests that the university has no mandatory reason for academics to retire and that the age regulation is only purposeful if the university has no need for the retiring academic. this was particularly the case for participant m, who was seen as no longer needed by the university and whose contract was therefore not renewed: ‘they in fact, ah, gave me a renewed, uh, contract and annual contract for, for three, three years. so like three year contract for post-retirement, ah, which had to be fought for. the university wasn’t too happy, but, um, and then, last year, that was a one course i did and this year they said ‘‘absolutely no ways’’. they were quite adamant … that, um, both xxx and myself had outlived our usefulness.’ this perpetuates badat’s argument that there is a trade-off between quality and accountability in terms of redressing past injustices and adhering to policies (badat 2010), but it further identifies the fact that this trade-off is only acceptable if the academic retiring is no longer useful and disposable. these values held by the university human resources department in terms of their policies and procedures can be seen as dehumanising to the academics at the university for the reason that older generation academic staff are only valued for their skills and input if it is desired. this realisation as to the message that the university stipulates to academics needs to be addressed, as these policies and procedures are directly affecting the transformation of the university. the efforts of older generation academics need to be realised if the university wishes them to transfer their skills to new generation academics. however, the university can require academics to retire, as their contract does have a retirement age statement; according to the labour relations act of 1995, it states that employees and employers can, within their own capacity, negotiate the terms of this age and suggest possible alternatives should either party deem them beneficial (department of labour 2017). this realisation is emphasised by the human capital theory, which states that the skills and experiences of academics need to be invested in (mccracken et al. 2017). this investment in the older generation academics’ skills can be in the form of an open communications system from the university and the acknowledgement of the individual rather than just their credentials and input into the university. this incentivised approach to recognition of the person can allow for the academics to feel the university wishes them to share their skills and that, once they retire, they may do so knowing that their skills and experience will still be valued by the new generation of academics. transforming an institution vincent (2015) states that the policies and procedures of an institution may change, but the social and cultural practices stay the same. in the case of this university, this has been found to be particularly true. this theme highlights these two viewpoints of vincent (2015) in that the policies of rhodes university have remained the same, but the culture of the university misrepresents and clashes with these policies. ‘the buzzword’ transformation within higher education has been seen to be influenced largely by society and has formed a fundamental part of south african society, post-apartheid (badat 2010). however, there has been a debate around higher education wherein the practices and the procedures of the institution have remained the same despite the fact that many initiatives have been implemented. throughout the interviews, the participants came to a consensus that there has been change within the demographics of the institution but that the syllabus and procedures have remained the same. participant w informed us that he understood ‘transformation’ to be a buzzword in terms of the fact that its meaning is whatever anyone perceives it to be and that this is problematic as it only allows for particular aspects of transformation to be seen, whereas others are discriminated against: ‘ya, i’m aware. i’ve been aware of it very largely as a buzzword and it seems to me from the word go, it seems to me to mean almost anything, mean whatever anybody wants it to mean. a bit of like humpty dumpty. the words can mean whatever i say. ah … and i think it’s, to me, a problematic concept. um, part of my early training in english here was under somebody who was very interested in, it was the field of semantics. what was really the study of meanings and that stuff. the rhetoric has changed and the race of the people propagating the rhetoric has changed but nothing else has changed.’ this statement further leads to the fact that, although south africa has transformed post-apartheid in terms of creating equality and improving the lives of those who were oppressed during apartheid, the policies and structures that have allowed this are the same in terms of the westernised perspective. cloete et al. (2004) further state this, as they suggest policies have changed but that their intention and implementation are not supplementary, which can lead to certain aspects being ignored. this is further stated by another participant in that they acknowledge the fact that the racial demographics have changed, but the syllabus and the structures of the university remain the same: ‘well, i suppose, first of all, it’s … it’s, ah … although what’s pretty well achieved now is that the demographics have changed. um … you know it used to be a white-only university but it’s not that anymore, of course … ah, and i think we’re … that they … as far as i know, the syllabi are pretty what they were.’ ‘well, being honest, the upgrades and upgraded, you know, has been research or something like that. but by and large, it’s pretty much the same things that are being taught.’ (participant m, male) the term ‘transformation’ is widely debated within higher education, with some arguing that the decolonisation of the institution is important when redressing the past. however, this is not what is required, and according to simon (2000), the concept of hybridity should be used to describe the transformation of an institution. this idea of hybridity integrates both the westernised and colonial perspective with that of the african perspective so that they form a relationship of exchange between cultures (simon 2000). the idea of decolonisation was highlighted in an interview with participant p, who stated that the term ‘decolonisation’ was problematic: ‘and then there’s the, there’s the question of the curriculum, which has obviously been in, um, on the agenda for the last … for recent years, one of decolonisation of the curriculum. which is quite a, um, it’s a, it’s a tricky area. it’s not straightforward. you can’t just … i, i always think to say it’s the same way we must decolonise. one had had to ask … should one of us say: ‘what are the possibilities for decolonisation and what are the limits to it?’ (participant p, male) although the idea of decolonisation is highly debated, this article aims specifically to look at it in terms of the idea of hybridity and that this idea of an exchange between cultures has already established itself within the social interactions of the university. ‘you know, i’ve seen the initial patterns of white students staying with white students and black with black and very tentative, you know, up to fully integrated multiracial couples. you know, and the whole thing, and every time i see a vigorous multiracial interaction and student interaction, i think, this is what it’s all about.’ (participant w, male) this is important to realise the fact that, within the transformation of the institution, the social interactions also form part of this process. participant w went on to say that these social interactions were also what allowed him, as a white male, to connect with students intellectually and emotionally: ‘and i also feel i’ve made some real connections with students and so on. they don’t just see me as an old white racist to whom they can’t relate, i hope. um, which is what, you know? so, i think the moral of the language project for me and the wonderful thing about that language project is that i was working with trained professionals across all colour divisions at the time and you know, we were in a partnership and we had a common goal, which was the upliftment and breaking down of this …’ within the above extract, participant w spoke directly to the fact that the cultures and social constructs of the university have already started to change and that the commonality in breaking down the structures of inequality was what drove their team to participate in the language project, which he mentioned. however, he further went on to say that the discourses that were dominant within grahamstown had not allowed these small achievements to be recognised: ‘ya, ya. um, and of course sadly in grahamstown, geographically the opportunities to meet across those old divisions were so much greater and yet they were so much more – it’s like the ditch was kind of like …’ ( participant w, male) this is one of the main areas of transformation that must be addressed: the small interactions and exchanges of cultures that are seen within the university are significant, but it should be reflected by the policies and procedures that the university has in place. these policies are not only in terms of the relationship between rhodes university and the students but also the community as well because of the fact that universities are microcosms of society. this is also acknowledged by the general systems approach which forms part of the congruency model as the inputs and the external environment affects outputs of the university. in addition, in order for the processes to be effective, all the operations and inputs of the organisation need to reflect the needs and wants of the community as well as its employees (nadler & tushman 1983). the alienation of institutional culture the institutional culture at this university, particularly looking at the younger academic staff, has been shown to be quite uninviting, and this culture has led to a divide between the viewpoints of older generation academics and new generation academics, as well as students. badat (2010) argues that the older generation academics will need to be replaced and that this will affect new generation academic staff. this is particularly true as it is observed that cultural differences affect the way in which skills are perceived by academic staff as well as students and the community. throughout the interviews, participants did not perceive the quality of knowledge to be less than that of previous years, but it was noted that many considered new generation academics to be far more pressurised in terms of higher education and the expectations of the institution and the members of the community. one particular example must be noted in terms of the expectations of academics: ‘she began to realise they were, they were becoming quite sullen and turned off. and so she engaged with them and she said, ‘what’s the problem? we seemed to start so well’ … ‘no, you are a paraffin teacher’ – it’s a wonderful metaphor. ‘you are a paraffin teacher’ – she said, ‘well, what do you mean, a paraffin teacher?’ so they said: ‘have you ever seen a paraffin lamp?’ … ‘yes’ … ‘well, it gives out a poor light, doesn’t it?’ … ‘yes’ … ‘so, you must be like the neon light, you must give out a strong bright light. the fact that you put us in groups means that you don’t know the answers’ – this is a totally unanticipated construction of … if you are asking us questions, you don’t know the answers. that means you’re a paraffin teacher – you don’t have enough light in you. a teacher must be like that and give out a strong, constant light. now that’s – that, i mean, we can sit back and say, well, that’s culturally constructed and you can change it but, can you? after 12 years.’ ( participant w, male) the notion of the ‘paraffin teacher’, according to w, creates the perception that academics are supposedly ‘all-knowing’ and that their opinion and answers are correct, as they are in a position of superiority. however, this expectation does not allow academics to engage critically with students or other academics, as the cultural expectation of the community and members of the institution is that they must teach students what they know and that what they know must be correct. in most viewpoints, it is considered that the new generation of academics, who are mostly black scholars, do not believe the culture of the institution to reflect their values and beliefs through the way they are welcomed into the department as well as within lectures (dash 2015; hlengwa 2015). this can further decrease the importance of skills transferability; the new generation of academics may feel disinterested in the ideas and knowledge of the older generation academics because they too make new academics feel alienated. this was noted by the participants in the study, with the majority expressing concern over this alienating culture and that this culture is further emphasised by the students and community, as well. ‘but there has been a number of black academics who have been appointed here and have left for one reason or the other – it’s quite a debate as to why they have left. um, and i suppose that in turn relates to another aspect of transformation, and that is, what they call the institutional culture and that is deemed to be quite alienating to a lot of people who come from cultures which are not familiar with the aspects of … anti-european culture or one of bad terms.’ (participant p, male) w also mentions this problem of the institutional culture, as he goes on to say the following: ‘mmm. have you read, there was that critical seminar that was here a few years ago and i know xxx spoke at it. it was a symposium or something about [name of the university] – but he said coming to this department, there was absolutely no attempt was made to kind of make him feel at home. to just assume that he would, you know? and he found that xxx, he found the culture of this department very different and alien. you see, i think people of colour, well, i think particularly black people in this town, they are very … ah, they are much more able to be unlabelled in the larger urban cultures. i mean, this town is still so tremendously divided between black, [which] largely equals poor, you know, and white equals prosperous. you know, and the two sides of the valley kind of spill it out.’ (participant w, male) this racialisation of how ‘black’ is associated with being poor and unintelligent and ‘white’ is associated with being rich and intelligent is a problematic factor within the transformation of higher education – specifically within this university, where the westernised culture is still emphasised through the structure of the university whereas the african culture is emphasised in the social interactions of the university: it’s very difficult to tell, very difficult. i, i get … i hear different things, actually, from students. that the first year student comes to the university and likes to see a sort of greying-white male professor lecturing. that’s the image that they come to university with – that kind of person.’ (participant p, male) this viewpoint that participant p emphasises also allows for the narrative of inequality to be expressed by new generation academic staff, as the policies and procedures may support transformation and redressing of past injustices. however, the institutional culture of the university directly affects this, and this institutional culture affects the way they are perceived by students within the classroom, as stated by p in the following extract: ‘um, and i also hear that, well, darker academics suffer from that expectation particularly in their interaction with students. so there are – i’ve heard black academics, they get asked questions – not because the students want to get answers to the questions but […] to test the knowledge and the ability of the lecturer. so there’s a lot of, a strong sort of racial dimension there.’ (participant p, male) this further highlights badat’s (2010) view that there seem to be trade-offs between quality and accountability. boughey (2002) also states that equity was a core focus of higher institutions to redress past imbalances but that there has also been a shift from equity to skills development in order to create a workforce for economic growth. however, this shift towards skills development hasn’t been properly addressed within higher education, as the need for racialisation of the workforce has been seen to show precedence. badat (2010) states that south african universities need to give attention to redressing injustices of the past in terms of social equity – particularly for black south african women – while at the same time producing and retaining a new generation of academics. a study conducted in 2006 found that only 36% of the academic staff in all south african universities come from the african, mixed race and indian populations, with only 24% being africans (badat 2010). although these figures show improvement from 1994, they still do not warrant the notion of an equal and diverse enough workforce. factors that affect these new academic staff, however, are not just the ability to conduct research and publish knowledge but also the fact that retiring staff need to be replaced (badat 2010). this realisation calls to the fact that older generation academics and their cultures are leaving the institutional environment. although some of the advantages may be that a new adaptable culture can be implemented into the institution, it is important to consider the skills and knowledge these academics can relay to new generation academics to help them better their understanding in their respective fields. the human capital theory states that the skills and knowledge of staff need to be invested for growth of the workforce to be achieved (nufakho et al. 2004). however, the policies around redressing past transgressions and the institutional culture surrounding these policies seem to be creating a barrier, which results in skills being lost as well as the increased sense of an alienating culture for both older generation academics as well as new generation academics. this is as older generation academics feel they are excluded through polices and new generation academics feel they are excluded through the culture of the university. this therefore does not allow for academics to communicate with one another and also creates a divide in their perceptions of their teaching styles and how students respond to them: ’okay, so for me, transformation must be meaningful, okay. um, and the thing that has worried me about it as a political hooray word means, white must go, black must arrive and …’ (participant w, male) this alienating culture is directly affected by cultural diversity amongst staff as well as within the community; as we can see from the above extract, it is not only higher education institutions that are being affected by the trade-off of equity and accountability but the community as well. the divide between the policies and the narratives of individuals informed by their cultures is an issue that needs to be addressed at this university. one way in which this article aims to address this, is by looking at the policies of mentorship programmes and suggesting ways in which the policies of the university reflect the institutional culture and the diversity of the social interactions and values of the individuals within rhodes. a collaborative approach to mentoring because south african universities have a diverse workforce as well as student population, the policies and programmes that allow for mentorship and training of academic staff must reflect the needs of this diverse workforce. akojee and nkomo (2007) and the human capital theory (mccracken et al. 2017) both state that higher quality results will be yielded through a more diversified combination of people as well as resources. therefore, the programmes implemented within the university that aim to yield these results must make use of the diversified workforce and resources at their disposal. the gap in new generation of academics programme an unobserved issue within ngap is that the mentors these academics are being assigned to, may not be the most experienced and qualified in their field. however, those that meet this criterion are those of the older generation and who are seen to be of no real value in the transformation of higher education because of their race, age and cultural identity. booi, vincent and liccardo (2016) further emphasise this point, as they argue that equity has been predicated on one’s race and gender and that these factors form part of the stipulations as to the implementation of programmes. they further argue that the retention of black academics and senior staff members are challenging components for higher education institutions but that the retention of black staff does not automatically enhance the transformation of the institution (booi et al. 2016). this study aims to emphasise the importance of both the new generation academics and older generation academics in terms of their skills and knowledge, which are vital to continuation and growth of not just research within the field, but also teaching abilities within the structure of the institution itself – particularly pertaining to their role in the promotion of quality information. the participants of the study were all asked whether or not they had heard of the ngap programme, as all participants were seen to be experts in their fields and would therefore have skills and experiences that would be beneficial to new generation academics. only two of the participants were aware of the programme and none of them had ever been involved since its launch at rhodes university in 2001. however, participant m was involved in another mentorship programme that was similar and deemed relevant to the ngap. when asked about the ngap, participant s said: ‘i know about it but i haven’t been involved. not at all.’ participant w also acknowledged the fact that he was unaware of the programme in the following extract. in fact, the researcher had to explain what the ngap was to these academics: interviewer: ‘um, the ngap programme is a next generation academic programme.’ participant w: ‘oh, all right.’ interviewer: ‘which has been implemented at [this university] from 2001.’ participant w: ‘i retired in ’09 so i should’ve known about that.’ participant m, who had taken part in a mentoring programme, suggested that their skills and experiences were used when helping mentor other academic staff members but that there was no formal structure to follow in terms of how to measure progress, the expectations that they as the mentor had or the requirements of the mentee: ‘i, i think it ought to, and this place has made, uh, weak attempts, ah, to, um, what’s the word i’m looking for? … um, mentoring, mentorships in someone, uh, a couple of students have been assigned to me in the last few years. uh, one was a coloured girl who had to work sort of through me while she was here, ah. ah, and the other was xxx; i was supposed to mentor them. nobody asked me for reports or what i was doing. i got no encouragement to mentoring, i had no mentoring training, um, i don’t think it was – there was certainly not any incentive … for me. ah, cos all it was, you know, get out as soon as you can. ah, years ago i did some work before i came here [name of the university] around the sort of black advancement story in a company in durban and it was about the apprentices and were the apprentices helping the new black apprentices – the white apprentices – and the guys said, you know, um, ‘voting to support your programme is like a turkey voting for christmas’. (participant m, male) this form of mentorship would not yield correct results according to the human capital theory, as there was no investment of resources or expectations of both parties involved (mccracken et al. 2017). this also emphasised the fact that the mentor was not fully aware of their role, as they had no training in mentorship, and this in turn would affect their relationship with their mentee. another aspect that the ngap took into consideration is that the acquisition of knowledge was important within the programme and that mentees were also given some autonomy in their decision-making and new ways of teaching (dugmore 2016). however, the observed sentiment from the participants was that academics would not be valued in terms of their teaching abilities but rather for their research and publication abilities and that this research ability and the progression of the cv was the main contributing factor as to how academics were recognised within the university: ‘as far as i know, it’s more the position than the skills. i don’t think the skills are fully appreciated. i know they do have the lecturer awards and the researcher awards, and my personal opinion is that they often go to the wrong people and i’d like to see awards going to young, developing people who’ve really shown how they have developed and shown promise. there is one in the faculty, but it’s … everything is so predicated on publications and there’s so much more to being a good university lecturer.’ (participant s, female) another fact observed by participant m was that, by the university excluding some academics, it emphasised the fact that certain individuals are only considered based on their roles and certain achievements, which further emphasised the point participant s made above: ‘but ya, that’s the problem with a small university and excluding people who could be able to help and, no, i think they, um, and they certainly don’t go out of the way to defend the skills. um, i think the university as an organisation is never taught. so it focuses on the educational enterprise rather than on the organisational psychology of rhodes …’ (participant m, male) this idea of publications and research seems to be the predicating factor for the success of academics and that these are the most important skills to have. however, this research ability is important, but it does not address the fact that academics must be able to transfer their knowledge to the students and that, to do so, they must be aware of the skills necessary to present to students and what information is needed for them to present. this type of mentorship needs to be considered within the policies and procedures of rhodes university and the ngap is not substantial in this regard. the informal of the formal although the ngap is seen to have addressed equity within the institution, as stated by hlengwa (2015), the formalised structures of the programme does not allow for the transfer of informal skills to take place between older generation academics and new generation academics. all of the participants agreed that they would willingly take part in a mentorship programme that has formal policies in term of implementation but that the programme should be voluntary and informal in the nature of relationships between the mentor and mentee. another argument that was made by several of the participants was that the head of department should be the main enforcer of the programme, but that the mentee should be able to learn from various mentors and not just one in particular. this was argued because of the fact that the participants felt that the formalisation of having one mentor did not allow the mentee to consider various perspectives as well as engage with others with whom they work and that an informal structure would allow academics to create a two-way learning process where both the mentor and the mentee could develop and grow: ‘no, and i think one needs to, to pass on some fundamental ideas, but really, you know, also have room for the student to take them and build them and adjust them to a particular way so, in your case, you know, if you wanted to go into hr, what particular kind of organisations that you would like to go into, what would you – how would you aim to get in there, what you need to achieve that. you know, and so on.’ ( participant r, male) the comment made by participant r is important to realise, as he reflected the sentiments made by hlengwa (2015) in the sense that the university should allow the new generation academic to grow within their own field and knowledge and that the culture of the institution should be of their choice as well as reflect their own beliefs and values. this can only be done through a programme that allows both the institution as well as the academic to grow; this was further argued by s, in that there needs to be a formalised process that allows this: ‘i do think so. i think it’s absolutely essential that there is a transfer of skills. and you quite rightly said, it’s not necessarily just the academic knowledge that the whole skill of – there’s institutional knowledge you want to pass on, there’s how to deal with students – that’s the, sort of, problems that you have in supervision and looking after students. there’s a whole lot of things that don’t get passed on and the problem is, there’s nothing formalised.’ (participant s, female) in acknowledging participant s’s statement of a formalised structure, it is also important to consider the thoughts of participant w, who suggested that the programme should also allow academics to create a mentorship environment within their departments. he also suggested that, even though it is a formalised programme, the reason for mentorship is to help academics progress – not to ensure that the process be done: ‘that you should be encouraged. a new member of staff, a young member of staff should be encouraged to identify somebody on the staff that they feel they could take their problem to. and it might be a different person every time for a different problem, you know? um, ah … so, but i do think that – it, it should be a – i don’t want to use that word ‘culture’, i hate that word ‘culture’ – but an atmosphere, an environment that encourages an open exchange, but i think it should be free and voluntary.’ (participant w, male) this idea of creating an environment is interesting to note by participant w as he suggests a mentorship programme that is open, as he further went on to state: ‘ya, ya. that is, that it should be communicated as: mentorship is one of the things we do. you pick what you want and take what you want and take, and feel free to pick and choose as well as often, as well. because it’s, what ultimately matters is you. the person who you are becoming and we’re all still in the process of becoming.’ (participant w, male) this collective approach to teaching would therefore allow all parties within the mentorship programme to collaboratively work with one another and to create a programme that allows the mentee to grow his or her skills through informal relationships, with many academics helping them develop both their informal and formal abilities that are necessary and that will help them grow within the institution. this type of knowledge production is known as ‘organisational learning’, where knowledge is a combination of experience, values, contextual information and expert insight that provides a framework for incorporating and evaluating new experiences and information (amos et al. 2008). this is important to consider when looking at skills transferability from older generation academics to new generation academics; amos et al. (2008) further goes on to state that this knowledge originates from the minds of knowers – for this study, the minds of the older generation academics. conclusion to the debate of transformation of the academy, this study brought the important question of skills transferability; ideas for including a more voluntary and practical mentorship programme were suggested that can be employed to try mitigating the noticeable missing link of skills transferability in the sector. considering the current transformation debates and discourses currently moulding themselves in higher education institutions, it is important to remember the aspect of skills in building the human capital of the workforce and that these skills are needed to further the understanding in knowledge, teaching and understanding of the role higher education plays within the greater society. thus, this understanding, although limited to the research conducted within this study and only looking at the context of this university, forms the foundations of research and development into this field of research to build on the discourses of transformation – and aid in the successful implementation of policies of redress and development to move south africa forward; societally, economically and cultural development. therefore, the policies of this university and the value that is placed on academics need to be redressed and evaluated if this collaboration amongst staff members is to be realised. this further perpetuates the need for the policies and procedures to be informal in terms of implementation, as this allows open communication as well as an environment in which academics can approach one another freely. this open and voluntary mentorship programme was expressed by the participants to be a core focus for this university, as the exclusion of academics within the participation of the ngap programme only allows new academics to gain expertise from those they are assigned to, which only allows the perspectives of one academic to be understood. participant w described this in his interview when he metaphorically emphasised that skills and experience gained were limited because of the notion that the development of knowledge and transfer of skills was a part of the production process – meaning that it was characterised as a ‘one size fits all’ process: [h]e and some one hundred and forty other schoolmasters had been lately turned at the same time, at the factory, on the same principles, by so many piano-forte legs. he’d been put through an immense variety of paces in order to out some volumes of head-breaking questions – orthography, entomology, syntax in prosody, biography, astronomy, geography and general cosmography – the sciences of compound proportion, land surveying and levelling … as though it was drawing for models for all of the n’s of his 10 chilled fingers. overall, an important realisation that was made within this research study, and in looking at the preceding extract, was that the diversity of cultures does not allow for a one-size-fits-all approach to skills transferability and collaboration and that the diversification and allowed growth of new generation academics will only be realised by the institution once the institutional culture embedded in the policies and procedures of the university allows for a dynamic response to teaching. this further emphasises the importance that the skills of older generation academics are needed for new generation academics to advance their experiences and teaching; however, it is not only the transfer of knowledge that is needed but the collaborative effort to allow both parties to grow in their own understanding of their ‘being’ and their need within the transformation of higher education. acknowledgements competing interests the authors declare that they have no financial or personal relationships which may have inappropriately influenced them in writing this article. authors’ contributions s.b. conceptualised the whole study and provided the necessary literature. s.b. also did the second round of corrections. l.m. was s.b.’s postgraduate student. l.m. collected the data for this article and wrote most part of the article. t.k. helped with the first round of reviewers’ recommendations. t.k. also contributed in the writing of some sections. references akojee, s. & nkomo, m., 2007, ‘access and quality in south african higher education: the twin challenges of transformation’, sajhe 21(3), 385–399. amos, t., ristow, a., ristow, l. & peasrse, j.p., 2008, human resource management, oxford university press, south africa, cape town. badat, s., 2010, ‘the challenges of transformation in higher education and training institutions in south africa’, paper commissioned by the development bank of southern africa, viewed 13 june 2016, from https://www.ru.ac.za/…/the%20challenges%20of%20transformation%20in%20high berndt, a. & petzer, d., 2014, marketing research, pearson education south africa, cape town. booi, x., vincent, l. & liccardo, s., 2016, ‘counting on demographic equity to transform institutional cultures at historically white south african universities?’, higher education and research development 36(3), 498–510. https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2017.1289155 boughey, c., 2002, ‘from equity to efficiency: access to higher education in south africa’, arts and humanities in higher education 2(1), 65–71. https://doi.org/10.1177/1474022203002001006 braun, v. & clarke, v., 2006, ‘using thematic analysis in psychology’, qualitative research in psychology 3, 77–101. https://doi.org/10.1191/1478088706qp063oa bryman, a., bell, e., hirschohn, p., dos santos, a., du toit, j., masenge, a. et al., 2014, research methodology: business management and context, oxford university press, cape town. cloete, n., maasen, p., fehnel, r., moja, t., perold, h. & gibbon, t., 2004, transformation in higher education: global pressures and local realities in south africa, 2nd edn., kluwer academic publishers, south africa, dordrecht. dash, m., 2015, in p. tabensky & s. matthews (eds.), being at home: race, institutional culture and transformation at south african higher education institutions, pp. 157–178, university of kwazulu-natal press, pietermaritzburg. department of higher education and training (dhet), 2013, white paper for post-school education and training: building an expanded, effective and integrated post-school system, department of higher education, pp. 1–96. department of labour, 2017, labour relations act 66 of 1995, republic of south africa, pp. 100–113. dugmore, h., 2016, rhodes university: growing the next generation of academics, communications and marketing division, grahamstown, pp. 1–49. gordon, l.r., 2015, ‘race and justice in higher education: some global challenges, with attention to the south african context’, in p. tabensky & s. matthews (eds.), being at home: race, institutional culture and transformation at south african higher education institutions, pp. 157–178, university of kwazulu-natal press, pietermaritzburg. hesummit, 2015, ‘reflections on higher education transformation’, higher education summit 2, 1–24. hlengwa, a., 2015, ‘employing safe bets: reflections on attracting, developing and retaining the next generation of academics’, in p. tabensky & s. matthews (eds.), being at home: race, institutional culture and transformation at south african higher education institutions, pp. 147–154, university of kwazulu-natal press, pietermaritzburg. human resource development council, 2015, production of academics and strengthening of higher education partnerships with industry (pashepi), vol. 1, human resources development council, pp. 1–58. makgoba, m.w., 2004, conceptions of a transformed university: ‘south african’, ‘african’, ‘engaged …’, che roundtable discussion, council on higher education, pretoria. mccracken, m., mcivor, r., treacy, r. & wall, t., 2017, human capital theory: assessing the evidence for value and importance of people to organisational success, cipd, pp. 1–96. nadler, d.a. & tushman, m.l., 1983, ‘a general diagnostic model for organisational behaviour: applying a congruence perspective’, in j.r. hackman, e.e. lawler & l.w. porter (eds.), perspectives on behaviour in organisations, pp. 112–125, mcgraw-hill book company, new york. national treasury, 2004, retirement fund reform: a discussion paper, national treasury, pretoria, pp. 4–69. neuman, l.w., 2014, social research methods: qualitative and quantitative approaches, 7th edn., london, pearson. nufakho, f. m., hairston, n. & brooks, k., 2004, ‘human capital theory: implications for human resource development’, human resource development international 7(4), 545–551. https://doi.org/10.1080/1367886042000299843 pension fund of rhodes university, 2015, a member’s guide to the rhodes university pension fund, rhodes university, grahamstown. rhodes university, 2014, full report on the rhodes university institutional culture survey, office of equity and institutional culture, grahamstown, pp. 1–181. simon, b., 2000, ‘hybrid america?’, in a. singh & p. schmidt (eds.), postcolonial theory and the united states: race, ethnicity and literature, p. 415, university press of mississippi, jackson, ms. south african government gazette, 1998, employment equity act, government gazette, prtoria, october 19, pp. 1–28. van bruggen, a.c., 2001, individual production of social well-being: an exploratory study, university medical centre, groningen, pp. 115–142. vincent, l., 2015, ‘“tell us a new story”: a proposal for the transformatory potential of collective memory projects’, in p. tabensky & s. matthews (eds.), being at home: race, institutional culture and transformation at south african higher education institutions, pp. 21–42, university of kwazulu-natal press, pietermaritzburg. waghid, y., 2002, ‘knowledge production and higher education transformation in south africa: towards reflexivity in university teaching, research and community service’, higher education 7, 457–488. https://doi.org/10.1023/a:1015211718131 abstract introduction securitisation theory and the securitised university europeanisation, securitisation and higher education the nascent colonisation of global intellectual capital conclusion acknowledgements references about the author(s) liam f. gearon harris manchester college and department of education, university of oxford, oxford, united kingdom faculty of education and arts, school of humanities and social science, newcastle university, newcastle, australia citation gearon, l.f., 2019, ‘securitisation theory and the securitised university: europe and the nascent colonisation of global intellectual capital’, transformation in higher education 4(0), a70. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v4i0.70 original research securitisation theory and the securitised university: europe and the nascent colonisation of global intellectual capital liam f. gearon received: 08 apr. 2019; accepted: 24 apr. 2019; published: 26 june 2019 copyright: © 2019. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract background: this article explores the increasing prevalence of security themes in higher education policy. aim: addressing neglect in security studies on the role of the university in the processes of securitisation, this article shows the integral relationship between securitisation theory and the securitised university. setting: drawing on exemplars from european higher education, the article argues that this complex epistemological transformation is part of a new and as yet little understood new colonisation of global intellectual capital. methods: the argument is in three stages: (1) that securitisation theory can account for the emergence of the securitised university; (2) that this securitisation of universities is integral to the political process of europeanisation; and (3) that from this european context we may glimpse a nascent colonisation of global intellectual capital. results: this analysis of securitisation has, therefore, deep if as yet little explored epistemological implications for the transformation of universities worldwide, particularly because of this epistemological dimension, a de facto securitisation of knowledge. conclusion: this article concludes that these transformations are also important if at present neglected element to historic and contemporary debates on decolonising the curriculum, which frequently highlight the postcolonial relations and culturally still powerful relations between continents, for example between europe and africa. keywords: securitisation; universities; colonisation; epistemology; postcolonialism. introduction in the wake of the defining 9/11 landmark of international security and terror attacks on european cities – bavaria, brussels, copenhagen, london, madrid, manchester, munich, nice, paris and stockholm – europe has become increasingly engaged in strengthening its counter-terrorism policies (european council 2017). this as part of a wider notion of european security evidenced by the european agenda on security, into which universities have now been explicitly drawn (european agenda on security [eas] 2015). european universities are then increasingly significant institutions in a securitised europe (davies & gustafson 2016; de graaff 2018). yet the historic and contemporary relationship of european universities to security runs deeper and wider than current counter-terrorist measures. not only have universities been and continue to be major sources of recruitment for the security and intelligence services in europe and the united states, and a reservoir of secret as well as open source knowledge and (security-sensitive) information, universities have also been integral to the origins and formation of the leading security and intelligence agencies themselves (aldrich 2019; andrew 2010; jeffery 2011; weiner 2012). western security and intelligence agencies have also helped shaped significant emergent disciplines in the academy such as security and intelligence studies, and have an historic and current, near all-encompassing outreach into a multitude of fields across the arts, humanities and social sciences as well across all domains of medical, scientific and technological research (gearon 2015, 2017a, 2017b; sinclair 1987; winks 1987). the emergent ‘disciplines’ of intelligence collection, knowledge gathering, generation and dissemination, the very aims and purposes of universities, are themselves increasingly critical to security and intelligence processes (lowenthal & clark 2015). universities have long been then the physical and intellectual space where academic endeavour meets security and intelligence agency, where, that is, two types of intelligence agency have long met in the physical and intellectual space of the european university. much of this has been under-researched because of the covert operational nature of the security and intelligence agencies themselves, though of late some limited light has been thrown upon such engagements (gearon 2015, 2017a, 2017b). beyond educational research there have been substantial uk research council investments into security (tilley, bouhana & braithwaite 2014), and this includes the major research councils uk funding over £1.5 billion over 5 years for their global challenges research fund (gcrf 2019). there are also increasingly embedded cross-european security research projects which are the result of substantial collaborations between a range of disciplines, and a range of security and intelligence agencies, the final evaluation of which suggests social sciences as a whole are underrepresented as partners and collaborators (technopolis 2015). today, in large measure through greater involvement of european universities in counter-terrorism provisions of governments across the continent, such processes are intensified and intensifying. the securitisation of european universities and european research is thus only in part driven by such counter-terrorism agendas. the latter have simply highlighted patterns of securitisation long observed by theorists of security studies (albert & buzan 2011; buzan, waever & de wilde 1998; buzan & hansen 2009; dunn cavelty & balzacq 2016; huysmans 1998; johnson 2012). though technical in nature, the idea at the heart of a complex theoretical framework is a simple one. its premise is that security has burgeoned beyond its traditional home in directly military contexts into a wide arena of different dimensions: social, cultural and political dimensions (albert & buzan 2011; buzan et al. 1998; buzan & hansen 2009; huysmans 1998). securitisation theory has now produced an inordinate amount of specialist and supplementary literature under the heading of critical security studies (for a review of which see van munster 2016). security studies has itself has become an important element of higher education curricula, replete with its own epistemological territories (collins 2017, 2018; dunn cavelty & balzacq 2016; hough 2014; hough et al. 2015; peoples 2014; peoples & vaughan-williams 2010; williams 2003; williams & mcdonald 2018). one defining characteristic of securitisation theory is that to prevent everything being securitised (and thus making the process theoretically impracticable) is that to be defined as a security issue there must be some real, indeed existential threat. i still think this useful caveat has been best clarified by taureck. taureck (2006) follows buzan et al. (1998), in highlighting this notional existential threat to justify the ‘securitisation’ label: if we do not tackle this problem, everything else will be irrelevant (because we will not be here or will not be free to deal with it in our own way). (buzan et al. 1998:24) collins (2017, 2018), too, usefully defines how such security threats can be incorporated within the academic study of security: war and the threat to use force are part of the security equation, but the prevalence of threats is far-reaching for security studies … pandemic and environmental degradation to terrorism and inter-state armed conflict … it also investigates the deepening and broadening of security to include military security, regime security, societal security, environmental security, and economic security … traditional and non-traditional issues that have emerged on the security agenda, including weapons of mass destruction, terrorism, energy security, and health. (p. 1) thus addressing a relative neglect in security studies on the role of the university in the processes of securitisation, this article shows the integral relationship between securitisation theory and the securitised university. drawing on exemplars from european higher education, the article argues that this complex epistemological transformation is part of a new and as yet little understood new colonisation of global intellectual capital. the argument is in three stages: (1) that securitisation theory can account for the emergence of the securitised university; (2) that this securitisation of universities is evidently integral to the deeper political and public policy processes of europeanisation; and (3) that these processes are worldwide, and that, as a result, the securitisation of universities is part of a new colonisation of global intellectual capital. this analysis of securitisation has, therefore, deep if as yet little explored epistemological implications for the transformation of universities worldwide. particularly, because of this epistemological dimension, a de facto securitisation of knowledge, this article concludes that these transformations are, too, an important if at present neglected element to historic and contemporary debates on decolonising the curriculum, which frequently highlight the postcolonial relations and culturally still powerful relations between continents, for example between europe and africa. securitisation theory and the securitised university amidst ever-increasing threats from international terrorism universities have become, then, intensified foci for security concerns and marked as loci of special interest for the monitoring of extremism as well as the mobilisation of counter-terrorism efforts (uuk 2011, 2012, 2013, 2016). viscerally embodying an horrific sense of physical threat plaguing a continent, even if terrorism and counter-terrorism are definitionally disputed (schmid 2011: 23–27, 39–98, 99–157, 532–539; seiple, hoover & otis 2015), ‘the counter-terrorist campus’ reveals a wider, deeper, historically rooted and contemporary relationship between universities and the security and intelligence agencies (gearon 2019; den boer 2015; den boer & wiegand 2015). this relationship can be defined most importantly in epistemological terms: there is thus a critical link between knowledge (the common currency of universities as much as the security and intelligence agencies, though the applications differ) and the knowledgeable (or the personnel or people-dimension of those who have access to knowledge, including formal and informal networks of intelligence gathering). epistemologically, post-snowden and post-assange ample evidence here suggests security and intelligence agency efforts and interests worldwide are pervasive and polymathic, or indeed multi-disciplinary, characterised by some as overly intrusively, privacy-invading marks of a surveillance society (greenwald 2015; harding 2014; leigh & harding 2011). today, then, intelligence gathering is potentially about everything and everyone, and not merely defined enemies and adversaries (aldrich, cormac & goodman 2014; iriss 2015; wright & kreissl 2013). it is by such moves that universities – as loci for knowledge generation – have become a critically important element in the unfolding, widening and deepening of security/intelligence knowledge gathering (dale & robertson 2009; robertson et al. 2016). here, it is knowledge (dissemination, exchange, production, and protections thereof for commercial or economic, defensive or offensive purposes) itself which provides the lynchpin between european security and european universities. not only are european universities critical elements in a securitised europe but the very aims and purposes of universities coincide with the processes of securitisation through intelligence collection, or through what are known as the ‘five disciplines’ of intelligence gathering (lowenthal & clark 2015). the present-day process of such extensions of security and intelligence interest emerged, most scholars agree, in the modern or current sense and frame of securitisation, in the cold war when intelligence came to be seen as essential to peacetime as to war (dulles 2006; felix 1992; herman 1996; shulsky 2001). in the cold war, ideas and ideology were as critical as armaments. risso’s (2014) study of the north atlantic treaty organization (nato) information service (natis), for instance, demonstrates the extent of interest of intelligence services in cultural matters far distant from battlefield engagement or the nuclear arms race preoccupations of the time. operationally and epistemologically, the extension of interest was to types of knowledge and types of people beyond the military to include the cultural, as is also demonstrated by studies of the central intelligence agency (cia) engagement with the arts (gearon & davies 2019; stonor saunders 2013). in security and intelligence studies, this expansion of security into different domains is delineated by ‘traditionalists’ or ‘realists’ who maintain conventional defence and warfare are the proper object of study, and on the other side, the ‘wideners’ and ‘deepeners’, identified sometimes as ‘the critical security project’ or ‘the human security project’ argue for the importance of human security and regard the expansion of security into other domains as pernicious expansionism (dunn cavelty & mauer 2012). the expansion of security into a plethora of wider societal arenas has been defined as a ‘securitisation’ by the ‘copenhagen school’, the most influential theorists of new security agendas (peoples & vaughan-williams 2010; taureck 2006; williams 2003). securitisation theory thus presents a means of exposure, a frame of exposition and a method of analysis which takes consideration beyond narrowly traditional, realist or militaristic spheres. prominent amongst the copenhagen school are ole wæver and barry buzan (adler & barnett 1998; albert & buzan 2011; buzan & waever 1997). their ground-breaking theorisation identified five non-traditional security sectors: military, political societal, economic and environmental (buzan et al. 1998; waever 1995; also huysmans 1998; and for an accessible summary review of the literature, see van munster 2016). bagge laustsen and waever (2000), interestingly prior to 9/11, suggested adding a sixth sector category as religion. operationally, there are three historically and contemporaneously complex levels of interaction between the security and intelligence agencies and public bodies such as universities: covert, overt and a blended overt-covert (gearon 2015, 2017a, 2017b). the covert illustrates the default, secret involvement of security and intelligence agencies with universities. in britain, for example, until the 1980s there was an official cross-party agreement that matter of security and intelligence were not discussed in the uk parliament, nor were the operational matters of security and intelligence agencies subject to scrutiny, indeed the very existence of agencies such as the secret intelligence service (sis) were neither affirmed nor denied (aldrich et al. 2014; aldrich & cormac 2016). the overt demonstrates the position, largely elicited by historic concerns over secret agencies within the state and parallel moves towards enhanced transparency in polity and governance in open, liberal democracies. in britain, the joint intelligence committee (largely) publicly holds the machinery of the security and intelligence agencies to account, and public inquiries do the same, most notably in the uk government commissioned report on the iraq war (chilcot 2016). the blended overt-covert position largely defines the operational grey area which characterises the modus operandi in present-day practice of the security and intelligence agencies. this justifies the continued need for some secrecy on the basis of national security but allows for a wide range of activities which cannot for said justification be disclosed. at a very basic level, this means some knowledge is secret (or classified) and some knowledge is open, in the public domain (unclassified). of what are known as the five disciplines of intelligence collection, the latter domain of unclassified knowledge is one of the five disciplines of intelligence collection, known as open source [or open source intelligence (osint); for consideration of the other four intelligence disciplines, see lowenthal & clark 2015]. in the bridge between academic research and the security and intelligence communities’ quest for knowledge, universities’ publicly available research is part of what is known as osint. according to a range of accounts, osint accounts for more than 80% of all information or knowledge gathered by security and intelligence agencies worldwide. how that knowledge may be used however may clearly be secret or covert, and who within a university is ensuring the analysis or interpretation or even gathering of open source information for secret or covert purposes will be classified. this is one generalised demonstration of the operational and epistemological meeting as an overt-covert interface. the multiple ethical issues within the security and intelligence agencies often surround issues of secrecy or its breach and matters of the utmost moral seriousness such as the unlawful taking of life, extrajudicial killing, covert support for insurgency and so forth (goldman 2009, 2011; johnson 2012, 2018; palys & lowman 2012; omand & phythian 2013, 2018). all of which actions have been part and parcel of the histories of all security and intelligence agencies, perhaps unsurprisingly when their very lack of formal existence or existence above the normal range of democratic politics, encouraged a mentality above the law though ironically of course in the spirit of protecting the state which creates the law. any authoritative history of the western intelligence agencies will thus reveal a modus operandi which makes the institutional conformities of the educational researcher seem positively homely (aldrich 2010; andrew 2010 2018; jeffery 2011; weiner 2012), nor indeed is their historically covert relationship with universities anything essentially new (see winks 1987). current counter-terrorism contexts have however intensified these relations between universities and national security and intelligence agencies. where these threat narratives have entered into public policy they have increasingly entered higher education policy too (gearon 2018). where this is the case it has raised specific ethical issues for universities such as academic freedom, freedom of speech, security-sensitive research, external speakers and the subtle changing professional relationship which involves responsibilities about reporting terrorist-link suspicions amongst students or staff (arthur 2015; davies 2016; durodie 2016; glees 2015; o’donnell 2017; richardson 2015; sieckelinck, kaulingfreks & de winter 2015; uuk 2011, 2012, 2013, 2016). in summarising the different ethical challenges between universities and the security and intelligence agencies, we might say that calls to collaborate in counter-terrorist efforts raise qualms less defined by operational expediency (whether such assistance would be effective) than by transparency and consequent concerns over academic integrity, institutional autonomy or intellectual freedom enforced not only by legal diktat but security force (ctsa 2015; eas 2015; russell group 2015; uuk 2016; also, shore & taitz 2012). far wider than counter-terrorist concerns, this research area has become defined as a sub-field of security and intelligence studies characterised as the universities–security–intelligence nexus interface (gearon 2019). this nascent relationship between securitisation theory and the notion of a securitised university is evident in key literature in eu-related security (argomaniz, bures & kaunert 2014; argomaniz 2009; bakker 2014; bellaby 2012; leonard 2015; monar 2015; wright & kreissl 2013) and current eu security policy (eas 2015). europeanisation, securitisation and higher education an examination of european public policy can show that the fore-discussed university securitisation is part of a wider process of securitisation in public life; indeed one is integral to the project of europeanisation. we can see, for instance, how in plain terms security now explicitly permeates european public policy agendas. the new eas (eas 2015) thus calls for ‘a more joined-up inter-agency and a cross-sectorial approach’ which ‘[g]iven the increasing nexus between different types of security threats, policy and action on the ground must be fully coordinated amongst all relevant eu agencies, in the area of justice and home affairs and beyond’ (eas 2015:4). apart from those researchers knowledgeable of counter-terrorism in education (ghosh et al. 2016), and those engaged directly in security studies, most university academics might view notions of security as conceptually remote, even alien. yet across europe the eu has instigated protection against state-threatening instability which directly impacts all universities. counter-terrorism policies are here but one element of a new eas, into which universities have now been explicitly drawn (eas 2015). the pan-european eas policy initiative thus makes plain a ‘securitisation’ of europe itself. these ‘cross-border and cross-sectorial’ security threats are seen as originating from ‘instability in the eu’s immediate neighbourhood’ and ‘changing forms of radicalisation, violence and terrorism’. seen as requiring an ‘effective and coordinated response at european level’, the eas sets out how the eu can bring ‘added value to support the member states in ensuring security’. though aware of the need to ‘remain vigilant to other emerging threats that also require a coordinated eu response, the priorities of the eas are stated as ‘terrorism, organised crime and cybercrime’ where ‘strong cross-border dimension, where eu action can make a real difference’ (eas 2015, np). cognisant of ‘the need for further synergies and closer cooperation at all levels’, the eas has still unfolding implications for europe’s educational systems, particularly its universities and is integrally related to perceived threats to the four freedoms. these four freedoms of europe – free movement of capital, goods, services and workers – are economic freedoms that reflect the original vision of european cooperation post-world war ii as a shared market in which business and commercial collaboration would prevent the internecine conflicts which had riven european nations in the previous half century. in this framing, the four freedoms form the ‘substantive law of the european union’ (barnard 2016). this is merely an economic-legal interpretation however relating to the european union as a market. europe’s substantive values, as enshrined in the 1950 european convention for the protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms (echr 2018), the world’s earliest multi-nation collaboration on rights to follow from the united nations’ formation (rainey, wicks & ovey 2017), arguably represent a deeper, structural seam of european values, ones which outstrip in significance the economic. they are also now indelibly securitised, and impact all aspects of european public policy, including that of the universities. the proximity of the four freedoms to the security agendas of europe is evidenced within the lisbon treaty (eu 2007) by the juxtaposition of title iv (‘free movement of persons, services and capital’) and title v (‘area of freedom, security and justice’). on title iv, the lisbon treaty makes plain that the ‘freedom of movement for workers shall be secured within the union’, within the proviso that such freedom is ‘subject to limitations justified on grounds of public policy, public security or public health’. the latter caveat is applied to all the four freedoms. title v makes explicit the inherent connectedness then more explicitly, the link, that is, between security and freedom: ‘the union shall constitute an area of freedom, security and justice with respect for fundamental rights and the different legal systems and traditions of the member states’ (eu 2007). the high status given to universities within the european context is provided by title iii (‘procedure before the court of justice’) wherein (article 19): university teachers being nationals of a member state whose law accords them a right of audience shall have the same rights before the court as are accorded by this article to lawyers. (eu 2007) title xix (‘research and technological development and space’) deals explicitly with university matters, with the objective of strengthening ‘scientific and technological bases by achieving a european research area in which researchers, scientific knowledge and technology circulate freely’ (article 179, 1). thus the union is to ‘encourage undertakings, including small and medium-sized undertakings, research centres and universities in their research and technological development activities’, supporting collaborative efforts’, and ‘aiming, notably, at permitting researchers to cooperate freely across borders and at enabling undertakings to exploit the internal market’ (article 179, 2, eu 2007). article 180 provides obligation for: (a) implementation of research, technological development and demonstration programmes by promoting cooperation with and between undertakings, research centres and universities; (b) promotion of cooperation in the field of union research, technological development and demonstration with third countries and international organisations; (c) dissemination and optimisation of the results of activities in union research, technological development and demonstration and (d) stimulation of the training and mobility of researchers in the union. (eu 2007:n.p.) as a critical factor in a global knowledge economy, europe’s universities are here, then, integral to the four freedoms: educational goods such as publications, research and other ‘products’ of the academy foster trans-national dissemination of knowledge in all academic disciplines; educational institutions and especially universities have ‘workers’ at all levels transferring between different european countries to engage in collaborative work or in the seeking of individual advancement; educational services are freely exchanged between and beyond european nations; and in capital terms universities present particularly good evidence of the movement of finance in terms of research grants, student and staff exchanges, the question of visas and the right to work. the purpose here is to elaborate a general theoretical framing of the link between security agendas and the four freedoms, not to elaborate individual instances of case studies. thus, in terms of general principle, if the four freedoms are essentially statements of economic liberty they reflect the protection of a deeper network of rights and freedoms, and yet also we see part now of the securitising moves of the european union. these security moves represent of necessity (by their nature) a limitation on such freedoms. thus, especially in cases of national but also wider european security there is now an integrated system of protection against the threats to these same freedoms, economic on the one hand (concerned with markets and narrow conceptions of the four freedoms) and on the other a protection against internal and external threats to those freedoms and rights encapsulated by those enshrined in and through the convention for the protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms, and subsequent legislative frameworks (1950; echr 2010). it is for this reason that europe’s intensified security context, established to protect against threats to rights and freedoms has though also been perceived as itself a systemic threat to that which they seek to protect. amnesty’s (ai 2017) dangerously disproportionate thus, for example, defines such securitising moves (largely justified through current climates of terrorism impacting on europe) as symptomatic of an ever-expanding national security state across europe. while acknowledging the ‘need to protect people from such wanton violence’ as ‘obvious and urgent’ and upholding ‘the right to life, enabling people to live freely, to move freely, to think freely … are essential tasks for any government’ these ‘are not tasks that should, or can, be achieved by riding roughshod over the very rights that governments are purporting to uphold’. positing: a profound shift in paradigm across europe: a move from the view that it is the role of governments to provide security so that people can enjoy their rights, to the view that governments must restrict people’s rights in order to provide security. (ai 2017:6) the report examines the ‘national security landscape in europe’ to demonstrate ‘a widespread and deep’ ‘“securitisation” of europe’, including through international, inter-governmental moves beyond but impacting upon europe, notably un security council resolution 2178 (un 2017, and the wider range of 19 international legal instruments countering terrorism; also un 2015). the eu counter-narrative maintains enhanced security freedom-protecting not freedom-denying, that security is necessary and proportionate, and undergirded by five operationalised principles of european value: (1) ‘full compliance with fundamental rights’; (2) enhanced ‘transparency, accountability and democratic control’; (3) ‘application and implementation of existing eu legal instruments’; (4) ‘a more joined-up inter-agency and a cross-sectorial approach’; and (5) a conjoining of ‘all internal and external dimensions of security’ (eas 2015). the resultant picture though is of security permeation across eu policy: the treaty on the functioning of the european union (tfeu 2012) presents in excess of 100 ‘security’ citations determined as defence, military and intelligence engagement; eur lex access to european law in excess of 100 000, across all aspects of eu policy from defence and development, economics and environment, from health through to education. whichever narrative one accepts (too much security, too little liberty; or its converse), security is now a pervasive feature of eu policy and justifies an explicit connectivity between europeanisation and securitisation (cf. agrell 2012; christou et al. 2010; davies & gustafson 2016). specific measures such as the eas show the four freedoms are themselves directly subject to what security theorists call a ‘securitising move’ (taureck 2006). european universities are here an ever-significant element in securitisation (glees 2015). it is possible to argue of course that consideration of such issues of the politics of european security are the call of other disciplines such as politics and international relations, or the burgeoning sub-field of security and intelligence studies. the contention here is that to take such a view is a narrow and parochial interpretation of research in higher education. the case for establishing greater engagement of higher education research in such a securitised europe is a move which necessitates an epistemological broad-mindedness, one which needs must be preceded by a richer frame of contextual explanation and theoretical reference. but such thinking cannot be restricted to europe, nor is it, though at present one of the greatest, most seismic shifts or transformations of higher education worldwide is under-examined ironically perhaps most of all by the very field most impacted by such transformations. europe is thus merely an illustrative case. the global terrorism and counter-terrorism agendas which have been shown recently to have impacts in all disciplines of the academy worldwide means security impacts all universities across all continents, with as yet also under-examined implications for higher education as diverse as research ethics to professional conduct (gearon & parsons 2018). at a time, then, when the european union has arguably never been faced with greater levels of uncertainty and threat within and beyond its borders – however we define the threat narrative or counter-narrative – the challenges facing a securitised europe necessitate a constructive research agenda of integrated thinking. its absence is one of the most critical symptoms of what has itself identified as a generic weakness in linkage of educational research in europe with wider social science communities (lawn et al. 2017). in this instance it is argued here that security is one such new ‘space’ of european educational research which has – epistemologically and operationally – embedded itself into the institutional fabric of european higher education at a systemic level. and it has occurred under the radar of scientific observation by this same community of educational researchers committed to examining a multitude of other power structures without cognisance of the operational linkage between universities and the security and intelligence agencies. the nascent colonisation of global intellectual capital there are wider conclusions to be drawn from this analysis of securitisation theory and university securitisation beyond the scope of this article. we may but merely begin at a rudimentary level in the field of educational research itself, and higher education research perhaps in particular. thus, if the european educational research community is genuinely committed to examining the political processes and the power structures that permeate its institutions it will need – not simply as a matter of relevance or as a commitment to the evidence-based and policy-informed approaches (møller 2017) – at least to recognise security as one of the critical and least examined of all the processes that characterise globalisation. here counter-terrorist policy and legislative agendas have, as has been shown, a naturally high priority. the context of terrorism and counter-terrorism measures has been the impetus for developing public policy to respond to real, imagined and prospective threats which are genuinely existential, that is, life-threatening and societally/politically destabilising. arguably nothing in the past decades has had more impact on global geopolitics than 9/11 and its aftermath. but terrorism and counter-terrorism is only part, a fraction, of the broader picture, the deeper notion of the deep security state. more widely, then, security agendas are re-shaping the milieu of university research in europe itself, and in large measure however without making a substantive contribution to its formative directions. those disciplines related to research agendas and the environments in which these take place: the university. these security agendas, then, are particularly pertinent here as they are a mainstay in the examinations of universities as institutions, as contributors to the generation of new knowledge in the context of power relations of and between state and other actors. within and far beyond educational research, the work of ozga (2011) and others (williams 2012) on the study of leadership, power and elites is not thereby precluded or over-shadowed but it requires revisiting in the light of new securitisations. it can be argued here, too, that a nascent principle is emergent: the integration of security into public policy implies always the permeation of security in public life. security studies theorists have long noted this (e.g. kelstrup & williams 2000). it has been delineated as a move from the ‘convergence’ of security policy to ‘deep integration’ (den boer & wiegand 2015). the role of universities has been less than attenuated. this involvement of higher education institutions now however includes significant legislative obligations for universities, their staff, their students, the research they conduct, and their legal obligations to assist in matters of security (e.g. in the uk, see ctsa 2015). universities are thus ever increasingly integrated into operational security apparatus of states. it has been argued, further, that in this newly securitised european context universities have become important players in often difficult to determine relations with said national security and intelligence agencies. for all university academics this is important, not simply those educational researchers concerned with the power structures which imbue the very (higher) educational systems and structures they are charged with understanding. from the security and intelligence policy perspective, it might also however be noted that they too share concerns for a lack of wider public policy understanding and integration, just as is sometimes framed across european educational research communities. as davies (2010) notes, the failure to address intelligence agencies as public organisations part and parcel with the overt machinery of government constitutes a significant lacuna both in the specialist study of intelligence and the broader discipline of public administration studies. (davies 2010:29) this statement might be more generally applied to the specific functionality here of universities, and of educational research communities across and beyond europe. here, theorisations of a wider and deeper relationship between universities and the modus operandi and rationale of the security and intelligence agencies themselves – a deeper, structural interplay of power designed for the protection against threat – remains not only little investigated but under-theorised, and likely under investigated because little recognised. these security processes, and their implications, are not however singularly european. the tension, for example, between rights and freedoms on the one hand and security on the other is thus far from restricted to a single continent (roux & becker 2019). in specific terms of higher education, the posited integration of universities into the frame of securitisation theory means a potentially wide and deep prospective epistemological transformation of universities worldwide, a shifting locus of what bourdieu famously described as social and cultural capital. cultural capital, as bourdieu has made plain, resides in the three material forms of the embodied state, the objective state and the institutional state, in the embodied state, i.e., in the form of long-lasting dispositions of the mind and body; in the objectified state, in the form of cultural goods (pictures, books, dictionaries, instruments, machines, etc.), which are the trace or realization of theories or critiques of these theories, problematics, etc.; and in the institutionalized state, a form of objectification which must be set apart because, as will be seen in the case of educational qualifications, it confers entirely original properties on the cultural capital which it is presumed to guarantee. (bourdieu 1986:243) for such reasons institutions of higher education, principally universities but also institutes of higher learning and research, remain still the primary means of knowledge generation, dissemination and above all validation. if social capital is ‘the aggregate of the actual or potential resources which are linked to possession of a durable network of more or less institutionalised relationships of mutual acquaintance and recognition’, these relations, which may exist in the practical state of ‘material and/or symbolic exchanges’ which maintain them, or be ‘socially instituted and guaranteed’ through ‘a whole set of instituting acts designed simultaneously to form and inform those who undergo them’, are based upon ‘indissolubly material and symbolic exchanges’, a ‘proximity’, in, that is, physical (geographical) space or even in economic and social space (bourdieu 1986: 248–249). the space within which present considerations are based is europe and its universities, but our analysis opens up possibilities for comparative international studies of universities worldwide, wherever, that is, a process of enabling such protection against threat becomes part of a process of securitisation. if, deferring to bourdieu, we can note that the ‘volume of the social capital possessed by a given agent’ (a term here used without irony) ‘depends on the size of the network of connections he [sic] can effectively mobilise and on the volume of the capital (economic, cultural or symbolic) possessed in his [sic] own right by each of those to whom he is connected’ (bourdieu 1986:248–249). the profits thus gained from membership of the group accrue from membership itself and ‘are the basis of the solidarity which makes them possible’ (bourdieu 1986:248–249). so, we may consider again europe’s four freedoms. across european universities these goods, workers and services are the means of transference of academic capital. it is academic capital which is at stake in a securitised europe. in the sense which bourdieu has it capital is not merely an economic factor but cultural and social. we can put it like this. the academic capital of the four freedoms is economic and intellectual, the goods, workers and services are the means of transfer in geographical/geopolitical but also in ideological senses. here, as we have tried to show, securitisation is the process by which such economic and intellectual capital is protected from threat, actual and imagined. if the new university security environment is defined by multiple, complex and contested threat narratives and counter-narratives (croft & moore 2010; glazzard 2017), such narratives/counter-narratives lead us, then, to raise questions of and around whose interests are under threat. as has been noted from the outset, such considerations should not of course be deemed as an entirely new project. it should be seen as part of that intellectual tradition of europe’s influential thinkers – arendt, berlin, again bourdieu, camus, foucault, gadamer, habermas, heidegger, levi, levi-strauss, marx, sartre – and those within and beyond europe who have been the fiercest critics of a perceived, inherent imperialism of western modernity, such as césaire, chomsky, fanon, said. these collectively represent a tradition of criticality, a public critique of the social and political order within and beyond universities. this has become renewed and enlivened by strongly contested debates around colonisation and the curriculum. this colonial/postcolonial democratisation of public voice and discourse is also in some part a realisation of bourdieu’s (1986) hopes of an enlarging distribution of knowledge to break down ossified structures of economic, social and cultural capital as an inherently unjust and unequal distribution of power. if these relationships between knowledge and power also pre-eminently preoccupied foucault (1970, 1972, 1977, 2009, 2010), the particular and specific implications of such relationships for universities in the light of newly securitised higher education environments – and university researchers’ relations to democratised knowledge – has barely begun to be explored. here, universities themselves have growing importance in a wide range of security narratives and related social policy developments. the prevalence of universities and their foundational work of knowledge construction and dissemination are fundamental in the free movement of academics and the exchange of knowledge between peoples, as the most powerful of all social and cultural capitals. it is reasonable to propose, then, that educational researchers here need to play a (more) significant role in conceptualising, evidencing and above all theorising such developments. if it is not unfashionable or uncritical to suggest educational research merits though it has perhaps not as yet deserved an intellectual lead, one which recognises that the security processes which permeate our higher educational systems are there because of a fundamental systemic insecurity. the role of the university itself in this transformation, this securitisation, has until of late been curiously neglected from the literature of security studies, just as it has from the literature on higher education. and it is an important missing component as universities remain important sources in not only the discovery but also the definition of knowledge. if universities themselves can be said to have become, or are becoming, themselves increasingly securitised environments, the relationship between knowledge and security is critical. when we examine how universities have increasingly become security environments and as environments of knowledge generation, preservation and dissemination, we may indeed be witnessing a new and ever more explicit manifestation of the correlations between knowledge and power, much and pre-eminently noted by foucault (1970), bourdieu (1986), herman and chomsky (1995), and so forth. postcolonial critiques have also long recognised the critical significance of cultural knowledge as much as economic and military control to the enterprises of colonialism and imperialism (for instance, bhabha 2004; césaire 2000; fanon 2001; mishra 2013; said 1994). in terms of the university, often very intense debates rage today in higher education institutions across continents between the colonised and former colonised over the form, content and interpretation of the curriculum. often framed in terms of ‘decolonising the curriculum’ such debates are live and often inflammatory in europe as much as say in africa, a useful review is presented by the south african council on higher education (che 2017). the addition of a securitisation framing to such debates may help provide understanding of real engagements of power in postcolonial university contexts. as importantly, while using a predominantly european focus, such applications of security theory can open new perspectives to show that securitisation and university securitisation go hand in hand. these are inherently deep level impacts that cannot be limited to any single continent. they are indeed likely to illuminate the epistemological power that still permeates university pedagogy and research as much as it does postcolonial politics. conclusion this article has attempted, then, to address these issues as defining characteristics of securitisation which is now in subtle and yet powerful ways integral to europeanisation as it is to current debates around decolonisation, within and beyond the university curriculum. this process of securitisation can and should thus be seen as part of that intellectual tradition of european thinkers – and those thinkers, postcolonial and others critical of the european project – whose lifework was the critical assessment of power structures in societal context, where educational institutions are the mainstay of both its maintenance and potentially the means for its transformation. there are, naturally, other interpretive lenses here. one of the notable ways to conceive the matter is through the idea that collectively modern societies are evermore threat-aware and risk-averse, that we live, wherever we live, in a ‘risk society’, increasingly alert to real and imagined present and future dangers, of threats to peace, security, prosperity, flourishing, individual and social well-being (bauman & donskis 2013; beck 1992; furedi 2004, 2006, 2016; also wiener et al. 2010). it may indeed be the case that these perceived and actual risks create their own threat narratives and counter-narratives. undoubtedly it is so. but, as this article shows, arguably too the dominant response to such has been and continues to be narratives and counter-narratives of threat which require a security framework and a security response. bauman and donskis (2013) importantly here define the notion of ‘liquid modernity’ where a ‘moral blindness’ makes any threat response equivocal and uncertain – here, it is possible to suggest that understanding the powers within and beyond the university which seek epistemological dominance (control of the narrative) is all the more imperative. nor is it easy to deny the increasing predominance of security in the discourse of public policy. the analysis raised further questions here. in all of this the power of knowledge cannot be under-emphasised. securitised knowledge is a very powerful political instrument. the what, the how, and the who for (and indeed who is behind) knowledge become paramount. are securitised universities a re-colonisation? if first generation colonialism was premised on economic principles and masked by epistemological violence in the name of civilisation, is the securitisation of the university a re-colonisation, a new, a global colonisation, of epistemologies masked as the protection of freedoms and security from threat and fear? security theorists have themselves recognised this connection, williams (2011) thus defining ‘the liberalism of fear’. fear, justified and actual, in the human and present-day societal setting have thus created a world in which security has become a dominant discourse. who determines such discourse and who actuates responses to threat is part and parcel of securitisation theory itself. its relevance to our knowledge of ourselves in these states of (in-)security makes this, as the security theorists tell us, a matter not simply of labels of existential threat. we may yet venture to suggest that our present epistemological preoccupations are also permeated by a deep-seated sense of ontological fragility. the current transformation of universities by security agendas thus becomes an epistemological duty, a political and social responsibility, as well as an ontological and existential necessity. acknowledgements competing interests the author declares that no competing interest exists. authors’ contributions i declare that i am the sole author of this research article. ethical considerations due ethical considerations were taken; this is a philosophical piece not including empirical study of human subjects. funding this research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors data availability statement data sharing is not applicable to this article as no new data were created or analysed in this study. disclaimer the views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any affiliated agency of the author. references adler, e. & barnett, m. (eds.), 1998, security communities, cambridge university press, cambridge. agrell, w., 2012, ‘the next 100 years? reflections on the future of intelligence’, intelligence and national security 27(1), 118–132. ai, 2017, dangerously disproportionate: the ever-expanding national security stare in europe, amnesty international, viewed 27 may 2019, from https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/eur01/5342/2017/en/. albert, m. & buzan, b., 2011, ‘securitization, sectors and functional differentiation’, security dialogue 42(4–5), 413–425. aldrich, r.j., 2019, gchq, penguin, london. aldrich, r.j. & cormac, r., 2016. the black door: spies, secret intelligence and british prime ministers, william collins, london. aldrich, r.j., cormac, r. & goodman, m.s., 2014, spying on the world the declassified documents of the joint intelligence committee, 1936–2013, edinburgh university press, edinburgh. andrew, c., 2010, the defence of the realm: the authorized history of mi5, penguin, london. andrew, c., 2018, the secret world, allen lane, london. argomaniz, j., 2009. ‘post-9/11 institutionalisation of european union counterterrorism, emergence, acceleration and inertia’, european security 18(2), 151–172. argomaniz, j., bures, o. & kaunert, c., 2014, ‘a decade of eu counter-terrorism and intelligence, a critical assessment’, intelligence and national security 30(2–3), 191–206. arthur, j., 2015, ‘extremism and neo-liberal education policy: a contextual critique of the trojan horse affair in birmingham schools’, british journal of education studies 63(3), 311–328. bagge laustsen, c. & waever, o., 2000, ‘in defence of religion: sacred referent objects for securitisation’, millennium: journal of international studies 29(3), 705–739. bakker, e., 2014. ‘eu counter-radicalization policies: a comprehensive and consistent approach?’, intelligence and national security 30(2–3), 281–305. barnard, c., 2016, the substantive law of the eu: the four freedoms, 5th edn., oxford university press, oxford. bauman, z. & donskis, l., 2013, moral blindness: the loss of sensitivity in liquid modernity, polity, cambridge, england. beck, u., 1992, risk society: towards a new modernity, sage, london. bellaby, r., 2012, ‘eu counter-radicalisation policies, a comprehensive and consistent approach intelligence and national security’, intelligence and national security 30(2–3), 93–117. bhabha, h., 2004, the location of culture, routledge, london. bigo, d., 2002, ‘security and immigration: toward a critique of the governmentality of unease’, alternatives 27(1), 63–92. bourdieu, p., 1986, ‘the forms of capital’, in j. richardson (ed.), handbook of theory and research for the sociology of education, pp. 241–258, greenwood, westport, ct. buzan, b. & hansen, l., 2009, the evolution of international security studies, cambridge university press, cambridge. buzan, b. & waever, o., 1997, ‘slippery? contradictory? sociologically untenable? the copenhagen school replies’, review of international studies 23(2), 241–250. buzan, b., waever, o. & de wilde, j., 1998, security: a new framework for analysis, lynne rienner, boulder, co. césaire, a., 2000, discourse and colonialism, monthly review press, new york. che, 2017, decolonising the curriculum: stimulating debate, council on higher education, viewed 27 may 2019, from https://www.che.ac.za/sites/default/files/publications/brieflyspeaking%20(3)%20curriculum%20decolonisation.pdf. chilcot, j., 2016, the iraq inquiry, viewed 27 may 2019, from www.iraqinquiry.org.uk/the-report. christou, g., croft, s., ceccorulli, n. & lucarelli, s., 2010, ‘european union security governance: putting the “security” back in’, european security 19(3), 341–359. collins, a. (ed.), 2017, contemporary security studies, oxford university press, oxford. collins, a. (ed.), 2018, contemporary security studies, oxford university press, oxford. croft, s. & moore, c., 2010, ‘the evolution of threat narratives in the age of terror: understanding terrorist threats in britain’, international affairs 86(4), 821–835. ctsa, 2015, counter terrorism and security act 2015, uk government, london. dale, r. & robertson, s. (eds.), 2009, globalisation and europeanisation in education, symposium, oxford. davies, l., 2016, ‘security, extremism and education: safeguarding or surveillance?’, british journal of educational studies 64(1), 1–19. davies, p., 2010, ‘intelligence and the machinery of government: conceptualising the intelligence community’, public policy and administration 25(1) 29–46. davies, p. & gustafson, k., 2016, intelligence elsewhere: spies and espionage outside the anglosphere, georgetown university press, washington, dc. de graaff, b., 2018, intelligence bibliography, viewed 27 may 2019, from http://www.iafie-europe.org/sites/iafie/files/intelligence%20bibliography%20%28last%20update%20%203%20march%202017%29.pdf. den boer, m., 2015, ‘counter-terrorism, security and intelligence in the eu: governance challenges for collection, exchange and analysis’, intelligence and national security 30(2–3), 281–305. den boer, m. & wiegand, i., 2015, from convergence to deep integration: evaluating the impact of eu counter-terrorism strategies on domestic arenas’, intelligence and national security 30(2–3), 377–401. dulles, a., 2006, the craft of intelligence, the lyons press, guilford, ct. dunn cavelty, m. & balzacq, t. (eds.), 2016, the routledge handbook of security studies, routledge, london. durodie, b., 2016, ‘securitising education to prevent terrorism or losing direction?’, british journal of educational studies 64(1), 21–35. eas, 2015, european agenda on security, european commission, brussels, viewed 27 may 2019, from https://ec.europa.eu/home-affairs/what-we-do/policies/european-agenda-security_en. echr, 2018, european convention on human rights, viewed 27 may 2019, from https://www.echr.coe.int/documents/convention_eng.pdf. eu, 2007, the treaty of lisbon, european parliament, strasbourg, viewed 27 may 2019, from http://www.europarl.europa.eu/about-parliament/en/in-the-past/the-parliament-and-the-treaties/treaty-of-lisbon. european council, 2017, european council conclusions on security and defence, social dimensions, education and culture, and climate change, european council, brussels, viewed 27 may 2019, from http://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2017/12/14/european-council-conclusions/. fanon, f., 2001, the wretched of the earth, penguin, london. foucault, m., 1970, the order of things, tavistock, london. foucault, m., 1972, the archaeology of knowledge, pantheon, new york. foucault, m., 1977, discipline and punish, allen lane, london. foucault, m., 2009, security, territory, population, picador, new york. foucault, m., 2010, the birth of biopolitics, picador, new york. furedi, f., 2004, therapy culture: cultivating vulnerability in an uncertain age, routledge, london. furedi, f., 2006, culture of fear revisited: risk-taking and the morality of low expectation, continuum, london. furedi, f., 2016, what’s happened to the university?, routledge, london. gcrf, 2019, global challenges research fund, research councils uk, swindon, viewed 27 may 2019, from http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/funding/gcrf/laruelle francois has recently detailed in conversation with petit philippe (francois 2015). gearon, l. (ed.), 2015, ‘education, security and intelligence studies’, british journal of educational studies 63(3), 263–411. gearon, l. (ed.), 2017a, education, security and intelligence studies, routledge, london and new york. gearon, l., 2017b, ‘the counter-terrorist campus: securitisation theory and university securitisation – three models’, transformation in higher education 2, np. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v2i0.13 gearon, l., 2018, ‘terrorism and counter-terrorism policy and research in uk universities (1997–2017): an analytic-structural review of the literature and related sources’, policy reviews in higher education 2(1), 32–60. https://doi.org/10.1080/23322969.2018.1424561 gearon, l. (ed.), 2019, the routledge international handbook of universities, security and intelligence studies, routledge, london and new york. gearon, l. & parsons, s., 2019, ‘research ethics in the securitised university’, journal of academic ethics 17(1) 73–93. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10805-018-9317-2 gearon, l. & wynne-davies, m. 2019 ‘literature and security: cia engagement in the arts – what philosophers of education need to know and why’, journal of philosophy of education 54(2), 742–761. ghosh, r., manuel, a., chan, w.y.a., dilimulati, m. & babaei, m., 2016, education and security: a global literature review on the role of education in countering violent religious extremism, tony blair institute for global change, viewed 27 may 2019, from https://institute.global/sites/default/files/inline-files/igc_education%20and%20security.pdf. glazzard, a., 2017, ‘losing the plot: narrative, counter-narrative and violent extremism’, international centre for counter-terrorism – the hague 8(8). https://doi.org/10.19165/2017.1.08 glees, a., 2015, ‘intelligence studies, universities and security’, british journal of educational studies 63(3), 281–310. goldman, j. (ed.), 2009, ethics of spying, a reader for the intelligence professional, scarecrow press, lanham, md. goldman, j., 2011, words of intelligence, an intelligence professional’s lexicon for domestic and foreign threats, 2nd edn., scarecrow press, lanham, md. greenwald, g., 2015, no place to hide, edward snowden, the nsa and the surveillance state, picador, london. harding, l., 2014, the snowden files, the inside story of the world’s most wanted man, guardian faber books, london. herman, m., 1996, intelligence power in peace and war, cambridge university press, cambridge. herman, e.s. & chomsky, n., 1995, manufacturing consent: the political economy of the mass media, vintage, london. hough, p., 2014, environmental security: an introduction, routledge, london. hough, p., malik, s., moran, a. & pilbeam, b., 2015. international security studies, routledge, london. huysmans, j., 1998, ‘revisiting copenhagen: or, on the creative development of a security studies agenda in europe’, european journal of international relations 4(4), 479–505. iriss, 2015, increasing resilience in surveillance societies, viewed 27 may 2019, from http://irissproject.eu/. jeffery, k., 2011, mi6: the history of the secret intelligence service 1909-1949, penguin, london. johnson, l.k. (ed.), 2012, the oxford handbook of national security intelligence, oxford university press, oxford. johnson, l.k., 2018, spywatching, oxford university press, oxford. kelstrup, m. & williams, m.c. (eds.), 2000, international relations theory and the politics of european integration: power, security and community, routledge, london. lawn, m., grek, s., papanastasiou, n. & rönnberg, l., 2017, eerj moot, viewed 27 may 2019, from http://www.eera-ecer.de/ecer-2017-copenhagen/programme-central-events/eerj-moot/. leigh, d. & harding, l., 2011, wikileaks, inside julian assange’s war on secrecy, faber guardian, london. leonard, s., 2015, ‘border controls as a dimension of the european union’s counter-terrorism policy: a critical assessment’, intelligence and national security 30(2–3), 306–332. lowenthal, m.m. & clark, r.m., 2015, the five disciplines of intelligence collection, cq press, thousand oaks, ca. mishra, p., 2013, from the ruins of empire: the revolt against the west and the remaking of asia, picador, london. møller, j., 2017, ‘leading education beyond what works’, european educational research journal 16(4), 375–385. monar, j., 2015, ‘the eu as an international counter-terrorism actor: progress and constraints’, intelligence and national security 30(2–3), 333–356. o’donnell, a., 2017, ‘pedagogical injustice and counter-terrorist education’, education, citizenship and social justice 12(2), 177–193. omand, d. & phythian, m., 2013, ‘ethics and intelligence: a debate’, international journal of intelligence and counterintelligence 26(1), 38–63. omand, d. & phythian, m., 2018, principled spying: the ethics of secret intelligence, oxford university press, oxford. ozga, j., 2011, ‘researching the powerful: seeking knowledge about policy’, european educational research journal 10(2), 218–224. palys, t. & lowman, j., 2012, ‘defending research confidentiality “to the extent the law allows:” lessons from the boston college subpoenas’, journal of academic ethics 10, 271. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10805-012-9172-5 peoples, c., 2014, critical security studies, routledge, london. peoples, c. & vaughan-williams, c., 2010, critical security studies: an introduction, routledge, new york. rainey, b., wicks, e. & ovey, c., 2017, the european convention on human rights, 7th edn., oxford university press, oxford. richardson, r., 2015, ‘british values and british identity: muddles, mixtures, and ways ahead’, london review of education 13(2), 37–48. robertson, s.l., olds, k., dale, r. & anh dang, q. (eds.), 2016, global regionalisms and higher education: projects, processes, politics, elgar, cheltenham. roux, c. & becker, a. (eds.), 2019, human rights literacies: future directions, springer, new york. russell group, 2015, russell group response to the consultation on the counter-terrorism bill draft statutory guidance, viewed 27 may 2019, from http://www.russellgroup.ac.uk/uploads/57-russell-group-response-to-consultation-on-the-prevent-duty-guidance-as-described-by-the-counter-terrorism-and-secrurity-bill-2015.pdf. said, e., 1994, culture and imperialism, vintage, london. schmid, a.p., 2011, the routledge handbook of terrorism research, routledge, london. seiple, c., hoover, d.r. & otis, p. (eds.), 2015, routledge handbook of religion and security, routledge, london. shore, c. & taitz, m., 2012, ‘who “owns” the university? institutional autonomy and academic freedom in an age of knowledge capitalism’, globalisation, societies and education 10(2), 201–219. shulsky, a.n., 2001, silent warfare, understanding the world of intelligence, 3rd edn., brassey’s, new york. sieckelinck, s., kaulingfreks, f. & de winter, m., 2015, ‘neither villains nor victims: towards an educational perspective on radicalisation’, british journal of educational studies 63(3), 329–343. sinclair, a., 1987, the red and the blue: intelligence, treason and the universities, hodder & stoughton, london. stonor saunders, f., 2013, the cultural cold war: the cia and the world of arts and letters, the new press, new york. taureck, r., 2006, ‘securitisation theory and securitisation studies’, journal of international relations and development (9), 53–61. technopolis, 2015, final evaluation of security research under the seventh framework programme for research, technological development and demonstration: final report, european commission, brussels. tfeu, 2012, treaty on the functioning of the european union, access to european law, eur, viewed 27 may 2019, from https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/en/txt/?uri=celex%3a12012e%2ftxt. tilley, n., bouhana, n. & braithwaite, a., 2014, evaluation of the esrc/fco/ahrc new security challenges, radicalisation and violence – a critical assessment initiative, esrc, london, viewed 27 may 2019, from http://www.esrc.ac.uk/files/research/evaluation-and-impact/new-security-challenges-radicalisation-and-violence-initiative/. un, 2015, framework for cooperation for the system-wide application of human security, viewed 27 may 2019, from https://www.un.org/humansecurity/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/framework-for-cooperation-for-the-system-wide-application-of-human-security.pdf. un, 2017, transnational threats, united nations, geneva, viewed 27 may 2019, from https://www.un.org/ruleoflaw/thematic-areas/transnational-threats/. uuk, 2011, freedom of speech on campus, rights and responsibilities in uk universities, viewed 27 may 2019, from http//www.universitiesuk.ac.uk/highereducation/documents/2011/freedomofspeechoncampus.pdf. uuk, 2012, oversight of security-sensitive research material in uk universities, guidance, viewed 27 may 2019, from http://www.universitiesuk.ac.uk/highereducation/pages/oversightofsecuritysensitiveresearchmaterial.aspx#.vssqee3bloy. uuk, 2013, external speakers in higher education institutions, universities uk, london. uuk, 2016, universities and counter-terrorism, universities uk, viewed 27 may 2019, from http://www.universitiesuk.ac.uk/policy-and-analysis/pages/universities-and-counter-terrorism.aspx. van munster, r., 2016, securitization, oxford bibliographies, oxford, viewed 27 may 2019, from http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780199743292/obo-9780199743292-0091.xml. wæver, o., 1995, ‘securitization and desecuritization’, in lipschutz, r.d. (ed.), on security, pp. 46–86, columbia university press, new york. weiner, t., 2012, legacy of ashes: the history of the cia, penguin, london. wiener, j.b., rogers, m.d., hammitt, j.k. & sand, p.h., 2010, the reality of precaution: comparing risk regulation in the united states and europe, rff press, new york. williams, c., 2012, researching power, elites and leadership, sage, london. williams, m.c., 2003, ‘words, images, enemies: securitization and international politics’, international studies quarterly 47(4), 511–531. williams, m.c., 2011, ‘securitization and the liberalism of fear, security dialogue 42(4–5), 453–464. williams, p. & mcdonald, m. (eds.), 2018, security studies: an introduction, routledge, london. winks, r.w., 1987, cloak & gown, scholars in the secret war, 1939–1961, william morrow and company, inc., new york. wright, d. & kreissl, r., 2013, european responses to the snowden revelations, iriss, viewed 27 may 2019, from http//irissproject.eu/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/iriss_european-responses-to-the-snowden-revelations_18-dec-2013_final.pdf. abstract introduction principlism and rational self-interest the stellenbosch university case complexity of ethics in the contemporary university conclusion: towards an immanent ethics acknowledgements references footnotes about the author(s) lesley le grange department of curriculum studies, faculty of education, stellenbosch university, cape town, south africa citation le grange, l., 2020, ‘research ethics: examining the tension between principlism and rational self-interest in a neoliberal university context’, transformation in higher education 5(0), a88. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v5i0.88 original research research ethics: examining the tension between principlism and rational self-interest in a neoliberal university context lesley le grange received: 27 june 2020; accepted: 17 aug. 2020; published: 15 oct. 2020 copyright: © 2020. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract background: the reconfiguration of the contemporary university as a consequence of the (re)ascendency of neoliberal politics has not escaped south african universities. the higher education landscape in the country is characterised by performativity regimes – discourses on quality assurance, efficiency and accountability abound and so too modes of regulation based on rewards, sanctions and censorship. aim: the article explores the extent to which these two conflicting ethical discourses (principlism and rational self-interest) have a bearing on a south african case that resulted in an investigation into research misconduct at a south african university. setting: the broader setting is the neoliberal university. the specific setting is stellenbosch university. as is the case with many western(ised) universities, this higher education institution has not escaped neoliberal influences. methods: the methods used combine conceptual exploration supported by a case study. the usage of case in this study does not refer to how it is typically used in qualitative research. the focus is not on a bounded system but on the narrative essence of the case, more akin to the usage of ‘case’ in law and medicine. results: the philosophical tensions between the two discourses on ethics might be overcome by refocusing the university on the public good, instead of valorising the individual. conclusion: overcoming the philosophical tensions between the two discourses might only be possible through recognising the value of an immanent rather than a transcendent ethics. keywords: ethical regulation; immanent ethics; neoliberal; principlism; rational self-interest. introduction the landscape of the contemporary university has changed radically because of the adoption of neoliberal policies and the emergence of knowledge societies driven by the global knowledge economy. according to sutherland-smith and satmarsh (2011), contemporary universities have been reconfigured as engines of economic growth, which has led to the erosion of ethical principles, and conduct in universities is ‘now driven by corporate interest, competitive individualism, and the intensification of audit and surveillance regimes’. ball (2003) points out that performativity produces fabrications, that is, the presentation of self within particular registers of meaning in which only certain possibilities of being have value. in the neoliberal university, we are witnessing a phenomenon coined by haggerty (2004), called ‘ethics creep’. ethics creep refers to the expansion of ethical regulation from the biomedical sciences to the human and social sciences – referred to by some as the biomedicalisation of the humanities and social sciences. about ethics creep, haggerty (2004) writes: [i]t involves a dual process whereby the regulatory structure of the ethics bureaucracy is expanding outward, colonizing new groups, practices, and institutions, while at the same time intensifying the regulation of practices deemed to fall within its official ambit. (p. 394) for guta, nixon and wilson (2013), what we are witnessing in the contemporary (neoliberal) university is a shift from professional ethics rooted in academic norms to the codification of ethics through ethical regulation by external review bodies. this shift, they argue, has created consternation amongst researchers regarding issues listed here. ethical reviews are often reduced to tick-box exercises. works of review boards are not transparent – they are often secretive. there is a lack of consistency in interpretation and application of review boards. some forms of inquiry are burdened and others are privileged by ethical reviews. approaches to ethics are rooted in positivism and a biomedical conception of harm. ethics creep has been linked with the erosion of academic freedom. the latter concern is relevant to the case that will be described, and with particular reference to how ethical regulation can result in censorship. censorship in this context refers to restrictions placed on the freedom of the researcher or author to speak in particular ways (guta et al. 2013). the case that will be presented later relates to an investigation into research misconduct (in relation to ethics) at stellenbosch university in south africa. stellenbosch university is south africa’s second oldest university and one of a few research-intensive universities in the country. the university is historically white and afrikaans but its monocultural identity has been (and is being) challenged in post-apartheid south africa. the case provides a rare opportunity for learning and reflection because the information about the case is already in the public domain. but, such learning and reflection could have broader application given the normalising and homogenising effects of neoliberal policies on the contemporary university. kruger, ndebele and horn (2014) point out that the first documented cases of ethical review on the african continent were recorded in south africa. the first research ethics committee (rec) on health research that was established in south africa was at the university of witwatersrand in 1966. today, there are recs at most of the south african public universities and at two private higher education institutions and 17 non-academic institutions (kruger et al. 2014). at stellenbosch university, there are currently three different recs: one for human research, one for biomedical research and one for animal research. in this article, i discuss two oppositional ethical discourses (principlism and rational self-interest), which co-exist in the contemporary (neoliberal) university, and examine the extent to which these discourses play out in the stellenbosch university case involving an investigation into ‘research misconduct’ by a phd student. i suggest that ameliorating the tensions produced by the two competing ethical discourses might only be possible through recognising the value of an immanent instead than a transcendent ethics. i divide the discussion of the rest of the article into the following sections: principlism and rational self-interest the stellenbosch university case complexity of ethics in the contemporary university conclusion: towards an immanent ethics. principlism and rational self-interest in her article entitled confessions of an ethics committee chair, halse (2011:239) shifts the angle of vision from the procedural, bureaucratic effects of regulatory ethics to an interrogation ‘of the possibilities of being in the academy and being an ethical researcher within the ethics of principlism’. principlism is an ethical framework based on normative principles that guide research performed on human subjects. the most well-known ethical principles used to guide research involving human subjects are those specified by beauchamp and childress (1985): autonomy (the ability of a rational person to make a decision to participate in research or not), beneficence (the benefits of the research justifying its risks), non-maleficence (no harm will to be done to research subjects) and justice (that the benefits and risks of research should be fairly distributed). halse (2011) argues that as an ethical framework, principlism is not based on a single, coherent ethical theory but a set of principles which is a blend of different philosophical perspectives: kant (autonomy), mills (beneficence), gert (non-maleficence) and rawls (justice). beauchamp and childress (1985) pointed out the four principles that they specified were not intended to be a general moral theory but to provide a framework to assist those working in medicine to identify moral problems and to make decisions in solving such problems. it is important to note that principlism has its origin in the field of medicine. however, as a consequence of the biomedicalisation of the social sciences and humanities, it has been applied more generally. principlism has been critiqued by several scholars. walker (2009) distinguishes between principlism as a descriptive claim and principlism as a normative claim. principlism as a descriptive claim relates to the actual moral norms shared by all morally serious people. principlism as normative claim concerns what moral norms ought to be shared by all morally serious people. walker (2009) argues that as both a descriptive claim and a normative claim, principlism based on the four principles specified by beauchamp and childress is inadequate. he avers that the four principles do not capture common morality because there are culture-specific moral norms which beauchamp and childress’s principles do not incorporate. principlism as normative claim means that all moral norms that are universalisable are included. walker (2009) argues that if this is true then principlists need to explain why morality is so narrowly constrained (to only include beauchamp and childress’s principles). walker proposes two solutions to address principlism as descriptive claim and normative claim. he suggests that there are only two options for principlists: to add more universalisable principles so that common morality is more adequately captured; or, to move to more culture-specific versions of principlism, which would in most cases include more than the current four principles. de marco (2005) argues that principlism has resolved moral dilemmas in two basic ways: only one prima facie obligation entails a genuine obligation; and, all obligations are genuine, so a moral residue results, which manifests in moral regret or a derived moral obligation such as compensation. for example, a medical practitioner promises to take her partner to dinner on his birthday, but receives a call to say that she is needed at the hospital because of an increase number of covid-19 patients. the doctor has a moral dilemma, her promise to her partner versus her obligation to save lives. de marco (2005), argues that for principlists, there is only one genuine obligation and that is for the medical practitioner to save lives. but this results in moral regret because a promise has been broken. the medical practitioner could of course do something such as to book a weekend away for the two of them as a means of compensation. de marco (2005) argues that such a scenario is unsatisfactory and proposes that a new principle be added to the four established principles, the mutuality principle. this principle involves the process of ensuring the mutual enhancement of all basic principles. he argues that the mutuality principle adds coherence to a system of moral values. for de marco (2005), ‘mutual enhancement means, at the minimum, that the enhancement of one value should not be at the cost of another’. so in this example, the conflict could have been avoided by the medical practitioner saying to her partner that they would go to dinner to celebrate the partner’s birthday, but if she is called to the hospital she would have to postpone the dinner and would also say what the alternative arrangement might be. not only does principlism have its origin in the field of ethics, but debates on principlism have also mainly occurred in the field of medical ethics. however, principlism has migrated into other fields through ethical regulation, which is the consequence of ethics creep. in this migration into other fields, the critical debates on principlism have not been incorporated and ethical regulation-based on beauchamp and childress’s principles continue to be used whether in a modified or revised form. in fact, principlism has become the foundation of regulatory frameworks and drives decision-making of university recs in many universities of anglophone countries. different countries and universities have adapted the sets of principles mentioned above to guide research conducted on or with human subjects by their academics and students. for example, australia’s national statement on ethical conduct in human research (nhmrc, arc & ua 2007) states that research conducted in the country should be guided by the following principles: research merit and integrity (that research should be theoretically, empirically and methodologically rigorous), justice, beneficence and respect (that the privacy, confidentiality and dignity of participants are respected). in south africa, the department of health (2015) has identified the following ethical principles that should guide health research: beneficence and non-maleficence, distributive justice (equality) and respect for persons (dignity and autonomy). according to stellenbosch university’s standard operating procedure (sop) for its rec, ‘[s]ocial, behavioural and educational research, all provisions for health research in national policies and laws should be adhered to in so far as they are relevant to research conducted in the social sciences and the humanities’ (stellenbosch university 2019). halse (2011) contrasts the principlism of regulatory ethics with that of rational self-interest and argues that the former is the antithesis of the latter. she points out that rational self-interest is a philosophy that originated in the work of english philosopher henry sigwick (1874) and was developed further by others, including ayan rand (1964). rational self-interest is a normative ethics that gives primacy to the personal interests of the researcher (in this instance) so that the well-being of others is secondary. halse (2011), however, points out that rational egoism or self-interest1 is not a licence to do as one pleases because the interest must be driven by a rational reason. nor does it mean that rational judgements and the actions that flow from them are immoral. as baier (1993) writes: [rational egoists are not] self-centred, inconsiderate, unfeeling, unprincipled, ruthless self-aggrandizers, pursuers of good things in life whatever the cost to others, people who think about themselves or, if about the other, than merely as a means to their own ends. (p. 7) the interest of the other is, however, subordinate to that of the self. giving attention to the notion of rational self-interest is important because it ‘has become the defining feature of the moral economy of universities under neo-liberalism and new public management’ (halse 2011:248). much has been written about the influence of neoliberal ideology on the contemporary university, which is characterised by performativity regimes, audit cultures, economic rationalism, placing value on the individual, managerialism and so forth (see le grange 2009; olssen & peters 2005; peters 2007, 2013; rose 1999). there is no need to rehearse this discussion here. suffice it to say, neoliberal ideology has radically changed the nature of the university in relation to its management, academic organisation, systems of regulation and control, introduction of incentives, changes to promotion criteria, workloads, behaviours of academics and so forth. why is the distinction between principlism and rational self-interest pertinent to our discussion? halse (2011) argues that the ethics of principlism and rational self-interest are two competing and opposing discourses on ethics that co-exist in the contemporary university. moreover, that the irreconcilable philosophical conflict of these discourses raises the critical question of whether it is possible to be an ethical researcher in the contemporary university. the core of the conflict is the fact that rational self-interest overrides the notion of the singular responsibility to others, which is at the heart of an ethics of principlism. the discussion on principlism and rational self-interest as well as matters discussed in the introduction provide the backdrop for examining the stellenbosch university case with the aim of exploring to what extent principlism as ethics and rational self-interest have a bearing on the case; what is the possibility of being an ethical researcher in a context such as stellenbosch university; how to register the possibility of an immanent ethics in the contemporary university. the stellenbosch university case my invocation of the term ‘case’ is not akin to its conventional usage in case study research whereby case study refers to an inquiry into a contemporary phenomenon in a real-life context and uses a range of different methods. my usage of case relates to what herreid (1997:92) has so succinctly put, ‘cases are stories with a message’. demez (2015) elaborates on this understanding of case: ‘the emphasis here is not on the border but on the narrative essence of the case, in relation with a theoretical issue, beyond the didactic one (the message)’. this understanding of case is relatively unexplored in higher education studies and is probably more closely related to the usage of ‘case’ in law and medicine. the stellenbosch university case therefore is a narrative constructed to illuminate the tension between principlism and rational self-interest in social research. the narrative is constructed from five journal publications produced on it (horn et al. 2016; lüdemann 2017; stolp 2016a, 2016b; walton 2017). it begins with a summary (see box 1) of the events as they occurred chronologically and augmented with direct quotes from the articles and the investigating committee (ic) report.5 box 1: the summary. subsequent to the completion of the original ic report a number of articles were published on the case in question. the first was an article by stolp (2016a) in which she argues that ideological differences in the department of music, which also reared its head in the proposal approval stage of her thesis, was the catalyst for what unfolded in this instance. she avers that academic freedom and freedom of speech in the post-apartheid south african university is being curtailed as a consequence of the ‘managerial turn’ in university management and in particular the utilisation of ethical regulation in humanities research. she argues that in her own case, ‘managerial power mechanisms co-opted ethics into processes of censure and censorship’ (stolp 2016:1). moreover, she points out that ethical regulation in the contemporary university is closing down spaces for doing what she terms ‘risk-taking research’. stolp’s thesis was a critique of the status quo in departments of music at universities such as stellenbosch university and performances that are privileged in such institutions, which are largely based on european classical music. the status quo excludes or marginalises african and local south african music and genres such as improvisational jazz. as stolp (2016) writes: the institutional critique presented in the dissertation dealt with issues such as a perceived lack of institutional engagement with contemporary art music repertoire (at curriculum level, as well as in terms of concept programming); inadequate support for new music by south african composers; and limited exploration of contemporary art practices such as conceptual art, improvisation, intermediality and transdisciplinary work. an attempt was made to address these perceived issues by performatively engaging with them: performing music seldom (if ever) heard in south africa (especially in concert offering of institutions such as stellenbosch university) … (p. 11) stolp argues that she felt ethically obligated to offer the critique presented in her thesis and to use the ‘new’ methodology (presumably to disrupt the status quo in music research in some south african universities) in her study. she writes: although i was well aware that the content of my dissertation was controversial, i felt an ethical imperative to risk addressing certain issues that i believed were pertinent in south african art music culture. i also felt strongly committed to exploring a new type of research and to demonstrate its possible uses in doctoral studies in music. the final thesis was a result of exploration, investigation and consideration of key issues, amalgamated in a document and subjecting the work and its author to a protracted investigation process did not, in my opinion, serve a scholarly purpose … (pp. 12–13) the first reply to the article published by stolp in 2016 was co-authored by the rio, chairperson of the senate’s ethics committee, the senior director: drd, and two members of the original ic.6 in their response to stolp, the authors (horn et al. 2016) do several things: acknowledge that the university committed some procedural faux pas and had deviated from its policies; point out that stolp misunderstood several matters; comment critically on stolp’s claim that in her case ethical regulation was used as a power mechanism for censure and censorship; and comment critically on stolp’s lack of reflexivity in conducting narrative or auto-ethnographical research. i shall focus on the latter two. horn et al. (2016) point out that stolp’s phd proposal was not submitted for any formal process of ethics review or approval, despite the fact that a stellenbosch university policy was in place at the time which stated the following: international guidelines for the need for ethics approval of non-health related research e.g, social science research involving human participants are less clear. however, research involving direct interaction with human subjects or the capturing of any personal information should be approved by an ethics committee. […] (pp. 6–7) research involving human participants must comply with the following principles: […] ensure research participants are well informed on the purpose of the research and how the research results will be disseminated and have consented to participate, where applicable, ensure research participants’ rights to privacy and confidentially [sic] are protected; ensure the fair selection of the research participants be preceded by a thorough risk benefit. […](pp. 6–7) based on stolp’s arguments (presented earlier), one could infer that she did not deem it necessary to subject her proposal to ethical review because she felt that the ethical imperative to critique music culture and music research in south african universities superseded subjection to ethical regulation. however, horn et al. (2016) argue that academic freedom does not have to be sacrificed on the altar of research ethics. horn et al. (2016) write: as is clear in stolp’s article, the actions taken with respect to this dissertation, after the investigation7 was concluded, were regarded as ‘censure and censorship’. we do not agree with this perspective and as stated previously, believe that both principles of academic freedom, and research ethics could have been fulfilled simultaneously in this dissertation. this dissertation could have leveled a powerful critique at both stellenbosch university and the department of music, including commentary on the apartheid legacy of the music department and issues related to transformation, without making this critique personal to the point where individuals were either directly or easily identifiable. (p. 12) concerning stolp’s perspective that the methodology used justified identifying person’s in the research, horn et al. (2016) do not agree with her perspective. horn et al. (2016) quote directly from the ic report about the authors’ views on the ethics of doing narrative or auto-ethnographical research: from the committee’s conversation with dr stolp, and from the way in which the thesis itself was written, the committee came to the view that dr stolp appears to have conflated two issues. there is a difference between taking subjectivity seriously and giving due weight, and of selectively privileging the subjective experiences of the author. though it is correct to say that a subjective interpretation of events is important to understand and to respect and embrace, this is not the same as implying that the views of the author (in this case dr stolp) should not be subject to the same skeptical scrutiny as those of others. dr stolp does address this issue distally in her early chapters, but there are occasions when she discusses her findings that she does not seem to entertain as seriously as she could the possibility that her interpretation is but one of many ways of understanding what has occurred. this is a difficult issue, as it is her right methodologically and intellectually to use her own subjectivity. it was clear from our discussions with her that dr stolp felt to some degree victimized by the department of music, and this was indeed part of her experience. what she seems to have taken less cognisance of, in her writing of the thesis, was her own power and agency (admittedly within the context of asymmetrical power relationships in which she was structurally in a less powerful position). […] (pp. 11–12) horn et al. (2016) note that there is a growing trend in auto-ethnographical research and that this should be welcomed. however, as wall (2008) reflects on her own auto-ethnography, she writes: [t]here is a need to be concerned about the ethics of representing those who are unable to represent themselves in writing or to offer meaningful consent to their representation by someone else. (p. 49) stolp was asked by the journal acta academica to write a rejoinder to the horn et al. (2016) reply. stolp’s (2016b) rejoinder was brief and the essence thereof is best captured in her own words: i agree with many of the points raised in this response, although i would also continue to argue that the particularities of specific situations warrant more contextualised applications of ethics-related theories than what is, in my view, generally the case in the stellenbosch university’s response to my article. while there are some points i disagree with, and while i remain convinced of the validity and ethicality of my own work, i will not attempt to comprehensively engage the entirety of the response here: this important and ongoing debate will benefit, i believe, from contributions that seek to also to move beyond the specificity of a single case study and engage a broader field of inquiry. (pp. 16–17) but, with respect to replies and rejoinders, the dust had not settled. in 2017 there were two further replies written to the journal acta academica from (1) the internal examiner (extraordinary professor at stellenbosch university and academic at the basel university of music, switzerland) chris walton and (2) the chair of the department of music, winfried lüdemann. in a short reply, walton (2017) raises two issues. firstly, he states that he agrees with horn et al. (2016) that stolp’s thesis raised complex issues of ethics and agency. however, he points out that these issues were the subject of robust deliberations by the examiners and unanimously resolved during the viva voce by them. walton’s issue is that none of the examiners were asked for their opinion during the investigation. walton is correct and makes a valid point. the second issue that walton (2017) raises is what he claims is the fundamental issue at stake in the case. in his own words, he describes the issue as follows: how can a music department be allowed to file a complaint against a doctoral student of its own, whose topic it has accepted, whose research it has supported, whose examiners it has appointed, and to whom it has already agreed to award the degree? at what point does departmental incompetence descend into unethical conduct? there is indeed scope here for a large-scale investigation of academic ethics. but its focus should be on the department, not its student. (p. 1) lüdemann (2017) raises two interrelated points that are pertinent to the discussion. he contests stolp’s claim that tensions amongst staff members in the department of music were the catalyst for the events that unfolded, leading to an investigation into possible research misconduct. lüdemann points out that in his complaint he clearly spelt out that the complaint related to ethically questionable research and quotes from his own written complaint to support his view. lüdemann (2017) states that his complaint was motivated by a: [d]eep sense of responsibility and duty as chair of the department to stand up for the personal dignity and rights of my colleagues and students implicated in the dissertation, the reputation of the music department and, equally important, the integrity, ethical standards and reputation of research conducted at the university of stellenbosch. no other issues whatsoever are at stake here. no issues brought to the fore by any party should deflect or detract from this fundamental concern. (pp. 3–4) lüdemann (2017) also points out that the above statement was known by stolp and nowhere does she produce any evidence that reflects that this statement was disingenuous. moreover, lüdemann (2017) notes that if indeed resistance to transformation at disciplinary or institution level was dealt with by using ethical regulation as a power mechanism for censure and censorship, then it would imply that there was collusion between the various structures of the university to make her allegation convincing. such collusion was unlikely because all committees conducted their work independent from one another. the main arguments arising from the five articles published in the journal acta academica were presented in the chronological order in which the different papers were published in the journal and not arranged in an order that reflects the (de)merits of the arguments. what the case highlights is the complexity of ethics in the contemporary university, a discussion to which i shall (re)turn next. complexity of ethics in the contemporary university the case highlights the complexity of ethics in the contemporary university and the difficulties of being in the university and being an ethical researcher. stolp (2016a) outlines a convincing argument for why she contends that ideological struggles in the department of music acted as catalyst for invoking ethical regulation as a power mechanism for censure and censorship of her thesis. in all written documentation on the case, there is no instance where any author denies that there were ideological struggles in the music department. in fact, the ideological differences are acknowledged and noted in the report of the original ic. that tensions amongst staff in the department of music spilled over onto her study is also not denied by anyone. the lack of transformation at stellenbosch university (and other south african universities) is well documented and laid bare by students’ protests of 2015 and 2016, the #rhodesmustfall and #feesmustfall campaigns and more localised movements linked to these such as the #openstellenbosch movement (for a more detailed discussion see le grange 2016). as a consequence of colonialism, south african universities inherited european models of academic organisation (le grange 2014) and so it is unsurprising that much of what is taught or learned and the performances organised in or by the department of music at stellenbosch university are eurocentric. stolp’s critique of the eurocentrism prevalent in the department of music and her actions to move marginalised genres, particularly local ones, to the centre, are politically and ethically admirable. furthermore, her claim that ethical regulation can be used for purposes of censure and censorship is not far-fetched. literature supports such a view (see guta et al. 2013) and she draws on this literature in support of her argument. from, stolp’s vantage point, the way she connects the dots of the events that unfolded is plausible. what stolp’s (2016a) argument does (and does no more than this) is to register the possibility of ethical regulation being used in the neoliberal university as a smokescreen for some other agenda. however, stolp’s claim of being an ethical researcher might be less convincing. here my earlier discussion on principlism is worth returning to. i discussed how principlism as ethics has become infused into regulatory frameworks of nation states, ethics review boards, recs and so on. however, even though ethical principles, such as beneficence, non-maleficence, justice, autonomy and respect, have become co-opted into ethical regulatory frameworks, such as in policies, sops and so forth, these principles predate neoliberal ethical regulation and call on researchers and others who interact with human subjects to take these principles seriously and to uphold them. even if principlism as multiprincipled theory were extended by adding more principles, be they more universalisable principles or culture-specific principles as suggested by walker (2009), or the mutuality principle suggested by de marco (2005), such modifications would not exonerate her from obligations to uphold the principles specified by beauchamp and childress (1985). it is stolp’s breach of at least some of these principles (principles which stand or hold outside of ethical regulatory frameworks of neoliberal ideology) that makes it difficult to infer that she was ethical as a researcher. we may infer that stolp is unreflexive about her lack of engagement with these ethical principles in her thesis and also in her two articles (stolp 2016a, 2016b). but, might the problem not be with principlism itself? i shall return to this question in the conclusion of the article where i propose a shift from a transcendent ethics to an immanent ethics. before doing so i first discuss the matter of self-interest and responsibility in relation to the stolp case, which i am unable be explore in any detail. all activities in a university are driven by human self-interest. and so we might ask, what were stolp’s self-interests? were they, the interest to attain a phd and the personal and professional benefits that derive from holding a phd? and what about her self-interests related to her engagement with a public good concern to critique an untransformed music culture in a university – engaging in public good matters do not erase self-interests. furthermore, we might ask about the self-interests of the supervisor, chair of the department of music and the internal examiner, self-interests that have not been laid bare in the exchanges in the five academic articles about the case. self-interests, of course, are not necessarily negative, but they represent opposing discourses to principlism and might explain the ethical breaches committed by stolp when doing her research. this links to the question of responsibility. we might ask questions concerning stolp’s responsibility as researcher to act in ethical ways, her supervisor’s responsibility to guide the student in the process of becoming ethical and the university’s responsibility to create opportunities for phd (and other) students to engage with ethics in research as part of doctoral education. and also, what about the university’s responsibility to put the necessary infrastructures in place to deal with ethical challenges – in this case we saw university role-players fumble at times, the university deviating from its policies, not having its procedural ‘ducks in a row’ and so forth, which made for a drawn out and messy case. but, a case from which we might learn. conclusion: towards an immanent ethics halse (2011) raises the critical question as to whether we can be in the university and be an ethical researcher given the conflicting discourses of ethics that co-exist in the neoliberal university. at the end of her article halse (2011) points out that in order to have ethical researchers in the university, we do not need: [a] coercive technology for disciplining researchers but as a moral beacon for those occasions when rational self-interest causes students, academics and universities to fumble or neglect their responsibilities to others. (p. 250) the problem with principlism and even more its application in ethical regulation (in the neoliberal university) is that it is driven by a transcendent ethics – ethics is codified and imposed from the outside through mechanisms of control. principlism functions on rules linked to the obligatory. liberating ourselves from the fetters of neoliberal ethical regulation and overcoming the challenges presented by conflicting ethical discourses might be possible through practicing an immanent ethics rather than a transcendent ethics. smith (2011) argues that an immanent ethics draws the distinction between ethics and morality. morality is defined as a set of constraining rules that guide and judge our actions and intentions. janning (2015) avers that moralistic questioning aims at leading one in the right direction and that the direction has already been defined before the question is asked. he states that in contrast ethics is a set of assisting rules that helps one in evaluating what one is doing, thinking and feeling ‘according to the immanent existence it implies’ (janning 2015:495). morality asks, ‘what ought we to do?’ whereas ethics asks, ‘what might we do?’ so, if ‘ethical’ principles are to serve as beacons for directing us in the right direction then they belong in the realm of morality. in contrast, ethics requires all principles and ethical discourses to be put to the test, to be evaluated so that new values can be created – values that liberate us from ethical regulation in the neoliberal university. to be in the university and to create the possibility of being or becoming an ethical researcher requires all of us to put all our values, norms and principles to the test and to create new ones. in her book on deleuze and guattari’s immanent ethics, lorraine (2011) writes: deleuze and guattari’s conception of an immanent ethics calls on us to attend to the situations of our lives in all their textured specificity and to open ourselves up to the responses that will best serve the evolving capacities of the interdependent life-forms of the communities to which we belong. (p. 1) research, particularly social research, is by nature layered and complex and every situation is unique and therefore requires unique responses – the stellenbosch university case aptly demonstrates this. we therefore cannot attend to such situations through regulation or principles that are linked to the obligatory. an immanent ethics also negates rational self-interest because our becoming as researchers is in intra-action with others, both human and more-than-human. so to be an ethical researcher in the contemporary university means attending to situations as they unfold and to act in ways that will enhance life (including one’s own in intra-action with others) – the only constraint on our actions is life itself. what it means to be ethical in the university cannot be known in advance. therefore, de marco’s (2005) mutuality principle cannot rescue principlism from the limits of its transcendent nature. acknowledgements competing interests the author has declared that no competing interest exists. authors’ contributions the author declares that he is the sole author of this article. ethical consideration this article followed all ethical standards for carrying out research without direct contact with human or animal subjects. funding information the research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors. data availability statement data sharing is not applicable to this article as no new data were created or analysed in this study. disclaimer the views and opinions expressed in this article are that of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any affiliated agency of the author. references baier, k., 1993, ‘egoism’, in p. singer (ed.), a companion to ethics, pp. 197–204, blackwell, oxford. ball, s., 2003, ‘the teacher’s soul and the terrors of performativity’, journal of education policy 18(2), 215–228. https://doi.org/10.1080/0268093022000043065 beauchamp, t. & childress, j., 1985, principles of biomedical ethics, oxford university press, oxford. department of health, 2015, ethics in health research: principles, processes and structures, department of health, pretoria. de marco, j.p., 2005, ‘principlism and moral dilemmas: a new principle’, journal of medical ethics 31(2), 101–105. https://doi.org/10.1136/jme.2004.007856 demez, h., 2015, ‘what is a case, and what is a case study?’, bulletin de méthodogie sociologique 127(1), 43–57. https://doi.org/10.1177/0759106315582200 guta, a., nixon, s.a. & wilson, m.g., 2013, ‘resisting the seduction of “ethics creep”: using foucault to surface complicity and contradiction in research ethics review’, social science & medicine 98, 301–310. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2012.09.019 haggerty, k.d., 2004, ‘ethics creep: governing social science research in the name of ethics’, qualitative sociology 27, 391–414. https://doi.org/10.1023/b:quas.0000049239.15922.a3 halse, c., 2011, ‘confessions of an ethics committee chair’, ethics and education 6(3), 239–251. https://doi.org/10.1080/17449642.2011.632718 herreid, c.f., 1997, ‘what is a case? bridging to science education the established teaching tool of law and medicine’, journal of college science teaching 27(2), 92–94. horn, l., van niekerk, a., theron, t., swartz, l. & le grange, l., 2016, ‘power and ethics in humanities research: a response to stolp’, acta academica 48, 1–15. https://doi.org/10.18820/05872405/aa48i2.2 janning, f., 2015, ‘towards an immanent business ethics?’, asian journal of humanities and social studies 3(6), 492–500. kruger, m., ndebele, p. & horn, l., 2014, research ethics in africa: a resource for research ethics committees, african sun media, stellenbosch. le grange, l., 2009, ‘how would ludwig wittgenstein have performed in the current south african higher education system?’, south african journal of higher education 23(4), 629–634. https://doi.org/10.4314/sajhe.v23i4.51052 le grange, l., 2014, ‘currere’s active force and the africanisation of the university curriculum’, south african journal of higher education 28, 1283–1294. le grange, l., 2016, ‘decolonising the university curriculum’, south african journal of higher education 30(2), 1–12. https://doi.org/10.20853/30-2-709 lorraine, t., 2011, deleuze and guattari’s immanent ethics, suny press, albany. lüdemann, w., 2017, ‘power and ethics in humanities research: another response to stolp’, acta academica 49(2), 1–10. nhmrc, arc & ua, 2007, national statement on ethical conduct in human research, viewed 27 june 2020, from https://www.nhmrc.gov.au/about-us/publications/national-statement-ethical-conduct-human-research-2007-updated-2018. olssen, m. & peters, m., 2005, ‘neoliberalism, higher education and the knowledge economy: from the free market to knowledge capitalism’, journal of education policy 20(3), 313–45. https://doi.org/10.1080/02680930500108718 peters, m.a., 2007, knowledge economy, development and the future of higher education, sense publishers, rotterdam. peters, m.a., 2013, ‘managerialism and the neoliberal university: prospects for new forms of “open management” in higher education’, contemporary readings in law and social justice 5(1), 11–26. rand, a., 1964, the virtue of selfishness: a new concept of egoism, signet, new york, ny. rose, n., 1999, powers of freedom: reframing political thought, cambridge university press, cambridge. sigwick, h., 1874, the methods of ethics, 7th edn., macmillan and co, london. smith, d.w., 2011, ‘deleuze and the question of desire: towards an immanent theory of ethics’, in d.w. smith & n. jun (eds.), deleuze and ethics, pp. 123–141, edinburgh university press, edinburgh. stellenbosch 2020. ‘research ethics committee: social, behavioural and education research (rec: sb)’, terms of reference and standard operating procedures, stellenbosch university, stellenbosch. stolp, m., 2016a, ‘report to the academy: power and ethics in humanities research’, acta academica 48(1), 1–26. https://doi.org/10.18820/24150479/aa48i1.1 stolp, m., 2016b, ‘response to the academy’, academica academica 48(2), 16–17. https://doi.org/10.18820/05872405/aa48i2.8 sutherland-smith, w. & saltmarsh, s., 2011, ‘guest editorial: in search of the ethical university’, ethics and education 6(3), 213–215. https://doi.org/10.1080/17449642.2011.632713 walker, t., 2009, ‘what principlism misses’, journal of medical ethics 35(4), 229–231. https://doi.org/10.1136/jme.2008.027227 wall, s., 2008, ‘easier said than done: writing an autoethnography’, international journal of qualitative studies 7(1), 38–53. https://doi.org/10.1177/160940690800700103 walton, c., 2017, ‘of ethics and incompetence’, acta academica 49(1), 1. footnotes 1. rational self-interest and rational egoism are used synonymously in this article. 2. according to the university calendar, ‘the unique nature of the integrated option is derived from the coherence and interdependency of the study of the creative processes and theoretical dimensions of the research leading to an original contribution to knowledge of and insight into the arts’. 3. vice-rector is the equivalent of deputy vice-chancellor used at many commonwealth universities. 4. the senior professors were leslie swartz (distinguished professor of psychology), n. botha (retired and now deceased professor of social work) and lesley le grange (distinguished professor of education). 5. i declare that as author of this article, i was a member of the ic. in performing my role as investigator, i was as objective as i could be and in writing this article i have attempted to do the same. however, i shall declare some broad personal interests that may have impacted on what is reported in this article. it is my view that transformation at stellenbosch university has been slow and that not much has been done to change the culture of the university in post-apartheid south africa. so i have an interest in seeing the university being transformed more rapidly. i also believe strongly in human freedom but that freedom is to be curtailed when other humans or the more-than-human world is harmed. i leave the reader to decide on the extent to which my beliefs and interests have influenced what is reported in the article. 6. the third member of the ic was deceased at the time. 7. the investigation referred to here is that of the original ic. abstract background aim: mapping my argument setting: understanding disability in traditional african society and disability justice reflections on reflective-creative education and the role of higher education in disability justice the ubuntu notions of relational and communal living in disability justice discourse conclusion acknowledgements references footnotes about the author(s) erasmus masitera higher education and human development research group, faculty of economic and management sciences, university of the free state, bloemfontein, south africa department of philosophy and religious studies, simon muzenda school of arts, culture and heritage studies, great zimbabwe university, masvingo, zimbabwe citation masitera, e., 2020, ‘towards a humane community: the search for disability justice in higher education through african moral thinking’, transformation in higher education 5(0), a85. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v5i0.85 original research towards a humane community: the search for disability justice in higher education through african moral thinking erasmus masitera received: 03 may 2020; accepted: 29 sept. 2020; published: 03 nov. 2020 copyright: © 2020. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract background: the central claim of this article is that african disability justice is possible through analysing, re-examining and reimagining realities that distort and disempower the being of individuals with disabilities. aim: in this article, i argue for an african disability justice. methods: i do this by establishing that higher education ought to produce citizens who are responsive and are able to reinvent africa through the idea of (community) serving. i borrow these ideas from the african ethical thinking and practice of relational attitude and communal living. setting: in traditional african thinking, as informed by ubuntu [i am, because you are] social thinking, disability was recognised and respected. results: i, therefore, develop the concept of reflective-creative education (rce) as carrying this african ethos for social justice (responsive and enabling citizens) towards members with disabilities. in that endeavour, african higher educational institutes ought to prepare and empower africans to be responsive and to enable others to live confidently and inclusively in transformed communities that address the needs of citizens. conclusion: in this way education becomes a tool (rce) for changing attitudes and developing citizens to be proactive in building better communities to live in. keywords: disability justice; african ethical thinking; ubuntu; higher education; reflective-creative education; communal living; relational thinking. background the central claim of this article is that african disability justice is possible through analysing, re-examining and reimagining realities that distort and disempower the being of individuals with disabilities. i assert that this is possible through reflective-creative-education (rce)1, which higher educational institutions have a duty to uphold, articulate and disseminate. as such my intention is to show the relevance of rce, in and through african institutions of higher education in inculcating a sense of justice (for the disabled) from an african perspective that promotes or propagates relational attitudes and communal living within the context of southern africa. disability justice and disability and justice are not a new or underexplored academic areas. a lot of work has been forwarded in that regard (cf. berghs 2017; ngubane-mokiwa 2018; onazi 2016, 2020) except that none make a link on disability justice, institutions of higher learning and the african ethical notions of relational attitude, communal living as proceeding from rce. in this regard, my work differs from other works that address disability, education through perspectives such as the human rights, legal, distributive justice and the capability perspectives on disability and education. i admit that some efforts on (higher) education, disability and (african) ethics have been forwarded (cf. mckenzie 2016; mpofu & molosiwa 2017), yet these works examine the issues from matters of inclusion, exclusion, equality and or at times general views on ethics and institutions of learning. in this work, i make a critical connection that exist amongst higher institutions of learning, african ethical thinking especially the relational and communal living as championed by rce and justice for disabled individuals. in my argument, i assert that the two notions, relational and communal living are the embodiment of the value of diversity and inclusion and advocate for shared life (living together), these are essential in advancing african disability justice. furthermore, i argue that the african disability justice i agitate for calls for the inculcation of the common good that aims at responding to each other’s needs and enable each other to live lives of choice. this is made possible through mutual interaction to understand each other. this removes heartlessness and egoism yet intensifies conversion of diversity and inclusion into a strength that empowers and enables all to exploit or harvest what society (social goods) offers in order to utilise and live a meaningful life. yet this is propagated through an educational system that allows for critical and truthful assessment of society itself. to successfully present my view firstly, i will make a discussion on my argument by distinguishing it from existing one. secondly, i will present an african understanding of disability and disability justice itself, then thirdly, link that justice to the idea of rce in higher education and discuss the role that higher education plays. fourthly, i discuss the notions of relational attitudes and communal living as there is much reference to them in the discussions on rce, higher education and the search for disability justice, i therefore consider it necessary to have a deliberation on them. fifthly, i will draw a conclusion for the article. aim: mapping my argument i acknowledge the efforts that onazi (2016, 2020) has done on disability justice from an african point of view. onazi (2016, 2020) argued for african disability justice from a legal perspective, through using notions of community living and relational attitude that are implicit in the philosophy of ubuntu [i am, because you are]. he asserts that relationships within communities are essential in as much as they offer societies any opportunity to evaluate, influence and criticise political and social institutions and at most create, promote, nurture and strengthen the institutions so that they sustain communal relations and especially those that relate to people living with disability (onazi 2020:124). i applaud and appreciate his thinking although i should say his limitation is that his focus is on institutional justice rather than justice for and amongst the people. in this work, i propose using higher education to facilitate, advance and address african disability (in)justice through teaching, analysing, critiquing social, economic and political systems and redressing injustice through imagination on how to live together. in addition, in the ensuing work, i will depart from the usual disability justice arguments such as the human rights, capability approach and distributive justice arguments. rather my emphasis is on what higher education can do or contribute to the african disability justice discourse, especially the idea of developing a common good that empowers and motivates people or communities to be responsive and in enabling everyone to realise their needs and achieve dignity. to that end, i note that, the human rights approach is concerned with examining the question of disability justice vis-à-vis the concept of equality, individuality and its connection to individual autonomy. yet, my contention is that certain african quarters subscribe to the idea of communitarian living (cf. chemhuru 2018; gyekye 1992; mbiti 1969; menkiti 1984)2, which in the course of this article is of importance. in that regard, i express reservations over the celebrating and promoting individual autonomy whilst neglecting the communal and collectiveness aspect that some africans respect, which this article advances. i therefore, in this article, bring forth ideas that have relevance to disability justice from a (moderate) communitarian perspective. apart from the human rights discourse on disability, i note that there have also been arguments from the distributive justice approach. distributive justice refers to different frameworks that seek to address the sharing of burdens and benefits in society (lamont & favor 2017). in most cases, this would include aspects of equal distribution of material goods. reasonable as this maybe but focusing on material goods is narrow, it ignores other aspects of human life such as self-respect, individual well-being (needs especially in cases of differences or disability) and accessing other social and political goods (kleist 2010; nussbaum 2000:74). furthermore, i argue that the frameworks are mostly of western origin not reflecting an african feature. i intent to bring the african feature into the discourse on higher education and disability justice. yet, a seemingly response to some of the distributive justice limitations comes from the capability approach. the capability approach emphasises on human development through focusing on the individual’s needs. equally to blame like distributive justice, capability approach still has an individualistic flavour (kleist 2010) at the expense of communal living and it ignores addressing historical injustices (masitera 2017:165–166). historical injustices play an important role in as much as they contribute to the debate on rectifying past injustices (masitera 2017:165). this is an area that deserves attention (although beyond the scope of this article) but important in as much as it contributes to awakening and conscience raising on exploitation, marginalisation and what needs to be done so as to better the lives of individuals living with disability. as such in this article, i present african disability justice that draws views from varied african moral thinking especially the notions of relational and communal living as promoted or propagated through institutions of higher education. in that effort, i bring in rce that shows the importance of recapitulation (part of historical justice) by linking this to the development of a new african community (creativity through imagination) that honours a shared life that is responsive and enables all to live better lives. this brings me to the discussion on african disability justice. setting: understanding disability in traditional african society and disability justice disability in african traditional thinking in traditional african thinking, as informed by ubuntu3 social thinking, disability was recognised and respected, and in some cases, disability has been viewed as possessing divine powers. in the same tradition and traditional thinking thereof, humans have always been depicted as divine and their bodies as holy and the same also applies to individuals who were and have disabilities (musenze & ojok 2019). however, people with disability were more revered and glorified as possessing divine spiritual attributes (musenze & ojok 2019). this may explain why in certain contemporary countries individuals living with various forms of disability are hunted and brutalised for their body parts to be used as ‘magical potions’ (musenze & ojok 2019). in addition, people living with disabilities have been acclaimed for possessing extra prowess in different trades. in some cases, disabled individuals are well known for their physical abilities, knowledge in the use of herbs, abilities in the arts (performing and visual). in fact, such individuals are at times well known for doing whatever they can with inexplicable perfection and power (i am not going to belabour on this as i am only interested in illustrating a point about reverence, recognition and acceptance of such people in african societies). people living with disability are limited perhaps to that which they do best beyond that they may and actually encounter difficulties or limitations (there maybe cognitive, physical and sensory limitations). in african communities, and as noted by broodryk (2006), the limitations and/or lack that individuals living with disabilities were always taken care of by the community through the ideas of supporting and being generous. in most cases, the lack was covered for by the generality of the community through various forms of generosity, which was and is inherent in african social thinking. the generosity manifests itself in the form of caring and sharing with members of the community. the caring and sharing is a vocation that ubuntu members have and does not require remuneration. as a vocation, caring and sharing in the ubuntu tradition is shown through attitudes of loving, empathising, sympathising, listening and accepting and responding to that which the less privileged require especially through sharing and giving (broodryk 2006:43–45). again this demonstrates the acceptance of disability and its recognition in african societies. the reciprocation, complementation and compensation of and for individuals living with disability present the responsiveness of the community and also the enabling nature of african societies. the idea of complimenting is part of the ubuntu social support system that guarantees personal security and supports individuals’ aspirations (masitera 2018a:28). ideally, the thinking does not discriminate, hence the thinking that difference or disability is part and parcel of society (berghs 2017:3; ndlovu 2016:29). this does not mean that societies are immune to exclusion or discrimination, exclusion and discriminations have become rampant in contemporary societies because of foreign influences that have changed the thinking and practices of the people. disability as difference implies the uniqueness in human beings. the uniqueness i refer to constitute the variances found in the functionalities of human body parts functionalities; these differ in appearance and capacity or ability to be used. in short, berghs (2017) called these human impairments. these impairments limit particular individuals’ functions be it physically, cognitive or sensory ability. yet, this does not render individuals with such limitations any less human. disability meant limitation in some human functionality but the same does not mean inability. individuals with impairments may compensate for what they lack in one area with abilities in other areas. furthermore, within the african traditional thinking, the practice of shared humanity and shared living (drawn from the concepts of common good, caring and generosity [cf. broodryk 2006]) also cover and compensate or complement for the lack of physical, cognitive and sensory incapacities. in this article, i am concerned with this form of disability largely because it fits (and is applicable) into a framework that has to do with understanding community living and relational attitude and disability and justice for disability. although traditional african thinking as expressed above celebrated difference, it is important to note that there are instances where disability was derided by communities. ndlovu (2016:29) noted that there are instances whereby stigmatisation and exclusion of individuals living with disability existed. the same sentiments are shared by berghs (2017:3) who implied to this by noting that segregation, exclusion and marginalisation of individuals living with disability has become rampant in african societies largely because of the loss of traditional african culture and values. yet besides all these negative perceptions, there is always the thinking that african moral values and notions can still assist in implanting positive attitudes amongst contemporary african societies and protect and empower people living with disability. disability justice in general justice is an ideal, an expected standard and a goal that societies establish and strive to achieve in an endeavour to establish and formulate acceptable and appropriate relations that enhance human living. this will be premised on interaction amongst individuals in society and on institutional arrangements and the ability of the society or institution to execute duties bestowed upon it (campbell 2010:6–9; moyo 2015:71). in that regard, disability justice like any other form of justice is the search for meaning and appropriate relationships for individuals or groups that live with varying forms of disability. the search for meaning includes by and through rights discourses, distributive discourses, contractarian discourses and identity discourses, epistemic and relational (in)justice discourses amongst others (putman et al. 2019). in the same sense although put differently, keifer-boyd et al. (2018:268) said ‘[d]isability justice is a socio-political activist framework that recognises entangled forms of oppression …’ towards people with disability. from the two definitions, one can deduce that disability justice is both a normative and an activist framework to analyse and critique various forms of exclusion, marginalisation, stigmatisation, powerlessness and dependence of individuals living with disabilities and also a means to argue for the liberation and the seeking of inclusion for the same people. there is therefore a sense in which disability justice is a quest for recognition, respect, inclusion, a call to dismantle hierarchies, a search for collective liberation and establishment of an acceptable society where all thrive and/or realise their well-being. in that view then, i argue that disability justice within the african context follows both the normative framework and social activist approach; it strives to empower, include, recognise and respect individuals who live with disability. the kind of justice that i argue for is one in which self-actualisation of such individuals is enhanced within a community whereby the community is responsive and enables individuals to realise their well-being within a community’s shared life. in addition, the justice is premised on reconstructing and redefining one’s community so that enabling avenues are created for individuals to actively participate in the life of the community and contribute meaningfully to the formulation of the society. at most this includes recognition, respect and awareness of uniqueness or differences that humans exist with, and beyond that this involves commitment to care and share with the less privileged in society. note that the reconstructing and redefining of society is one in which history is interrogated and a new image emerges and/or rather the true image about individuals’ place and dreams is realised. only a responsive community can thus enable individuals to rise from past distortions and recuperate to live lives worth their abilities. importantly, i note that the african communal life provides for this especially through upholding the notions of relational thinking and communal living. in addition to this, the notions of relational attitudes and communal living are part of the values that african communities impart to its members. the imparting is both informal (different experiences) and formal (oral and class teaching). for this article, i will make a case for formal education by presenting my ideas through examining the role of higher education in the promotion of disability justice. reflections on reflective-creative education and the role of higher education in disability justice what is reflective-creative-education? reflective-creative education is my own proposal and suggestion for an integration of recapitulated human realities, criticism and imagination into one reality that aims at changing and creating well-being for all. in fact rce does two things: it has a curative and/or corrective (emanating from history) and it is imaginative (creative aspect). reflective-creative-education is an educational curriculum that attempts to create a person who is aware of the injustices, who thinks critically and is ready to respond to and enables others to realise their well-being. this kind of education allows one to rise above being mere recipients of other people’s views (cf. freire’s [1970] bucket filling concept) and is above the mere raising of objections (cf. passmore 1972) to one who questions and seeks recourse and resolution to what is before them. in this kind of education, the learners are encouraged to become more creative through critiquing, imagining and reimagining the kind of life they would want to have especially the life that enhances everyone’s well-being. the rce that i propose, closely follows critical education, which has been used in some countries as a way to bring awareness and enhance and build positive images and recreate community lives (pacho 2013). reflective-creative education is the kind of education that advances serious self-social-community assessment, opens up avenues for honest analysis of activities and seeks true corrective measures from the community itself. the redressing of community faults takes a historical approach of learning from the past (wrongs and the good) and it allows for creativity through reimagining how to live together. in that regard, this education asks questions such as: what kind of society do we want? why is that society not realisable? how and what needs to be done in order to achieve the expected? what role does each individual have to play? what needs to be done to the less privileged and in particular those living with differences or disability? where have we gone wrong in advancing everyone’s well-being? responding to such questions necessitates conscience formulation and awareness to differences that people live with in life and helps formulate a society that enables everyone’s well-being. furthermore, rce takes history serious, and it acknowledges that history (past) is important as it assists individuals to interrogate past living conditions, think about them and necessarily assist to critique those conditions and then (re)imagine a possibility. one can think of the history of disability in africa in particular – the distorted images that have been proffered, dehumanising descriptions, marginalisation and exploitations that have occurred and continue to occur. these at most have significantly contributed to disablement of individuals living with disabilities, social contempt associated with having disability and psychological degradation. in that view then, history helps to actualise people, defines identity, moulds expectations and effectively guides direction that people’s lives will take (ojara 2006:328). as if that were enough, rce considers the present and the future as essential components in addressing justice and indeed disability justice. in regard to the present and the future questions such as: how do we correct these? how do we create positive images? which normative systems portray a positive image? these are ethical questions that seek to assess the readiness of individuals or society to respond to the needs of others. furthermore, these are questions that demand commitment to change attitudes, a plea to move beyond indifference and a search for a better society. in connection to the commitment to a better future, the rce that i propose draws inspiration from the african ethical thinking that speaks of ways of strengthening and complimenting each other through caring and sharing. in particular i am thinking of the notions of relational and communal living; these give a nuance of inclusivity, enabling, respect, recognition and responsiveness to the needs of each other, thereby leading to enhanced well-being for all (a sense of community shared life and serving each other). the notions of relational thinking and communal living are reasonable in as much as they can be embraced by all because they can be learnt through formal and informal means. in this discussion they became critical because they expose the integral aspect of african living. they show the connections and the commitments of africans to social and community formation and this becomes central in addressing and fighting against social injustices and in particular disability injustice. how is this noble african aspect and commitment to be disseminated? i argue that education is one possible way although i think institutions of higher education would do a better job. i therefore turn to discuss the role of institutions of higher education in the cause for disability justice. in that endeavour, i share hlatshwayo and shawa (2020) positioning of institutions of higher learning as ideal in responding to the african context (problems and successes). although for hlatshwayo and shawa this is a general suggestion on what african higher education institutes ought to do, i however go on to make a discussion of positioning african morality in higher education and making it relevant to disability discourse. higher institutions and propagation of african disability justice what role will institutions of higher learning have in promoting african disability justice? i respond to this question in this section of the article. the inculcation of culture has been the task of many societies across the ages. this kind of inculcation is seen in many different social institutions, ranging from the home to academic institutions (plato 1997). matsika (2012) proffered the view that within african communities, moral education has always been disseminated through traditional methods of family teachings and through traditional educational systems passed down from one generation to the other. beyond that matsika (2012) noted that institutions of formal learning have replaced the traditional ones because of the changes brought about by globalisation; i share this view. i also add that the institutions of learning have become centres of forming new cultures and inculcating ways of living. this is also in reference to disability justice and in particular the african disability justice that i am championing. a distinct feature of the traditional ubuntu moral education is that it seeks to inculcate a culture of collectivism (working and living together) through emphasising on the aspect of community serving in which human interactions aimed at empowering each other as a community rather than individual prosperity. matsika (2012:157–160) said the african traditional education initiated individuals into society, and i find the term initiation very useful. this initiation involved training into what behaviours are deemed socially acceptable or unacceptable. in this regard, matsika (2012:158) emphatically said, ‘the purpose of the initiation practices was to instil or reinforce critical socio-cultural values among the youth in a way which would facilitate their being remembered throughout life’. initiation was thus aimed at informing and instilling a sense of self-respect and respect for others, and most importantly, at least in my opinion, it was aimed at instituting social reform amongst members of society. self-respect, respect of others and social reform are important in as much as they have something to do with social justice and in this vein initiation is motivated by the idea of advocating for social justice. the understanding of social justice is bordered on ‘being there for each other’, which is basically the recognising and supporting of each other for the sake of progress for all. in connection with the above, i argue that public institutions of higher learning can be ideal places or platforms for conscientising, repositioning and ultimately (re)initiating humans into a humanising tradition. my thinking here is that the ideas of rce can be actualised, that is, through permitting students and institution staff to interrogate seriously the existential realities they face; this implies changing classroom teaching method of memorising to one that challenges students to participate and be imaginative. in this case, participants reflect on what is wrong, correct and on what ought to be done as a way of correcting relations at the same time suggest means and ways to enhance and empower each other so that all realise a good life. through the adoption of rce, participants (recapitulate, becoming aware) relive and revisit historical positions and activities reflect on them; identify the bad and the good that is being critical and analytical of those situations. beyond the questioning there will also be the creative part that involves thinking of how best to avoid future reoccurrences and reconsider or reorganise themselves (where possible taking lessons from them and using that to guide their views of how to live together). this thinking of formulating a way of living from the past for the benefit of the future has its foundations in critical thinking of freire (1970) who argued for free interaction and free thinking in formulating a way of living. further to the above, i argue that curriculum ought to respond to contemporary african situations, that is, the needs, interests, joys and solving african problems. in this case, my interest is on social dislocation and social injustices, which conceptualisation of disability might have caused. according to ndlovu (2016:29) some contemporary african societies despise individuals living with disability. at the same time, such individuals face exclusion and stigmatisation and are ultimately marginalised and disempowered. the same views are shared by berghs (2017:3) and ngubane-mokiwa (2018:2). in the light of these disablements (inability to live freely and autonomously), there is a challenge for the search of justice, justice for disabled members of society and especially the role of institutions of higher learning in this matter. the institutions are to be platforms for discussions for attaining disability justice. the institutions of higher learning are flexible, multipurpose and inclusive, and this will be ideal. the participants will be different people – disabled and non-disabled and their discussions aiming at achieving well-being for all. this will not be hypothesising but practically criticising social practices and thinking about disability and demythologising that from an informed position. this is possible because the participants will include all people. as the discussions take place in the african context, which particular african practices or trends of thoughts are relevant? i suggest that relational thinking and communal living ought to take a centre stage largely because they embody the african ethos of humaneness (the aspect of humaneness will be elaborated on in the section that deals with relational living and community living). i therefore consider that institutions of higher learning take a lead in research and in dissemination of the different ubuntu notions discussed, both in theory and in practice. what do i mean by this? firstly, through research these notions should be made known and elaborated, meaning that the notions are brought into line with existing trends in education and even in other global practices. doing so will help to confront injustices that occur. secondly, i think that higher educational institutions provide fertile ground for introducing or initiating people into ubuntu theory and practice. note that generally universities are multicultural and multiracial in their nature, thus making them suitable for initiating and re-initiating students into the humanising philosophy of ubuntu. the initiation would be aimed at individuals who are generally unfamiliar with the ubuntu philosophy, and the (re)initiation would be aimed at individuals who may have been aware of the existence of such a philosophy but need intensive re-education on the theory and practice of ubuntu. such a practice will also deepen the understanding of the notions and their application to different life situations including how to live with disabled individuals. how will this be made possible? i think such initiation and re-initiation efforts can be done in class and through voluntary clubs that allow free interaction amongst students. in the case of classes, there may be a deliberate inclusion of ubuntu education throughout disciplines. this is not new; there are universities that have included certain philosophical components in different disciplines for appreciation and for assisting students to argue logically. with this in mind, it might also be possible to include ubuntu components either as stand-alone modules or as a component of already existing modules. apart from classroom acquisition and appreciation of ubuntu values and associated notions, it may be ideal for institutions of higher education to establish ubuntu clubs that also work towards conscientising people and disseminating ubuntu practices and theories. these will be voluntary organisations to which all will be welcome. in this way there will be broad association of different people and greater learning about ubuntu theory and practice. i think these activities will go some distance in demythologising the thinking that ubuntu applies to certain groups or races at the expense of others and in introducing the richness of the tradition into contemporary educational systems and social systems. in the end there are chances of initiating individuals into the attitudes that ubuntu thinking inculcates and ultimately the application of those attitudes to different aspects of human life. the ubuntu notions of relational and communal living in disability justice discourse ubuntu ethics is an african moral philosophy that seeks to promote, protect and secure human life. ubuntu moral thinking advances the idea of humanness. this idea is well portrayed by different south african philosophers who aver this perspective in the sayings: ‘a person is a person through others’ (cf. shutte 1993); ‘i am because we are; and since we are therefore i am’ (mbiti 1969).4 ramose (1999) also propounded that a person is understood in relation to other persons in the community. furthermore, connecting implies a movement towards integrating, interacting and working with and for others’ good. this idea has been expressed by different philosophers as humaneness (murungi 2013), a humanist ethical world view (berghs 2017:2; kaunda 1966:136) or a communal way of living (ngubane-mokiwa 2018:1; nyerere 1965:170). this idea of connectedness and related terms mentioned here captures the essence of what a person is and ought to be in the african moral sense. nyerere (1965:170) said connecting is embracing the entire human society by valuing responsibility, respect, and recognising is the basis for shared life and interdependence. to that end, onazi (2016) aptly articulated this by saying that human interdependence reveals the complex ethical ways of sharing lives: [i]t encompasses the ethical and moral literacy that is acquired through learning from and sharing, exchanging, experiencing and interacting with each person. human interdependence is predisposed to and provides the grounding for other values, particularly compassionate dispositions of love, care and affection for the most vulnerable people, not only as the ultimate measure of a community, but also of society as a whole. (p. 35) onazi’s views reveal that african ethics (ubuntu included) constitutes an ethics that is defined and dependent on human interaction, which is best described as a shared humanity. shared humanity means supporting and enabling each other to become who they want to be (berghs 2017:2). the supporting and enabling involves a complete support for all – young, old, able-bodied, disabled – through sharing, caring and affection. in short, ubuntu is a social support system for everyone that guarantees that everyone’s wellbeing is realised, yet this support system is based on mutuality. these views are well articulated in the notions of relational thinking and communal living; these two i discuss here. relational living one of the expectations of the ubuntu ethics is the notion of relating well with others. in some instances, relating well with others has been referred to as other regarding (metz 2011a:532, 2011b:16), interconnectedness (oelofsen 2015:368) and interdependence (masitera 2018a). hoffmann and metz (2017) actually propounded that relational attitudes (as pronounced in ubuntu thinking) constitute the basis of all social relations. i share this view largely because i note that a relational attitude is premised upon the idea of being there for others, to such an extent that individuals in society act consciously towards bettering the lives of others, the basis of mutuality. in fact, there is a personal conviction that whatever members of society do for each other, is always done for the good of the other and community at large. this means that the well-being of each person in society counts and is catered for by every other member of the community. relational attitudes involve the way in which people interact with each other, especially with the intention to humanise human interactions (tavernaro-haidarian 2018:30). humanised human interactions are interactions that are rational and that seek crafting a shared end and maximising good outcomes for all (tavernaro-haidarian 2018:30). in this regard, there is the question of avoiding divisions by encouraging unity, solidarity, harmony and well-being for all. the relationship is about mutually, ‘… act(ing5) for the sake of one another (ideally, repeatedly over time)’ (metz 2009:183). ideally, relational living aims at formulating the ‘we’ in community, that is, living together in unity, improved understanding of each other, formulating common goals, consensus, living harmoniously and in solidarity by understanding and responding to differences that exist in society. in relation to this discussion, the well-being of individuals living with disability is a concern of the entire community and is embedded in communal relations. reflecting on murungi’s (2013:24) postulations that no one human in african communities lives at the expense of others, and the same applies to communities, it is plausible to make the claim that despite human impairments such individuals will still live their lives to the full. my thinking is that by having a mentality founded upon improved understanding, friendliness and the sharing of common goals, individuals easily connect. there is a sense in which members of society deliberate, negotiate and seek consensus and ways of collaborating for mutual goodness. more importantly, through relating with each other certain obligations are set, to such an extent that an attitude of sharing, reciprocating kindness and caring and being helpful towards others is also established (ngubane-mokiwa 2018:1; onazi 2016:35). in the words of broodryk (2006) this is the african way of goodwill, which is an inherited and experienced way of life. in short, the notion of relationality obligates people to adopt a spirit of mutual respect, inclusivity, caring, sharing and generally being helpful to each other. the stated ideas can be disseminated through educational systems, especially the teaching of ethics. communal living the other notion that i discuss in relation to disability justice and education is communal living. by bringing in the idea of communal living, i intend to encourage and bring in a dimension that may be useful in reimagining or creating a new common good, which is an aspect that can be used in grounding new ideas of a new society. this will then be developed within the extents and limits of higher education curriculum. importantly, communal living is the climax and real practical expression of relational living in a community. this is where the actual implementation of expectations referred to in relational thinking take place. in this regard, communal living concerns how people actually live with each other (the practical part of ubuntu ethical thinking), that is, the various mechanisms that they use to live harmoniously, successfully, maintaining stability and promoting each other’s well-being as well as the well-being of the community itself. that is exploiting human and social good to realise the good for all. to this end, kasomo (2012:187) asserted that communal living is by and large a result of public conscience of which every member of the community is part. there is a sense in which members of the community contribute to how they are to live together, and as such a deep sense of corporate life and solidarity is formed. feinberg (1970) postulated that collective living is based on reinforcing solidarity and on having large community of interests, which is supported by reciprocity and the well-being of all. hence, communal living is a movement towards collective good and realising a collective destiny. the same ideas are shared by elechi, morris and schauer (2010:73–74) who added that good relations are the foundations of the collective good and destiny. so, communal living can be summed up as an attempt to live together peacefully through having sound social relations that reinforce solidarity and that promote the well-being of each other. this in itself invites questions about how this mode of life is to be achieved. this is where the issue of the mechanism of promoting, maintaining and protecting social well-being comes in. the mechanism of promoting, maintaining and protecting constitutes consensus or agreement. consensus is a settlement or a form of social contract through which members formulate an agreement (cf. wiredu 1995, 1997). importantly, the social contract in ubuntu social thinking always aims at preventing people from falling into social evils or traps. as already stated, ubuntu is a social security and support system that promotes the well-being of people and, as such, consensus within ubuntu ethical practices has the same aims. note that the well-being of the people is inclusive of protection from social traps such as exclusion, poverty and various forms of discrimination. to achieve or establish a social security and support system, there is need for the involvement of members of the community in coming up with views on how they are to live together (which i consider as consensus). to reach this mentioned consensus, certain deliberations, negotiations and commitments are needed in striving to respect outcomes. the outcomes become the duties and obligations of the community members. by and large consensus is a way of reformulating social arrangements, policy reformulation, agreeing on issues of redress and ensuring reconciliation. furthermore, consensus or formulating a common goal comes from deliberations (that occur whenever there is a need for such) aimed at addressing certain societal dislocations and disharmonies (gwaravanda 2011:148, 151; idowu 2006:44; murungi 2004:525; tshuma 2015:317). deliberations have always been rational (tavernaro-haidarian 2018:30) as opposed to rhetoric, which invites confrontation and conflict and as such deliberations are therapeutic (restorative of broken relations) in their nature (masitera 2018b) as they address deep divisions that society has already encountered. as such, these deliberations map the future by suggesting better ways for coexistence and in this sense formulate laws that govern the solving of vexing and complex issues related to individuals living with disability and how to continue living together justly. essentially, the deliberations set in motion the process of cooperating and working together from divergent positions (i.e. the inclusive nature of reaching consensus). tellingly, therefore, deliberations lead to the formulation of people-centred solutions from social ills. i furthermore argue that there is a serious search for justice that promotes human relationships and well-being during these social meetings. in regard to members of society living with various forms of disability, such interactions or meetings offer platforms where their needs, aspirations and interests are expressed and considered by the community. according to tavernaro-haidarian (2018:73), deliberations inform and help others to visualise divergence and differences and make an effort to sympathise and assist others from a different stand point. this is the case with disabled individuals – it is only when they are heard and when they express their frustrations, joys and needs that those who are not disabled get to be sensitised as to the disabled members’ positions, understand them and then act accordingly. at the end of the deliberations, a common goal is reached that devises a better way of living together; a community in which no one lives at the expense of the other. note that the obligations and duties of how to behave towards the disabled members are crafted through the discussions, and simultaneously the disabled members also receive their obligations and duties towards the others. for me this is a place where the values of caring, sharing and empathy are extrapolated and emphasised for the community and especially towards the unfortunate. on the other hand, the disabled will be expected to show gratitude and contribute to the community in different ways, especially where they can. in this way, i argue that consensus from deliberation eliminates society’s social ills through obligating and assigning duties to members of the community. the same ideas of avoiding social traps or evils have been proffered by philosophers such as dyzenhaus (2003), weale (2013), tshuma (2015) and castiglione (2015), although their focus was on other social evils unrelated to disability. having made a case for relational and communal living as integral aspects of ubuntu society, it is now necessary to argue for their relevance in contemporary societies by repositioning higher education institutions as the ideal disseminators of ubuntu ethos through various platforms for discussing issues that affect society in general. conclusion in this article i have established that in ubuntu guided societies people living with disability have always been respected, recognised and appreciated. the respect and recognition has been based on certain ubuntu notions that are essential in establishing a humanised society, that is, relational and communal living. from these notions i argued that attitudes of social security, protection and promotion of everyone’s well-being are developed and that these attitudes contribute to the formulation of communal living and relational attitudes. communal living is an agreed way of living together, that is, living together through agreement and consensus. i also observed that the notion of relational attitude is an idea of relating well with other and is referred to as ‘other regarding’. in that sense ‘other regarding’ and agreeing is essential in promoting the well-being of members who are living with disability as their needs are taken care of by the community (others). in promoting well-being, the ubuntu social system disregards all forms of discrimination, exploitation and marginalisation by covering and compensating for members who have incapacities through the practice of sharing and being generous. lastly, i have made a case for rce as a curriculum that integrates recapitulated human realities, criticise and reimagines the form of life that is good for all. it is also inclusive of african ethical thinking in advocating for social change. in connection to this, i argued that institutions of higher learning will be ideal to initiate, (re)initiate and disseminate the rce as the basis for disability justice. acknowledgements the author would like to thank dr munamato chemhuru for providing views on the manuscript and dr simon vurayai for also taking time to read and give ideas on the manuscript. competing interests the author has declared that no competing interests exist. authors’ contributions the author has declared that he is the sole author of this article. ethical consideration this article followed all ethical standards for a research without direct contact with human or animal subjects. funding information this study was funded by the sarchi chair in higher education and human development research programme, university of the free state, south africa. data availability statement data sharing is not applicable to this article. disclaimer the views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any affiliated agency of the author. references berghs, m., 2017, ‘practices and discourses of ubuntu: implications for an african model of disability’, african journal of disability 6(0), 1–8. https://doi.org/10.4102/ajod.v6i0.292 broodryk, j., 2006, ubuntu: life coping skills from africa, knowres publishing, randburg. campbell, t., 2010, justice, palgrave-macmillan, hampshire. castiglione, d., 2015, ‘introduction: the logic of social cooperation for mutual advantage – the democratic contract’, political studies review 13(2), 161–175. https://doi.org/10.1111/1478-9302.12080 chemhuru, m., 2018, ‘african communitarianism and human rights: towards a compatibilist view’, theoria: a journal of social and political theory 66(157), 37–56. https://doi.org/10.3167/th.2018.6515704 dyzenhaus, d., 2003, judging the judges, judging ourselves: truth, reconciliation, and the apartheid legal order, hart publishing, oxford. elechi, o.o., morris, s.v.c. & schauer, e.j., 2010, ‘restoring justice (ubuntu): an african perspective’, international criminal justice review 20(1), 73–85. https://doi.org/10.1177/1057567710361719 feinberg, j., 1970, collective responsibility. doing and deserving: essays in the theory of responsibility, princeton up, princeton, nj, pp. 222–251. freire, p., 1970, pedagogy of the oppressed, transl. m.b. ramos, continuum, london. gyekye, k., 1992, ‘person and community in akan thought’, in k. wiredu & k. gyekye (eds.), person and community, pp. 101–122, the council for research in values and philosophy, washington, dc. gwaravanda, e.t., 2011, ‘philosophical principles in shona traditional court system’, international journal of peace and development studies 2(4), 148–155. hlatshwayo, m.n. & shawa, l.b., 2020, ‘towards a critical reconceptualisation of the purpose of higher education: the role of ubuntu-currere in reimagining teaching and learning in south african higher education’, higher education research and development 39(1), 26–36. https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2019.1670146 hoffmann, n. & metz, t., 2011, ‘what can the capabilities approach learn from an ubuntu ethic? a relational approach to development theory’, world development 97, 153–164. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2017.04.010 idowu, w., 2006, ‘against the skeptical argument and the absence thesis: african jurisprudence and the challenge of positivist histography’, the journal of philosophy, science and law 6(2), 34–49. kasomo, d., 2012, ‘psychological and religious understanding of wrong doing in african perspective’, international journal of psychology and behavioral science 2(6), 185–195. kaunda, k., 1966, a humanist in africa, longmans, london. keifer-boyd, k., bastos, f., richardson, j. & wexler, a., 2018, ‘disability justice: rethinking “inclusion”’, arts education research studies in art education 59(3), 267–271. https://doi.org/10.1080/00393541.2018.1476954 kleist, c., 2010, ‘global ethics: capabilities approach’, viewed n.d., from https://iep.utm.edu/ge-capab/#h4. lamont, j. & favor, c., 2017, ‘distributive justice’, stanford encyclopedia of philosophy, viewed 27 february 2020, from http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/justice-distributive/. masitera e., 2017, ‘dilemmas and controversies surrounding the land debacle in zimbabwe: appropriating some ideas from the shona unhu (ubuntu) justice’, in m. mawere, t.r. mubaya & j. mukusha (eds.), the african conundrum: rethinking the trajectories of historical, cultural, philosophical and development experiences of africa, bamenda: langaa research and publishing c i g, pp. 267–286. masitera, e., 2018a, ‘economic rights in african communitarian discourse’, theoria 65(157), 15–36. https://doi.org/10.3167/th.2018.6515703 masitera, e., 2018b, ‘the moral significance of dare system in seeking justice and peace among the shona people of zimbabwe’, in n. marongwe, f.p.t. duri & m. mawere (eds.), violence, peace and everyday modes of justice and healing in post-colonial africa, langaa research and publishing cig, bamenda, pp. 291–312. matsika, c., 2012, traditional african education: its significance to current educational practices with special reference to zimbabwe, mambo press, gweru. mbiti, j., 1969, african religions and philosophy, london, heinemann. mckenzie, j.a., 2016, ‘an exploration of an ethics of care in relation to people with intellectual disability and their family caregivers in the cape town metropole in south africa’, alter, european journal of disability research 10(1), 67–78. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.alter.2015.12.001 menkiti, i.a., 1984, person and community in traditional african thought. african philosophy: an introduction, university press of america, new york, ny. metz, t., 2009, ‘the final ends of higher education in light of african moral theory’, journal of philosophy of education 43(2), 179–201. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9752.2009.00689.x metz, t., 2011a, ‘ubuntu as a moral theory and human rights in south africa’, african human rights law journal 11(2), 532–559. metz, t., 2011b, contemporary african philosophy, oxford bibliographies online, viewed 18 february 2020, from http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780195396577/obo-9780195396577-0164.xml. moyo, k., 2015, ‘mimicry, transitional justice and the land question in racially divided former settler colonies’, the international journal of transitional justice 9(1), 70–89. https://doi.org/10.1093/ijtj/iju026 mpofu, j. & molosiwa, s., 2017, ‘disability and inclusive education in zimbabwe’, in n. phasha, d. mahlo, g.j. sefa dei (eds.), inclusive education in african contexts: a critical reader, sense publishers, rotterdam, pp. 49–64. murungi, j., 2004, ‘the question of an african jurisprudence: some hermeneutical reflections’, in k. wiredu (ed.), a companion to african philosophy, pp. 519–526, blackwell publishing ltd., malden. murungi, j., 2013, an introduction to african legal philosophy, lexington books, lanham, md. musenze, j.b. & ojok, p., 2019, ‘a defence of identity for persons with disability: reflections from religion and philosophy versus ancient african culture’, african journal of disability 8(0), a490. https://doi.org/10.4102/ajod.v8i0.490 ndlovu, h., 2016, ‘african beliefs concerning people with disabilities: implications for theological education’, journal of disability and religion 20(1–2), 29–39. https://doi.org/10.1080/23312521.2016.1152942 ngubane-mokiwa, s., 2018, ‘ubuntu considered in light of people living with disabilities’, african journal of disability 7(2018), 1–7. https://doi.org/10.4102/ajod.v7i0.460 nussbaum, m., 2000, women and human development: the capability approach, cambridge university press, cambridge. nyerere, j., 1965, freedom and unity: a selection from writings and speeches 1952–1965, oxford university press, nairobi. oelofsen, r., 2015, ‘afro-communitarian forgiveness and the concept of reconciliation’, south african journal of philosophy 34(3), 368–378. https://doi.org/10.1080/02580136.2015.1077306 ojara, p., 2006, towards a fuller human identity: a phenomenology of family life, social harmony, and the recovery of the black self, peter lang, bern. onazi, o., 2016, ‘an african legal philosophy of disability justice: between discovery and recognition’, in r. kiddey (ed.), isrf bulletin issue x: discovery & recognition, pp. 10–15, independent social research foundation, amsterdam, the netherlands. onazi, o., 2020, an african path to disability justice: community, relationships and obligations, springer nature switzerland, cham. pacho, t.o., 2013, critical and creative education for the new africa, peter land ag, nairobi passmore, j., 1972, ‘on teaching to be critical’, in r.s. peters (ed.), education and the development of reason, routledge, london, pp. 415–433. plato, 1997, plato: complete works, edited by j.m. cooper & d.s. hutchison, hackett publishing co., indianapolis, in putman, d., wasserman, d., blustein, j. & asch, a., 2019, disability and justice. stanford encyclopedia of philosophy, viewed 18 february 2020, from plato.stanford.edu/entries/disability-justice/. ramose, m.b., 1999, african philosophy through ubuntu, weaver press, harare. shutte, a., 1993, philosophy for africa, university of cape town press, cape town. tavernaro-haidarian, l., 2018, a relational model of public discourse: the african philosophy of ubuntu, routledge, new york, ny. tshuma, a., 2015, ‘reframing post-mugabe justice: a critical need for a truth and reconciliation commission’, african journal of political science and international relations 9(7), 308–320. weale, a., 2013, democratic justice and the social contract, oxford university press, oxford. wiredu, k., 1995, ‘democracy and consensus in african traditional politics: a plea for a non-party polity’, centennial review 39(1), 53–64. wiredu, k., 1997, ‘democracy and consensus in african traditional politics: a plea for a non-party polity’, in e.c. eze (ed.), postcolonial african philosophy: a critical reader, blackwell publishers inc., cambridge, ma, pp. 303–312. footnotes 1. a proposed platform for critical and imaginative reconstruction of living in a contemporary society that endeavours to support and promote each other’s well-being. 2. these scholars have difference with regard to the kind of communitarian living. mbiti and menkiti in particular ascribe to radical communitarianism that is a system in which obligations overshadow by means of radical subsuming individual rights. on the other hand, gyekye and chemhuru subscribe to moderate or limited communitarianism that posit that individual rights and autonomy are respected within community living and at the same time accepts the being of the community with limited control over individuals. 3. ubuntu is one of the several african moral theories. ubuntu is a humanising philosophy that draws its inspiration from humanness (advancing human existence through human interactions based on essential human virtues) (broodryk 2006). 4. this is dictum used by mbiti to refer to communitarian life in east africa, but is also applicable in discussing ubuntu way of life. 5. own addition. abstract introduction philosophy’s past problems haunting the present the demand for decolonial education and what needs to be done possible benefits conclusion acknowledgements references footnotes about the author(s) bernard matolino school of religion, philosophy and classics, college of humanities, university of kwazulu-natal, pietermaritzburg, south africa citation matolino, b., 2020, ‘philosophers’ debt to their students: the south african case’, transformation in higher education 5(0), a87. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v5i0.87 original research philosophers’ debt to their students: the south african case bernard matolino received: 29 may 2020; accepted: 15 july 2020; published: 31 aug. 2020 copyright: © 2020. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract philosophy teachers owe their students a little more than mere formal instruction of topics popular in philosophy. what they owe their students is largely influenced by philosophy’s claims to be a discipline that is principally dedicated to the study and fostering of wisdom. therefore, there is an obligation to be wise on the part of philosophy teachers so that they can deliver that wisdom. a big part of this would involve a sort of transformation in knowledge and character that the teachers themselves must go through as a result of engaging in philosophy. such transformation will not only show in ways that philosophers live their private lives, as wise people, but will certainly show in the topics they teach their students and how they help their students to wisely respond to their environment through an enlightened, relevant and empowering curriculum. if philosophers fail at this task, they will only dispatch fragmented pieces of information about philosophical topics and method that are of no use to their students. if philosophers are unable to see the shortcomings of this approach, then they can just as well count themselves unfit to be called (wise) teachers but technical philosophers. the fees must fall and rhodes must fall movement coupled with demands for decolonisation, caught philosophers underprepared for such demands from students. hence, in this article, i seek to examine the legitimate demands for transformation of the curriculum and how philosophical instruction in the country contributed to this protest, which eventually was caricatured in some sections as unreasonable. i argue that beyond what appears as unreasonable demands by students, there is an obligation by philosophy teachers to be responsible and responsive to the students’ context in what they teach. keywords: philosophy; south africa; fees must fall; philosophers’ obligation; decoloniality. introduction in this article, i seek to present what i consider to be philosophers’ obligation to their students, as university teachers, in the south african context in the aftermath of the fees must fall movement and calls for the decolonisation of the curriculum. i argue that the problem may be located in philosophers abdicating their role as practitioners in a field that demands that they be wise. in concentrating on the technical aspect of philosophy (such as validity, proper names, brains in a vat, justification, etc.), to satisfy philosophical standards of the global north, philosophers have contributed to the creation of an intellectual vacuum amongst their charges, which has contributed to calls for the curriculum to be decolonised. however, this crusade for decolonisation suffers the fate of a not so well-informed binary view of the world. whilst it is understandable where this binary view emerges from, what is not clear is its real purpose. i argue that the reason for this loss, at least in philosophy, is because of philosophy teachers having abdicated their responsibilities to impart wisdom – as philosophy’s definition prescribes. for a country like south africa, the university instruction of philosophy has been the greatest betrayal of the young generation by a professoriate that has a long history of irrelevance to its context. such irrelevance is galling not only for its lack of contextual sensitivity, but also for its capacity to mislead a whole generation that (philosophy) teachers have been tasked with forming into wise and well-informed citizens. as a result of the abdication of responsibility to be wise teachers, philosophers have contributed to the cementing of views of a world of binaries that has fermented violence and absurdities in the university itself. this article is divided into three sections, the first is a brief outline of the historical problem and how it has led to the present stagnation, the second is pointer to what needs to be done in the instruction of philosophy in south africa and the third attempts to sketch the benefits of following the instruction i suggest in the second section. philosophy’s past problems haunting the present whilst violence accompanying the fees must fall movement was shocking to many who witnessed it, it was long time coming to many others (see xaba 2017). some actions and rhetoric that were deployed were far from civil and bordered on hate speech (hodes 2016:147), which universities are tasked with defeating. the political origins of the fees must fall moment lies in the basic structure of south africa as a severely divided society, the effects of which were felt by some enrolled students at the university (langa n.d.). the legitimate and justified complaint was that certain sections of the society were being denied a university education by virtue of their historical material deprivation, which is steeped in the history of apartheid and racial discrimination (oxlund 2016). this history created a class of generally well-off citizens (who happen to be white) whilst confining the majority (who happen to be black) to a fate of material deprivation and financial insecurity, which reduced their access to facilities that could better their lives (oxlund 2010:33–35). denial of access to higher education on the grounds of financial inability, in the country of one’s birth, is a gross injustice that was correctly pointed out by the fees must fall movement. i am not going to pursue this line in any detail as it is not the target of this discussion. rather, what i am interested in is the spin-off from the fees must fall that came to be known as the call for the decolonisation of the curriculum (le grange 2016). this call was mainly centred on the university’s failure to transform its structures, which led to the exclusion of certain groups, the professoriate so that it becomes demographically representative and epistemologies so that they can be reflective of the context in which teaching was happening (and effectively stop the promotion of western epistemology at the expense of african epistemology). this last complaint was also to be known as advocacy of the africanisation of the curriculum (ally & august 2018). i am interested in tracing the link between philosophy’s past failures and the demand for africanisation as it emerged in calls made by agitated students. if that link can be proven, then philosophy’s culpability in these events is great, and the figures behind these developments must take full responsibility. of all the notorious political systems that this world has seen, there is no doubt that south africa’s apartheid system was one of the vilest to an extent that it was declared a crime against humanity (see lingaas 2015). this declaration shows how wicked apartheid was as a political project. nothing was commendable about it, if anything, it only succeeded in attaining a criminal status as the declaration indicates. philosophy, unfortunately, was complicit in the misdeeds of apartheid. wolff’s (1986–87) assessment of philosophy in english-speaking south african universities, following his visit in the 1980s left him no option but to strongly condemn its manner as insensitive to the fact that it was being carried out in a fascist background. in the same manner, more (1996) insisted that the majority of philosophers in the country were indifferent to the fate that befell their fellows who, in the struggle for freedom, were victimised by the apartheid regime. in the midst of apartheid’s atrocities, what is clear is that in the division that existed between continental and analytical philosophy in formerly white south african universities, the intent was replication and pursuit of western traditions. at the margins of these endeavours were african universities that were denied both the space and materials to pursue african-centred forms of knowledge. african universities simply replicated the banality of african lives in the broader society as second class and inconsequential. in contrast, afrikaans universities benefitted from state sponsorship that ensured that afrikaans was turned into a scientific language that enabled both instruction and publication (kamwangamalu 2004:206). overall, formerly white universities pursued their teaching and research in ways that showed complete apathy to the environment they operated in. there was absolutely no political or intellectual pressure for these public institutions to be of benefit to the greater members of the population. philosophy was right in it. never bothered by the political and social injustice around it, and not prepared to comment on that injustice, south african philosophers made careers out of studying western philosophers. for generations, careers were carved out of writing and lecturing on western thinkers and traditions. what can we make of philosophy’s general silence and failure to condemn apartheid? i think there are three ways of approaching this question.1 one way would be to say that most of the individual philosophers who practiced their trade during apartheid did not really know what was happening in the country. it could be said that although they cared deeply about justice and the fate of all human beings, including black south africans, the apartheid regime did such a brilliant job of misleading its white citizens that they did not have a real understanding of what the situation was for black people. it is very hard to believe this line of thinking. whilst it is true that the apartheid regime was engaged in acts of disinformation, it remains to be seen how white people (individually or collectively) reacted to information that contrasted the apartheid regime’s propaganda. further, it also remains to be seen what the silent whites thought of their fellow whites who openly denounced apartheid and decisively threw their lot with the cause of black people. indeed philosophy had such a citizen in the person of rick turner.2 a second way would be to see white people as genuinely committed, but mistakenly so, to what they believed to be their cause. they could have believed that black people were actually asking for too much, and that if blacks could only behave properly everything would be alright. they could have believed that some or all black political leaders were trouble makers who were bent on causing trouble for no good reason but to cause trouble. they could have believed that whilst their government acted excessively, in some cases, it was always provoked to act the way it did and those actions were for the good of everyone in south africa as they contributed to the maintenance of order. a third way would be to see white people during apartheid as believers in differences that existed between black and white people. they could have thought that culturally, intellectually and morally – white people were different from black people. what that difference could have implied is that white people were to be held to a higher standard that black people were incapable of, hence these racial groups could not expect to enjoy the same benefits. white people could have operated with a certain notion of history that placed white achievements at the top and blacks right at the bottom. they could have been aware of the history of ancient and modern civilisations that consistently showed white people to be more cultured than black people. they could have thought that whilst individual black people could be trained to be skilled in one or two trades (even all the way to becoming medical doctors), they were not good enough to collectively form a culture that would be comparable with white culture. they might also have thought that white culture was simply too advanced. for this reason they just sought to get on with the experience of being white, whilst they also allowed blacks to be blacks. whatever the truth for the reasons of white attitudes could be, it matters little as black people were systematically discriminated against and abused by the white establishment. what is important is that any possible attitude that white people had against black people or to explain the differences imposed by apartheid, were simply not true. one can push the matter further by arguing that white people who fell victim to these beliefs were intellectually and morally dishonest. many philosophers who practiced their trade in white universities were particularly dishonest by their failure to demand the normalisation of society, purely on philosophical grounds. there was enough written on notions of justice and equality in their books that should have made them think carefully about the african’s situation and how apartheid could, at least theoretically, be failing both black and white citizens. however, as professional philosophers did nothing of the sort, we can say that they implicitly acquiesced with apartheid’s underlying logic of creating superiority and inferiority amongst racial groups in the country. the philosophy they pursued and practiced was meant to benefit the group that was seen as superior and was of no import to the group that was deemed inferior. intellectually, they did not care about the environment they operated in. this lack of care led to an abdication of their responsibility to their own situation. this is quite an astounding achievement, as philosophers are normally people who prioritise questions and views from their environment as they tend to show deep concern for it. this is not just a personal commitment that philosophers choose for themselves or are guided by, rather it is simple logic of philosophy itself. jones (2006) supported this thinking when early on in his own essay on philosophers’ moral obligation to their environment he wrote: i have become sympathetic to the thought that philosophers, in our roles as philosophers, have responsibilities to respond to our context, and this essay is a defense of this claim. the upshot of the essay is that philosophers should be aware of, concerned with, and working on philosophical issues that arise in their context, and that this responsibility is a moral one. the accusation may or may not in any one case be appropriately targeted at a philosopher or philosophical community, but the idea behind accusations – that philosophers have responsibilities and are susceptible to a judgment of negligence – is, i shall argue, correct. (pp. 624–625) as philosophy is grown by thinkers who are in a particular environment that is shaped by its own local facts and proclivities, they should attempt to attend to and prioritise their local experience before seeking to claim their universal (philosophical) citizenship. with the south african situation, there was no attempt at developing south african philosophy (through engagement with south african issues), but there was commitment to furthering western philosophy. that, in all probability, was an indication of where the cultural commitments of the philosophers lay. whilst there were philosophy, philosophy departments and philosophers during apartheid, there was no south african philosophical tradition, and what was bequeathed post-apartheid south africa was nothing south african. in the aftermath of the end of apartheid, when all manner and forms of change were occurring, philosophy retreated into a space of privileged exclusion of questions of the day. philosophy, as it was practiced during apartheid, continued unperturbed by the transformation and other events around it. philosophy departments, in formerly white universities, continued identifying themselves either as analytical or continental. not only did they identify themselves as such but these two traditions competed for influence in both the official philosophical society in the country and its journal. this competition culminated in a nasty confrontation, at the 2007 annual meeting of the society, between a representative of agitators for continental philosophy and well targeted then editors of the south african journal of philosophy who were accused of favouring the analytic tradition (see spurrett 2008:154, footnote 2). however, philosophy’s inability to transform itself and be sensitive to its environment came to a head in a very nasty way in the national society’s meeting, when a new generation of black south africans, clearly fed up with the way of doing business called philosophers’ racism out3 as well as the deliberate ignoring of african philosophy. so huge was the effect of that indictment, the incident was reported in a respected weekly and the society probably suffering from extreme guilt went into voluntary suspension whilst it took stock. these are the shenanigans of philosophy in south africa! but behind all these farcical commitments to western dogmas and resolute ignoring of the local, there was serious harm that was being done. the short-sightedness of philosophers under apartheid and their belief that they could continue with the same approach two decades into a free south africa, shows a serious lack of wisdom and sound judgement. this is particularly so if one considers that philosophy departments, in the country, are largely staffed by south african citizens. their failure to be responsive to their ‘backyard’ is not only inexcusable but damaging. one can imagine how the public funds that were used to maintain philosophy and people staffing those departments actually never benefitted the public. one can regret how so much potential talent and education was wasted on far away concepts at the expense of never explored home-grown concepts. one can imagine how useless the discussions on plato’s ideas of democracy were, in south africa, whilst apartheid raged. it was this useless and irrelevant philosophy that was handed over to the generation that demanded a decolonised curriculum. if this generation was taught descartes’s musings on himself as a thinking thing, on kant’s duties and utilitarianism’s bewildering theories and anything of that sort, they probably had every right to feel short-changed, undermined and mis-educated. a ready justification for this façade is found in wolff’s (2016) thinking on, or reaction to, demands for curriculum transformation when he writes: quite regularly in debates about the curriculum, it is mentioned that students – here black students – in general have an experience of estrangement due to the course content. what is taught at university does not fit into what they learn at home, it is often said. but in my view this is not necessarily a problem. i remember very well, for instance, how some of my own classmates experienced the confrontation of the racism they had picked up at home with anti-racism at varsity – with salutary effect. if staunchly creationist students of biology are shocked by the theory of evolution, i sympathise, but do not see this as sufficient reason to change the biology curriculum. there are a number of reasons why, in philosophy too, students may have to deal with a tension between what they have learned at home and what they study in class. these remarks are not intended to dismiss the reported experiences of some students. such reports may be a way in which cultural bias in the curriculum is registered. my point is that there is no direct correlation between students’ disorientation by study material and the illegitimacy of teaching such material. (p. 455) one can see from this passage how dismissive wolff is of black students’ estrangement and their demands for curriculum transformation. that transformation by the way is not primarily to satisfy black students’ private comforts or continue with providing them with the familiarity of their home prejudices. on the contrary, it is a moral obligation for academics to be sensitive to the context of the majority of the students they teach. for wolff to dismiss such a context as equivalent to some white students’ experiences of racism or creationism, which are challenged at university is mischievous. it is mischievous because the two instances he equates to black experiences of alienation and demands for transformation are actually instances of ignorance and unworthy bias. the disorientation he describes black students to experience is not a matter of mere home-reared bias. it is deeper than that as it goes to the politics of privilege at university and who has the privilege to ignore what and incorporate what as genuine knowledge – particularly in humanities (philosophy included). what wolff represents is a long-standing defence of a façade that hides an equally long-standing need by south african philosophers. the need of recognition! recognition by the colonial metropole that they were able to replicate the research expertise and teaching competencies of the prestigious universities of the world. this, charitably, is a result of the global hierarchies of knowledge that exist and are said to be true. hence, there is an expectation that leaders in the fields of knowledge will be from these universities and the best that the rest of the world has to do is to keep with them. however, this view, is not useful for agitated students who feel excluded in systems of their third world and perennially ‘developing’ countries. the students see this as coloniality and demand that it should end. the demand for decolonial education and what needs to be done the demand for decolonial education was carried out by eager but not so well read, sophisticated, advantaged or knowledgeable professors. it was mainly carried out by students who were expressing their impatience and anger at not only being materially excluded in the country of their birth through grinding poverty, but who were also feeling very angry about how higher education was structured in ways that made the acquisition of knowledge more suited to certain sections of society than others. however, because these agitated students were confronting their well-educated teachers, who believed that they had a superior intellect and had real interests to defend, the students’ real arguments were routinely ridiculed, shown to be juvenile, ambitious and misdirected. also, the accompanying violence of the students’ demands did not help their cause in the slightest. whilst i do believe that the students were correct in their call for decolonised education, the call got lost somewhere in the violence of the fees must fall movement that came with it. the first problem that the students encountered was that they lacked a coherent theoretical outline of what the programme of a decolonised curriculum would actually entail. even their lecturers were not so sure what decoloniality was. costandius et al. (2018) wrote: during the group discussion on decolonisation, lecturers agreed that the term has not been defined well enough. many students and lecturers do not know what decolonising the university means. lecturers asked: ‘what does decolonisation stand for? who is asking it? can we move to decolonisation if we don’t have a shared way of thinking about where we want to go?’ lecturers called for the creation of a unified definition of decolonisation within each institution and faculty, which must be communicated to other institutions and faculties. (p. 75) although this study’s focus was stellenbosch university, i don’t think it is an exaggeration to generalise this ignorance to almost all universities, particularly former white universities. former black universities were not even well equipped to provide intellectual succour to this burgeoning theoretical demand as they had never exhibited desire for, or competence at it. thus, the students fell into a dangerous trap. the trap is decoloniality itself as an academic subject – from the humanities. the concept and practice of decoloniality has been raging for as long as africa has been free with various approaches to interpreting or understanding its major tasks. as gatsheni-ndlovu (2015) wrote: decolonial movements assumed various forms and terms such as ethiopianism, garveyism, negritude, pan-africanism, african socialism, african humanism, black consciousness movement, and african renaissance. thus, unlike simple anti-colonialism, decoloniality was and is aimed at setting afoot a new humanity free from racial hierarchization and asymmetrical power relations in place since conquest. (p. 488) on the next page, we get further information on the nature of decoloniality when gatsheni-ndlovu (2015) continues: decoloniality names a cocktail of insurrectionist-liberatory projects and critical thoughts emerging from the ex-colonized epistemic sites like latin america, caribbean, asia, middle east, and africa; it seeks to make sense of the position of ex-colonized peoples within the euro-america-centric, christian-centric, patriarchal, capitalist, hetero-normative, racially hierarchized, and modern world system that came into being in the 15th century. (p. 489) from the identity of decolonial movements, one gets a myriad of commitments that are all tied together by the desire to get rid of racial hierarchies. however, two points are noteworthy. the first is that some of these movements have come under sustained criticism for either their simplicity or inability to advance african people’s cause. i have in mind criticism raised against negritude and african socialism. negritude as a theory of knowledge has been dismissed as an epistemological framework that caricatured africans as naive and unresponsive to reason. with senghor’s insistence on emotion as a mode of knowing, debates have raged on whether such a method is justified or whether it is sufficient for the purpose for which it was invented – a counter to white supremacy (see masolo 1994:27; mudimbe 1988:92, 94). african socialism has been shown to be a discredited political theory that has led to material impoverishment of citizens whilst contributing to the stifling of individual rights and freedoms (alofun 2014:71). the second problem for decoloniality is the description it earns as insurrectionist. i do not want to think that this is an unfortunate choice of words, but an apt description of the real aim of the project of decoloniality. it is literally insurrectionist. this means that it might have a single interpretation of the problem as well as the method necessary to address the problem. thus, the trap that decoloniality provides, exists at the conceptual and practical level. at the conceptual level, in order to develop any concept that is described as decolonial, in any sense, one must have a firm grasp of world events of colonialism, philosophies and histories of racism as well as reasons behind these commitments. one must have an almost perfect knowledge of the intricacies of the epistemologies they are going to oppose, the grounds on which those epistemic frames have been universalised and how they have come to be dominant. one must have an excellent knowledge of how these thinkers’ context was and how they related to that context, which turned them into committing to their epistemologies and accompanying claims of superiority or universal validity. this in itself is no easy task. not only does it require a degree of sophistication and formal education, but it requires serious expertise that universities judge by conferring titles that affirm such expertise. taking an example drawn from philosophy, my favourite philosopher in decolonial theory is emmanuel chukwudi eze. eze was a man who was immensely talented; he was widely read and highly knowledgeable as can be seen from his work. he died at a relatively young age (44) in 2007. at the time of his death, he was an associate professor at de paul university and he had just completed his book, on reason: rationality in a world of cultural conflict, which was published posthumously. eze is recognised as an expert in the philosophy of the enlightenment. he is particularly interested in what was responsible for making the enlightenment’s major philosophers committed to racism. in his in-depth study of philosophers such as kant and hume, he gives insightful detail of what could have led them to committing to their positions. firstly, at the general level, he argues that modern masters of western philosophy have been obsessed with the topic of ‘man’. this obsession was in part fuelled by the westerner’s encounter with different human beings, which led him to ask if there was a serious difference between himself and these other men. a part of enlightenment philosophy was to account for that difference. for kant, eze demonstrates, his approach to race was informed by his interests in anthropology, which he followed for a whilst before ‘changing’ to philosophy. for hume, eze shows, his interest in the difference of operations of reason lay in his epistemology and politics, which was committed to a form of reason that favoured abstract thought. through both the effort to categorise human beings into different varieties as well as a preference for a certain form of reason as human, the exclusion of the black race was completed in the enlightenment. in his on reason, eze (2008) gives a comprehensive account of the nature of reason as it has been used in the west. he shows what the peculiarities and shortfalls of that use were. however, he has an insightful view of the origins, strengths and weaknesses of different forms of reason as used in different contexts. his major aim is to show that reason is not to be divorced from its context. however, in the fifth and last chapter of that book, a chapter devoted to south africa – ubuntu in particular, eze changes his argument. in that chapter, eze makes a compelling argument that if ubuntu is to succeed as a philosophical project there is need for it to be separated from politics. what this means is that whilst ubuntu may be seen as a political project, it can also be seen as a philosophical endeavour. once there is misunderstanding of how far the political aspect may be allowed to encroach the philosophical space, then philosophising on ubuntu will be hindered by political considerations. my reason for using eze is to illustrate how complex the issue of decoloniality is. in part it is a reaction against a set frame of thinking that is steeped in a history and context of discrimination. not only does one have to be an expert at what he advocates, he must also be an expert at what he opposes. as eze does, there is need to go beyond the appearance of thought to discover what is behind that thought. but there is also need to be fully aware of the pressures that bear on our systems of thought. we must be able to separate burdens of analysis from political burdens so that we can be true to the calling of philosophy. at the same time we must be able to judge and separate versions of philosophy that pretend to be universally valid from those that are genuinely of use to our context. this is not an easy task. it has many levels of conceptual analysis that require the sort of dexterity that is expected from leading scholars. tragically, in the south african space, such philosophical competence and insight had been marginalised. students were then left to forage for usable concepts in aid of articulating their struggle and what they came up with was fanon and biko. the problem with the usage of fanon’s ideas on violence, in particular, proved to be handicap for the students’ movement at two levels. firstly, theoretically the students failed to see the possibility of engaging with the world that did not create fanonian distinctions steeped in confrontation. it was as if, for them, there were no other usable approaches to decoloniality that did not invoke dichotomies. for example, tuck and yang (2012) read paulo freire’s thinking as the complete opposite of fanon’s, hence they wrote: fanon positions decolonization as chaotic, an unclean break from a colonial condition that is already over determined by the violence of the colonizer and unresolved in its possible futures. by contrast, freire positions liberation as redemption, a freeing of both oppressor and oppressed through their humanity. humans become ‘subjects’ who then proceed to work on the ‘objects’ of the world (animals, earth, water), and indeed read the word (critical consciousness) in order to write the world (exploit nature). for freire, there are no natives, no settlers, and indeed no history, and the future is simply a rupture from the timeless present. settler colonialism is absent from his discussion, implying either that it is an unimportant analytic or that it is an already completed project of the past (a past oppression perhaps). freire’s theories of liberation resoundingly echo the allegory of plato’s cave, a continental philosophy of mental emancipation, whereby the thinking man individualistically emerges from the dark cave of ignorance into the light of critical consciousness. (p. 20) given south africa’s trajectory of peace and reconciliation was started by mandela, we could ask if the students ever considered the question was the trajectory advocated by freire not more useful towards contributing to the mandela project. of course not, that is why mandela was vilified by their movement as a sell-out. yet, at another level, the very violent nature of this moment was based on the fanonian masculinisation and understanding of violence, which excluded all other forms of protest, resulting in patent criminal acts such as rape and roughing up of lesbian activists, as xaba (2017) argued. the second problematic aspect of decoloniality is its practical aspect. as gatsheni-ndlovu affirms, decoloniality is an insurrectionist–liberatory approach to the experiences of colonialism. what this means is that the attitude adopted by adherents of decoloniality will be in line with what is demanded by insurrectionist–liberatory practices. this may include glorification of violence as an effective mode of dethroning colonial systems. the origins of this attitude is understandable. there was a time when the only option, to successfully confront, colonial regimes was through violence of varying degrees. this led to the launching, sponsorship and justification of insurrectionist movements and military outfits. these outfits were armed by sympathetic countries such as china and the ussr with friends that were dotted around the globe. countries such as south africa, angola, zimbabwe, namibia and mozambique (in southern africa) saw armed wars for independence and freedom. these wars are a perfect example of decolonial campaigns of an insurrectionist–liberatory kind. they also provide a reference to what genuine decolonial campaigns look like. however, what must be recognised is that wars of liberation have their relevance and context. whilst they may serve as inspiring events for future generations to contemplate upon or refer to, once they have attained their goal, their use begins to fade into the background. pseudo-militant language, styles and approaches to present day problems may actually be of limited effect. yet these traits were clearly on display in the fees must fall and decolonial moment. revolutions or violence as a means to an end has the potential to delegitimise otherwise a legitimate cause, if circumstances that justified use of violence have changed or disappeared. whilst supporters of the cause may justify the use of violence as the only resort available to register their discontent, there is no assurance that such tactics actually succeed in addressing root causes of problems such as structural inequalities and real reasons behind them westernised university curriculums. in any event the state, through the police, showed the students who actually had a monopoly on violence. what i, therefore, think needs to be done is something akin to eze’s (2006) suggestion that the teaching of philosophy in universities needs an upgrade. whilst eze’s argument is aimed at improving philosophy so that it can be in conversation with other specialisations in the sciences, the upgrade i have in mind is of a different form. philosophy in south africa needs to be upgraded from both the apartheid curriculum and the decolonial insistence. both these approaches present dangers that need to be avoided. the apartheid form is a relic that has no relevance and use in our present context. decolonised philosophy, on its own, is insufficient to skill our students the way philosophy students should be skilled. the upgrade i propose involves genuinely taking into account what the purpose of philosophy is in any given environment. philosophy operates in its environment as an attempt to respond to a set of questions that are significant to both professional philosophers and ordinary people. those questions are significant because they arise in the course of people living their lives or as people begin to reflect on their lives. as life is lived and experienced, there will always be questions and searches for either answers to issues that are not clear or inquiries into what is not clear or what needs attention. some of these questions will not be philosophical but other questions will be of a philosophical nature. if the questions are of a philosophical nature, then philosophers with all their skills may intervene and attempt working out possible philosophical responses or offer philosophical insights. what must not be disputed is that each human environment, in its totality is different from other human environments. factors such as history, beliefs, how evidence is treated and what knowledge is taken to be are going to differ from one place to another. in addition, social factors that may bring people together or divide them play an important role in how each group and its individual members view reality, their relations to other groups and what they think is their justified expectation of how society should treat them. if all these factors are taken into account, the specific demands that a place has on philosophers to create a philosophical environment that is reflective of the distinctness of that place, become all too clear. the situation in south africa is that of dichotomies and philosophy has tended to reproduce the unproductive parts of these dichotomies. by remaining white both in composition and topics of preference, it has only become a continuation of its environment rather than reflect on that environment of dichotomies. philosophy needs to upgrade to a status of integrating the myriad voices that compete in determining questions that arise in the public space. especially questions that its citizenry (its students) may encounter on a day to day basis. african students who have a radically different experience of life from their professors are not expecting too much when they enter into classes with the hope that the philosophy they will be taught will be relevant to their lives. any professor who teaches philosophy that is not relevant to such students can rightly expect to have his relevance questioned. as baumgarten (1980) wrote: the work of philosophy teachers is thus a form of service to others, and it is open to ethical assessment according to the degree to which it benefits students, ‘those who are subject to it’. (p. 185) whilst it is fair to note that there are as many voices as there are students and claimed identities, it is the job of professors to deliberately make their philosophical encounters or instruction be about the contestation over reality that has become characteristic of this country. my argument is not that priority should be given to some view about what this place is about; rather, my argument is that philosophy must be open to this place. it must begin to be comfortable about the place it operates in so that it can originate in this place. the only way to achieve this is for philosophy itself to engage its place in ways that show the seriousness that the place deserves. for a long time, this place has been treated as if it could not fit into philosophical discussion, or when it is made to fit into philosophical discussion, a special category is created for it under dubious descriptors such as ‘we offer a course in african philosophy’. this is a misnomer as africa is part of the name of this country and africa should be foundational to the philosophical experience in this country. this, without any ambiguity, is the debt that philosophers have to their students. possible benefits i propose that there are some benefits that are likely to accrue to students as a result of the foregoing. if philosophy curriculums were fundamentally reformed to be reflective of the major concerns (both living and conceptual) of this place, then the demand for decolonisation will fall away. the demand for decolonisation will not fall away because the curriculum would have been decolonised and would now be offering courses that are essentially africanised and stripped of all undue influence of colonial influences and continued control by former colonial metropoles. sensitivity to the requirements of a place is broader than narrow and unclear demands for decoloniality. decoloniality, particularly on the african continent, both as an intellectual ideal and political practice has never genuinely empowered the citizens of this continent. as a theory it has remained locked at the level of trying to work out what it is and what its potential effect is. at the practical level all forms of decolonial experiments and programs have ended in disaster with africa, materially, firmly at the bottom of all nations. what i think more productive is an approach to teaching philosophy that empowers the students and liberates the professors. one way in which professors of philosophy may be liberated is for them to acknowledge, and transmit that acknowledgement as academic knowledge, that they are in a discipline that is historically racist (and sexist). western philosophy, with its claims of origins in greece, has always been tied to historical episodes of the expansion of the empire. alexander and aristotle, the slave trade and the enlightenment philosophers are just but two prime examples that need serious philosophers to be frank about when they stand in front of first year students. whilst kant, hume, marx and whoever are brilliant thinkers who are seductive and powerful when their ideas are properly taught and understood, there is a dark side to them about how they enabled the universalisation of division amongst races and inferiorisation of the black race. if their ideas are taught, in context, the students would be truly empowered to develop the historical appreciation that eze refers to. at the same time, philosophers must also free themselves to be truly at home in their home. they should be able to teach those aspects of african history that are taken as highlights of african thinking. william amo’s refutation of descartes, charles mills’s reading of john rawls, emmanuel eze’s characterisation of reason and kwasi wiredu’s view on decolonisation are all possible productive starting points of embracing the real presence of philosophy in blackness. theirs is a philosophy that is not parochial, a philosophy that does not hide behind force and mysteries of black witchcraft and nightly operations but is based on operations and justification of reason. ideas from all angles of the historical encounter of european reason and african reason, in the context of conquest, must be laid bare for the students to appreciate the world they live and operate in. two tragedies have besieged philosophy in this country to the detriment of the quality of philosophy students we produce. they are the tragedies of avoiding the philosophy of race and the tragedy of a partial (if not late and ineffectual half embrace of african philosophy). this tragedy is seen in the sort of absence of specialisation or influence that south africa has in the philosophy of race. at the beginning of this essay, i bemoaned the bankruptcy of apartheid as a criminal exercise. its criminal nature was primarily that it was racist. all the nefarious effects of apartheid proceeded from its racism. yet philosophers in this country have largely decided to stay away from the issue of race and racism. frankly, south african philosophers should be competing with their american counterparts in discussions of the problematic topic of race and racism. this is particularly so as race remains a determinant of a person’s life chances and possibilities in south africa, more than any other category. the tragedy of african philosophy is even farcical. there were not more than three black south african philosophers, in this country, on the eve of 1994. these thinkers had carried the light of african philosophy to varying degrees, but from 1994 to this day, south africa, despite being so well-resourced, does not have research output in african philosophy, comparable to ghana – a country with a much smaller population than south africa. another glaring tragedy is that south african philosophy departments have a very small number of south african (born) professors of african descent. whilst some moves (as a result of pressures of equity targets), are being made to fill junior positions with south african (born) junior academics, a lot still needs to be done at most of the formerly white universities to achieve an acceptable representation of south african philosophers of african descent. if these tragedies are overcome and university lecturers are freed from the bondage of the need to defend a certain view of philosophy at the expense of their place and environment and are willing to embrace the philosophical promise and actual achievements of this place, then we will possibly have a well-developed curriculum emerging from our departments. such a curriculum, as mentioned, will be sensitive to history, the history of ideas and the role that philosophy has played in the development of both. professors can only deliver the truth about these matters and students will be expected to reflect on them with integrity. by doing so, professors will invite students of all colours and creeds to a genuine journey of intellectual inquiry into the fickleness of humanity and the promise that humanity holds. but most importantly, our students will begin to benefit from an education that is truly universal. if all aspects of philosophical reasoning and orientation was presented to students, equally, then students will have a better appreciation of their own place in the globe. whilst it is true that we are connected in fundamental and meaningful ways, those connections need a bit of enunciation about where they start from and how they spread all over the world to create our current reality. i do believe that students who have such an understanding stand a better chance of appreciating their place, which gives rise to their philosophy and how it connects to the rest of the world. they become empowered citizens of the local and the global as they are able to explain the dynamic of their situation and what they can expect from the history of such a situation and what they take exception to. such students begin to be truly knowledgeable students of the discipline as opposed to political agitators of a dogmatic orientation to the world. they will not always find the language of insurrectionist–liberatory approaches to knowledge to be the only way they can claim citizenship in the academe. their language will be much richer than an insurrectionist dictum. conclusion if this reads like an indictment, then maybe it should be. what i have sought to present is how the state of philosophy cannot be excused from the current crisis of decoloniality. it is a serious crisis that requires philosophy teachers to think about their own attitudes and what teaching and doing philosophy in the southernmost country on the african continent should be about. the approach to teaching philosophy, i have sought to defend, is one that does not seek to choose between dichotomies of western curriculum and so-called indigenous knowledge systems. it will be a curriculum that shows awareness to the possibility that both intellectual traditions may contribute to the development of students as well-informed graduates. acknowledgements competing interests the author has declared that no competing interests exist. author’s contributions i declare that i am the sole author of this research article. ethical consideration ethical clearance was not needed for the study. funding information this research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors. data availability statement data sharing is not applicable to this article as no new data were created or analysed in this study. disclaimer the views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any affiliated agency of the authors. references ally, y. & august, j., 2018, ‘#sciencemustfall and africanising the curriculum: findings from an online interaction’, south african journal of psychology 48(3), 351–359. https://doi.org/10.1177/0081246318794829 alofun, g.o.o., 2014, ‘african socialism: a critique’, iosr journal of humanities and social science 19(8), 69–71. https://doi.org/10.9790/0837-19866971 baumgarten, e., 1980, ‘the ethical and social responsibilities of philosophy teachers’, metaphilosophy 11(2), 182–191. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9973.1980.tb00108.x costandius, e., blackie, m., nell, i., malgas, r., alexander, n., setati, e. et al., 2018, ‘fees must fall and decolonising the curriculum: stellenbosch university students’ and lecturers’ reactions’, south african journal of higher education 32(2), 65–85. https://doi.org/10.20853/32-2-2435 eze, e.c., 2006, ‘what to do? upgrade!’, topoi 25(1–2), 51–56. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-006-0007-0 eze, e.c., 2008, on reason: rationality in a world of cultural conflict and racism, duke university press, durham, nc. gatsheni-ndlovu, s., 2015, ‘decoloniality as the future of africa’, history compass 13(10), 485–496. https://doi.org/10.1111/hic3.12264 hodes, r., 2016, ‘questioning fees must fall’, african affairs 116(462), 140–150. https://doi.org/10.1093/afraf/adw072 jones, w.e., 2006, ‘philosophers, their context, and their responsibilities’, metaphilosophy 37(5), 623–645. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9973.2006.00462.x kamwangamalu, n.m., 2004, ‘the language planning situation in south africa’, in r.b. baldauf & r.b. kaplan (eds.), langage planning and policy in africa vol 1: botswana, malawi, mozambique and south africa, pp. 197–281, multilingual matters ltd, clevedon. langa, m. (ed.), n.d., #hashtag: an analysis of the #feesmustfall movement at south african universities, centre for the study of violence and reconciliation, johannesburg, viewed 14 may 2020, from http://csvr.org.za/pdf/an-analysis-of-the-feesmustfall-movement-at-south-african-universities.pdf#page=8. le grange, l., 2016, ‘decolonisation, higher education transformation, student protests and university curriculum’, south african journal of higher education 30(2), 1–12. https://doi.org/10.20853/30-2-709 lingaas, c., 2015, ‘the crime against humanity of apartheid in a post-apartheid world’, oslo law review 2(2), 86–115. https://doi.org/10.5617/oslaw2566 masolo, d.a., 1994, african philosophy in search of identity, east african educational publishers, nairobi. more, m.p., 1996, ‘complexity, neutrality or advocacy? philosophy in south africa: ronald aronson’s “stay out of politics”: a review essay’, theoria: a journal of social and political theory 87, 124–135. mudimbe, v.y., 1998, the invention of africa: gnosis, philosophy and the order of knowledge, indiana university press, bloomington, in. oxlund, b., 2010, ‘responding to university reform in south africa: student activism at the university of limpopo’, social anthropology 18(1), 30–42. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-8676.2009.00095.x oxlund, b., 2016, ‘#everything must fall: the use of social media and violent protests in the current wave of student riots in south africa’, anthropology now 8(2), 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1080/19428200.2016.1202574 spurrett, d., 2008, ‘why i am not an analytic philosopher’, south african journal of philosophy 27(2), 153–163. https://doi.org/10.4314/sajpem.v27i2.31509 tuck, e. & yang, k.w., 2012, ‘decolonization is not a metaphor’, decolonization: indigeneity, education & society 1(1), 1–40. wolff, r.p., 1986–87, ‘philosophy in south africa today’, philosophical forum 18(2–3), 94–104. https://doi.org/10.1080/02580136.2016.1242200 wolff, e., 2016, ‘four questions on curriculum development in contemporary south africa’, south african journal of philosophy 35(4), 444–459. https://doi.org/10.1080/02580136.2016.1242200 xaba, w., 2017, ‘challenging fanon: a black radical feminist perspective on violence and fees must fall movement’, agenda 31(3–4), 96–104. https://doi.org/10.1080/10130950.2017.1392786 footnotes 1. i do not seek to suggest these ways as exhaustive but merely illustrative of possible commitments. 2. rick turner (1941–1978) was a white south african radical philosopher who was assassinated in his house (possibly for his political activism). 3. the events leading up to and after this encounter were reported in the national press: https://mg.co.za/article/2017-02-07-no-one-philosophical-about-demise-of-philosophical-society/ abstract the higher education system in argentina universities within their territory research methods and design results covid-19 and the new challenges faced by argentine universities final words acknowledgements references footnotes about the author(s) mariana mendonça institute of argentine and american history ‘dr. emilio ravignani’, department of history, faculty of philosophy and literature, university of buenos aires, buenos aires, argentinanational council for scientific and technical research (conicet), buenos aires, argentina citation mendonça, m., 2020, ‘national universities in argentina during the pandemic outbreak’, transformation in higher education 5(0), a91. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v5i0.91 original research national universities in argentina during the pandemic outbreak mariana mendonça received: 07 aug. 2020; accepted: 02 oct. 2020; published: 02 nov. 2020 copyright: © 2020. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract background: the health emergency that argentina is experiencing because of the covid-19 pandemic radically changed institutional normality at all educational levels. universities have certainly not escaped this logic. whilst their first response was a general shut down, along with a shift to online teaching and learning, the actions taken in response to the pandemic went far and beyond. these institutions sought to contribute, in different ways, to satisfy the new social demands linked to the outbreak of the health emergency. aim: we aim to give an account of the actions that the national universities in argentina took in response to the distinctive social demands linked to the pandemic outbreak. setting: specifically, we focussed on the academic and pedagogical decisions, the reorientation of scientific research, the availability of infrastructure and resources for the covid-19 treatment and the responses to the social demands of local communities. methods: we worked with institutional documents from the national universities, the national inter-university council, the ministry of education and the ministry of science and technology. we also used news sources, such as newspapers articles and the universities web sites. results: our research brought the attention to some interesting facts on the country’s higher education system, which shows us a distinctive role that universities play in argentina. nevertheless, we have also found indicators regarding the difficulties that these institutions struggle with. in particular, these linked to the economic crises that the country has suffered for decades, which in turn have changed the universities specific features. conclusion: the covid-19 pandemic disrupted the functioning of society as a whole, and universities were no exception. despite the strong heterogeneity that characterises national universities throughout the country, all of them agreed to make all their resources available to mitigate the effects of the health emergency. keywords: university; higher education; argentina; pandemic; covid-19; social demands; research; online teaching. the higher education system in argentina since the mid-twentieth century, argentina’s higher education system has undergone different waves of expansion and transformation. the university map shows today 131 institutions spread all over the country. amongst them, 66 belong to the public sector, 63 are privately managed and the other two are foreign ones. despite the similar number of institutions in the private and the public sector, it is worth highlighting that the public sector holds 79% of enrolment in the country, that is, 1 500 000 students approximately.1 unlike other latin american countries, the private sector in argentina never reached more than 20% of enrolment (ballerini 2018). one of the main explanations of this characteristic is that the core policy since 1950 has been tuition-free and open access in the public system (with political interruptions until 1983, when the establishment of free tuition was definite).2 during the eighties and nineties, enrolment grew mainly in traditional universities, most of them based in large urban centres.3 once again argentina went through an expansive wave of higher education institutions and by the mid-1990s, the number of universities had gone up to 35 and the number of enrolees surpassed 800 000 (mendonça 2020). although undergraduate tuition is free, since 1996 the national government has implemented different grant programs to support other educational costs, such as books, transportation and class materials, whether per diem or by a monthly sum. these policies respond to the rise in the poverty and unemployment rates that took place in the nineties: while the former grew up to 30%, the latter doubled its initial number, reaching a peak over 20% in 2002 (acuña, kessler & repetto 2002). in this scenario, free tuition did not necessarily imply free and open access. hence, the public university system tried to catch up to new demands, mainly related to a new social-student profile. low-income sectors are today the largest and most dynamic segment of enrolment expansion. many university students are already employed or are actively seeking employment, and nearly 20% of them are heads of household. likewise, there are a significant number of students who have graduated from special government programs aimed at the completion of secondary school. these students are generally young mothers from impoverished neighbourhoods, teachers or adults who had postponed their studies to work. most of them are making significant progress in comparison to their parents, since they represent the first generation of university students in their family and even the first generation of high-school graduates. many of these students were able to access university education in the framework of university expansion policies that took place during cristina fernández administration (2007–2015) (mónaco 2017). in those years, a third expansion wave took place and several institutions were established across the country, eight of which were based in buenos aires’s suburban areas. we should underscore the fact that 20% of the total population of argentina lives in buenos aires province (indec 2010), a territory that has historically been characterised by being home to a significant section of the population living in poverty, with unfulfilled basic needs and high levels of unemployment. these universities were aimed at reorienting argentina’s economy towards diversification and complementation of the national productive structure, contributing to regional and national development (garcía delgado & casalis 2013). in general, their institutional projects focused explicitly on the linkage between local, regional and national development. indeed, the academic offerings and the lines of research proposed are oriented towards the establishment of a direct link with the local environment, seeking to contribute to areas considered as priorities: production, technology, environment, health, social economy, management and public services, amongst others. one of the main characteristics of these new universities’ set of objectives is that they aim to review practices and the ways in which they relate to their social environment. in particular, they seek to promote the type of research that contributes to the resolution of problems affecting the population, implement non-university education programs around subjects relevant to the local community, engage in cultural activities of community integration and encourage – on the basis of knowledge acquired in university – the development of media campaigns to help the community and activities to improve their living conditions. thus, new universities, and particularly those based in buenos aires’s suburban areas, have developed a network of social inclusion that transcends academic training, something that has been mainly accomplished through outreach programmes. this feature has been conceptualised by international literature as a ‘third mission’ for higher education institutions, which includes all those activities that escape academia and that are related to the production, use, application and exploitation of knowledge and other competencies at the disposal of universities (molas-gallart et al. 2002). in argentina, this so-called third mission not only refers to the transfer of knowledge and technology but also to ‘university social responsibility’, which encompasses proposals like the ones mentioned above. this is a clear indication that we are before a reinforcement of this role in the university system. within this framework, universities have experienced some changes in their functions and have acquired a significant role in development processes (cin 2012). universities within their territory the linkage between universities and their surrounding territory is not new in the history of argentina’s higher education system. on the contrary, the need to reinforce the ties with non-university actors began to gain importance amongst the academic community at the beginning of the 20th century. in particular, community outreach programmes have been identified to be crucial for the transformations brought about by the 1918 university reform (labrandero & santander 2008; tünnerman 2000). the desire to integrate university life into the community gave rise to this ‘social responsibility’, which distinguished latin american institutions from those in other parts of the world (tünnerman 2000). the question that arises, then, is what makes these new national universities (in particular those created in the buenos aires suburbs) different from the others when it comes to their linkage with the territory? as we have already mentioned, we must point out their geographical location: a significant fraction of buenos aires suburbs is marked by strong social deterioration. a large part of the population has unsatisfied basic needs (nbi), including housing, education, labour and health deficits. as suárez and palma arce state, these conditions determine the strong heterogeneous structure that characterises the buenos aires suburbs, which is expressed, in turn, in social and territorial fragmentation and segmentation (suárez & palma arce 2010). it is within this context that we must analyse these new universities. one of the most notable features of these institutions was the magnitude of the enrolment, driven mainly by students coming from the surrounding areas. in particular, as we have mentioned, the low-income sectors now represent the most dynamic segment of enrolment growth. on the other hand, science and technology policies, as well as linkage and technology transfer actions, have also generated important results during the first decade. in this sense, thomas (2015) states that the role of science, technology and innovation in providing solutions to problems regarding poverty and social exclusion has become a highly relevant issue in the academic field, and that it yields useful results for public management. this has been expressed in the orientation of activities, budgets and teaching staff towards the development of applied research in strategic sectors, as well as extension and transfer policies aimed at local governments and economic actors in the local territories (garcía delgado & casalis 2013). in particular, universities are constantly trying to respond to the social demands of the local population, and permanent strategies are being developed. while it is not the aim of this article to give an account of these processes, we do believe that it is important to shed light on some lines of action in order to later understand how they managed to adapt immediately to a national health challenge such as covid-19. the research lines, the outreach programmes and technology transfer activities that these universities carry out are based on situated knowledge. in other words, the production of knowledge is carried out through a direct link with the recipients. thus, for example, if we look at the addressee of research and/or transfer projects of the new universities in the buenos aires suburbs, we find that in 2017, more than 50% was oriented towards social transfer, including local governments, businesses, social organisations, other sectors of local, regional or national administrations and the community in general (roca, schneider & pedrosa 2018). amongst the most outstanding issues, we find them related to community health, environmental management, environmental health, occupational health, urban development, mobility, habitat, industrial design and support to small producers through, for example, research in areas such as biotechnology. this eagerness to put in motion activities in the territory and establish inter-institutional links distinguishes the new universities from the ‘traditional’ ones (roca et al. 2018).4 however, it should be mentioned that the former have a strong budgetary disadvantage. in sum, it has been possible to set up research groups and develop lines of research, outreach programmes and technology transfer programmes with local communities. on the basis of strengthening the link between universities and the territory, these new institutions have also been able to offer an articulated response to the emergence of the covid-19 pandemic. in this article, we will underscore the actions developed by the national universities in the country in order to address the social demands that emerged in the pandemic outbreak. as we have mentioned, since the 1970s the system has undergone three expansion waves and today there are more than 50 national universities spread all over the country. the ones created in the seventies sought to emphasise a regional profile and were built, mainly, in different provinces. during the nineties, the universities were established in buenos aires’ suburban areas and it was expected that this would decentralise enrolment in old traditional universities (the university of buenos aires and the national university of la plata). the last wave of expansion took place a decade ago and universities were created in different provinces, but were mainly created in the buenos aires suburbs. all of them have responded in different ways to the pandemic. it is our aim to give an account on their actions. research methods and design the main research questions aimed to explore how the pandemic outbreak impacted universities activities and the role that they play in the argentine society. in the first place, we have used scholarly second-hand sources to approach the general economic and health context in the country, as well as to give an account of the main characteristics of the higher education system. in order to analyse the impact of the pandemic outbreak on university activities, in the second place, we collected the information through institutional sources, such as the national universities, the national inter-university council (cin), the ministry of education and the ministry of science and technology. given the quarantine context, these sources were collected from the institutions websites. all of them have been published since march and were consulted from that date to the end of august 2020. we also used news sources from five different national newspapers: la nación, clarín, página/12, infobae and ámbito. these were also consulted online, and their use is merely informative and by no means aims at analysing different points of view. on the contrary, we have consulted these sources in order to give an account on the information regarding national universities in the pandemic on a daily basis. considering that most of these media published the same information, we have selected the newspaper articles that had addressed the topic in-depth and covered all aspects of the subject. when necessary, we have also used online media to support the information. ethical consideration this article followed all ethical standards for carrying out research without direct contact with human or animal subjects. results our research brought the attention to some interesting facts on the country´s higher education system. as we will present in detail in the following sections, universities have managed to respond in different ways to the health emergency. in the first place, the shift to online teaching and learning involved a massive restructuring of the teaching activities: not only did teachers need to learn to use many information and communications technologies and to adapt their classes to a virtual environment, but students were also required to engage with this new system. secondly, many universities put their research teams and infrastructure at the service of the community to respond to different demands, that is, the prevention of new infections, the reorientation of research teams into new treatments, the rehabilitation of recovered patients and the increase of the health system capacities. finally, various actions have been carried out in relation to social problems, such as food, health and clothing, triggered by the pandemic at a local level. while this shows us a distinctive role that universities play in argentina, we have also found indicators regarding the difficulties that these institutions struggle with. in particular, these linked to the economic crises that the country has suffered for decades, which in turn have changed the universities specific features. covid-19 and the new challenges faced by argentine universities on march 20, in response to the local outbreak of the pandemic, the national government issued a decree ordering a general social confinement in order to prevent and reduce the spreading of the virus and mitigate its impact on the health system. in this context, most of the population had to remain in their homes, abstaining from going to work or moving around locally and regionally and avoiding public places and social meetings. in this context, public universities began to gain space in the design and implementation of strategies linked to the containment of the virus, reducing the spread of the pandemic and researching into medical treatments, as well as the design of strategies to implement virtual teaching methods. this role was foreseen by the minister of education, nicolás trotta, at a meeting held with the executive committee of the cin, where he stated that: ‘we have to prepare ourselves for an unknown scenario and that is where we believe our universities will be able to play a leading role’ (cin 2020a). as mentioned above, the whole education system went through a general shutdown after march 20th.5 however, one of the first actions carried out by the national universities was the implementation of a framework agreement signed by the cin and the ministry of education in order to produce and broadcast educational content. the objective of the agreement is that these institutions provide the entire educational system with means and infrastructure necessary for the production of educational and cultural content in different formats, that is, radio, audio-visual and editorials. according to the cin, this should enrich the content and proposals that are being made available to the country’s students (cin 2020a). in addition, universities collaborated with prevention campaigns, information and brochures of the pandemic. a few days later, a survey of the infrastructure capacities of the public university system in relation to the pandemic began, which included the availability of beds in university hospitals and the scientific and technological capacities for the production of inputs (cin 2020b). in particular, some universities contributed to the manufacture of alcohol gel and 3-d technology printing of protective masks for health personnel. others redirected the lines of research of their working groups, which had concrete results of great importance. the following is a description of the different actions that were carried out in response to the health emergency. to do so, we will work with the four proposed themes: academic and pedagogical decisions, reorientation of scientific research, availability of infrastructure and resources for the covid-19 treatment and responses to the social demands of local communities. the shift to online teaching and learning after the general shutdown, universities worked against the clock to ensure the academic year. while the undergraduate programmes in public universities in argentina are mostly face-to-face classes, the pandemic outbreak forced a shift to online classes. however, as marquina (2020) states, argentina has an advantage regarding distance education. at the turn of the century, it began to expand at a fast pace, and in 2017 the university sector as a whole signed a framework agreement for distance education, grounded on with the same quality standards as face-to-face education. to this end, the cin, together with the office of university policies (spu) worked on a regulatory framework to specify quality requirements for distance education. this, in turn, resulted in a new beginning for distance education in argentina´s public universities. since then, each university has had to set up its own institutional distance education system, and subsequently get assessed by the spu and by the national commission for university evaluation and accreditation (coneau). this evaluation process documents the universities functional structure, technological infrastructure, specialised human resources, teaching strategies and research activities on this type of education. although most academic offerings are face-to-face programmes, as marquina (2020) points out, the university system relays on a structure that is prepared to face this kind of contingencies. nevertheless, setting up a virtual academic year for the whole system at the beginning of a pandemic outbreak presents several problems. for instance, virtual platforms had to be set up in a record time, teachers without the necessary pedagogical skills had to prepare virtual classes against the clock, learn how to use the platforms, be able to digitalise documents and books for the students and organise their work shifts in order to fulfil the requirements both at home and in class. all of these, at some point, were taken care by the technological staff. but another key issue was soon identified: do all students have access to a computer, a cell phone or a tablet? do they count with network connectivity? argentina has over 40 million inhabitants. throughout the country, there is a strong heterogeneity when it comes to living conditions, especially in cities that are distant from the urban centres. the buenos aires suburbs stands out, since a quarter of the country´s population lives in this area and approximately 4 million (34.1%) are poor, that is, their total incomes do not cover food and basic services for a daily reproduction (beccaria n.d). in this scenario, it is not surprising, then, that access to the internet and electronic devices has emerged as problems to be solved in order to ensure pedagogical continuity. as a first step, the national government made an agreement with the wireless communication service companies, facilitating free access to the university virtual platforms. despite that, students were not able to assist to the virtual classes online, since most of them were not undertaken in the university platforms, but were taken in other cloud-based video-conferencing services. some universities, thereupon, decided to create grant programmes in order to provide internet services to their students. at the same time, some of them decided to lend computers to students until the end of the quarantine. nevertheless, national universities experienced a high level of dropouts during the first semester.6 although dropouts during the first academic year are common in argentina’s university system, we may expect an increase with the pandemic outbreak, despite all the efforts made by the government and the university authorities. that said, even though argentina is technically prepared to respond to this contingency, it still presents an enormous challenge given the heterogeneity, poverty and inequality of its population.7 the pandemic outbreak brought to light one of the main problems that the university system in the country has: in spite of the open access and free tuition, universal higher education still remains unmet.8 scientific research argentina has a strong tradition in scientific research and technological development, which was historically performed by universities. compared to other countries in the region, argentina has achieved early and satisfying results in this matter. in the early twentieth century, the first research groups that were recognised as such were located in the public national universities. although over the years other privateand public-scientific institutions emerged, national universities still hold most of the ongoing investigations. more than 60% of the 50 000 people who conduct science and technology activities in argentina work at public national universities (albornoz 2004). with the outbreak of the covid-19 virus, the scientific system was put under further strain. one of the first measures at the national level was the creation of the ‘covid-19 coronavirus unit’, aimed at responding to the immediate demands and needs of the executive branch and the ministry of health. to do so, the national council for scientific and technical research (conicet), in cooperation with the ministry of science, technology and innovation and the national agency for the promotion of research, technological development and innovation (agencia i+d+i), presented the guidelines to develop projects aimed at improving the national capacity to respond to the pandemic in the country (conicet 2020c). with an investment of $5 million, these organisms and agencies financed 64 research projects, most of them were carried out in public national universities. amongst these, many extremely valuable developments in prevention and diagnosis should be highlighted. in the first place, three different covid-19 tests were developed by scientists at public universities or public health institutions, either by their own or allied to private firms. one of those, the ‘neokit-covid 19’, is a diagnostic test for the simplified molecular detection of the sars-cov-2, the etiological agent of covid-19, which was designed by conicet researchers at the césar milstein science and technology institute, along with researchers at the san martin and the quilmes national universities. instead of the polymerase chain reaction (pcr) technique, it relies on loop-mediated isothermal amplification (lamp) for ribonucleic acid (rna) amplification. this makes it as reliable as the other one, but it is quicker (the results are delivered in less than 2 h) and cheaper. as a matter of fact, it can also be mainly manufactured with local components, which is particularly important in argentina, because of the fact that the costs of imported products are extremely high. another advantage is that the lab test is simpler, and therefore it does not need to be operated by highly-trained personnel. in a similar fashion, the ela-chemstrip test, jointly developed by researchers at san martin national university and quilmes national university and technological firms, operates with easy loop amplification (ela) and offers similar advantages as the other one. besides, a serological test was also jointly developed by researchers from conicet and the leloir institute, a public health institution. the covidar igg, aimed to test for the presence of covid-19 antibodies, is based on the elisa technique and offers high sensibility and quick results at a low cost (ámbito 2020; bär 2020c; conicet 2020a, 2020b; infobae 2020; unqui 2020; zamponi 2020). besides, it not only gives information of the presence of antibodies but can also quantify them, a crucial information regarding the identification of potential plasma donors (unsam 2020). in the second place, an anti-covid-19 hyper-immune serum for passive immunisation was developed recently as a result of a joint effort by the san martín national university and the private sector. this therapeutic serum contains a large number of antibodies with neutralising capacity. via in vitro tests, the serum has shown the ability to neutralise the sars-cov-2. it could prevent the virus from entering the cells where it multiplies (buenos aires time 2020). besides, the buenos aires university led the first trial of the use of cured patients’ plasma for severe covid-19 cases, and later allied to a private health firm in an effort to multiply plasma donors (bär 2020c; sigal 2020). in the third place, researchers at the leloir institute and the san martín national university joined forces to develop a vaccine against covid-19. the project is still in pre-clinical phase, and an alliance with private firms is expected in order to move on to the next phases. while this development is lagging behind many other vaccine trials around the world, the researchers are attempting to produce a vaccine version that could be orally administered, therefore not requiring trained personnel for its application (la voz 2020). lastly, researchers from conicet, the university of buenos aires and the national university of san martín have created facial masks using a technology that deactivates the covid-19 virus in 5 min. these researchers developed fabrics treated with antiviral, bactericidal and fungicidal agents to manufacture, amongst other things, face masks. the fabrics properties were successfully tested by the national institute of industrial technology (inti), and are now marketed under the brand name atom protect (conicet 2020c). we must point out that these are developments that were possible precisely because of previous investment in technology and training of qualified workers over the years. although the country´s scientific system has not fully recovered after the military coups in 1966 and in 1976,9 after the return to the democratic and constitutional government in 1983, scientific research has been driven by national policies although with variable strength. therefore, today it has a long tradition and counts with different research teams that have been working in different research areas. thus, with the pandemic outbreak, national universities were able to reorient their lines of work to meet the new health demands. infrastructure and resources as marquina (2020) states, since march national universities have become leading players in the fight against covid-19. many institutions started producing items in short supply, such as alcohol-based hand sanitiser and masks, as well as ventilators and other hospital supplies. the institutions that have medical schools are also carrying out tests to diagnose the disease in their university hospitals or laboratories; the ones who do not, they have prepared their headquarters to be used as field hospitals if necessary. at the same time, all of them have recruited volunteers to assist patients, give support to elderly living alone and to work hand-in-hand with different activities of local governments to mitigate the disease. it is not our intention to list all the activities that these institutions started during the outbreak, but we can mention some of them as an example. medical students, that is, future doctors and nurse practitioners, amongst others, held flu vaccination rounds all over the country. students enrolled in other university careers volunteered in control tasks in order to guarantee that all medical supplies would reach destination. others started working at call centres specifically set up to monitoring persons who have been in contact with the virus. nevertheless, the pandemic has significantly increased the requirement of health professionals. enrolment in medicine careers, especially m.d., has been historically massive in argentina. so much so that in some periods, it has become a problem and a lot of reports have proposed redirecting enrolment to careers considered to be a priority, for example, engineering and technology. in the last few years, degrees other than m.d. arose as priorities within medical school: nurse practitioners, physiotherapy, physiatrist, obstetrician, amongst others. immediately after the outbreak hit europe, and then latin america, one of the main problems appeared to be the need to increase the number of available ventilators, which are used in the most severe cases of the illness. the first response, in turn, was importing and producing local ones. some universities in argentina, in the framework of the covid-19 coronavirus unit, developed a project that aimed to improve the capabilities of mechanical ventilators and allow the simultaneous ventilation of two patients. but as garofalo states, ventilators do not operate themselves. even as the production of ventilators catches up with the unprecedented demand around the globe, ventilators still need skilled – and physically and psychologically healthy – staff to operate them properly. one ventilated patient requires at least two healthcare professionals per shift. the pandemic has made the already existing shortage of trained icu personnel become more evident. (garofalo 2020) as a matter of fact, intensive care units (icu) include not only doctors and nurses but also physiotherapists. an initial response from the national government and the office of university policies was to expedite the issuance of university degrees. in argentina, it is not uncommon that degrees are issued long time after graduation, sometimes more than a year. during the pandemic, universities managed to speed up the process to just a few months. besides, to be able to practice, health professionals must pay a required fee in order to receive their medical license. accordingly, some universities created grant programmes to support them and increase the health staff. it is worth mentioning that, in argentina, nursing students often belong to the most economically-disadvantaged groups. in this health emergency scenario, physiotherapists became key professionals, because of the fact that one of the discipline specialties is respiratory rehabilitation. this specialty has existed since the mid-fifties, when argentina went through the polio epidemic. today there are around 1200 specialists, many of whom are graduates from the argentine society of intensive care (página/12 2020). patients who recover sufficient lung capacity to be disconnected from the ventilator must recover their muscular strength, achieve autonomy to be able to eat and drink and overcome possible sequelae associated with the use of the ventilator (página/12 2020). because of this, the ministry of health of the province of buenos aires carried out a call for additional hospital staff, seeking to incorporate 500 physiotherapists to public hospitals. at the same time, one of the universities in the buenos aires suburbs recently inaugurated a respiratory rehabilitation centre to attend patients recovered from covid-19 who have respiratory sequelae (perfil 2020). this demand would have been much harder to satisfy without expediting the issue of degrees. social demands while the confinement allowed slowing down the rise of contagion, its flip side was a fall in production, the growth of poverty and in the number of people in a state of emergency (onu 2020). between 2005 and 2011, argentina´s economy expanded at an annual rate of 5.7%, but between 2012 and 2019 it withdrew to an average rate of 2.5%. these cycles of expansion and retraction in the economy are characteristic of the country (salvia & poy 2020). since 2018, however, this period of stagnation or recession turned into a structural crisis, which would be aggravated by the pandemic: in 2020, the gross domestic product (gdp) is expected to shrink around 10%. the confinement has a severe impact on different economic activities. according to the international labour organisation, the most compromised activities are those related to business, construction, manufacturing, tourism and transport, hotel and restaurant activities, as well as personal services and household employment. it must be noted that these activities employ 70.1% of the country’s urban labour force (salvia & poy 2020). besides, a great portion of workers are not registered or are in a precarious situation. in many occasions, this means that they are not able to earn their wage if they cannot go to work. in this scenario, the argentine government took several measures to compensate the collateral consequences that the pandemic outbreak brought. amongst them, we can point out the budgetary enforcement for school meals and community dinners, and an increase in different social-protection programs, amongst others. universities, for their part, were also active in the government’s response to social demands. one of the most relevant actions regarding the economic scenario was the solidary funds programme. the project is aimed at assisting the district’s community dinners, school dinners and clubs. it is worth highlighting that, since the nineties, the most impoverished fraction of population´s diet is mainly subsidised by the government. after the economic crisis in those years, schools also offered a place for setting community dinners, and some of them succeeded in reducing dropouts, thanks to these actions. many students went to school so they could have at least a daily meal. during this pandemic crisis, schools started handing out rations of food for all family members. to this end, universities have strengthened efforts in order to assist them. members of the academic community have agreed that a percentage of their salary is voluntarily deducted. the aid consists in boxes of non-perishable food and cleaning supplies. and at the same time, it involves students, professors and staff in voluntary work (unahur 2020a; ungs 2020; unpaz 2020). other actions were also carried out to support the workers of the local communities. the national university of hurlingham, for example, used to offer a bike lending service to their students. as they are not assisting to the campus during the outbreak, the service was redirected to students who work in the surroundings, who can borrow the bikes if they need to work outside their houses instead of cramming into public transports, one of the main focal points of contagions (unahur 2020b). final words historically, argentine public universities have been a place of knowledge production and development of research lines, with a strong interest in establishing links with society. university outreach, as we have mentioned, dates back to before the 1918 reform and has been modified, adapted and extended over the years. the link with the territory and with the local populations, consequently, was strengthened from the different substantive functions of these institutions. besides teaching, research, transfer and outreach programmes, argentine universities today have a myriad of actions that respond to different social demands. today we find universities with a strong social commitment, which includes the territory and local populations in their institutional projects. the covid-19 pandemic disrupted the functioning of society as a whole, and universities were no exception. however, the social purpose of these institutions was expressed in every possible way. despite the strong heterogeneity that characterises national universities throughout the country, all of them agreed to make all their resources available to mitigate the effects of the health emergency. perhaps the greatest attention has been paid to the academic calendar, whether or not pedagogical continuity could be guaranteed, as well as issues related to the quality of teaching in a virtual environment, and even discussions about assessments have been the focus during the first semester. but not everything was limited to training and teaching activities. on the contrary, the research teams, where possible, redirected their scientific progress and succeeded in developing products to be used in the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of covid-19. others started to use already existing technologies to be able to produce input elements for the health service, the production of masks with 3-d technology and the production of gel sanitiser, are just some of them. agreements with privately managed laboratories were also of great importance in order to advance in these developments. likewise, the framework projects and the agreements with the local governments allowed strengthening prevention actions with the local populations. in sum, the health emergency and the social isolation were far from paralysing university activities. not only did they accomplish to advance in actions to mitigate the covid-19 but also were able to redirect the different research lines. even young universities, created during the last decade, put all their resources at the service of the population in order to counteract the effects of the pandemic. acknowledgements competing interests the author has declared that no competing interests exist. author’s contributions the author declares that she is the sole author of this research article. funding information this study received funding from the national council for scientific and technical research (conicet). data availability statement data sharing is not applicable to this article as no new data were created or analysed in this study. disclaimer the views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any affiliated agency of the author. references achigar, s., 2020, ‘el acceso a la universidad en tiempos de pandemia’, la izquierda diario, 07 july, viewed from https://www.laizquierdadiario.com/el-acceso-a-la-universidad-en-tiempos-de-pandemia. acuña, c.h., kessler, g. & repetto, f., 2002, evolución de la política social argentina en la década del noventa: cambiosen su lógica, intencionalidad y en el proceso de hacer política social, center for latin american social policy – claspo – university of texas at austin, buenos aires. albornoz, m., 2004, ‘política científica y tecnológica en argentina’, in globalización, ciencia y tecnología, vol. ii, pp. 81–92, organización de estados iberoamericanos para la educación, la ciencia y la cultura (oei), españa. ámbito, 2020, investigadores argentinos desarrollaron un suero terapéutico anti coronavirus, viewed n.d., from https://www.ambito.com/informacion-general/covid-19/investigadores-argentinos-desarrollaron-un-suero-terapeutico-anti-coronavirus-n5110656. ballerini, v., 2018, america´s promise and argentina´s unrestricted access: a comparative analysis of equity implications of tuition-free and open-access models in higher education, higher and postsecondary education department of administration, leadership and technology, new york, ny. bär, n., 2020a, ‘coronavirus en la argentina. crean un test bien “criollo” para detectar covid-19’, la nación, 13 junio, viewed n.d., from https://www.lanacion.com.ar/ciencia/coronavirus-argentina-crean-test-bien-criollo-detectar-nid2378973. bär, n., 2020b, ‘coronavirus en la argentina: la ciencia local entra a jugar contra el covid-19’, 18 marzo, la nación. bär, n., 2020c, ‘coronavirus en la argentina: preparan un gran ensayo con suero de convalecientes’, la nación, 14 abril, viewed from https://www.lanacion.com.ar/ciencia/coronavirus-argentina-preparan-gran-ensayo-suero-convalecientes-nid2354112. beccaria, a., n.d., observatorio del conurbano, viewed n.d., from http://observatorioconurbano.ungs.edu.ar/?p=7102. bekerman, f., 2013, ‘the scientific field during argentina’s latest military dictatorship (1976–1983): contraction of public universities and expansion of the national council for scientific and technological research (conicet)’, minerva 51(2), 253–269. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11024-013-9227-9 bekerman, f., 2018, ‘orfología del espacio científico-universitario argentino: una visión de largo plazo (1983–2014)’, ciencia, docencia y tecnolo 29(56), 18–46. https://doi.org/10.33255/2956/361 chiroleu, a. & marquina, m., 2017, ‘democratisation or credentialism? public policies’, policy reviews in higher education 1(2), 139–160. https://doi.org/10.1080/23322969.2017.1303787 consejo interuniversitario nacional (cin), 2012, plan estratégico de desarrollo de la extensión 2012–2015, consejo interuniversitario nacional, santa fe. cin, 2020a, consejo interuniversitario nacional, 16 marzo, n.d., viewed from https://www.cin.edu.ar/. cin, 2020b, ‘comisión especial con el ministerio de educación para la prevención y contención del covid-19’, in consejo interuniversitario nacional, 19 marzo, viewed n.d., from cin.edu.ar: https://www.cin.edu.ar/comision-especial-con-el-ministerio-de-educacion-para-la-prevencion-y-contencion-del-covid-19/ conicet, 2020a, ‘aprueban el uso de un nuevo test molecular de covid-19, sensible, específico, rápido y económico’, in conicet, 13 junio, viewed n.d., from https://www.conicet.gov.ar/aprueban-el-uso-de-un-nuevo-test-molecular-de-covid-19-sensible-especifico-rapido-y-economico/ conicet, 2020b, ‘los test de diagnóstico rápido neokit-covid-19 y elachemstrip empezaron a distribuirse en los hospitales públicos’, in conicet, 29 junio 29, viewed n.d., from https://www.conicet.gov.ar/los-test-de-diagnostico-rapido-neokit-covid-19-y-ela-chemstrip-empezaron-a-distribuirse-en-los-hospitales-publicos/ conicet, 2020c, ‘desarrollan telas antivirales para barbijos de uso social’, in conicet, 06 august, viewed n.d., from https://www.conicet.gov.ar/desarrollan-telas-antivirales-para-barbijos-de-uso-social/. dal piva, g., 2020, ‘más de la mitad de los ingresantes universitarios abandonaron en la cuarentena’, río negro, 03 may, viewed n.d., from https://www.rionegro.com.ar/mas-de-la-mitad-de-los-ingresantes-universitarios-abandonaron-en-la-cuarentena-1344758/ garcía delgado, d. & casalis, a., 2013, ‘modelo de desarrollo y universidad en argentina. análisis crítico y contribución de la extensión universitaria al desarrollo local y regional’, +e: revista de extensión universitaria 3(3), 24–31. https://doi.org/10.14409/extension.v1i3.468 garofalo, l., 2020, ‘ventilators alone won’t save us’, sapiens, 20 may. indec, 2010, censo nacional de población, hogares y viviendas 2010, instituto nacional de estadísticas y censos república argentina, buenos aires. infobae, 2020, coronavirus: científicos argentinos desarrollaron un test que detecta covid-19 hasta cuatro veces más rápido, 13 junio, viewed n.d., from https://www.infobae.com/salud/2020/06/13/coronavirus-cientificos-argentinos-desarrollaron-un-test-que-detecta-covid-19-hasta-cuatro-veces-mas-rapido/ labrandero, m. & santander, l., 2008, ‘extensión académica: una función del sistema universitario’, revista de la educación superior 47(1), 1–10. la voz, 2020, ‘avanza una vacuna argentina contra covid-19’, in la voz, 21 junio, viewed n.d., from https://www.lavoz.com.ar/ciencia/avanza-una-vacuna-argentina-contra-covid-19 marquina, m., 2020, ‘the argentine university against covid-19: old and new discussions in an unforeseen reality’, international higher education 102, 34–36. mendonça, m., 2020, ‘towards a deepening of labour-power differentiation: five decades of transformation in the argentine higher education system’, journal for critical education policy studies. mendonça, m., in press, ‘educational reform policies in argentina in the 1970s: the beginning of a differentiation process among national universities?’, espacio, tiempo y educación. molas-gallart, j., salter, a., patel, p., scott, a. & duran, x., 2002, measuring third stream activities. final report to the russell group of universities, spru, university of sussex, brighton. mónaco,j., 2017, ‘primera generación de estudiantes ¿por qué yo no?’, le monde diplomatique, august, 8–9. onu, 2020, análisis inicial de las naciones unidad. covid-19 en argentina: impacto socioeconómico y ambiental, united nations. página/12, 2020, ‘coronavirus: el delicado trabajo de los kinesiólogos en terapia intensiva’. página/12, 16 abril, viewed n.d., from https://www.pagina12.com.ar/259817-coronavirus-el-delicado-trabajo-de-los-kinesiologos-en-terap perfil, 2020, ‘nuevo centro de rehabilitación de la unahur’, perfil, 09 august, viewed n.d., from https://www.perfil.com/noticias/educacion/nuevo-centro-de-rehabilitacion-de-la-unahur.phtml roca, a., schneider, c. & pedrosa, j., 2018, el legado reformista en las nuevas universidades del conurbano: inclusión democracia conocimiento, edunpaz, josé c. paz. salvia, a. & poy, s., 2020, presentación del estudio: impacto social de las medidas de aislamiento obligatorio por covid19 en el amba, observatorio de la deuda social argentina, buenos aires. sigal, p., 2020, ‘el avance de la pandemia coronavirus en argentina: cómo es el acuerdo de la uba con la medicina privada para multiplicar los donantes de plasma’, clarín, 30 junio, viewed n.d., from clarin.com/sociedad/coronavirus-argentina-acuerdo-uba-medicina-privada-multiplicar-donantes-plasma_0_q-_ovsuek.html suárez, a.l. & palma arce, c., 2010, ‘condiciones de vida en el conurbano bonaerense’, in a. rofman (ed.), sociedad y territorio en el conurbano bonaerense, pp. 25–102, universidad nacional de general sarmiento, buenos aires. thomas, h.b., 2015, enfoques y estrategias de desarrollo tecnológico, innovación y políticas públicas para el desarrollo inclusivo, documentos de trabajo iesct-unq, bernal. tünnerman, c., 2000, ‘el nuevo concepto de extensión universitaria y difusión cultural’, pensamiento universitario 19, 2–4. unahur, 2020a, puesta en marcha del fondo solidario, 29 june, viewed n.d., from http://unahur.edu.ar/es/puesta-en-marcha-del-fondo-solidario unahur, 2020b, bici-unahur: cobertura para actividades esenciales, 28 july, viewed n.d., from http://unahur.edu.ar/es/bici-unahur-cobertura-para-actividades-esenciales unesco-iesalc, 2020, covid-19 y educación superior: de los efectos inmediatos al día después, unesco, viewed n.d., from http://www.iesalc.unesco.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/covid-19-es-130520.pdf ungs, 2020, fondo solidario de emergencia social y sanitaria, 30 june, viewed n.d., from https://www.ungs.edu.ar/new/fondo-solidario-de-emergencia-social-y-sanitaria unpaz, 2020, fondo solidario unpaz, 07 september, viewed n.d., from https://unpaz.edu.ar/node/4153 unqui, 2020, ‘la unq y la unsam crearon un nuevo kit de diagnóstico rápido para covid-19’, in noticias unqui, viewed n.d., from http://www.unq.edu.ar/noticias/4472-la-unq-y-la-unsam-crearon-un-nuevo-kit-de-diagn%c3%b3stico-r%c3%a1pido-para-covid-19.php zamponi, a., 2020a, ‘diego álvarez: “desarrollamos un test que es clave para identificar donantes de plasma contra covid19”’, in noticias unsam, 08 mayo, viewed n.d., from http://noticias.unsam.edu.ar/2020/05/08/diego-alvarez-desarrollamos-un-test-que-es-clave-para-identificar-donantes-de-plasma-contra-covid19/ zamponi, a., 2020b, ‘cómo funciona el test molecular rápido de covid-19 100% argentino’, in noticias unsam, 14 junio, viewed n.d., from http://noticias.unsam.edu.ar/2020/06/13/como-funciona-el-test-molecular-rapido-de-covid-19-100-argentino/ zamponi, a., 2020c, ‘investigadores de la unsam desarrollaron un suero hiperinmune contra covid-19’, in noticias unsam, 18 junio, viewed n.d., from http://noticias.unsam.edu.ar/2020/06/17/investigadores-de-la-unsam-desarrollaron-un-suero-hiperinmune-contra-covid-19/ zamponi, a., 2020d, ‘unsam y unq desarrollaron un diagnóstico molecular de covid19’, in noticias unsam, 13 junio, viewed n.d., from http://noticias.unsam.edu.ar/2020/06/13/unsam-y-unq-desarrollaron-un-diagnostico-molecular-de-covid19/ footnotes 1. for detailed statistical information, see http://estadisticasuniversitarias.me.gov.ar/#/home. 2. under juan domingo peron´s government, all restrictions to access were removed, tuition fees were eliminated in 1950 and in 1953 so were all the entrance exams. this led to an explosive growth in the public universities enrolment. two coups d’état tackled this trend in 1966 and in 1976, respectively. after the fall of the last military junta (1976–1983), which had triggered a severe contraction in enrolment as a direct result of the repression unleashed upon students and the implementation of admission courses, the number of incoming students grew strongly again. 3. while until 1956 argentina had eight national universities in some provinces, by 1975 there were already 25 national universities in different parts of the country, which allowed for this growth to take place. 4. the ‘traditional’ universities have been, historically, the first institutions of higher education that were created in the country, that is, the national university of córdoba and the university of buenos aires, both of them with strong napoleonic roots. since then, new universities have been created aiming to be different from the latter. thus, the institutions that were created during the first decades of the 20th century intended to resemble the german humboldt model, with a solid research profile. by the mid-fifties and seventies, the united states model was dominant. despite the fact that the 16 new national universities that were created between 1971 and 1975 were sought to emulate the anglo-saxon model, a few years after the first wave of expansion, most of them had traditional features (mendonça forthcoming). during the nineties and the first decades of the 21st century, new national universities were created, aiming, once more, to differ from the traditional profile. although they have been created in different moments, and under different political regimes, all of them are national, tuition-free universities and their core functions are teaching, research and outreach activities. 5. in argentina, the academic year starts in march and universities, although they offer summer classes during february, start their first semester during mid-march or april. 6. although a rigorous analysis of university statistics needs to be done in order to compare dropout rates before, during and after the pandemic in argentina, it is possible to trace some interesting data. see, amongst others dal piva (2020) and achigar (2020). 7. for detailed information on latin american higher education systems during the pandemic, see unesco-iesalc (2020). 8. for more detailed analysis on this topic, see amongst others, chiroleu and marquina (2017). 9. the scientific system, including research performed at national universities, started growing during the 1950s. however, the military regime that came to power in 1966, led by general juan carlos onganía, took over the national universities, which were believed to be loci of communist activities. hence, political repression was widely carried out, resulting in violent events such as la noche de los bastones largos (the night of the long sticks), where the police entered into the university of buenos aires and hit students and professors alike. ten years later under another coups d’état, as bekerman (2018) states, the scientific institutions underwent a strong discipline process which included strict ideological control and the expulsion of professors and researchers for political reasons. universities underwent budget cuts and entire research groups were dismantled. at the same time, however, conicet went through a contradictory process, whereas an initial restriction was followed by budgetary, institutional and human resource expansion. this, in turn, lead to a clear division between teaching and research activities, mainly restricting teaching and learning in universities (bekerman 2013). abstract introduction academia’s crises colonisation/decolonisation, transformation and other questions reflections dystopia and conversations afterthought acknowledgements references footnotes about the author(s) ida h.j. sabelis department of organization sciences, faculty of social sciences, vrije universiteit, amsterdam, the netherlands citation sabelis, i.h.j., 2020, ‘the construction of a post-academic university: opportunity or status quo?’, transformation in higher education 5(0), a94. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v5i0.94 original research the construction of a post-academic university: opportunity or status quo? ida h.j. sabelis received: 08 sept. 2020; accepted: 23 oct. 2020; published: 27 nov. 2020 copyright: © 2020. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract background: over the last two decades it has become increasingly urgent to rethink current hurdles and opportunities for higher education, not just in the global north, but in the effects of northern policies globally. aim: for the last 6 years a team of european scholars worked on a book entitled, academia in crisis (donskis et al. 2019), aic as it will be referred to in the article, inspired by the works of our late colleagues zygmunt bauman and leonidas donskis. setting: tamara shefer from the university of the west cape (uwc) was invited to provide a foreword to aic, providing a perspective from the global south. method: this served to question underlying dimensions of mutual influence: neo-coloniality in times where the demand for decolonization from south african colleagues is strong and justified. results: it seems urgent, in the light of recent cooperation and mutual support between these two parts of the world, to reflect on recent developments in and around higher education. what currently ‘neo-colonises’ higher education? more or less parallel to aic, rob pattman and ronelle carolissen produced transforming transformation in 2018 with the promising subtitle ‘south african offerings’. conclusion: combining insights from those two works leads to renewed inspiration, at least in terms of new debates and questions about the present and future of higher education, especially following the current pandemic with all the effects it has had on collegial cooperation, locking down of universities, and perhaps some thinking time over managerialisms and other power processes in academic work. keywords: europe; south africa; higher education; post-academic university; neoliberal systems; decolonial; alternatives; transformation; post-pandemic university. excellence itself has been reduced to statistical accountancy. (mbembe 2015:8) introduction much has been written in the wake of universities changing from knowledge institutes to education-producing entities under neoliberal conditions – from birnbaum’s how colleges work (1989) via the ironic concept of mcuniversity (parker & jary 1995; ritzer 1996) all the way to nelson’s no university is an island (2011), both of which are more or less activist and meekly despairing works on the quality, and thus the future, of academia in international and national contexts (flikkema 2016; lorenz 2012; shefer 2019a; sobuwa & mckenna 2019). by and large the growing hegemony of neoliberalism, that is, the belief that all organisations and institutions ultimately could thrive on market-economy principles, followed up by the consecutive ‘privatisation’ of healthcare, public transport and education, has produced some unintended effects, to put it mildly. and now that the coronavirus disease 2019 (covid-19) pandemic has occupied centre stage, bringing traveling and conferencing to a halt, perhaps this pandemic will bring things to a standstill, enabling us to contemplate more acutely our ways1 and show us the limits of our ever-expanding industrial method of producing academic knowledge and education. in this reflective article based on academia in crisis (aic), i propose to explore issues in higher education from the perspectives embedded in the european tradition (and increasingly the anglo-saxon-infused traditions to begin with), not least because its influence can be considered to have a neo-colonial stance on academia worldwide, and maybe invasively so in the global south. we will be reflecting then on the transformation of ‘academia’, that is, on knowledge production, reflection and critical thinking infusing education. next, we will look at international (global) scholarship via the ‘uniformisation’ of educational structures and calendars. subsequently, we will study how it has increased the colonisation of the lifeworld of academics and lecturers via overwork and time pressures. and, finally, from a specific angle, we will present its impact on (new) ways of class-related and diversity-enhancing effects that could bring about different access options for students from different backgrounds, under the paradoxical idea that education-for-all might bring about societal change. these effects feature in aic, as it was written from a european context. for a non-european, more global readership, however, other questions should necessarily be raised from, and perhaps in contrast to, those insights. thus, it seems important to include reflections on higher education and the position of universities from elsewhere, particularly those reflections inspired by the global call for ‘decolonisation’ and transformation of education as exemplified in the recent volume by rob pattman and ronelle carolissen, transforming transformation (2018), and inspired by the works of mbembe (2015), tate and page (2018), sobuwa and mckenna (2019) and others. this kind of reflection is usually done in terms of structures and systems. yet, more specifically, it should also include the potential of bringing about change towards a genuinely democratic, that is, an inclusive, socially just and societally relevant, view on education. by looking at what is hindering academics (and students, cf. kamsteeg 2016) from achieving their potential, as well as by acknowledging the need for decolonisation, along with looking at what we have in common (critique), and where or how we differ (neoand decolonisation), might be able to bring about mutual collaborative thinking in order to feed a critical view on how we position ourselves in global academic work. more importantly, by striving for debates and conversations between the respective academic traditions and needs, this ultimately should lead to genuine transformation for all regions. academia’s crises what has happened with higher education in europe over, say, the last three decades, and how has this influenced academic habits and rules elsewhere? in europe, a marker for change was the 1999 ‘bologna treaty’2 in which the structure of higher education was ‘uniformised’ for the european union (eu) countries, with the aim of providing education across borders and changing higher education so that the european ideal of bildung, that is, a broad and critical, self-reflective mode of education, would again be revived, whilst at the same time establishing greater opportunities for international education (e.g. abrahám 2019; bianchini 2019). obviously, in europe, higher education is not really a matter of distant learning, as the continent is small enough to travel easily from one place to another, and ‘in the old days’ travelling for one’s education was quite a common practice, not only on an academic level but also for a lot of professions (e.g. painters, builders and others – with differences from one of the then ruling kingdoms to another, of course) (bauman & donskis 2013:135 ff.). still, within the eu so many different timetables, accountability systems and management structures were in place that higher education systems were scarcely compatible. this implied that it did not really make sense for students to travel abroad to study, even in those cases where programmes were obviously better or only existed abroad. in the context of the growing pressure to shorten study times and become more ‘efficient’ in education, the bologna treaty offered the promise of open borders and more equal opportunities by claiming ‘compatibility and comparability’ (louvain – louvain la neuve 2009) in higher education. however, since the mid-1980s, another global capitalist-driven development was taking place on a wider scale and thus contextualising any innovation in the public sector: neo-liberalisation, meaning the gradual industrialisation, financial accountability and increased control, accompanied by the thatcherite expression ‘there is no alternative’ (tina) (bauman & donskis 2016). this driving force of sense-making in all realms of the public sector (worldwide, see below) has brought about a lot of the structures, systems, and social contracts that we now live and work by. maybe unintentionally, tina has become a symbolic marker and the core driver of control, especially in universities, as these have come to be seen as the embodiment of technological and practice-oriented, useful solutions. furthermore, tina fits the zeitgeist in an awkward way: it is nice to ‘have no alternative’, as this presupposes that straightforward solutions and rational options are out there, to be applied instantly, and, if not, ‘science’ will or will have to come up with the answers soon. was the bologna treaty partly meant to prevent the tina effect from taking place? or were both developments part of similar societal phenomena that represent our so-called ‘liquid modernity’, zygmunt bauman’s (2000) symbolic term for making sense of postmodern times? has reliance on old structures vanished in order to ultimately be replaced by new forms of ongoing control based on shifting configurations of identification? bauman and donskis’ later work moral blindness (2013) confirms the dystopian undercurrents that transpired from a postmodern notion of our lifeworld. not only in universities, but also on a far wider, global scale, the ‘uniformisation of systems’ needed to steer worldwide consumerist production and globalised reproduction. let us first have a look at how signals of alienation, separation3 and an increase in systems of accountability, control and measurability of just-about-everything have worked out. obviously, this is necessarily an embarrassing process because as academics most of us have been part of that process; we have been compliant for a long time. already around the turn of this century colleagues were speaking up against the growing managerialism in universities, but the soothing and seducing effect of organisational consultants explaining how and why common systems for measurement and quality control could only serve the collective striving for excellent science and education gave way to ever more ‘uniformisation’ of our trade. the promotion of ‘fairness’ in compatibility and comparability turned out to be a powerful discursive device to separate resistance from compliance. after all, who could say ‘no’ to quality control, accountability and a collective striving for excellence? in the first two chapters of aic, leonidas donskis and frans kamsteeg address exactly this development, leading to what can be called the post-academic university, a university that is … … [a]n awkward amalgam of medieval academic ritual, specialisation, a blatant and blunt denial of the role of the humanities in modern society, managerialism … (…) … the playground for enormous pressures … coming from technocratic forces disguised as the genuine voice of liberty and democracy … with no room for the principle of alternative, including critical thought and self-questioning (donskis et al. 2019:30). universities as institutes of education, in a very broad sense bildung, have in europe historically always navigated between deep thinking, the art of reflection and the production of knowledge to inspire, guide and provide instruments to ‘serve society’ as a whole. yet, this is true perhaps more commonly for specific parts of societies via policies, politics and power tools. in our day and age, tina has disrupted, at least partly, the multi-dimensional character of science and academia. a society that does not like, or claims not to need, ‘alternatives’ because certainty and palpable results are valued more seems to be looking for confirmation of ‘no alternative’. this becomes clear, for instance, in the paradoxical wish for science to know all the answers and at the same time produce those within a set timeframe. a fine example of this twisted requirement is the emergence of state research bodies that divide up the scarce money for research. apart from any general criticism about a state body taking over the responsibility for dividing scarce resources, the projects on offer by those bodies have begun to include fixed outcomes in terms of ‘results’ and ‘usefulness’, thereby tempting scientists to predict and produce results before a research project can even be carried out, including short-term calculated benefits. this latter preferably also occurs in terms of commodification of public–private partnerships. as a representative of my own country once said, reacting to a grant application that he really liked ‘… but now let us translate this fine project into economic terms. after all, we need to present research in terms of interest for our national big companies in order to make a real difference’.4 donskis in the context of the commercialisation of science talks about ‘zombie concepts’ (atkinson 2007; beck 2001; donskis et al. 2019:32), referring to discursive devices that thrive and are being juggled mainly by university management and politicians. these concepts do not carry meaning anymore, and therefore have to be revised and reconstructed whilst critically rethinking meaning and impact. think of autonomy, academic freedom, excellence and, lately, diversity or inclusion, and academic ethics. they become part of management and consultant speak, and finally appear in reports measuring performances and boost reputations in rat races between universities, whereas perhaps originally universities were there to jointly and collectively produce new knowledge, satisfy curiosity and serve collective societal needs via the benefit of education for all (johnson 2006; kamsteeg 2016). reconstruction and revision of those concepts will require a critical look at the uses and application of those central concepts for university life, and perhaps a critical look at who benefits most from the lists and sheets where markers of ‘excellence’ are being counted and accounted for. it almost goes without saying that the dream of internationally compatible university education from the bologna treaty has become co-opted and digested into management speak and the requirements of comparability in universities’ administrative dungeons. furthermore, the internationalisation of study programmes has materialised on paper and websites, but is still a difficult thing to do because of administrative jungles and shortening of study times, unless one has the funds to extend the time available for study. yes, some institutes of liberal arts education have appeared, providing space for students to enter academic life via a broad range of topics and enabling them to peak into other fields rather than directly being geared towards their specific interests. university colleges have popped up in many eu countries (abrahám 2019; bianchini 2019). however, practice has it that only a specific societal layer of students benefits; the advantaged are further advantaged, and vice versa. after all, spending 3 or 4 years in the luxury of transdisciplinary abundance is a costly thing. consequently, this option is not obtainable for students who are, or have to be, goal-oriented towards a clear working environment or career perspective. here is where class and other diversity issues come in. meantime, it is generally known that the european (rhineland) tradition does not favour the distinction between private and public schools, as does the anglo-saxon (the united kingdom [uk] and the united states of america [usa]) tradition. the now almost global commercialisation of university education reinstates new class divisions, and undoubtedly strengthens race and gender divisions, especially in the global south where education still is not as accessible in comparison to the global north.5 this is not only related to shorter timeframes for studies and huge cohorts in the undergraduate phases, but also further on, in the extension of the curriculum. it becomes ever more common to plan a phd, or another post-doctorate study programme, right after a master’s degree. increasingly, the system of ‘graduate schools’ has entered universities, as if to suggest that the extension of the curriculum is necessary to build a career, suggesting that real science needs elite extension, whilst more likely hiding what has been rationalised out of traditional programmes (and the timeframes in which people were supposed to study). the design and structuration of study programmes demonstrates that efficiency, that is, a smooth programme, preferably to be finalised in a ‘set time’, is of core importance, more important than ever before. apart from being related to the system of output finance for universities (finance is dependent on the diplomas obtained more than on actual student participation and performance), efficiency as a core value in university management leads to compression of space, time and people, just like everywhere else in industrial cultures. the latter, that is, efficiency, also shapes the work of academics, or rather those who do the teaching. increasingly, their tasks are extended with additional administrative tasks mainly serving accountability devices, coupled with precariousness in their working conditions, which take up about 40% of their time.6 in the netherlands, some universities face increasing percentages of flexible personnel, especially in academic positions,7 leading to uneven division of age groups over the teaching community, and especially to patchwork contracts for younger people who sometimes have to work extremely hard without knowing if they will ever obtain any job certainty (sabelis 2019). it seems only logical that the combination of work pressure, if not work stress, and precariousness in working conditions does not exactly help develop a critical attitude amongst young academics, mainly because only those who can and want to comply will survive within the system. what will that ultimately mean for the quality of research and education? what if slow thinkers and critical teachers have left academia in the near future when we will need them to escape uniform thinking? bunn and bennet (2020) summarise this: … present practices, value and pleasures in research, learning and teaching are directed toward ‘keeping up’ with others, always producing and anticipating change while at risk of being out-competed (for example, in employment and research opportunities) or becoming obsolete or irrelevant …. (p. 699) one answer, to highlight once again the critical and creative thinking in the rhineland-bildung tradition, could be the cherishing of what is sometimes called ‘slow science’ (berg & seeber 2016; wels 2019) – a science that thrives on reflection, time for thought and, especially, not always knowing beforehand what the process will produce. and, according to wels in aic (2019:119 ff.), one of the markers of current developments is the loss of reading as a contemplative activity that helps us experience the combination of deep knowledge and time. in current academic life, the production of books, or monographs, has been replaced by a steady flow of journal articles. and journal articles are supposed to be published in high-ranking journals, internationally. in many countries, article publication has become more important than feeding research results back to communities, as i learned from the arrangements some south-east asian colleagues have to live by.8 this happens not as a conscious choice but as an effect of managerialist organisation of both research and teaching processes. after all, in a competitive environment, we need measurements to be able to distinguish better research from the normal, and high performance from mediocre output. however, over the last two decades this has led to increasing output numbers, the measurement of journals according to standards largely outside the scope of their users, and the clogging of publication pipelines delaying publication times, instead of speeding up the spread of knowledge, in short, a form of ‘temporal precarity’ (bunn & bennet 2020) that adds to the structural precarities already highlighted. the non-democratic, and probably neo-colonising undercurrents, in these processes are clear to most colleagues. sometimes one sees minor results puffed up in order to meet the next publication deadline, instead of working on a book development over several years so as to build a full and nuanced picture of a field, a problem, or a development or a well-wrought solution. ‘uniformisation’ of publication opportunities does not necessarily lead to higher quality. and, at the end of the day, huge numbers of articles do not really enable an overview in any field; we plainly do not have the time to read everything published on a topic that interests us, provided that we have access to all the outlets in the first place. this paradoxical development at first sight triggers the plea to ‘slow down’, for contemplation and taking it slow, for being reflective, and thinking things over. however, as long as the underlying systemic causes are not addressed, slowing down will only lead to backlash in the rat race of academic performance. the exception, perhaps, lies in those senior colleagues who, after retirement and retreat from the everyday bureaucratic business, finally can ‘do what they really like’: deep thinking and well-wrought writing. and so who does the teaching whilst seniors are publishing? the answer is usually younger colleagues who have become socialised into the system with big teaching loads, with the message being that if you are looking for normal working hours, the university is not the place to be.9 in summary, these developments, the increase of what is euphemistically termed practice orientation, the ‘uniformisation’ of teaching and research and the concomitant time pressures (because systems plainly do not include all tasks in working times) together demonstrate a changing position for academia in our societies, as post-academic production institutions managed like global businesses. too often over the last couple of years, i have witnessed those bureaucratic systems spreading (or colonising, for that matter) on a global scale, with the consequence that we face ‘uniformisation’ of higher education across borders to the detriment of local knowledge, needs and skills. what about transformation then? does this mean new forms of colonisation of the curriculum globally? how does this relate to calls for decolonisation (e.g.jansen 2019; mbembe 2015, 2016; shefer 2019b)? that is a question i cannot answer; it needs discussion and contemplation by those who stand for education on all levels, and preferably more comparative conversations across borders. colonisation/decolonisation, transformation and other questions let me illustrate where i think we stand now with two inspiring quotes i derived from the foreword of transforming transformation by rob pattman and ronelle carolissen (eds. 2018) – with the promising subtitle ‘south african offerings’! indeed, this book speaks to me from the context of south africa – and provides so much familiarity and parallel thought – whilst at the same time demonstrating that in the debates on a global scale, different issues are at stake and different voices need to be heard. there is a different fighting spirit – caught in the middle as universities in south africa navigate between commodified and commercialised international academic life and the genuine, very palpable and important context of racism, neoand de-colonisation, and the development of african science and voices in a context of forms of human violence that cry out for exactly the type of analysis we plead for. this context adds quite different dimensions to the necessity of decolonising, transforming, reflecting and changing systems of higher education, and of academe in general, whilst including creative, genuinely innovative and long-term research in the process. looking in detail at intersectionalities of gender, race, class, language and other forms of positioning, the examples in transforming transformations provide a kaleidoscopic in-depth overview of all dimensions to be included and dealt with, as well as the different levels (managerial, pedagogical, training-wise and political) that feed into the debates ‘on offer’ – and show the amount of work to be done. this only serves to bring the necessary debates closer and equally urgent, for both our contexts. it illustrates that, not just in europe, nor just in south africa, systematic exclusion is partly an unintentional consequence of the current state of universities … we have, since 1994, produced more than twenty national reports on our size, shape, admissions profiles, capacity to provide accommodation, leadership and governance, funding, research priorities, teaching and learning priorities, transformation and the broad mission we want to see the system adopting. every single institution in the system has been examined, for various reasons, multiple times. (eds. pattman & carolissen 2018ii) i would like to add that it does not just follow up on 1994 as a historical moment in south africa. it was around that time that the tina model came to dominate just about worldwide and forever rendered higher education more a business than a safe place for learning and thinking. the inevitability of this is illustrated by the second quote dealing with those who tried to resist the development and were ridiculed and dismissed: … they [the resisters – is] are in this sense fanonian in their vision. like fanon, they read widely and took in what they needed to know, looked around themselves and pondered on their own experiences, and then, critically, ventured into theorising the world in which they lived. the analyses went beyond their own narratives. they began from where they were. in the belly of the beast. they ended up explaining modern contradiction in its wondrous complexity. (eds. pattman & carolissen 2018:iv) however, as we can see from the sum total of the chapters in transforming transformations, resistance is thriving on so many levels and from so many angles that the aftermath of tina is not an easy situation to deal with. it will undoubtedly take time to balance the struggles involved not only from a geographical or global point of view but also in terms of weighing out dimensions of diversities (intersectionalities) more broadly against the interest of those who demand an immediate result. ultimately, of course, the question is, ‘where do we go from here?’ how can we escape from the dystopian undertone in this analysis of a culture of post-academic life (managerial research and teaching)? i have to admit that the south african contribution, transforming transformations, has a firm grounding in the daily lives of people – far more related to the lifeworld and the daily injustices experienced by ordinary people than the contemplative work of aic. will the south african critique, firmly rooted in an overall critique on academia from the position of decolonisation, bring about a greater sense of urgency to change? and at the same time, will the greater counting/accounting and jurisdiction than perhaps elsewhere (remember the example of south-east asia) lead to more resistance and a plea for more local benefits from research and teaching alike? how come that in our countries the establishment of rules and monitoring systems continues to be seen, or at least promoted to be, a panacea to produce social justice and integrity in education? reflections now perhaps we can all agree that the ideal university does not exist, and perhaps should not exist if we are to take the ultimate consequence of decolonisation seriously. the very idea of ‘ideal’ renders difference obsolete, and kills discussion and reflection. moreover, it would ultimately kill a lively, temporally/contemporarily fit idea of education in academia in terms of ongoing development and change. what binds us, however, and what we have in common, is the tina flavour of how our universities are managed, producing regimes of counting/accounting, examination and comparability that hinder education instead of supporting it, and which include and co-opt all of us to such an extent that we seemingly cannot change or deflect that development. the point with tina is that it is colonial (the ‘no alternative’ is framed from a northern, capitalist point of view). additionally, tina also implies fixation on one system, which allows for no change whatsoever over time and across borders. the main thing is that we find ourselves in a global movement towards measurements, and a specific understanding of justice and fairness (all measured the same, and geared towards ready-made solutions and efficiency, preferably) that excludes people’s diversity in the first place. in europe it has produced ivory towers, particularly from natural sciences’ habits, whilst claiming to provide access for all. in south africa it impedes decolonisation through its blind spot for the colonial undercurrent in promoting a globally uniform system. underlying this are commodification, commercialisation, and especially rationalisation of control in higher education (he) – be it because the business world calls for a specific type of employee, with very applicable skills and not too many questions, or be it because some groups of students claim the right of a diploma because they have paid regardless of their efforts. we face a non-recognition of human needs based on background variables that feed the up-or-out undercurrent in most educational systems in the world, or by fighting over who suffers most from the current system instead of unveiling new (and traditional) boundaries that separate us when we construct hierarchies when it comes to forms of exclusion. are we thus facing a post-academic society or a post-university one, one where young people can just come and pick up their qualification, whilst thinking, debate and reflection need a new space, new niches to flourish, outside he institutions? or is it high time we just refuse to accept that we are functioning between bureaucratised systems and desperate students in never-ending working days and weeks? although some of this is just the reality we live in, the question is whether we should accept this as a future present. and, if we do not, what can we do? dystopia and conversations i do not necessarily embrace a dystopic view of universities. in the european context, it might be sensible to have universities consider restructuring, for example, between professional, high-skill-based institutions versus other spaces for reflection from the angles of philosophy and preparation for research (like honours programmes and research masters at present). obviously, both streams require accessibility for all, but choices, mentoring and selection should from the outset be based on motivation and career prospects, not on perceived status of diplomas with no consideration whatsoever for future prospects, individually as well as societally. i know this may sound elitist, but maybe we might just allow ourselves to be aware of, and try to counter, the unintended effects of ‘university for all’, for example, in ever bigger classes and inevitably in devaluation of diplomas over time. as for the south african context, i can only imagine that decolonisation requires a total rethink of all forms of education geared towards what is required in the south in general and in south africa more specifically. pattman and carolissen’s work provides a panoramic overview of inter-related fields that together demonstrate concern for social, economic, pedagogical and political dimensions that should be addressed in combination. it is not up to me to ponder this: the neo-colonisation of education already constitutes a risk when thinking about this. debates over sociocultural and racial equality have a different stance, flavour and need in south africa (rudwick cited in eds. pattman & carolissen 2018:489 ff.). still, in mutual conversation it should be possible to detect how neo-colonial effects go hand in hand with resistance to transformation, and how in turn decolonisation and transformation also (should) inspire a rethink of curricula in the north. ultimately, this line of reasoning leads to the question of what education, in the cultural sense, is for, and with what timescales societies can and want to afford knowledge and professional development. do knowledge and skill serve fast-food-like applicability? do some societies more than others prefer techno-rational wealth over critical/political thinking? (cf. guo & radder 202010). and should we perhaps also take a closer look at how new class relations come about through the ‘higher education for all’ ideal, causing higher student numbers, all whilst the resources cannot be sustained and all at the expense of those who work in the sector (cf. sobuwa & mckenna 2019)? the main implication seems to be that as long as we remain under the rule of neo-liberal production and business thinking in our institutions, not much will change. young colleagues continue being selected based on their perseverance in managing huge classes/cohorts and on their capacity to comply with counting, journal article publishing and successful, that is, big-money grant applications. yes, that is our world, and increasingly not a very attractive one for the brightest and the most creative amongst our students. sometimes we find ourselves inclined to advise them then to opt for ‘real business’, because there you clearly know that production is what you are paid for. at the same time, let us indeed keep trying to expose the myth of how the content and practice of academia are indeed still colonial, not least because of the way academia more and more produces scholars who do not think in terms of themselves but in terms of the world of business and marketing. despite the lip service paid to social justice in all dimensions, it is our task to expose those discourses as protracting ‘colonial’ practices in he. perhaps it is time that we draw more on the ideas of our colleagues from south africa – and other postcolonial or globally marginalised spaces – in order to provide us with notions of decolonisation and transformation. to the extent that we can see these as watchwords, we can remind ourselves that there are options aside from tina, away from a dystopic system. that type of transformation invites a critical rethink of the commodified mode that characterises a large part of global academia these days. afterthought the current covid-19 pandemic provides an almost cynical illustration of the long-term consequences of the tina impact on academia. where universities and research institutes have been forced into fierce competition over the last decades, all of a sudden they are required to join forces and collectively ‘fight the pandemic’. very often, in this situation of not-knowing, this leads to competitive debates amongst scientists, revealing, on the one hand, how science works: a process of trial and error, and of deep debates, thinking and disagreeing. on the other hand, however, the development and production, for example, of a vaccine largely seems to be taking place in laboratories that have learnt to protect their own interests. they only collaborate with others (universities, institutes and global firms) after long negotiations over who benefits from what, and how, in terms of revenues and reputation. in the panic around stopping the pandemic and at the same time finding long-term solutions via a vaccine, countries are designing their own local policies, and scientists are having a hard time agreeing and sharing knowledge about what needs to be done. the covid-19 pandemic also has brought much of life to a standstill. ironically, this global disaster may offer a golden opportunity to disrupt the globalised corporatisation of universities. whilst travelling less (saving time!) and being confined to our homes, we end up inventing new ways of dealing with our everyday tasks, with the help of colleagues, worldwide or close by. on the one hand, some tasks now seem obsolete, like conferencing and producing one paper after the other. on the other hand, distance teaching and learning are finally serving tina in an unexpected way. although undoubtedly there are huge differences around the world, the switch to online communication brings about much extra time for preparation, re-scheduling and (finally?) learning to juggle with all the web-based options that were available already, but now have to be used. apart from the attempt to force the old ways into new systems, we also have the unique chance to revise the status quo. whilst some want to return to ‘normal’, some embrace the ‘new normal’ and see a chance to redesign patterns that have been hurting for some time. what if… we use our spare time to turn to a real transformation of higher education based on insight into the zombie concepts of excellence and performance? do we have a choice between pursuing the further ‘uniformisation’ of curricula or do we seize the opportunity to rethink academia? working from our homes, wherever we are, now is the time for conversations, for meeting up with the ‘offerings’ that the debates over decolonisation and transformation bring. acknowledgements the author would to acknowledge her dear late colleague prof. elda de waal from north-west university, south africa, who inspired the above contribution in lengthy talks about the future of our trade. and of course tamara shefer (uwc) served as a guiding angel for this piece through her dear friendship and ongoing critical capacity. finally, the author would like to express her gratitude to shan simmonds and petro du preez (nwu) who were so patient and encouraging, waiting for the manuscript to finally materialise in writing. the author is enormously grateful to the anonymous reviewers who did a great job in scrutinising a previous version of the manuscript under, as always, huge time pressure. competing interests the author has declared that no competing interest exists. author’s contributions i declare that i am the sole author of this research article. ethical consideration this article followed all ethical standards for research without direct contact with human or animal subjects. funding information this research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors. data availability data sharing is not applicable to this article as no new data were created or analysed in this study. disclaimer the views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any affiliated agency of the author. references abrahám, s., 2019, ‘liberal arts to the rescue of the bachelor’s degree in europe’, in l. donskis, i. sabelis, f. kamsteeg & h. wels (eds.), academia in crisis. the rise and risk of neoliberal education in europe, pp. 82–110, leiden: brill rodopi. atkinson, w., 2007, ‘beck, individualization and the death of class: a critique 1’, the british journal of sociology 58(3), 349–366. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-4446.2007.00155.x bauman, z., 2000, liquid modernity. cambridge: polity press. bauman, z. & donskis, l., 2013, moral blindness: the loss of sensitivity in liquid modernity, polity press. bauman, z. & donskis, l., 2016, liquid evil, cambridge: polity press. beck, u., 2001, ‘interview with ulrich beck’, journal of consumer culture 1(2), 261–277. https://doi.org/10.1177/146954050100100209 berg, m. & seeber, b.k., 2016, the slow professor: challenging the culture of speed in the academy, toronto: university of toronto press. bianchini, s., 2019, ‘universities as laboratories. internationalisation and the liquidity of national learning’, in l. donskis, i. sabelis, f. kamsteeg & h. wels (eds.), academia in crisis. the rise and risk of neoliberal education in europe, pp. 53–81, leiden: brill rodopi. biesecker, a. & von winterfeld, u., 2018, ‘notion of multiple crisis and feminist perspectives on social contract’, gender, work & organization 25(3), 279–293. https://doi.org/10.1111/gwao.12206 birnbaum, r., 1989, how colleges work: the cybernetics of academic organization and leadership, jossey bass, san francisco, ca. bunn, m. & bennett, a., 2020, ‘making futures: equity and social justice in higher education timescapes’, teaching in higher education 25(6), 698–708. https://doi.org/10.1080/13562517.2020.1776247 clegg, s., 2010, ‘time future – the dominant discourse of higher education’, time & society 19(3), 345–364. https://doi.org/10.1177/0961463x10381528 donskis, l., sabelis, i., kamsteeg, f. & wels, h., 2019, academia in crisis: the rise and risk of neoliberal education in europe, leiden: brill rodopi. flikkema, m., 2016, sense of serving. reconsidering the role of universities now, vu university press, amsterdam. guo, y. & radder, h., 2020, ‘the chinese practice-oriented views of science and their political grounds’, zygon 55(3), 591–614. https://doi.org/10.1111/zygo.12635 jansen, j. (ed.), 2019, decolonisation in universities: the politics of knowledge, johannesburg: wits university press. johnson, b., 2006, ‘south african academia in crisis: the spread of “contrived collegial managerialism”’, south african journal of higher education 20(1), 58–71. https://doi.org/10.4314/sajhe.v20i1.25558 kamsteeg, f., 2016, ‘transformation and self-identity: student narratives in post-apartheid south africa’, transformation in higher education 1(1), 1–10. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v1i1.10 lorenz, c., 2012, ‘if you’re so smart, why are you under surveillance? universities, neoliberalism, and new public management’, critical inquiry 38(3), 599–629. https://doi.org/10.1086/664553 louvain – louvain-la-neuve, 2009, ‘the bologna process 2020 – the european higher education area in the new decade’, communiqué of the conference of european ministers responsible for higher education, leuven and louvain-la-neuve, 28th–29th april 2009. mbembe, a.j., 2015, ‘decolonizing knowledge and the question of the archive’, lecture delivered at the wits institute for social and economic research, april 2015. mbembe, a.j., 2016, ‘decolonizing the university: new directions’, arts and humanities in higher education 15(1), 29–45. https://doi.org/10.1177/1474022215618513 menzies, h., & newson, j., 2007, ‘no time to think: academics’ life in the globally wired university’, time & society 16(1), 83–98. https://doi.org/10.1177/0961463x07074103 nelson, c., 2011, no university is an island: saving academic freedom, vol. 4, new york: nyu press. parker, m. & jary, d., 1995, ‘the mcuniversity: organization, management and academic subjectivity’, organization 2(2), 319–338. https://doi.org/10.1177/135050849522013 pattman, r. & carolissen, r. (eds.), 2018, transforming transformation in research and teaching at south african universities, stellenbosch: african sun media. ritzer, g., 1996, ‘mcuniversity in the postmodern consumer society’, quality in higher education 2(3), 185–199. https://doi.org/10.1080/1353832960020302 sabelis, i., 2019, ‘timescapes in academic life. cubicles of time control’, in l. donskis, i. sabelis, f. kamsteeg & h. wels (eds.), academia in crisis. the rise and risk of neoliberal education in europe, pp. 129–149, leiden: brill rodopi. shefer, t., 2019a, ‘introductory thoughts’, in l. donskis, i. sabelis, f. kamsteeg & h. wels (eds.), academia in crisis: the rise and risk of neoliberal education in europe, pp. 1–10, brill rodopi. shefer, t., 2019b, ‘performative activism and activist performance: young people engaging in decolonial feminist community psychology in contemporary south african contexts’, in boonzaier, f. & van niekerk, t. (eds.) decolonial feminist community psychology, pp. 143–154. springer, cham. sobuwa, s. & mckenna, s., 2019, ‘the obstinate notion that higher education is a meritocracy’, critical studies in teaching and learning 7(2), 1–15. https://doi.org/10.14426/cristal.v7i2.184 tate, s.a. & page, d., 2018, ‘whiteliness and institutional racism: hiding behind (un)conscious bias’, ethics and education 13(1), 141–155. https://doi.org/10.1080/17449642.2018.1428718 wels, h., 2019, ‘academia in the fast lane vs. organisational ethnography and the logic of slow food’, in l. donskis, i. sabelis, f. kamsteeg & h. wels (eds.), academia in crisis. the rise and risk of neoliberal education in europe, pp. 111–128, leiden: brill rodopi. ylijoki, o.-h., 2013, ‘boundary-work between work and life in the high-speed university’, studies in higher education 38 (2), 242–255. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2011.577524 footnotes 1. i use ‘we’ and ‘our’ where i mean ‘the academic community i am part of: we, academics, or university employees. this is a tricky way to go about it, but further on it becomes clear that ‘we’ as academic community are part of the tina developments in academia. the neoliberal developments in universities have led to protest and critique, but by and large, there was… no alternative, not even for those who predicted the commercialisation and commodification of higher education. 2. for the full text of the declaration, visit: https://www.eurashe.eu/library/bologna_1999_bologna-declaration-pdf/. 3. of formerly necessarily linked spheres, comparable to the loss of the ‘social contract’ (cf. biesecker & von winterfeld 2018). 4. 2016, field notes ethiopia – during the project ‘creating opportunities? economic empowerment, political positioning and participation of sex workers in kenya and ethiopia’. 2014–2018, dr lorraine nencel and dr i. sabelis, project leaders. include – nwo, the netherlands. 5. pattman and carolissen (2018) – e.g. chapters 12, 16, 18, 24, 27 – on the various societal positionings of students vis-à-vis inclusion in the university. 6. this is a personal observation after time keeping, also observed by colleagues – and a well-researched phenomenon (e.g. clegg 2010; menzies & newson 2007; ylijoki 2013). 7. according to the dutch rathenau institute (february 2020), more than half of universities’ contracts are ‘flexible’, for example, not fixed but temporary in different combinations or patchwork arrangements. 8. this anonymous reference will have to do because of possible restrictions of those same national funding bodies, if more precise information is to be revealed (private field notes 2018). 9. at the start of the academic year 2020–2021, in september 2020, students in the netherlands painted 10 000 pink squares on the pavement between the old university building in the centre of utrecht and the new science area at the city border. they had calculated that overwork of academics adds up to 10 000 extra hours per week. 10. guo and radder (2020) analyse the differences between chinese and european attitudes towards the sciences, the latter aspiring to be more contemplative, the former traditionally/historically geared towards the production of practical solutions. abstract introduction literature review terms about cross-border education: cross-borders, borderless, transnational, intercultural factors of cross-border education: organisation and finance building international reputation through ‘internationalisation’ rationales for internationalisation within higher education multinational dimensions of internationalisation internationalisation and globalisation internationalisation and student exchange programmes internationalisation: global skills in the global labour market the essence of global skills: global citizenship global paths for the university of hong kong worldwide exchange students methodology data analysis the list of findings discussion conclusion acknowledgements references about the author(s) ivy c.c. lai faculty of law, the university of hong kong, hong kong citation lai, l.l., 2018, ‘global world, global mind: narratives of the university of hong kong worldwide exchange students’, transformation in higher education 3(0), a42. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v3i0.42 original research global world, global mind: narratives of the university of hong kong worldwide exchange students ivy c.c. lai received: 03 apr. 2018; accepted: 16 july 2018; published: 27 sept. 2018 copyright: © 2018. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract background: ‘internationalisation’ is what makes the university of hong kong (hku) reputable. ranked as the world top 25, in qs (quacquarelli symonds) 2019 world university ranking, hku provides students with ample opportunities to experience the global world, to possess a global mind. the hku worldwide exchange programme, established in 1998 by hku, allows students to study abroad for a certain period to sharpen their global vision. settings: this study investigated how hku facilitates ‘internationalisation’, which contributes to the international fame of hku. narratives by hku worldwide exchange students (whose anonymous identities were preserved) were examined to explore the ways in which these students participate in the global world, with a global mind. aim: the research question structuring the study is: how does the participation in hku worldwide exchange programme prepare hku students for the global world? method: this article addressed the ways in which hku prepares students for the global world. the knowledge contribution to internationalisation in higher education in relation to student exchange programmes as a result could fill the gap in studies of transformation in higher education. result: global attributes of hku worldwide exchange students were found that contributes to their future careers. being a global citizen is the ideal role of their careers, linking to a core mission of hku. conclusion: more policies on carrying out student exchange programmes for hku are recommended to benefit more future students. the future of these golden assets could bring a promising prospect for the transformation of he. introduction among the eight universities in hong kong, the university of hong kong (hku) is the most reputable university in hong kong. as an asia’s global university, hku delivers impact through internationalisation, innovation and interdisciplinarity. according to the “vision and mission” found on the hku’s webpage (n.d.), it attracts and nurtures global scholars through excellence in research, teaching and learning, and knowledge exchange. it makes a positive social contribution through global presence, regional significance and engagement with the rest of china. internationalisation is what hku has achieved, partly by the means of the hku worldwide exchange programme. established in 1998, the hku worldwide exchange programme is a student exchange programme by hku which allows students to study abroad for a certain period to sharpen heir global vision. this article argues that the hku worldwide exchange programme strengthens internationalisation of hku and the voices of the hku worldwide exchange students respond to the global world with a global mind, through their narratives. this leads to a research question structuring the study: ‘how could these hku worldwide exchange students acquire a global mind in the global world after participating in the hku worldwide exchange programme?’ the targeted audience is those who are very much concerned with student exchange programmes, higher education (he), internationalisation and what international universities could benefit from internationalisation of he through implementing student exchange programmes in strategic international partnership. this study could fill in the gap in the field of he in hong kong, with the focus on the hku worldwide exchange programme and internationalisation of hku. this fits into transformation in he. literature review globalisation and cross-border education in higher education global means ‘worldwide’ and de-emphasises the concept of nation without negating it (guruz 2008). globalisation is the flow of technology, knowledge, people, values, ideas, capital good and service ‘across national borders’ and affects each country in a ‘different’ way because of the nation’s ‘individual’s culture, history, traditions’ (guruz 2008, cited in knight). in other words, globalisation is best described as the ‘cross-national’ flow of goods, production and technology (turner & robson 2008). in this sense, globalisation involves human beings coming together interacting with each other (guruz 2008) across borders. in this new era of globalisation, he (i.e. education that involves teaching and research of university) has undergone fundamental changes (sakamoto & chapman 2012, cited in knight), which results in significant growth of cross-border education. this could be driven by internationalisation of he (which will be examined later). unexpectedly, there has been an overwhelming global demand for post-secondary education in most countries that people are looking for more ‘alternative’ ways of education to get them more equipped in the knowledge economy (sakamoto & chapman 2012). there are more secondary school graduates than before because of the change of demographics, while at the same time more and more people see the importance of life-long learning in the knowledge economy (sakamoyo & chapman 2012). the movement of life-long learning erupts (sakamoto & chapman 2012). more value has been placed on he than in the past. there are more alternative ways of education including cross-border education. more students and families are looking beyond the borders of their countries for better educational opportunities (guruz 2008). cross-border education has been evolving in reaction to the economic, political and social impact of globalisation (sakamoto & chapman 2012, cited in knight). although cross-border he is emerging, there have been antagonist ideas that the knowledge economy a university constructs, should also take morality enterprise into account. morality enterprise goes beyond knowledge economy and tampers with the ideas of preserving one’s own culture while sceptically questions the other’s culture. a university not only creates knowledge for students but also turns students into moral beings. as pinar (2007) points out in intellectual advancement through disciplinarity: verticality and horizontality in curriculum studies, he is undergoing intellectual advancement vertically and horizontally from the past to the present. unlike its emphasis in pure intellectual enquiry in academia, he as a moral enterprise is reaching out to promote morality by engaging students in student exchange programmes, for example to awaken their sense of compassion towards the needy in a foreign land. the concept of ‘international trade’ in education: cross-border education over the past decades, international trade in educational goods and services has significantly grown. the rise in international trade in educational goods and service is led by the global economic integration, new communication technologies and changing demographics (sakamoto & chapman 2012) under the impact of globalisation. the economic systems around the world are connected to one another. a feature of globalisation means the ‘break-down’ of national or local barriers to free trade and the open movement of people, information and capital (king, marginson & naidoo 2011). in fact, it is only 10 years since education has been included in international trade agreements, for instance the general agreement on trade in services (gast) (sakamoto & chapman 2012, cited in knight). education is becoming more ‘transnational’ and ‘borderless’ in the concept of international trade in education (sakamoto & chapman 2012). owing to the influence of international trade in educational goods and services, more universities around the globe have formed cross-border partnerships to negotiate agreements and deliver instructional programmes through student exchange activities (sakamoto & chapman 2012). the university of hong kong worldwide exchange programme is the focus of our study here. it is true that academic mobility nowadays has gained a worldwide recognition through education exchanges and partnerships (sakamoto & chapman 2012, cited in knight). franchise, meaning delivering course or programme in country b, while qualification is being awarded in country a in partnership, is ‘customised’ in each franchise arrangement (sakamoto & chapman 2012, cited in knight), within the concept of international trade in education goods and services, to gain mutually in both countries economically and yet educationally under collaborative partnerships. exchange is inextricably related to franchise agreement in trade in education goods and services. terms about cross-border education: cross-borders, borderless, transnational, intercultural cross-border education means movement of people and knowledge across borders and nations (sakamoto & chapman 2012). it is used interchangeably with transnational, borderless education (sakamoto & chapman 2012). borderless education means the disappearance of borders, while cross-border education emphasises the existence of borders, especially geo-graphics (sakamoto & chapman 2012). borders are getting more important when the focus of cross-education turns to ‘regulatory responsibility’, especially related to quality assurance, funding and accreditation (sakamoto & chapman 2012). exchange is part of cross-border education, through which ‘internationalisation’ of the university can be promoted. ‘transnational’ means ‘across’ the nations but does not address the use of relationship (guruz 2008). as stated above, transnational can be used interchangeably with cross-border (guruz 2008). ‘intercultural’ means ‘diversity’ of cultures within countries. intercultural skills mean competent communication skills through which people from diversified cultures can be interacted. factors of cross-border education: organisation and finance organisationally, cross-border education involves aligning with the educational aims of institutions specifically (sakamoto & chapman 2012). a wider set of purposes and mechanisms are thus involved in cross-border collaborations (sakamoto & chapman 2012). one of the key missions of hku education in the study is to nurture hku students to become global citizens through carrying out the hku worldwide exchange programme. financially, cross-border education generates huge income, turning he into a multi-billion dollars industry (sakamoto & chapman 2012). however, cross-border programmes need to be financially ‘viable’ (sakamoto & chapman 2012). basically, the primary motivation for new endeavours in this multiple complex world is to generate more and more income. building international reputation through ‘internationalisation’ what makes an institution highly reputable is through market branding (sakamodo & chapman 2012, cited in knight) to promote internationalisation. there is an increasing commercialisation under the flag of internationalisation (brandenburg & de wit 2015). internationalisation devalues for the rise of values of defensive measures (brandenburg & de wit 2015). however, commercialisation of quality assurance or accreditation, marketing and branding campaigns necessary increases ‘competitiveness’ and ‘perceived international legitimacy’ of an institution. as brandenburg and hans de wit in the provocative essay entitled ‘the end of internationalization’ state, … new components were added to its multi-dimensional body in the past two decades, moving from simple exchange of students to the big business of recruitment and from activities impacting on an incredible small elite group to a mass phenomenon. (stiasny & gore 2013, cited in brandenburg & de wit) the university of hong kong resorts to a branding strategy for the hku worldwide exchange programme to boost its university ranking. the world university ranking is an indicator of the ‘international’ recognition of the university worldwide. the university of hong kong is ranked 1st in hong kong, 2nd in asia in asia qs ranking (qs top universities 2017) and 25th in 2019 qs world university ranking. as hku is the most reputable international university in hong kong which creates a campus of diversity and international outlook, hku has been selected as the focus of the study, filling the gap in the previous literature on student exchange programmes in hong kong. the success of hku is mainly achieved by the ‘internationalisation’ of the university. in the context of hku, the intention of internationalisation is to create an environment where students must interact with people from different cultures (the university of hong kong 2016). the intensity of intercultural experience correlates with the willingness to interact with local people, such as using the local language and being involved in community projects (the university of hong kong 2016). internationalisation, to hku, is to promote global citizenship and competitiveness, through the plan to provide all students with at least one mainland china and one overseas learning opportunity by 2022 (the university of hong kong, 2016). the three pillars of hku are (1) excellence for teaching and learning, (2) excellence for research and (3) knowledge exchange. regarding excellence for teaching and learning, ‘internationalisation’ means hku will expand student and staff diversity, promote diversity awareness and empowerment, extend opportunities for cross-cultural encounters, particularly among students, deepen multicultural components of campus life, increase opportunities for students to gain learning experiences in mainland china and overseas, and focus on quality in developing our more successful and mature internationalisation programmes (the university of hong kong, 2016). regarding excellence for research and knowledge exchange, ‘internationalisation’ means hku will strengthen strategic cross-institutional collaboration to enhance both the breadth and width of research, thus directly strengthening the competitiveness of hku in public and private funding, and strengthen the international network through research partnership and collaboration, strategic alliance, flagship conferences and symposia, and joint bench-marking and evaluation exercises … (the university of hong kong, 2016). all these ‘internationalise’ hku and make hku a world-class global top-ranked university. ‘internationalisation’ means having undergone a process of being ‘internationalised’ in a way to gain the recognition that is agreed or consented by most nations worldwide. ‘internationalisation’, according to guruz, emphasises the notion of ‘nation’ and stands for the ‘relationship’ between nations, cultures or countries. however, hans de wit stresses that the notion of internationalisation is not only about the relationship between nations. rather, it is even more about the ‘relationship between cultures’ and ‘between the global and the local (stiasny & gore 2013, cited in hans de wit)’. yet, knight holds an entirely different view. having not mentioned about relationship between nations, she argues that internationalisation not only is oriented to countries but also includes ‘different cultural or ethnic groups within a country’ (stiasny & gore 2013, cited in knight & de wit)’. according to knight, ‘the acknowledgement of cultural and ethnic diversity within and between countries is considered as a strong rationale for the internationalization of a nation’s education system’ (stiasny & gore 2013, cited in knight). internationalisation of he by lived experience of student exchange should be recorded in academia for its knowledge contribution. as pinar (2007) puts it, linking lived experience to scholarship is exactly the academic enterprise. the widely known definition of internationalisation, adopted by knight, is: the process of integrating an international, intercultural or global dimension into the purpose, function or delivery of post-education. (stiasny & gore 2013:231) knight (2015b) updates the definition of internationalisation in ‘updated definition of internationalization’ in 2015, by stating that ‘international, intercultural, and global dimension are three terms that are intentionally used as a triad’. the term ‘internalisation’ has been used in he since the early 1980s, yet the discourse on meaning and impact of internationalisation continues (sakamoto & chapman 2012, cited in frame). in the 1990s, international education has been differentiated from comparative education, global education and multicultural education in the debate (sakamoto & chapman 2012). today, the relationship between cross-border, transnational, borderless and international education is getting more complex (sakamoto & chapman 2012). forty years ago (i.e. in 1972), international cooperation, international relations and international education as well as exchange were commonly used (sakamoto & chapman 2012). about 25 years ago, the term ‘internationalisation’ emerged and was defined in institutional agreements (sakamoto & chapman 2012). as internationalisation slides into the first part of the 21st century, an increasing orientation to student emerges, and more emphasis has been placed over commercial and market-driven exchange activities in so far as the competition among universities is getting keener in selecting a vast number of international academic partners in the collaborative relationships (sakamoto & chapman 2012). universities would then compete in gaining the ‘international’ reputation and recognition worldwide through organising exchange programmes. in 2018–2019, hku worldwide exchange programme had over 330 university partners in six continents in 40 countries in its recognition of ‘internationalisation’. as altbach (2015b) points out, ‘the voices discussing internationalization are largely western’. rationales for internationalisation within higher education hans de wit (turner & robson 2008, cited in de wit) identifies generic rationales for internationalisation within he: political – foreign policy, national security, peace and mutual understanding. economic – economic growth and competitiveness, labour market. cultural and social – national culture, academic exchange, global awareness. academic – international dimension to research and teaching. in view of internationalising he, exchange students are trained, as if they are diplomats, to promote culture and what are the best of their nations during their academic studies across borders (in the global sense) by increasing their economic competitiveness in the labour market. these generic rationales make sense when they all conjure up a complete picture of the role of an exchange student which makes sense to internationalisation in he. hans de wit (2015) highlighted that nine misconceptions of internationalisation existed, ‘whereby internationalization is regarded as synonymous with a specific programmatic or organisational strategy to promote internationalization’. this could be linked to the following multinational dimensions of internationalisation. multinational dimensions of internationalisation turner (turner & robson 2008) gives an account of multidimensional internationalisation: international engagement – national and institutional policy, partnerships. mobility – academic exchange, flow of students. revenues – international student fee income. international professionals – managers and administrators responsible for international matters. communication – website, media information. knowledge sharing – institutional leadership in international research. language – language diversity, english language. programming and curriculum – development of ‘international’ programmes, transnational projects. academic practices – local versus western. reciprocity or ‘westernisation’ – international collaboration and equality of partnerships. the following are interpretations of multidimensional accounts of internationalisation. the design of student exchange programmes could map into the aspect of internationalisation in he. nationally, a university upholds the policy of having engagement with strategic international partnership to promote student exchange programmes internationally. geographically, an exchange student is in high mobility, crossing over the borders. the flows of incoming and outgoing exchange students are inward and outward, vice versa, respectively. their directions are neither horizontal nor vertical. they are non-linear and multiple. economically, a university receives stable revenues through implementing sustainable student exchange programmes in accordance with the strategic international partnership policy. to achieve professionalism in the international context, an international office is established to run student exchange programmes to deal with exchange students’ issues. communicatively, english as a lingua franca is widely used inside and outside the classroom. university websites and social media are all in english. knowledge sharing wise, university student exchange programmes allow credits bearing and credits transfer, in a well-set transnational programme in the curriculum. exchange students could feel free to take subjects they want and decide if they wish to have credits transfer in an international university in exchange partnership. culturally sensitive, exchange students would have a heightened sense of distinction between the west and the east cultures in academic practices. this will enable them to respect cultural differences and appreciate the equality, whether it is reciprocal or not, of the university partnerships in two different cultural systems. approaches to internationalisation (knight & de wit 1997): activity approach – student exchanges. competency approach – development of knowledge and skills. ethos approach – creating a culture on campus that promotes and supports international or intercultural initiatives. process approach – integration or infusion of an international or intercultural dimension into teaching and research. what makes a university international? student exchange programmes a university carries out as an activity enhance internationalisation of a university. through participating in student exchange programmes, exchange students could gain competitiveness by having developed knowledge and skills in a global setting, enabling them to become global workers moving across borders. the ethos of an international university is to promote a supportive international or intercultural environment that boosts intercultural communication between exchange students from different nations in an international university. implications of intercultural competency for transnational teaching had been discussed (gopal 2011) to illustrate the significance of transnational teaching in international universities that accommodate student exchange programmes. thus, the integration or infusion of international or intercultural dimension into teaching, research and knowledge exchange could make an international university demonstrate excellence in teaching and learning, research and knowledge exchange that would push up its global ranking. global ranking for university, according to delgado-márquez, hurtado-torres and bondar (delgado-márquez, hurtado-torres & bondar 2011) in the article ‘internationalization of higher education: theoretical and empirical investigation of its influence on university institution rankings’, is very limited, as many factors like teaching and research could determine the overall score in various weights. therefore, global ranking of universities could be problematic. although global ranking could be problematic, he leaders are faced with decision about quality (blanco-ramírez & berger 2014), which global ranking as an indicator could reflect. what is striking though is that knowledge and education have become international commodities, which reflects the collapse of common goods (altbach 2015a). jane knight (2001) gives an account of the five myths about internationalisation as follows: myth 1: foreign students as internationalisation agents. myth 2: international reputation as a proxy for quality. myth 3: international institutional agreements. myth 4: international accreditation. myth 5: global branding. exchange students are ambassadors who serve as international agents to promulgate knowledge and skills as well as culture to which they belong, moving boundaries or borders over nations. exchange students could thus gain a global mind in the global world. as international agents, these exchange students could bring more reputation to the university as a proxy for quality. the university’s global ranking would eventually go up. in that sense, more universities would begin to explore international institutional partnership worldwide, for internationalisation could do more good than harm. internationalisation brings benefits to a university. international accreditation would then exist when two commensurable academic courses allow flexible credits transfer in student exchange programmes. as a result, global branding of a university could promote more student exchange programmes to foster more internationalisation of a university. it guarantees that students from exchange programmes would have a global mind in the global world. the global branding image echoes with a promising outlook of students taking part in student exchange programmes in an international university. as tadaki and tremewan (2013) emphasise, more scholarship on ‘the politics and transformative potential of consortia as deliberative spaces capable of reframing internationalization agendas’ needs to be addressed. knight and de wit (1997) give different viewpoints as stakeholders’ perspective on why and how he should be internationalised: the government sector – government units such as foreign affairs, culture, economic development and trade, and science and technology. the education sector – students, teachers, researchers and administrator. the private sector – heterogeneous: varied interests of manufactory, service or trade companies. government, education and the private sector have their own justifications of why he should be internationalised. from the government’s perspective, student exchange programmes could promote foreign affairs and culture and have an impact on economic development, trade and science and technology. from the education’s perspective, exchange students could benefit students, teachers, researchers and administrator in terms of embracing cultural diversity and global awareness of individual’s cultural differences. for the private sector, exchange students could contribute to the heterogenous society, leading to varied interests of manufactory, service or trade companies. from these perspectives, it is well-justified as to why he should be internationalised by implementing student exchange programmes. internationalisation and globalisation internationalisation means intensifying exchange between nations. globalisation means the process of progressive integration of economic structures within the global (king et al. 2011). internationalisation and globalisation indicate a growing confusion and movement (guruz 2008). national policies on foreign relations, trade, immigration, employment, science and technology, and education can have direct bearings on internationalisation of he (guruz 2008). internationalisation of he can take place in some countries independently or in other countries in an integrated manner (guruz 2008). one obvious challenge globalisation poses on the university is the promotion of national cultures in an increasingly global environment (guruz 2008). how can a university promote its national culture, especially its indigenous culture, in the global world? the preservation of the indigenous culture was explored in the data analysis of and discussion on the respect for cultural diversity. certainly, internationalisation of he is a ‘response to globalisation’ (guruz 2008). as maringe and foskett (2012) note, ‘universities all over the world are increasingly recognising the challenges of globalization and the pressures towards internationalization’. in he, he policy necessarily involves internationalisation as an ‘international’ element at both institution and national level in order to address the challenges imposed by globalisation (guruz 2008). as knight points out, ‘internationalization of higher education is one of the ways a country responds to the impact of globalization yet, at the same time respects the individuality of the nation’ (knight & de wit 1997:6). knight (2015a) concludes that internationalisation brings important benefits as well as risks. internationalisation and student exchange programmes international relations mean that people from different parts of the world collaboratively work together with people who do not know about each other’s history, culture, in an established relationship (knight & de wit 1997). student exchange programmes enable students to build up international relations with others. as guruz (2008) points out: being in contact with each other, living in other countries, and exposure to other culture generally create goodwill and contribute to global peace and security. hosting foreign students is intended to spread the host country’s cultural and political values as well as nurturing friends in other countries. the various national and international scholarships and exchange programs are driven by this rational and national policies based on it are referred to as the ‘mutual understanding approach’ to the internationalization of higher education. (p. 141) higher education plays a key role in national building (guruz 2008). national building capacity aligns with the mission statements of institutes of he (guruz 2008). what satisfies students from student exchange programmes is the ‘international experience’ which they cannot have in their own countries. to be international, they have to move across countries to broaden their horizons. turner (turner & robson 2008) notes: international experience is recognized as both personally desirable and as a useful addition to the curriculum vitae. students may be motivated to study abroad by a desire to travel, to meet new people, and to experience other cultures, and by aspirations and intentions to develop language skills, intercultural competencies and global awareness in order to enhance their career prospects. (p. 55) internationalisation: global skills in the global labour market internationalisation influences over the expectations of global skills in the global labour market. the ‘how’ of internationalisation that aims to identify, measure and improve heis’ (higher education institutions) policies and practices has become more practical in approaches, to which more recent attentions had shifted (gao, baik & arkoudis 2015). in this study, the global skills to gain competence in the global labour market had been classified and analysed. internationalisation is no longer confined to the study of foreign languages and cultures (stiasny & gore 2013). it is now an end in itself (stiasny & gore 2013). it has ‘intensified in response to globalisation’ (stiasny & gore 2013). ‘intercultural’ skills are one of the most desirable attributes in the emerging global workforce (stiasny & gore 2013). in fact, the ability to work in an ‘international’ environment by the ‘intercultural’ skills acquired through student exchange programmes becomes a key requisite for employment in the global job market (stiasny & gore 2013). higher education plays a central role in preparing the workforce (green, marmolejo & egron-polak 2012). in the globalising marketplace, employers are seeking graduates with skills that enable them to be more competitive in the international arena (turner & robson 2008, cited in industry task force on leadership and management skills). successful outcomes of internationlisation of he could be seen and measured indeed (deardorff & van gaalen 2012). in this study, a list of global skills required for work in the ‘international’ context that employers identify through the process of institutions liaising with employers by the newcastle university, global skills blueprint, had been adopted in an attempt to classify these skills acquired by hku worldwide exchange students (i.e. international abroad) as shown in their exchange stories for analysis and discussion (table 1). table 1: global skills. leadership, among all global skills, is the most important, for leadership could improve our society in the global world. a good leader could have a massive impact on the global world across nations. a global learning framework, according to kahn and agnew (2017), has benefits beyond teaching and learning and could contribute to the deliberate internationalisation of he. the essence of global skills: global citizenship the ultimate goal of the hku worldwide exchange programme is to nurture students to become ‘global citizens’. this is applied to other universities worldwide. as ng (2012) argues, internationalisation of he contributes to building more than economically competitive and politically powerful states. rather, it represents a commitment to the development of an internationalised curriculum where ‘the pursuit of global citizenship, human harmony and a climate of global peace is of paramount importance’. what is global citizenship? a citizen has his or her rights and responsibilities, duties and entitlement in society, bounded by nation. a citizen is global only through the action carried out upon the future of the globe (o’byrne 2003:127). to think local, act global is the slogan of a global citizen. in he, we live in ‘glonacal’: global + national + local (king et al. 2011) to nurture global citizenship. global citizenship is a myth, as o’byrne (2003) says that it is a performative social practice, in response to the planet earth, one common home of humanity (davies 2006). it is believed that we are already born citizens of the world (o’byrne 2003). there lies in the assumptions that human beings all have our ‘contracts’ with the world because of our strong bonding to the world. we have conscious and a commitment to our world to sustain peace. ‘global citizenship suggests that we should regard ourselves not only as belonging to our own nation, but to the world, to human beings, to all life’ (davies 2006). however, the world is divided into territories that a citizen is constrained by the laws of the nation state (o’byrne 2003). global citizenship is idealistic. it is ‘a metaphor, a linguistic fancy which deliberately appears a national political reality to a wider world order’ (davies 2006). honestly, ‘we cannot be citizens of the world in the way that we are of a country’. the globalised world is beyond the power of nation states. ‘so is global citizenship a fiction, a seeming paradox or oxymoron? (davies 2006)’. whether one can be a global citizen is questionable, doubtful and sceptical. ‘globalization is a threat or opportunity’ (davies 2006). to become a global citizen, one must be active or even proactive. a global citizen respects cultural diversity and bears in mind peace, justice and equality in the pursuit of a better future for the globe or the world. transcending boundaries of nation states is now a globalised phenomenon for one to go beyond borders to sustain peace amid conflicts and wars. according to oxfam global citizenship guides (2015) here are the key elements of global citizenship (table 2). table 2: key elements of global citizenship. these key elements include equity, social justice and peace. it is important for hku worldwide exchange students to develop a global mindset to gain more assets in a mobilised world to move across nations. global paths for the university of hong kong worldwide exchange students a university, in some ways, should be linked with the industries, especially with the ‘multinational’ organisations, for which the exchange students prepare to enter the global world (blumenthal 1996). according to harvey and held et al.: globalization is associated with the actions and interests of transnational corporations, the workings of global financial ad labor markets, the development of new forms of production based on new technologies, and the compression of time and space resulting in an ascendency of real time over clock time. (king et al. 2011, p. 41) by enabling exchange students to gain global skills to prepare them for the global world, it is obvious that he has responded to globalisation in this fast, changing world. the university of hong kong worldwide exchange programme works exactly in the best interests of transnational corporations by nurturing exchange students to have global minds in the global world. the literature listed above logically links together, constituting scaffolding of this study in an attempt to answer the research question – how does the participation in hku worldwide exchange programme prepare hku students for the global world? obviously, internationalisation of he and global attributes of hku worldwide exchange students could be correlational. it is worthwhile to call for the government to invest more money on he (tillman 2010), especially for student exchange programmes, because global attributes of exchange students are inextricably linked to internationalisation of he. in doing so, attractive financial and scholarship packages as marketing and recruitment strategies have to be adopted (hazelkorn 2015). personal and professional transitions for individuals and communities are essential to transformative internationalisation (robson 2011). internationalisation of he upholds a competitive agenda (rust, portnoi & bagley 2010). methodology students from student exchange programmes can be classified as international abroad (international he as a national export) and internationalisation at home (the embedding of international or intercultural perspectives into local educational settings) (turner & robson 2008). international abroad, as knight perceived, is ‘an export product’ (knight & de wit 1997, cited in knight). in this study, international abroad had been selected only to study what global skills they have acquired through studying abroad. this study explores the narratives of hku worldwide exchange students submitted in the recent academic year, 2013–2014, to the hku office of international student exchange (oise) to find out more about the latest findings of the global attributes of these hku worldwide exchange students. the sources were reliable and valid, as the narratives were up-to-date reports submitted to oise given the consent of the hku worldwide exchange students. voices from hku worldwide exchange students were heard through the analysis of narratives given the methodology of discourse analysis with prior coding given for keeping the students’ identities strictly confidential. this could benefit students who are interested in applying for hku worldwide exchange programme by following the shadows of their predecessors. what is more, we can get a better understanding of the effectiveness of implementing the hku worldwide exchange programme in hku with regard to producing hku worldwide exchange students having global attributes who can fit into the global job market. in this study, one to three hku worldwide exchange students (i.e. international abroad students or outgoing students) from universities selected in each representative country – united states, canada, united kingdom and australia in a random sampling were investigated to classify global attributes they had acquired through participation in the hku worldwide exchange programme in preparation for the global world. as brooks and waters state (2011) in ‘student mobilities, migration and the internationalization of higher education’, students’ perspectives on motivations, objectives and experiences should be taken into account to fill the gap. the book internationalization of higher education (cheng, cheung & ng 2016): reviews and analyses the issues and policies of internationalization and exportation of higher education and investigates the strategies and models of education hub development in the context of globalization, with hong kong in the asia-pacific region as a case study. setting the scene for this study. besides, the book internationalization of higher education in east asia: trends of student mobility and impact on education governance (mok & yu 2013) asserts east asia as an education hub that transports higher education into the education market, making the set of the scene for this study feasible. conceptions, typology and issues can be examined to give recommendations for future development of hong kong and international communities (cheng et al. 2016). hong kong’s higher education faces challenges and adopts internationalisation strategies to increase income (ng & tang 2016). asian regionalisation of higher education is of paramount importance (knight 2012). issues drawn from the previous study ‘assessing student exchange programmes: putting students at the centre of internalization efforts’ by david x. cheng, were employed in this study for data analysis and discussion. examples are making friends from different cultural backgrounds, travel and explore the world, cultural shock, financial problems, academic problems, communication problems and homesickness (stiasny & gore 2013, cited in cheng). some capacities which student exchange programmes helped students to develop, as stated in the previous study ‘assessing student exchange programmes: putting students at the centre of internalization efforts’ by david x. cheng, were adopted to analyse the global skills. these are critical thinking, communication skills, cultural awareness, adaptation flexibility, interpersonal skills, being proactive and problem-solving skills (stiasny & gore 2013). a similar study ‘a case study of issues of strategy implementation in internationalization of higher education’ (jiang & carpenter 2013) analyses resource allocation, communication, operational process, cooperation and coordination, organisational culture, resistance to change, student support and external environment. research findings indicate that most issues are rooted internally. higher education internationalisation is deemed to be integration and cohesion. the university of hong kong is of no exception. internationlisation of hku is integrative to and cohesive of issues articulated in hku worldwide exchange students’ narratives. this study ‘international students as a resource for internationalization of higher education’ (urban & palmer 2014), which identifies multiple areas of opportunities for higher education to facilitate international students’ active contributions to the university’s strategic goal of global engagement and internationalisation while also positively impacting the manner in which international students perceive their he experience, also serves as a good modelling of our study for hku worldwide exchange narratives in relation to internationalisation of hku in he. data analysis the following are the global attributes of hku worldwide exchange students (which shall be useful for their employment in the global job market upon graduation) we classify based on their narratives of hku worldwide exchange students’ stories: embracing cultural diversity getting acquaintance with a large diversity of people from all over the world makes hku worldwide exchange students ‘international’: ‘undergraduates (come) from states, russia, britain – from different nations!’. (hku worldwide exchange student 2, university of toronto, canada) in getting along with people of such a large diversity, the hku exchange students have to be ‘open-minded’ and receptive to as well as sensitive to similarities and differences between cultures to explore so as to show respect for each culture. celebrating the vibrant diversity of cultures underlines embracing cultural diversity: ‘the lecturer, a canadian-european who spent a few years in japan, had sheer sensitivity towards appreciation of similarities and differences between different cultures and always reminded students of the ‘vibrancies of different cultures’. (hku worldwide exchange student 1, university of british columbia, canada) when embracing cultural diversity, it is essential that we show respect for other cultures, while others have authentic interests in our own culture. harmony, peace and respect are necessary for fostering ‘internationalisation’: ‘i got along with people of different cultures, race and background. i show respect and sincerity for others while others also had authentic interests in my own culture’. (hku worldwide exchange student 1, university of california, irvine, united states) however, local students have a strong bond in the existing circles that there might be conflicts between international students and local students owing to cultural differences: ‘nearly one-third students are international students with different races and cultural background: international students are usually friendlier than local students as local students already had a strong bond between each other’. (hku worldwide exchange student 2, university of nottingham, united kingdom) ‘i could hardly find local students who are interested to get us involved as they have their existing social circle already – conflicts arise due to cultural difference – the lack of understanding and consideration by a small group of local students in the hall’. (hku worldwide exchange student 1, monash university, australia) accommodation, participation in student clubs and exchange activities, and doing group works allow hku exchange students to interact with others coming from different parts of the world to embrace cultural diversity. accommodation ‘… flat-mates are from us and italy, having casual talking in the common room discussing current affairs or comparing different cultures – italians are great chefs, french are passionate!’ (hku worldwide exchange student 2, king’s college london, united kingdom) ‘i lived with flat-mates who are from u.k., switzerland and italy in the residence where most exchange students were accommodated … sometimes i cooked with my flat-mates and held parties’. (hku worldwide exchange student 2, university of british columbia, canada) ‘i live in a big student accommodation where i was able to meet housemates from different countries, such as malaysia, china, indonesia, belgium, taiwan, australia, etc.’. (hku worldwide exchange student 2, the university of melbourne, australia) participation in student clubs and exchange activities ‘i got to know lots of people from canada and all around the world by participating in activities held by student association and exchange student clubs …’ (hku worldwide exchange student 1, university of british columbia, canada) ‘i participated in university choir and felt music is a universal language across borders to build up relationship with others’. (hku worldwide exchange student 2, university of nottingham, united kingdom) group works ‘i learnt and made friends with international students – i particularly like the group projects with them since this allowed me to expose to various cultures and think from different perspectives but so brought me friends from many countries’. (hku worldwide exchange student 1, the university of melbourne, australia) communication skills having daily interactions with others opens up a ‘casual, open and friendly foreign’ culture in which more interactions take place for exchange of ideas. others surrounding the hku exchange students were easy going, warm, outgoing and willing to share views on different daily life issues openly as a community practice. they include friendly and warm locals, children on the streets and even travellers around the world. effective communication skills have thus been exercised: ‘people were friendlier and more willing to interact with each other: chatting with another student at the station, getting on the bus, saying hello to the bus driver, hopping off the bus saying thank you to the friendly driver, speaking to other students: more interaction between people …’ (hku worldwide exchange student 1, university of nottingham, united kingdom) ‘children asked me to take photos on the street, then in return they talked about religion, views on family, money and work to exchange ideas about daily life with me’. (hku worldwide exchange student 1, university of california, irvine, united states) ‘i met a thai businesswoman in venice and she shared with me her view to thai politics’. (hku worldwide exchange student 2, king’s college, london, united kingdom) the locals were very helpful and kind. when the hku worldwide exchange students got into trouble and encountered difficulties, they were always there to help. even the taxi driver kindly offered them help by their problem-solving skills: ‘australians are very friendly and nice. whenever getting troubles and encountering difficulties, they put efforts to help you. when i arrived at the airport, i was not able to find the gathering point proposed by the university. the nearby taxi driver drove me to the gathering point’. (hku worldwide exchange student 2, the university of melbourne, australia) yet, the native speakers spoke fast with strong accents. in return, these hku worldwide exchange students’ english proficiency had been improved through interacting with them. they had more confidence to speak up and had more international exposure. they could communicate with them about hong kong: ‘i had to concentrate on their speaking, and choice of words as well as cultural difference: they speak so fast with strong accents’. (hku worldwide exchange student 3, the university of new south wales, australia) ‘going overseas builds up international exposure, boost self-confidence and enhance ability to communicate: share thoughts and ideas in the country, what they know about hong kong and china, ideologies on work and life aspirations to achieve innovative goals’. (hku worldwide exchange student 1, monash university, australia) ‘after 5 months living in foreign countries, my english proficiency has been improved. i am now able to adapt to a new environment. i understood the culture and living style of locals and met some friends who shared with the same interest. i became brave and positive to meet new challenges’. (hku worldwide exchange student 2, university of melbourne, australia) the ability to argue effectively influenced by westernisation, hku worldwide exchange students learnt in a socratic way. learning is not about spoon feeding. learning is achieved by questioning, challenging, arguing, organising and summarising. they argued in response to questioning in socratic debate in class, and then organised information into a framework by self-learning: ‘the professor adopted ‘socratic’ style of teaching to challenge my thoughts by aggressive questioning during class so that i could argue to respond and organize dispersed information into a framework through self-learning and questioning’. (hku worldwide exchange student 2, boston university, united states) critical thinking: self-knowledge and reflection no regrets of going for exchange! there have been some significant changes before and after exchange. the hku worldwide exchange students felt a sense of completion after going for exchange. they had no regrets of going on exchange. on their arrival for the first time, they had a mixed feeling of excitement and anxiety. however, when returning back home from exchange, they realised that they were more confident with high self-esteem, in contrast to being anxious and uncertain upon arrival. the university of hong kong worldwide exchange benefits students in personal growth and development. the exchange experience is an adventurous life experience through which one can explore possibilities of life options to grow up. excitement versus anxiety in first arrivals ‘excitement comes from the eagerness of a newcomer to explore the host institute and the country while at the same time anxiety arises from practical issues in life settlement – basics: bank account, course enrollment, grocery visit, worries about social life in an entirely different country, for instance, outings and social gatherings by the exchange club’. (hku worldwide exchange student 1, monash university, australia) changes before and after exchange ‘i was feeling stressed and anxious when i set off to united states; now i was content and got a clearer sense of direction when i came back’. (hku worldwide exchange student 2, boston university, united states) no regrets of going for exchange ‘i used to be a person who had little tolerance for uncertainty. i had to follow my plans. i did not take risks. i doubted if i should go for exchange. i doubted any chance for a graduate job, my grade point average (gpa), etc. now i can tell firmly to everyone i do not regret having this exchange experience because it did open my eyes and show me high (sic) big the world is. i learnt to be more flexible, and i aimed to reach the new heights of accomplishment, no failure in trying, i tried and i gained more than i gave’. (hku worldwide exchange student 1, the university of melbourne, australia) exchange experience had been a life-altering roller coaster ride ‘i could make new friends and learn new things in the alien city, look at the self in a differed light – see the strengths and weakness, put into perspective of others and view what is truly important in life and what does not matter much’. (hku worldwide exchange student 2, boston university, united states) critical reflection on cultural similarities and differences the hku worldwide exchange students discovered similar aspects of different cultures, while at the same time observed cultural differences. cultural similarities … living in a foreign place for a certain period enables me to learn a lot more about the lifestyle of people and how they live their life: even though we live in different places, people of different races and cultural background actually are similar in some aspects’. (hku worldwide exchange student 2, the university of nottingham, united kingdom) cultural differences toronto (canada) customer’s services require tips and tax: ‘… waiters and waitresses in toronto depend on tips from customers so they are warmer and friendlier’. (hku worldwide exchange student 1, university of toronto, canada) ‘… have to pay tips implicitly, approximately 15% of the total bill excluding tax’. (hku worldwide exchange student 2, university of toronto, canada) melbourne (australia) is tranquil and has a relaxing lifestyle, in contrast to busy hong kong: ‘australia is known for its laid-back lifestyle; however, australian students are hard-working, while the lifestyle is relaxing … i did not really get used to this relaxing but boring life. as time goes by, i finally appreciate and started to love the tranquility in this country. at weekend, i hanged around at sunday markets to see handicrafts or simply went to beaches or parks to have picnic with friends. why is hong kong always so noisy, busy and stressful?’ (hku worldwide exchange student 1, the university of melbourne, australia) people in canada (vancouver) treasure the quality of life more in a slow and relaxing pace, in contrast to the fast and hasty hong kong where people strive for excellence and efficiency at the expense of personal values in life: ‘people in canada value the quality of life much more, such as time with family and friends, and fresh air in the great natural environment – this is what hong kong should learn’. (hku worldwide exchange student 2, the university of british columbia, canada) critical reflection: feeling compassionate about the needy in host country the hku worldwide exchange students were concerned with the basics in life during exchange, and felt compassionate about the beggars in the poor area and the mentally ill people on public transport. they critically reflected these conditions as to how they could help the needy to deeply express their sense of justice in their hearts. what hong kong must learn from the united states are equality, justice, indiscrimination and humanities: ‘i live in poor area in london and felt compassionate about people begging for money that i would think twice before buying the most basic bread: lucky to experience different cultures and thankful for this, and grateful to help others’. (hku worldwide exchange student 2, king’s college london, united kingdom) ‘i was surprised that people in california accepted people who have mental problems on the public transport and showed no sign of discrimination in the hope that hong kong could also become a place with no discrimination’. (hku worldwide exchange student 1, the university of california, irvine, united states) evaluating the academic culture of the host country and of hong kong the hku worldwide exchange students in the united kingdom, canada and australia evaluated the unique academic cultures, in contrast to that of hong kong. united kingdom: students were ‘eager’ to speak up: ‘students in king’s college london are more eager to speak due to difference between asians and europeans: professors in king’s college london would encourage students to answer question, or even to challenge their teaching – this could spark discussion between students … hku students are more capable in applying knowledge in real life cases versus king’s college london students are more focus in theories’. (hku worldwide exchange student 2, king’s college london, united kingdom) canada: interactive e-learning: ‘e-learning is intellectually stimulating to interactively engage students in the lecture: 1) using an ‘i-clicker’ to answer multiple-choice questions to check the concepts, 2) peer-wise: students create their own multiple-choice questions for other students to answer and rate and make comments – these could be adopted in hong kong’. (hku worldwide exchange student 1, university of toronto, canada) australia: friendly, proactive, attentive and hard-working students despite laid-back lifestyle: ‘unlike typical hong kong students, students in monash are friendly and proactive: they are open to express opinions and take the initiatives to actively participate in class – still, face many assessments and examinations and lead a hard life’.(hku worldwide exchange student 1, monash university, australia) ‘i had to complete more assignments in melbourne university than in hku, while students in melbourne university were more attentive to classes, hard-working and serious amid the laid-back and relaxing atmosphere’. (hku worldwide exchange student 1, the university of melbourne, australia) comparing hall life of the host university and that of the university of hong kong the hku worldwide exchange students in nottingham university found the focus of hall life there very different from that of hong kong: ‘at hku, more focus is put on hall team spirits, which have been reinforced by many inter-hall competitions versus in nottingham university, it is more about vibrant student life – meeting people and having student parties, hanging around with other students each night, having dinner and drinks in parties or clubs …’ (hku worldwide exchange student 2, university of nottingham, united kingdom) setting the goals and planning actions the hku worldwide exchange students were determined to set goals to aim at what they would like to achieve at the start of the exchange to make their life experience a more fruitful and rewarding one. study-life balance was attempted. a sense of achievement could be obtained if the goals were fulfilled: ‘i spent sometimes in setting goals for myself: more aspirations for art of photography, more books reading … but failed to do exercise’. (hku worldwide exchange student 1, the university of nottingham, united kingdom) ‘i set up goals because i did not want to get lost without goals in the relaxing culture. i should devote more time on what i wanted to achieve: cooking, sports, and choir, before embarking on exchange …’ (hku worldwide exchange student 2, the university of nottingham, united kingdom) ‘i rode a bike to campus every day which took 5-10 minutes; after exam, i and two friends rode to frankston on raining and windy days. with support by friends, we finally achieved the goals after 6 hours, feeling exhausted by a sense of achievement back home!’ (hku worldwide exchange student 2, university of melbourne, australia) activeness: taking the initiative the hku worldwide exchange students in the university of british columbia actively took the initiative to experience what could not be offered in hong kong in order to taste the ‘local’ flavour in the ‘foreign’ land: ‘i took some courses that were common in north america which are not offered in hku to experience what i could not experience in my study in hong kong …’ (hku worldwide exchange student 1, university of british columbia, canada) adaptability to a new curriculum the hku worldwide exchange students had to adapt the curriculum differences between the host university and the hku: ‘u.s. is 4 years long while hk is 3 years … i had to take more courses to adapt; luckily i passed them all and learnt a lot from prestigious professors …’ (hku worldwide exchange student 1, university of california, irvine, united states) ‘university of toronto’s undergraduate degree is 4 years, unlike hku 3 years … courses in university of toronto were stimulating and exciting …’ (hku worldwide exchange student 1, university of toronto, canada) versatility: high adaptability to a new academic life in the ‘foreign’ land adapting to a new academic life in the foreign land enabled hku worldwide exchange students to tackle novel situations by solving ill-defined problems in their studies. the hku worldwide exchange students concentrated on long lectures hard to adapt. they were attentive and kept on jotting down notes. ‘it was the 3 hours lecturers in huge class size without tutorials: listening to an entire chapter material being covered in lecture, and tas [teaching assistants] were not approachable and helpful either …’ (hku worldwide exchange student 1, university of toronto, canada) ‘… lecturers were not used to distributing hard copies of handouts to students. i had to attend every class to jot down words on the whiteboards on my notes. a portion of assessment goes to pop-up quizzes that skipping class is not possible’. (hku worldwide exchange student 2, university of toronto, canada) however, the lecture delivered in university of british columbia was dominated by student debates in a dynamic way throughout the class that the hku worldwide exchange student found it hard to follow that even a single point could not be jotted down. discover the importance of raising questions to think deeply: ‘i found it hard to follow the dynamics in class, since the lecture was dominated by students having debates: in hku, the lecturer gave detailed elaboration on a specific topic vs in ubc [university of british columbia], students debated dynamically throughout the lecture to the extent that i could not even jot down a single note after a 3-hour lecture. i could not understand why the lecturer did not stop and resume the order. as time went by, i started to realize the importance of lecture to have students raised questions and the lecturer played the role of prompting students to think more deeply by attempting to offer some possible solutions’. (hku worldwide exchange student 2, university of british columbia, canada) discussion could substitute lecture. in king’s college london, the lecturer prompted students a few questions to open up an engaging discussion in which students could freely discuss. in nottingham university, law students spoke up and had a discussion with the professor or the tutor. the academic culture in nottingham university was open. even some had student-oriented and interactive tutorials more than lectures: ‘seminar participation and discussion are more engaging and lively, students were prompted by a few questions from the lecturer to begin a free discussion … there were more intellectual exchange in the seminars that challenged me to analyse literature more sophisticatedly deeper … very dynamic and active’. (hku worldwide exchange student 2, king’s college, london, united kingdom) ‘law students at the university are more willing to speak up and have a discussion with the professor or the tutor: students appear to be more engaged in the lectures and tutorials’. (hku worldwide exchange student 1, nottingham university, united kingdom) ‘an open academic culture that encourages student participation, even some have tutorials more than lectures, students-oriented and interactive: good – express self and learn from the peers vs. bad: – knowledge peers share is from reading and less in depth than the points given by the lecturer’. (hku worldwide exchange student 2, university of nottingham, united kingdom) in contrast to dominant lecture or open discussion, the hku worldwide exchange students in the university of new south wales had fewer hours class but more independent study. ‘problems in credit-transfer: i had comparatively fewer lecture hours and assignments but more intuition and thorough understanding of course materials … grading is not as mild as hk, e.g. high distinction = a’. (hku worldwide exchange student 1, the university of new south wales, australia) interestingly, hku worldwide exchange students had taken part in experiential learning. the hku worldwide exchange students in king’s college had experiential learning by getting a connection to creative writing and publishing industry, through studying plays and watching performance. ‘… since gpa is not affected on exchange, i tried creative writing course during which i was given a chance to attend lectures by authors and have seminars with professionals in the publishing industry … more reflective about own writing and inspire a new interest in creative writing … appreciation for this genre, and most enjoyable was to watch the live performance of plays studied in class on stage to have a holistic learning experience …’ (hku worldwide exchange student 1, king’s college london, united kingdom) the hku worldwide exchange law student in the university of british columbia joined internship programmes to enhance experiential learning to improve problem-solving skills: ‘i joined legal advice program to serve mandarin clients … i took part in chin law links program in which meetings were held to prepare trials for negotiation experiences … i worked with local lawyers to learn from them …’ (hku worldwide exchange student 2, university of british columbia, canada) versatility: high adaptability to a new accommodation in the ‘foreign’ land the hku worldwide exchange students could not afford to live in the ‘foreign’ land. they had to look for a safe yet less expensive flat that require them to travel less. it was hard to strike a balance between the price of and safety of the flat, and the distance between the flat and the campus. their high adaptability to a new accommodation in the ‘foreign’ land could strengthen their versatilities to be applied elsewhere. ‘i got rejected by landlords in boston, finding hard to find a living place near campus – luckily, i rented a flat in the suburb … i felt petrified in darkness in the first two months, and then started to grow bolder and even enjoyed the natural tranquil side of the suburb such as morning sunshine and stars in the sky…’ (hku worldwide exchange student 2, boston university, united states) ‘i had been allocated to one of the most expensive residence provided by kings college london – costing around hk $40,000 for a semester and this takes long hours, 45 minutes, to travel and it is not safe’. (hku worldwide student 2, king’s college london, united kingdom) versatility: high adaptability to the choice of transportation in the ‘foreign’ land the hku worldwide exchange students encountered transportation problems in the ‘foreign’ land. unlike the locals who had a car to travel around, they could not afford a car so they had to take the public transport to travel, even for long distances: ‘… public transport is not common in california, most people there have their own cars to travel … local friends were surprised of me taking the public transport so often, only people who could not afford a car take the public transport … not enough money to afford the expensive taxi fee or buy a car so i had to travel by public transport …’ (hku worldwide exchange student 1, university of california, irvine, united states) ‘it took at least 2 hours to travel from my house to campus …’ (hku worldwide exchange student 2, university of toronto, canada) problem-solving skills: independence fosters life survival skills to ‘survive’ in a ‘foreign’ land, hku worldwide exchange students exercised problems-solving skills to solve daily problems to become more independent. crisis fostered their survival skills through crisis management in life: ‘… the standard of living is higher: opened a bank commonwealth bank, bought a prepaid sim card, high currency or exchange rate, a chinese dish costs more than aud $10; public transport is expensive – buses or a ticket that incorporates train, tram and bus tickets … socket, adaptor, blankets and linen, kitchenware, cheap local flight tickets, mastercard for online shopping … loneliness in living alone without family: some challenges in routine life …’ (hku worldwide exchange student 3, the university of new south wales, australia) ‘black out … tried to get power from elsewhere, e.g. torch, chargers new a power plug at restaurant (hku worldwide exchange student 1, university of toronto, canada) i had chest pain in midnight so i went to hospital to check-up, luckily the housemate accompanied me to see the doctor and make sure i am alright – i remembered family was always with me when i was in trouble in hong kong, in a foreign land i felt afraid and scared in being alone to solve problems during crisis on my own …’ (hku worldwide exchange student 1, university of toronto, canada) the power of decision-making in life to gain independence the hku worldwide exchange students had the power to make decisions on their own to gain independence. these decisions are related to self-care which includes doing housework, being concerned with tight budget on meals and cooking: doing housework ‘i did housework after a day of work, through which i understand that how spoiled i was when my parents were around … now i learnt to take good care of myself and become independent …’ (hku worldwide exchange student 1, the university of melbourne, australia) being concerned with tight budget on meals ‘i took care of meals in a tight budget that i looked for cheap recipes’. (hku worldwide exchange student 2, king’s college london, united kingdom) cooking ‘i need to cook for myself for every meal in ‘broadgate park’, self-catered accommodation: lived in a flat with six students, sharing a kitchen, a toilet and a bath room, sharing the same kitchen so there are chances to meet each other’. (hku worldwide exchange student 2, university of nottingham, united kingdom) ‘what i learnt most is to take care of my own daily life, the price level in melbourne is high that dining out was un-affordable so i had to cook every day to have my cooking training started: went to queen victoria market to buy food, cooking by myself could help me to concentrate and forget all about pressure’. (hku worldwide exchange student 1, the university of melbourne, australia) global citizenship: respect the indigenous culture in the globalised world the hku worldwide exchange students in monash university had the awareness of preserving indigenous culture in australia with respect to promoting global citizenship: ‘australians are not the sole majority: student learnt to respect the indigenous culture of australia while embracing globalization in the 21st century – aboriginal culture: aboriginal performance – anti-racism!!!’ (hku worldwide exchange student 1, monash university, australia) global citizenship: viewing policies in light of multiculturalism in the pursuit of peace the hku worldwide exchange student in university of british columbia recommended exchange students in vancouver to pay more attention to local policies with respect to globalisation in view of multiculturalism in the globalised world. ‘i recommend exchange student in vancouver to pay more attention to local policies and social dynamics between people of different backgrounds to rethink issues of globalization, to understand multiculturalism and to develop a sense of global citizenship’. (hku worldwide exchange student 1, university of british columbia, canada) the list of findings to sum up, the hku worldwide exchange programme enables hku graduates to have these global attributes (as discussed) acquired in the globalised world: embracing cultural diversity. communication skills. the ability to argue effectively. critical thinking: self-knowledge and reflection. critical reflection on cultural similarities and differences. critical reflection: feeling compassionate about the needy in the host country. evaluating the academic culture of host country and that of hong kong. comparing hall life of the host university and that of the hku. setting the goals and planning the actions. activeness: taking the initiatives. adaptability to a new curriculum. versatility: high adaptability to a new academic life in the ‘foreign’ land. versatility: high adaptability to a new accommodation in the ‘foreign’ land. versatility: high adaptability to the choice of transportation in the ‘foreign’ land. problem-solving skills: independence fosters life survival skills. the power of decision-making in life to gain independence. global citizenship: respect the indigenous culture in the globalised world. global citizenship: viewing policies in light of multiculturalism in the pursuit of peace. the participation in hku worldwide exchange programme could best prepare hku students for a globalised world. discussion cultural diversity cultural diversity, one of the aims of internationalisation of hku, enables hku worldwide exchange students to embrace a diversified culture when studying abroad. the university of hong kong worldwide exchange students, in the future, if they move across nations to work with a global mind in the global world, would get to know how to appreciate and respect others’ culture in reflection of themselves. this underlines that the hku worldwide exchange programme as part of internationalisation of hku could foster hku worldwide exchange students to embrace or even celebrate cultural diversity. this corresponds to the hku’s intention of internationalisation, which is to create an environment where students must interact with people from different cultures. it adds values to the cultural and social rationalises of internationalisation in the form of academic exchange to promote culture of one’s own and to appreciate others’ culture to enhance global awareness. it is an ethos approach to internationalisation by creating a culture on campus that promotes and supports international or intercultural initiatives. for example, hku has an international campus for exchange students. the university of hong kong has a truly international staff and a diverse student body. the university of hong kong has a constant stream of international conferences and symposia in the university, numerous distinguished international professors visiting under their various schemes, and a huge number of international collaborations in research and teaching. the university of hong kong must ensure that it has an international approach to all that the university could do, bench-marking itself against international best practices and aspiring to achieve characteristics which define the world’s greatest universities (mathieson 2015). there is also a process approach to internationalisation. integration or infusion of an international or intercultural dimension into teaching and research can be found, for example in the design of some hku courses like courses on hong kong cinema. it is strongly linked to myth 1 about internationalisation – foreign students being trained as international agents. through participating in hku worldwide exchange programme, students could acquire excellent communication skills and team-building the government sector could be interested in hku exchange students who may hire them as diplomats, or leaders serving as nation’s ambassadors in the future. the private sector would also be interested in a heterogeneous working environment. possible international professionals that could be in the global world in the future include diplomats, cultural ambassadors and international agents in multinational firms. communication skills and the ability to argue one of the teaching and learning intended outcomes of hku under internationalisation is to equip students with essential communication skills and the ability to argue to present ideas clearly. the university of hong kong worldwide exchange students could then excel in proficient communication skills to articulate arguments inside and outside the classroom when studying abroad. the university of hong kong worldwide exchange students, in the future, could be trained as global scholars who could communicate effectively in well-presented arguments in academic work. this helps to strengthen the higher education sector. the university of hong kong’s teaching and learning in an international environment as part of internationalisation could motivate hku worldwide exchange students to communicate with others effectively with the ability to argue in academic settings. this could facilitate academic intellectual enquiry in academic rationale of internationalisation. it corresponds to the multidimensions of internationalisation: international engagement by strategic international partnerships, high mobility because of inflow and outflow of exchange students, revenues gained in transnational programmes, knowledge sharing for training to be institutional leaders and widely use of english language on campus, on website and other media amid language diversity. this links to myth 4 and myth 5 about internationalisation – international accreditation and global branding. academic programmes in international dimensions could be accredited that could push up the global branding. the competency approach to internationalisation also suggests that exchange students could be more competent by exercising language skills to present lucid arguments. this will link back to myth 2 about internationalisation; quality of students could result in international reputation. students could gain excellent communication skills as global skills – oral, interpersonal, written and others. possible international professionals that they could be in the global world in the future include global scholars in academia, lawyers, public relations officers, managers and business consultants in multinational firms. critical reflection critical reflection is required in any university training. the university of hong kong is of no exception. when studying abroad, hku worldwide exchange students could gain self-knowledge by critical reflection of their own, critically evaluate the similarities and differences of cultures between the west and the east, feel compassionate about the needy in the host country they are in, and compare the similarities and difference between hall education in hku and that in the host country. the university of hong kong worldwide exchange students in the future could be trained to become global scholars who can critically reflect upon their real life, for example their awareness of different cultures, their compassion towards the needy and their evaluation of what is the similarity or difference between the host country and their home country. critical reflection is the essence of intellectual academic inquiry, the first aim of teaching and learning of hku. the university of hong kong worldwide exchange students, after participating in the student exchange programme, could gain the ability of having critical reflection, which maps with the first key aim of teaching and learning of hku – the pursuit of academic excellence by critical enquiry. this could correspond to the multidimensions of internationalisation – knowledge sharing, programming and curriculum, and academic practices. competency approach to internationalisation means that students could be more competitive by having acquired critical reflection in academics or other international professional leadership positions. with critical reflection, students would have a higher capacity to be international agents, as discussed in myth 1, about internationalisation. they could have strong leadership skills, and could possibly be global scholars or diplomats. the government and the education sector would be interested in these attributes. the global skills they would have are self-knowledge and reflection, decision-making, creativity, problem-solving and leadership. possible international professionals that they could be in the global world in the future include academics, government officials and directors. life-long learning, goal setting, making plans and taking initiatives life-long learning is what an ideal education hku always aims at. it trains students to be good leaders by asking them to set up goals, make plans and take initiatives for their actions. these attributes could enable them to become global scholars. the university of hong kong worldwide exchange students could transfer these attributes in their solitary life in studying abroad to workplace. before they embark on their exchange journey, they set up life goals and make plans, and take initiatives to respond to or adapt in an unfamiliar environment. this corresponds to the economic and social rationale of internationalisation. students as life-long leaders could bring economic growth to society by contributing more to the labour market in the society. it adds values to the multidimensions of internationalisation: high mobility because of making plans to act by initiatives to attain life goals and academic practice to experience local versus western cultures in life. activity and competency approaches to internalisation could be adopted to understand that academic exchanges could enable students to be more competent to set goals and plan to act by initiatives as life-long learners. global skills – such as self-knowledge and reflection, planning and organising, problem-solving and leadership – could be acquired. possible international professionals that they could be in the global world in the future include teachers, government officials, policymakers and leaders. high versality and adaptability high versality and adaptability could be fostered by offering hku students various experiences, like experiential learning, taking common courses, engaging in flipped classrooms and taking massive open online courses (moocs). by taking part in a wide exposure of myriad forms of learning, they could always switch modes to gain high versality and high adaptability. these global attributes could enable hku worldwide exchange students to adapt to new curriculum, new academic life, new accommodation and new choices of transport in studying abroad, which in the future will help them to gain more assets in high flexibility when moving across nations in the global world to work in the future. they would be more versatile, highly adaptable to new situations to solve ill-defined problems, and more capable of working in the global world with a global mindset. this adds values to the cultural and social rationales of internationalisation – national culture, academic exchange and global awareness, which poses an impact on higher versality and adaptability of students. this also corresponds to the multidimensions of internationalisation – high mobility as well as reciprocity of western and eastern cultures in international collaboration and equality of partnerships. reciprocity of two entire different cultural systems allows high versality and adaptability. activity and ethos approaches to internationalisation could be understood – student exchange could lead to the development of knowledge and skills. this links to myth 5 about internationalisation, that is high versality and adaptability of exchange students could be treasured as their global assets, which could result in global branding of a university. a global branding of a university, in other words, guarantees exchange students having the ability to move across nations to work in high versality and adaptability for their future jobs. the private sector in favour of heterogeneous culture (e.g. multinational firms) would be interested in hiring these students as they acquire global skills – adaptability, problem-solving, creativity, relationship building, collaboration and leadership. possible international professionals that they could be in the global world in the future include tourist guides, think tank in the government and diplomats. problem-solving skills and independence of making life decision problem-based learning and having independence to make decisions are necessary skills to be learnt under hku teaching and learning that would be helpful under internationalisation. the university of hong kong worldwide exchange students could then solve problems on their own and make life decisions independently when studying abroad. these students in future could exercise problem-solving skills to make life decisions independently when encountering difficulties in other nations. this echoes with one of the aims of teaching and learning in hku – tackling novel situations and solving ill-defined problems. the university of hong kong worldwide exchange students could respond positively to unanticipated situations and problems, identify and define problems in unfamiliar situations, and generate and evaluate innovative solutions to problems. this would be beneficial for them to go to work in a global market; in particular, it would be extremely helpful for being a global scholar to solve problems in intellectual enquiry in academia. this links to the multidimensions of internationalisation – academic practices and programming of internationalisation. the competency approach to internationalisation could be analysed – students could take advantage of problem-solving skills and independence of making life decision to tackle ill-defined problems in novel situation. the university of hong kong worldwide exchange students are well equipped to be global scholars. the university of hong kong must get them outside their comfort zones and experience adversity, take calculated risks and test themselves in challenging situations. it is in this way that the future global leaders would be born (the university of hong kong 2015). according to myth 1 about internationalisation, the students would serve as international agents moving across borders to tackle problems in life or at work. the government and the education sector would be interested in hiring these students who have the problem-solving ability to make decisions independently, as they have global skills of problem-solving, decision-making and leadership. possible international professionals that they could be in the global world in the future include global scholars, great leaders, senior management staff and troubleshooters. global citizenship global citizenship is the ideal role in the mission of what hku would like its students to have. the university aims to produce students who can bear a strong responsibility to the global world. the university of hong kong worldwide exchange students thus not only respect the indigenous culture in the global world but also pursue peace in light of multiculturalism. this is one of the aims of hku to achieve, fostering intercultural communication to reinforce global citizenship. through participating in hku worldwide exchange programme, students could raise the awareness of their own culture and other cultures, develop cultural sensitivity and interpersonal skills for engagement with people of diverse cultures and perform social responsibilities as a member of the global community. global citizenship is the ideal state that hku would like to achieve under internationalisation. performing social responsibility as a member of the global community is our commitment to protect our global world hands in hands with the global mindset. this links to the cultural and social rationales of internationalisation. programming and curriculum as one of the multidimensions of internationalisation allows the infusion of international dimension into courses, such as offering common core courses on global citizenship. activity, ethos and process approaches to internationalisation could be understood as academic exchange increases the competitiveness of students by integrating intercultural dimension into teaching and learning at university. the myth 5 about internationalisation works well. exchange students serve as international agents. this would be a proxy to international reputation by the quality of exchange students. international institutional partnership agreements facilitate international accreditation of the programmes and courses, contributing to international branding of universities by the moving up of university ranking. all these are rooted in hku worldwide exchange students who are in the pursuit of being the ideal global citizens. education sectors, governments and world organisations would be interested in hiring these students who would attain the global citizenship. global skills that they have include taking initiatives, leadership, relationship building and collaboration. possible international professionals that they could be in the global world in the future include un officials, ngo workers and education officers. as discussed above, all these are global attributes of what these hku worldwide exchange students have, which are essential for the global job market for their future. conclusion to conclude, hku has undergone ‘internationalisation’, which makes itself a global top-ranked university in the world. the university of hong kong worldwide exchange programme is one of the effective key university strategies that focuses on collaborative international university partnership, contributing to hku’s internationalisation. to extend this further, hku aims to achieve a mandatory role for students to take part in one mainland and one international hku worldwide exchange by 2022 in order to qualify a graduate having possessed a global mindset in the global world. this study makes significant contribution to the transferrable knowledge and skills from the students’ exchange experience to the global job market in the field of internationalisation in higher education. further research can be conducted on employment opportunities of hku worldwide exchange students, and students’ perception of mandatorily providing with one mainland and one international student exchange experiences under the new hku policy 2022. this may question what pinar tends to suggest (pinar 2007): how far does intellectual advancement progress? acknowledgements the author would like to thank the office of international student exchange (oise), hku, for the data collected from the stories of the latest 2013–2014 returned hku worldwide exchange students (provided with consent of hku worldwide exchange students given anonymous identities via special coding). this is an article based on the presentation ‘global world, global mind: narratives of hku worldwide exchange graduates’ (with slight extensions and updates) held in the higher education research and development society of australasia (herdsa) conference during the academic year 2013–2014. this study has been cited and extended further by prof. john spinks, director of undergraduate admissions and international student exchange, in the work entitled ‘review of exchange students report’ in hku quality assurance council (qac) audit report [institutional submission], august 2015, page 1019, appendix 4.4. competing interests the author declares that she has no financial or personal relationships which may have inappropriately influenced her in writing this article. references altbach, p., 2015a, ‘knowledge and education as international commodities’, international higher education 28, the boston college centre for international higher education, boston, ma. altbach, p., 2015b, ‘perspectives on internationalizing higher education’, international higher education 28, the boston college centre for international higher education, boston, ma. blanco-ramírez, g. & berger, j.b., 2014, ‘rankings, accreditation, and the international quest for quality: organizing an approach to value in higher education’, quality assurance in education 22(1), 88–104. https://doi.org/10.1108/qae-07-2013-0031 blumenthal, p., 1996, academic mobility in changing world: regional and global trends, jessica kingsley publishers, bristol, uk. brandenburg, u. & de wit, h., 2015, ‘the end of internationalization’ international higher education 62, the boston college centre for international higher education, boston, ma. brooks, r. & waters, j., 2011, student mobilities, migration and the internationalization of higher education, springer, uk. cheng, d.x., 2013, ‘assessing student exchange programmes: putting students at the centre of internationalization efforts’, in going global: identifying trends and drivers of international education, pp. 183–192, emerald, bradford, u.k. cheng, y.c., cheung, a.c.k. & ng, s.w., 2016, ‘internationalisation of higher education: conceptualization, typology and issues’, in internationalization of higher education, pp. 1–18, springer, singapore. davies, l., 2006, ‘global citizenship: abstraction or framework for action?’, education review 58(1), 5025, taylor and francis, uk. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131910500352523 de wit, h., 2011, trends, issues and challenges in internationalisation of higher education, centre for applied research on economics and management, school of economics and management of the hogeschool van amsterdam, amsterdam. de wit, h., 2015, ‘internationalization misconceptions’, international higher education 64, the boston college centre for international higher education, pp 6–7, boston, ma. deardorff, d.k., de wit, h. & heyl, j.d. (eds.), 2012, the sage handbook of international higher education, sage, u.k. deardorff, d.k. & van gaalen, a., 2012, ‘outcomes assessment in the internationalization of higher education’ in the sage handbook of international higher education, pp. 167–189, sage, u.k. delgado-márquez, b.l., hurtado-torres, n.e. & bondar, y., 2011, ‘internationalization of higher education: theoretical and empirical investigation of its influence on university institution rankings’, international journal of educational technology in higher education 8(2), 265–284, springer, u.k. https://doi.org/10.7238/rusc.v8i2.1069 gao, y., baik, c. & arkoudis, s., 2015, huisman, j., de boer, h., dill, d.d., souto-otero, m. (eds.) in ‘internationalization of higher education’, the palgrave international handbook of higher education policy and governance, pp. 300–320, palgrave macmillan, london. gopal, a., 2011, ‘internationalization of higher education: preparing faculty to teach cross-culturally’, international journal of teaching and learning in higher education 23(3), 373–381, international society for exploring teaching and learning (isetl), u.s. green, m.f., marmolejo, f. & egron-polak, e., 2012, ‘the internationalization of higher education’ in deardorff, d.k., de wit, h., heyl, j.d., adam, t., in the sage handbook of international higher education, pp. 439, sage, u.k. guruz, k., 2008, higher education and international student mobility in the global knowledge economy, state university of new york press, new york. hazelkorn, e., 2015, ‘globalization, internationalization and rankings’, international higher education, pp. 53, the boston college centre for international higher education, boston, ma. jiang, n. & carpenter, v., 2013, ‘a case study of issues of strategy implementation in internationalization of higher education’, international journal of educational management 27(1), 4–18, emerald, uk. https://doi.org/10.1108/09513541311289792 kahn, h.e. & agnew, m., 2017, ‘global learning through difference: considerations for teaching, learning, and the internationalization of higher education’, journal of studies in international education 21(1), 52–64, sage, u.k. https://doi.org/10.1177/1028315315622022 king, r., marginson, s. & naidoo, r., 2011, handbook on globalization and higher education, edward elgar publishing limited, uk. knight, j., 2011, ‘five myths about internationalization’, international higher education, 62, 14–15. knight, j., 2012, ‘a conceptual framework for the regionalization of higher education: application to asia’, in higher education regionalization in asia pacific: implications for governance, citizenship and university transformation, pp. 17–35, palgrave macmillan, new york. knight, j., 2015a, ‘internationalization brings important benefits as well as risks’, international higher education pp. 46, the boston college centre for international higher education, boston, ma. knight, j., 2015b, ‘updated definition of internationalization’, international higher education 33, the boston college centre for international higher education, boston, ma. knight, j. & de wit, h., 1997, internationalization of higher education in asia pacific countries, the european association for international education, amsterdam. maringe, f. & foskett, n. (eds.), 2012, globalization and internationalization in higher education: theoretical, strategic and management perspectives, a&c black, uk. mathieson, p., 2015 “the speech of the president and vice-chancellor professor peter mathieson to the court (december 17, 2015)”, viewed may 2018, from http://www4.hku.hk/cpao/bulkmail/2015/president/court/speech/court2015f.pdf mok, k.h. & yu, k.m. (eds.), 2013, internationalization of higher education in east asia: trends of student mobility and impact on education governance, routledge, uk. ng, s.w., 2012, ‘rethinking the mission of internationalization of higher education in the asia-pacific region’, compare: a journal of comparative and international education 42(3), 439–459, taylor & francis, u.k. ng, s.w. & tang, s.y.f., 2016, ‘critical reflections on the challenges and strategies associated with internationalising hong kong’s higher education’, internationalization of higher education 42(3), 81–99. https://doi.org/10.1080/03057925.2011.652815 o’byrne, d.j., 2003, the dimensions of global citizenship: political identity beyond the nation-state, cass & co ltd, u.k. oxfam, g.b., 2015, “global citizenship guides” – key elements of global citizenship, viewed november 2015, from https://policy-practice.oxfam.org.uk/publications/global-citizenship-guides-620105 pinar, w.f., 2007, intellectual advancement through disciplinarity: verticality and horizontality in curriculum studies, sense, rotterdam. qs top universities, 2018 “top 10 universities in asia 2018”, viewed oct 17 2017, from https://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings-articles/asian-university-rankings/top-10-universities-asia-2018 robson, s., 2011, ‘internationalization: a transformative agenda for higher education?’, teachers and teaching 17(6), 619–630, taylor and francis, u.k. https://doi.org/10.1080/13540602.2011.625116 rust, v., portnoi, l. & bagley, s. (eds.), 2010, higher education, policy, and the global competition phenomenon, palgrave macmillan, u.s. sakamoto, r. & chapman, d., 2012, cross-border partnerships in higher education: strategies and issues, routledge, new york. stiasny, m. & gore, t., 2013, going global: identify trends and drivers of international education, emerald, bingley, u.k. tadaki, m. & tremewan, c., 2013, ‘reimagining internationalization in higher education: international consortia as a transformative space?’, studies in higher education 38(3), 367–387, taylor and francis, u.k. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2013.773219 the university of hong kong, ‘asia’s global university: the next decade, our vision for 2016–2025’, viewed may 2018, from https://www.sppoweb.hku.hk/vision2016-2025/phone/our-3-1-is.html the university of hong kong, communications and public office, first and foremost, viewed may 2018, from https://www.cpao.hku.hk/firstandforemost/rankings the university of hong kong, teaching and learning blog, ‘internationalisation at home’, viewed june 29 2016, from https://tl.hku.hk/tag/internationalization/ the university of hong kong, ‘vision and mission’, viewed may 2018, from https://www.hku.hk/about/vision.html tillman, m., 2010, ‘trends in global higher education: tracking an academic revolution’, international educator 19(3), 20, washington, dc. urban, e.l. & palmer, l.b., 2014, ‘international students as a resource for internationalization of higher education’, journal of studies in international education 18(4), 305–324, sage, u.k. https://doi.org/10.1177/1028315313511642 turner, y. & robson, s., 2008, internationalizing the university, continuum international publishing group, london. abstract introduction a decolonial lens reflection place: local and global epistemology and curricula alienation concluding analysis acknowledgements references about the author(s) anne becker department of curriculum studies, faculty of educational sciences, stellenbosch university, cape town, south africa citation becker, a., 2020, ‘a reflective analysis of articles published in the journal of transformation in higher education (2016–2020): beyond transformation?’, transformation in higher education 5(0), a98. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v5i0.98 original research a reflective analysis of articles published in the journal of transformation in higher education (2016–2020): beyond transformation? anne becker received: 30 sept. 2020; accepted: 14 oct. 2020; published: 04 dec. 2020 copyright: © 2020. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract background: the fault lines exposed by the coronavirus disease (covid-19) pandemic and global economic recession unfolding during 2020 in societies around the world, reiterated the need for transforming higher education globally. in south africa, transformation in higher education has been a priority since 1994. the first article in this journal was published in 2016 during the 2015-2016 #mustfall protests. during the protests, decolonisation and decolonising of higher education were central. aim: a reflective analysis of articles published in the journal of transformation in higher education 2016-2020. setting: transformation and decolonising in global and south african higher education. method: a reflective analysis is done through a decolonial lens. the contributions of authors are reflected upon through three themes: place (local and global), epistemology and alienation. results: although i find the engagement with decolonising substantive, i argue that there is still a lack of publications on specifically decoloniality and decolonial analysis. conclusion: i argue that the journal of transformation in higher education provides a platform for difficult and robust discussions on decoloniality, transformation, epistemology, issues of sexuality, gender and race, internationalisation and possible pluriversalisation in higher education for south african and international scholars. keywords: alienation; epistemology; decoloniality; local and global; pluriversality; transformation. introduction this article is a reflective analysis of articles published in the journal of transformation in higher education (the) (2016–2020). it is a reflection on how transformation in higher education is enunciated by authors publishing in this journal. the coronavirus disease (covid-19) pandemic and global economic recession unfolding during 2020, situate this reflection in time-place-space. although the pandemic has impacted everyone, it has put the spotlight on the consequences of global economic and political power, capitalism and neo-liberalism (peters et al. 2020). these consequences have been particularly stark in south africa. a central theme of the pandemic is the universal right to breathe (mbembe 2020). many people around the world would, however, argue that the earth, cosmos and the majority of humankind have already been in a premature cessation of breathing before the pandemic (mbembe 2020). the globally suffocating consequences of growing inequality and desperate poverty and suffering, continually masked by narratives of global economic development and progress, became clearly visible to everyone during 2020. the events of 2020 put, otherwise invisible, disposable bodies in societies on public display, through social media, print media and global digital communications. the consequences on display are not only related to class and inequality but also race and gender (femicide in south africa specifically). the 2020 global black lives matter protests, for example, attest to the suffocating consequences of global racism. race, as an organising principle, is a central axis of colonialism and coloniality, and maldonado-torres (2007:243) argues that ‘as modern subjects, we breathe coloniality all the time and every day’. it defines human relations, subjectivities, identities, cultures and knowledge (maldonado-torres 2007:243). catastrophic events, such as pandemics, always involve disruption (quay in peters et al. 2020:10). the pandemic and its consequences brought about cognitive, emotional, physical, spatial, social, educational, political and economic disruption. it required populations all over the world to continually change their lives in the midst of ongoing uncertainty (peters et al. 2020:10). certainty in education is recorded via facts and catalogued in curricula (quay in peters et al. 2020:10). the facts recorded in curricula were not disrupted during the pandemic. facts were, through disrupted education practices and processes, positioned differently. the practices of education and how we teach and learn were disrupted and are now steeped in uncertainty (quay in peters et al. 2020). this had consequences, as quay (in peters et al. 2020:11) poses: ‘the pedagogical changes wrought via the pandemic have positioned facts differently; their certainty is clothed in various forms of practice which alter their meaning: how they are known’. digital technologies, already in use before the pandemic, became the core means of teaching and learning. traditional education was replaced by online teaching across the world, and there can be no doubt that online education works differently from face-to-face teaching and learning (jackson in peters et al. 2020:23). online teaching has many positive possibilities. it is argued that access to quality education is increased and with it a global sense of citizenship and sociality. there are, therefore, many calls on educational administrators not to go back to traditional ways of teaching and learning. (jackson in peters et al. 2020:24). digital technologies, however, also carry risks. whilst online teaching and learning are presented as a way of expanding access to education, the current (forced) experiment highlighted global dimensions of unequal access, inadequate or non-existent internet access, lower quality equipment and limited experience with platforms such as zoom or skype. fataar (in peters et al. 2020:27) poses that the pandemic ‘simultaneously engages, intensifies and subverts existing educational inequity and iniquity’. globally the gains of expanding access could be wiped out by the loss of opportunities for some. in south africa, only 20% of the country’s educational institutions managed to move to efficient online teaching and learning (fataar in peters et al. 2020). access to efficient online teaching and learning in south africa remains along the lines of colonial and apartheid privileges. for the majority of the country’s students, the pandemic lockdown meant no education (fataar in peters et al. 2020). papastephanou (in peters et al. 2020:16) postulates that universities (in greek panepistimia – all sciences) and pandemics (all people) share the prefix ‘pan-’, which means ‘all’. the universality of all sciences and all people (panepistimia and pandemic) points to an interconnectedness of people and knowledge, which needs to be reimagined at this time of crisis. during such a reimagination, a new reality can emerge when ‘aspirational thought becomes pandemic’ (papastephanou in peters et al. 2020:16). how then can such reimaginations become ‘pandemic’ when thinking transformation in higher education? after more than a decade of writing, talking and debating transformation in south african higher education, the #mustfall protests (2015–2016) in south africa laid bare the little progress made. the pandemic reiterated the lack of transformation in higher education. this is, therefore, a time for change, for thinking differently of transformation, for thinking differently about new beginnings. it is time to think critically and honestly about what we envision for higher education in south africa. in the first article published in the journal of the, the editors explained their view on transformation as follows: ‘the concept ‘transform’ is therefore not the result of external forces but is, in fact, programmed by the concept (transform) itself. in other words, the fuzziness of ‘transform’ reflects the inherent complexity of the concept’ (du preez, simmonds & verhoef 2016:1). they argue for an open-ended rethinking of the concept transformation. davids (2016:5), similarly, poses that transformation both ‘reveals and conceals that which is not immediately visible’. it is waghid (2016:4) who states that if higher education needs to become transformative whilst remaining in potentiality ‘it has to be thought of differently’. both transformation and higher education, as well as transformation in higher education, need to be thought of differently. in reading through the titles, abstracts and keywords of the published articles since 2016, it seems that many authors (13 out of 35) advocate for decolonisation and decolonising as crucial to transformation. decolonisation and decolonising became key to, or even equal to, transformation in higher education during and after the #mustfall protests in 2015–2016. decolonisation and decolonising are explicit or implicit in titles, abstracts and keywords related to notions such as epistemic violence and eurocentric hegemony (heleta 2016), africanisation (horsthemke 2017), colonial and decolonial identity and subjectivity (bazana & mogatsi 2017; becker 2017; mabille 2019), black consciousness and black studies (bazana & mogatsi 2017; lamola 2018), indigenisation and indigenous knowledge (eybers 2019; horsthemke 2017), decolonial curriculum (nyoni 2019), postcolonialism (gearon 2019; nell 2020) and decolonial philosophy (matolino 2020). this reflection is done through a decolonial lens. the decolonial turn in humanities, whilst acknowledging the many contributions of postcolonial scholars, shifted decolonisation work towards an expanded and more in-depth analysis of colonialism and coloniality and its production of the other (garcía & baca 2019:2). scholars such as mignolo (2018a), maldonado-torres (2016) and ndlovu-gatsheni (2019) highlight how postcolonialism has european history and knowledge as a point of reference for understanding the global world. decolonial scholars, therefore, critique the post in postcolonial studies by claiming that coloniality still dominates the world today (garcía & baca 2019). decoloniality is thus different from postcolonialism, anti-colonialism and related decolonisation movements. decoloniality is specifically formalised by the colonised in the global south to dismantle global relations of power and conceptions of knowledge reproducing racial, gender and geo-political hierarchies (ndlovu-gatsheni 2019). the ongoing consequences of global economic power, political power and the reproduction of hierarchies made visible during 2020 make the interconnectedness implied in both panepistimia and pandemic difficult to reimagine, and a decolonial lens is therefore proposed. a decolonial lens maybe in the time of a pandemic and economic recession and immense suffering, it is time for higher education to ‘go back to school’ in order to search for different knowledge and different ways to teach and learn (biesta in peters et al. 2020:31). the origin of the word school goes back to the greek word for ‘leisure’. not a time to relax, but a time – emancipated from economic activities – to contemplate and to think. it also refers to showing, representing and teaching (biesta in peters et al. 2020:30) – teaching about the world and the people in the world. it is not about control, management, efficiency, economics or numbers. biesta (in peters et al. 2020:31) argues that this crisis demands from higher education to go back to contemplation and thinking and to ‘come to judgment, rather than rely[ing] on our quick reflexes’. in reimagining the interconnectedness of all sciences and all people (panepistimia and pandemic) whilst not relying on quick reflexes, we might benefit from decolonial thinking and imagining. walsh (2018) speaks of a decolonial beyond – a decolonial otherwise, which might be prudent during this time. for such an exploration, we need to go back to the beginning, the birth of coloniality and decoloniality – the beginning of colonialism. starting with spanish and portuguese colonisation in 1492, colonialism refers to the colonising of the physical spaces and bodies of the colonised by the coloniser (suárez-krabbe 2013). decolonisation is understood as the undoing of colonialism or the process by which a colonised country gains independence (mignolo 2018a). the success of the anti-colonial and decolonisation movements during and after the 1960s led to the liberation and independence of many colonies. however, the fact that the logic of coloniality was left intact points to the failure of these movements (ndlovu-gatsheni 2015). colonialism and coloniality still constitutes the discursive landscape within which many forms of domination and exploitation are embedded (ndlovu-gatsheni 2019). the logic of coloniality refers to colonial patterns and structures of power, knowledge and being, which mignolo (2018a) explains as the colonial matrix of power. the colonial matrix of power is like the unconsciousness to freud and the surplus value to marx (mignolo 2018a). the colonial matrix of power structures and controls global reality. it is a theoretical concept which, when analysed and unpacked, makes visible the suffocating consequences of ongoing colonial power, knowledge and being. it makes visible the invisible. the colonial matrix of power consists of two levels: the level of enunciation (terms) and the level of the enunciated (content). enunciation (terms) structures and controls the enunciated (content). knowledge, and specifically eurocentric knowledge, as a remnant of colonialism and coloniality, is privileged in the matrix. it is embedded in the level of enunciation and the level of the enunciated (mignolo 2018a). in the colonial matrix of power, epistemology (enunciation), specifically eurocentric epistemology, structures and controls ontology (enunciated). mignolo (2018a:135) poses that ‘ontologies are cosmologic/epistemic creations’ within the colonial matrix of power. both these levels (enunciation and enunciated) are connected by flow of energy in the spheres of knowledge, subjectivities and interests. enunciation frames the enunciated and our praxis of living. this downward flow controls and secures management in the colonial matrix of power. mignolo (2018a) illustrates this by referring to the 2008–2009 economic crisis and the quest to save capitalism. it was not a quest to save people from economic ruin but a quest to save the interests of capitalism. a similar situation is developing during this pandemic and the global economic recession. whilst the initial concern was the many lives that might be lost because of the pandemic, it was soon replaced with an urgent quest to save capitalist interests from the pandemic. the enunciation of who and what is human during modernity and colonialism was within a euro-western framework and when many could not identify as such, a hierarchy amongst humans was established to rank and classify humanity. racism and sexism were the consequences. mignolo (2018a) states: the question is not what is human and humanity but rather who defined themselves as humans in their praxis of living and applied their self-definition to distinguish and classify and rank lesser humans. (p. 153) understanding the colonial matrix of power is the first step in decolonising. as mignolo (2018a:136) argues, ‘you can hardly decolonise something about which you do not know how it works’. decoloniality is an option for resisting and analysing modernity and colonialism and the colonial matrix of power. decoloniality as an option is articulated ‘in decolonial analytics of modernity and coloniality’ (mignolo 2018a:224). it is the ‘core task’ of decoloniality to analyse, unmask, make visible and problematise the colonial matrix of power (ndlovu-gatsheni 2019:215). decoloniality is also not a single event or act. it is an ongoing resistance to colonialism and coloniality. i concede that decoloniality is not the only option for analysing modernity and coloniality. mignolo (2018b) poses that modernity and humanism are under attack today from two perspectives: decoloniality and posthumanism. for him, however, posthumanism is a eurocentric critique of the human, whilst decoloniality is a critique of both the euro-western conceptualisation of human and the posthuman. zembylas (2018) contests this view and argues that both posthumanism and decoloniality share a strong critique of modernity and humanism, strongly advocate for social justice and share a distaste for dualisms and binary conceptualisations. although posthumanism might be a strong contender to move transformation in higher education to an open-ended and different conceptualisation, posthumanism may not be adequate in making sense of the colonial condition and its consequences for south africa. mignolo (2018b:170) poses that one of the main tasks of decoloniality and decolonising is ‘to decolonise man/human, to liberate pluriversal humanity’. liberating pluriversal humanity is an act of reimagining the implied interconnectedness of panepistimia and pandemic – all knowledge for, and of, all people. a pluriversal humanity is structured and secured through pluriversal knowledge. developing pluriversal knowledge systems is the aim of the decolonial intellectual project globally (kumalo & praeg 2019). although decolonial resistance is geared towards the possibility of a global pluriversal, it cannot be other than local. it is always embedded in specific and unique place-space-time. it is also always a contextual communal grassroots resistance towards re-existence and reclaiming of pluriversal knowledge and ways of being. this requires deep engagement with grassroots’ struggles and movements (kumalo & praeg 2019). control and management of, and in, the colonial matrix of power are downwards. decolonial resistance is always upwards. in analysing and resisting the colonial matrix of power, the terms (enunciation) are unmasked, made visible and contested from the bottom up. this is done through multiple ways such as global and local movements, protests, grassroots projects and grassroots engagements. it is done by delinking from top-down hegemonic knowledges and relinking to bottom-up pluriversal knowledge (mignolo 2018b). maldonado-torres (2016), for example, poses that student movements play a crucial role in resisting colonial higher education. in highlighting lived experiences of students on university campuses, he references a student poet masisi (in maldonado-torres 2016), who during the protests in 2016 described the colonial/apartheid stripping of dignity and mental enslavement up to the point where ‘i can no longer breathe’ (masisi in maldonado-torres 2016:6). reflection the articles published in the journal of the display a thorough engagement, through a variety of lenses, with transformation in higher education from both local and international authors and perspectives. three themes crystallised: firstly, the notion of place and the relation between local and global; secondly, a robust exploration of epistemology, epistemological practices and curriculum; and lastly, the notion of alienation in terms of identity, subjectivity, gender, sexuality and technology. the power of colonial knowledge is central to all three themes. place: local and global the relation and movement between local and global are explored by many authors in the journal (gearon 2019; horsthemke 2017; lai 2018; mariaye & samuels 2018; nyoni 2019; smith & vass 2017; van de laar, rehm, & achrekar 2017). gearon (2019) in his paper, entitled securitisation theory and the securitised university: europe and the nascent colonisation of global intellectual capital, argues that the growing trend of securitised universities in europe is a very powerful political instrument. analysing this phenomenon in reference to ‘the what, the how, and the who for’ of securitised knowledge, he argues, is paramount (gearon 2019:9). he asks the following critical questions: are securitised universities a re-colonisation? if first-generation colonialism was premised on economic principles and masked by epistemological violence in the name of civilisation, is the securitisation of the university a re-colonisation, a new, a global colonisation, of epistemologies masked as the protection of freedoms and security from threat and fear? (p. 9) locally, heleta (2016) argues that first-generation colonialism, premised on economic principles and epistemic violence, is still very much intact in south african higher education. very little has changed since 1994 towards pluriversal knowledge systems in higher education, as there is not enough engagement with new knowledge-making ways. he states that although all universities have new policies and frameworks addressing freedom, equality, dignity and social justice, ‘institutional cultures and epistemological traditions have not considerably changed’ (heleta 2016:2). the logic of eurocentric coloniality stayed intact. contestations and resistance around notions of globalisation, europeanisation and africanisation in this journal and the broader academe remain embedded in the struggle to rid south africa and africa from colonial power embedded in hegemonic and universal eurocentric knowledge and ways of being. lamola (2018), in his critique of globalisation trends, poses that our thinking is: dazzled with imaginaries of ‘global community’, ‘global village’ and the concomitant ideal of cosmopolitanism. we are ethically impelled to aspire for the social ontology of a cosmopolitarian being, the ‘world citizen’ who is not ‘colour conscious’. (p. 3) horsthemke (2017) explains the essentialist nature of both europeanisation and africanisation. he argues that both fail to counter hegemonic universalism. he then argues for transcultural conversations on knowledge in higher education. arguments towards internationalisation in higher education are put forward in the journal. smith and vass (2017) argue that the internationalisation of universities and teaching could lead to transformation in changing assumptions and world views. mariaye and samuels (2018) explore internationalisation in educational hubs through econometrics, the travelling student, the customer student and parent, and marketisation. they warn that econometrics and marketisation are symptoms of the neo-liberal and capitalist saturation of global education. these symptoms are the masked enunciation of higher education as a capitalist project. lai (2018) unpacks the exchange programme at the hong kong university and argues that the benefits are linked to cross-border, borderless, transnational and intercultural learning. the focus on intercultural (lai 2018) and transcultural (horsthemke 2017) learning might have possibilities for universalisation and global intellectual pluriversal projects. matolino (2020:7) returns to the local and argues towards a more embedded and embodied pluriversality. he argues for a deep engagement with ‘the place’. pluriversal projects need to engage africa and south africa with the respect they deserve. in the field of philosophy, for example, africa and south africa were for centuries excluded from conversations in and on philosophy apart from a single course in african philosophy at some universities. africa and south africa are part of, and embedded in, the pluriversal philosophical and epistemological experience in ‘this place’ (matolino 2020:7). epistemology and curricula interrogating epistemology, epistemological practices and curricula are crucial to transformation in higher education. authors in this journal have robust engagements with epistemology, epistemological practices and curriculum (eybers 2019; gearon 2017, 2019; heleta 2016; horsthemke 2017; lomola 2018; matolino 2020; nyoni 2019; ramrathan 2016; simmonds & le grange 2019; venter 2016). ramrathan (2016) explains how transformation in higher education since 1994 has mostly taken on a number-counting, instrumentalised modality. the saturation of neo-liberalism and capitalism remains embedded in south african curricula practices. both heleta (2016) and nyoni (2019), after unmasking the coloniality of power and knowledge still intact in higher education, discuss approaches to transformation and decolonising in higher education. heleta (2016) poses two approaches. the first is to add new knowledge to the existing curricula, and the second is to make visible the enunciation of knowledge and how it constructs curricula. the first approach is consistent with eybers’ (2019) notion of epistemic plurality. it, however, runs the risk of what simmonds and le grange (2019) refer to as a ‘quick-fix’ in curriculum making. the second approach is a decolonial approach. it is a resistance to the colonial matrix of power by making the invisible visible and changing both the terms and the content of knowledge-making. nyoni (2019) postulates: decolonisation is a disruptive process of exposing and dismantling the obvious and hidden aspects of those institutions, linguistic and cultural forces that had maintained the imperialist power and that remain even after attainment of independence. (p. 7) in changing both the terms and the content in curriculum-making, nyoni (2019) proposes afro-communitarian theory, which explains the person in relation, and the afro-humanisation of pedagogy. simmonds and le grange (2019) engage curriculum through posthuman nomadic thought. through nomadic thought and interventions, and not a ‘quick-fix’, transformative becoming is possible. they also advocate for a change in the terms and not only the content of conversations in and on curriculum-making. this may lead to engagement with the otherwise ‘resources and traditions of thought that were never mainstreamed’ (simmonds & le grange 2019:8). alienation the #mustfall protests unmasked brutal alienation through race, class and gender at south african universities (bazana & mogotsi 2017; becker 2017; eybers 2019; lamola 2018; nyoni 2019; rothmann 2018). while bazana and mogotsi (2017) explore the relation between coloniality of knowledge and being in identity construction, mabille (2019) unmasks the interrelated movement between coloniality of power, knowledge and being. during modernity, power was directed towards generating a self, a human, relating to himself through colonial knowledge. this colonial constructed hegemonic self still imposes on and demands from all others ‘certain desirable characteristics by delegitimising all other alternatives as “other”’ (mabille 2019:3). this is illustrated by bazana and mogotsi (2017) in their exploration of identity struggles of black students in south african universities. euro-western knowledge, enunciating notions of being human, formed the basis for racial identities since colonialism. apartheid formalised and legalised these binary identities. bazana and mogotsi (2017) argue that black identity has historically embodied inferiority, submissiveness and dependency. the inferior black and superior white discourses are still embedded in higher education through the logic of coloniality, and have detrimental effects on identity construction and belonging for black students in higher education. lamola (2018:2) focusses his exploration of coloniality of being and its relation to coloniality of knowledge on ‘the complications and possibilities of lived black-experience-in-a-white-racist-world’. he poses that: being a black person is not merely an idea of the othering subject or a representation of a capricious colonial mind. it is a material reality of being, a facticity whose social ontology has to be self-negotiated. (p. 7) the ontological structuring happens when ‘others tell and teach her who she is, pricking and shaping her self-consciousness. she is not her own’ (lamola 2018:7). such experiences entail an ontological alienation from humanity through colonial epistemology. gender and sexuality are explored by rothmann (2018), tshilongo and rothman (2019), ramohai (2019) and norris and welch (2020). the effects of binary logic and heteronormativity on alienation in relation to sexuality and gender in higher education are evident in these publications. norris and welch (2020), in exploring gender-neutral pronouns through a posthuman lens, critique the influence of humanistic and colonial language on alienation for both humans and non-humans. they reference fanon ([1961] 2017) in wretched of the earth in which he describes how the oppressed are animalised through language use. the consequences of this are binaries separating humans through sexualities, gender and race and the maintenance of the nature and culture binary. in light of the digital interventions during the covid-19 pandemic, in order to facilitate teaching and learning, there is a warning from du toit and verhoef (2018) on the ‘instrumentalist and disembodied understanding of (digital) technology and its potential impact on higher education’. such approaches and understandings delimit embodiment and the entanglement between human and the artefact. it furthermore leads to a detached and alienating experience for the subjects of higher education. in combatting alienation and enabling human becoming through decoloniality, instrumentalist and disembodied understandings of technology, only deepen alienating practices in higher education. concluding analysis in any analysis through a decolonial lens, there are three key units of analysis: coloniality of power, coloniality of knowledge and coloniality of being (ndlovu-gatsheni 2019). coloniality of power as a unit of analysis is used to understand the global cartography of power. it is useful in exploring how global political and economic structures were constructed and constituted, and how they are maintained as hierarchies holding the ‘euro-american-centric, christian-centric, patriarchal, capitalist, hetero-normative, hegemonic and asymmetrical’ systems and structures in place (ndlovu-gatsheni 2019:216). coloniality of knowledge as a unit of analysis unpacks epistemological issues, the politics of knowledge, who constructs knowledge and for what purpose is knowledge constructed and disseminated (ndlovu-gatsheni 2019). epistemology is a key concept in analysing coloniality as it is inherent to both levels of the colonial matrix of power. coloniality of being concerns the key issues of human subjectivity and human ontology (ndlovu-gatsheni 2019). the three units are separated for analytical purposes but are interrelated through continual upward and downward movements. the analysis does not focus on the three units separately but the interrelated movements between them. the published authors engage with power, knowledge and being. the powerful and embedded role of knowledge (european, euro-western, securitised, globalised, african, colonial, intercultural, transcultural, internationalised) and knowledge-making is clear. local and international authors navigate these contestations sufficiently. there is also a variety of perspectives on the role of place – both local and global. in light of the privileged role of knowledge in the colonial matrix of power, some comments on epistemology and epistemological practices are needed. although authors clearly want to bridge different and competing hegemonic knowledge systems through notions of intercultural, transcultural and cross-border conversations and knowledge, the notion of bridging binary knowledge hegemonies remains a false premise for transformation. in decolonial thinking (and in posthumanism), there are no borders, universals, binary or competing hegemonies. there are multiple embedded, embodied, lived, local and global knowledge and epistemologies. mignolo (2018b) argues that pluriversality is the universal. the notion that the bridging of eurocentric and african knowledge systems is possible by adding indigenous knowledge to a eurocentric curriculum is a false notion. this notion has detrimental consequences for transformation in higher education in south africa. this is described in various publications in this journal (heleta 2016; matolino 2020; nyoni 2019). enacting global pluriversality relies on changing the terms of conversations on curriculum-making and knowledge. simmonds and le grange (2019) touch on that when they discuss the possibilities of nomadic thought and interventions for curricula. there need to be changes to the rules, terms and assumptions in knowledge-making. decolonial knowledge-making happens in ‘a web of consensual relationships that is infused with movement through lived experiences and embodiment’ (walsh 2018:18). pluriversality includes euro-western knowledge. it de-centres euro-western knowledge towards a pluriversalisation of multiple knowledge. higher education needs an embedded and embodied pluriversalisation in order to think differently. there are numerous possibilities presented for changing the content (enunciated) in conversations on transformation, not only in this journal but in the academe as well. this mostly consists of add-ons to existing curricula (see e.g. eybers 2019 on epistemic plurality). very little research is done and published on changing the terms (enunciation) of conversations on transformation. what is the enunciation of transformation in higher education, who enunciates and from where? if the enunciation of transformation happens through a euro-western point of reference, the terms of conversation cannot change. the terms of conversations on transformation are changed through decolonial resistance and analysis. there is a dire need to unmask, unpack and make visible the terms by which knowledge is made, for who, and by who, in higher education. ndlovu-gatsheni (2019:215) postulates that it is the ‘core task’ of decoloniality to analyse, unmask, make visible and problematise enunciation in the colonial matrix of power. only then can the content (enunciated) be decolonised. pluriversalisation might lead to the liberation of a pluriversal humanity, to embedded and embodied pluriversal identities and embedded and embodied pluriversal subjectivities. pluriversal knowledge enacts and validates pluriversal ways of being and living. the colonial alienation of being, still evident in higher education, as described by bazana and mogotsi (2017), lamola (2018) and mabille (2019), remains devastating. it needs serious attention in education research and transformation research. resisting the colonial matrix of power and changing the terms of conversations on transformation is furthermore always a bottom-up process. it is premised on deep engagements with grassroots struggles and movements. although the #mustfall protests are explored by various authors (becker 2017; davids 2016; matolino 2020), there is a lack of publications on grassroots and bottom-up research. a lack of community engagement in research was already highlighted by du preez et al. (2016), when they did a meta-analysis of articles on transformation published in south african journal of higher education in south africa from 2005 to 2015. this seems to be an ongoing trend. kumalo and praeg (2019) argue that given the complex and sometimes elusive and contested meaning of the concept of decoloniality, it often morphs into a performance – a decolonial performance which is ticked off from the list of transformation tasks. they argue that there is a lack of substantive and fundamental engagement with decolonial discourses and praxis in south african transformation conversations (kumalo & praeg 2019). although i find the engagement with transformation from most authors writing on decoloniality substantive, i agree that there is a lack of engagement with specifically decoloniality and decolonial analysis. there has, however, been growth in the depth of published articles on transformation and decoloniality since 2016 in the journal. in conclusion, what i found interesting in reading through the articles published in this journal was the multiple uses of the word beyond. there is a quest by authors for movement away from what higher education is now. davids (2016:1) argues for the need to move ‘beyond the thus far truncated parameters of transformation’. bazana and mogotsi (2017:10) pose that ‘universities need to go beyond the legislative prescripts of inclusivity’. smith and vass (2017:1) argue that students should be encouraged ‘to go beyond instrumental approaches to learning’. whilst davids (2016), bazana and mogotsi (2017) and smith and vass (2018) use the word beyond as a preposition (going to the further side of, or past this or that), lamola (2018) uses it as the beyond – the unknown or the outside. he laments: when we later add references to the psycho-social experiences of black students in white-majority or white-dominated educational institutions, this article will explicatively argue that the task before the academy is more than pedagogic and may be beyond the theme of ‘transforming higher education’ (lamola 2018:2, own emphasis) he argues that there are things that are in the beyond of transformation. mabille (2019:1) argues towards a ‘re-considered and reconfigured notion of educational identity beyond the confines of modernist western subjectivity’. the use of the word beyond here is in reference to foucault’s notion ‘of the unthought’ (mabille 2019:6). there are thus suggestions that transformation in higher education should move to the unknown, to the unthought and to the outside of certainty. walsh (2018) similarly speaks of a decolonial beyond – a decolonial otherwise. the consequences of the covid-19 pandemic illuminated the lasting consequences of the logic of coloniality and reiterated the need for a global decolonial otherwise. in times of uncertainty, constant change and disruption, the beyond might be the only option. reimaginations, beyond transformation, may then become pandemic. acknowledgements competing interests the author has declared that no competing interests exist. authors’ contributions the author declares that she is the sole author for this research article. ethical consideration this article followed all ethical standards for research without direct contact with human or animal subjects. data availability statement data sharing is not applicable to this article as no new data were created or analysed in this study. disclaimer the views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any affiliated agency of the author. references bazana, s. & mogotsi, o.p., 2017, ‘social identities and racial integration in historically white universities: a literature review of the experiences of black students’, transformation in higher education 2(0), a25. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v2i0.25 becker, a., 2017, ‘rage, loss and other footpaths: subjectification, decolonisation and transformation in higher education’, transformation in higher education 2(0), a23. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v2i0.23 davids, n., 2016, ‘on extending the truncated parameters of transformation in higher education in south africa into a language of democratic engagement and justice’, transformation in higher education 1(1), a7. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v1i1.7 du preez, p., simmonds, s. & verhoef, a.h., 2016, ‘rethinking and researching transformation in higher education: a meta-study of south african trends’, transformation in higher education 1(1), a2. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v1i1.2 du toit, j. & verhoef, a.h., 2018, ‘embodied digital technology and transformation in higher education’, transformation in higher education 3(0), a52. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v3i0.52 eybers, o.o., 2019, ‘applying ayittey’s indigenous african institutions to generate epistemic plurality in the curriculum’, transformation in higher education 4(0), a68. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v4i0.68 fanon, f. [1961] 2017, the wretched of the earth, kwela books, cape town. garcía, r. & baca, d., 2019, ‘introduction. hopes and visions: the possibility of decolonial options’, in r. garcía & d. baca (eds.), rhetoric elsewhere and otherwise. contested modernities. decolonial visions, pp. 1–46, ncte, illinois usa. gearon, l.f., 2017, ‘the counter-terrorist campus: securitisation theory and university securitisation – three models’, transformation in higher education 2(0), a13. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v2i0.13 gearon, l.f., 2019, ‘securitisation theory and the securitised university: europe and the nascent colonisation of global intellectual capital’, transformation in higher education 4(0), a70. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v4i0.70 heleta, s., 2016, ‘decolonisation of higher education: dismantling epistemic violence and eurocentrism in south africa’, transformation in higher education 1(1), a9. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v1i1.9 horsthemke, k., 2017, ‘transmission and transformation in higher education: indigenisation, internationalisation and transculturality’, transformation in higher education 2(0), a12. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v2i0.12 kumalo, s.h. & praeg, l., 2019, ‘editorial. decoloniality and justice a priori’, journal of decolonising disciplines 1(1), 1–9. lai, i.c.c., 2018, ‘global world, global mind: narratives of the university of hong kong worldwide exchange students’, transformation in higher education 3(0), a42. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v3i0.42 lamola, m.j., 2018, ‘blackhood as a category in contemporary discourses on black studies: an existentialist philosophical defence’, transformation in higher education 3(0), a55. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v3i0.55 mabille, m.l., 2019, ‘foucault and the origins of the disciplined subject: postsubjectivity as a condition for transformation in education’, transformation in higher education 4(0), a72. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v4i0.72 maldonado-torres, n., 2007, ‘on the coloniality of being’, cultural studies 21(2–3), 240–270. maldonado-torres, n., 2016, ‘outline of ten theses on coloniality and decoloniality’, franz foundation, viewed 2 october 2020, from http://franzfanonfoundation. mariaye, h. & samuel, m., 2018, ‘education hubs and private higher education expansion in small island developing states contexts: the case of mauritius’, transformation in higher education 4(0), a62. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v4i0.62 matolino, b., 2020, ‘philosophers’ debt to their students: the south african case’, transformation in higher education 5, a87. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v5i0.87 mbembe, a., 2020, ‘the universal rights to breathe’, critical inquiry, viewed 5 october 2020, from https://critinq.wordpress.com/2020/04/13/the-universal-right-to-breathe/. mignolo, w.d., 2018a, ‘the conceptual triad: modernity/coloniality/decolonial’, in w.d. mignolo & c.e. walsh (eds.), on decoloniality, pp. 135–152, duke university press, durham, nc. mignolo, w.d., 2018b, ‘what does it mean to decolonise?’ in w.d. mignolo & c.e. walsh (eds.), on decoloniality, pp. 105–134, duke university press, durham, nc. ndlovu-gatsheni, s.j., 2015, ‘decoloniality as the future of africa’, history compass 13(10), 485–496. ndlovu-gatsheni, s.j., 2019, ‘discourses of decolonisation/decoloniality’, papers on language and literature 55(3), 201–226. nell, i.a., 2020, ‘competency-based theological education in a postcolonial context: towards a transformed competency framework’, transformation in higher education 5(0), a74. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v5i0.74 norris, m. & welch, a., 2020, ‘gender pronoun use in the university classroom: a post-humanist perspective’, transformation in higher education 5(0), a79. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v5i0.79 nyoni, j., 2019, ‘decolonising the higher education curriculum: an analysis of african intellectual readiness to break the chains of a colonial caged mentality’, transformation in higher education 4(0), a69. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v4i0.69 peters, m.a., rizvi, f., mcculloch, g., gibbs, p., gorur, r., hong, m. et al., 2020, ‘re-imagining the new pedagogical possibilities for universities post-covid-19’, educational philosophy and theory. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131857.2020.1777655 ramohai, j., 2019, ‘a black woman’s perspective on understanding transformation and diversity in south african higher education’, transformation in higher education 4(0), a58. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v4i0.58 ramrathan, l., 2016, ‘beyond counting the numbers: shifting higher education transformation into curriculum spaces’, transformation in higher education 1(1), a6. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v1i1.6 rothmann, j., 2018, ‘a social constructionist approach to resilience for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, queer and/or questioning academics and students in south african universities’, transformation in higher education 3(0), a34. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v3i0.34 simmonds, s. & le grange, l., 2019, ‘research in curriculum studies: reflections on nomadic thought for advancing the field’, transformation in higher education 4(0), a76. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v4i0.76 smith, m.k. & vass, v., 2017, ‘the relationship between internationalisation, creativity and transformation: a case study of higher education in hungary’, transformation in higher education 2(0), a22. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v2i0.22 suárez-krabbe, j., 2013, ‘democratising democracy, humanising human rights. european decolonial movements and the “alternative thinking of alternatives”’, migration letters 10(3), 333–341. https://doi.org/10.33182/ml.v10i3.132 tshilongo, t. & rothmann, j., 2019, ‘a sociological exploration of the need for safe spaces for lesbian and gay students on a south african university campus’, transformation in higher education 4(0), a77. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v4i0.77 van de laar, m., rehm, m. & achrekar, s., 2017, ‘“community of learning” for african phd students: changing the scene of doctoral education?’, transformation in higher education 2(0), a17. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v2i0.17 venter, r., 2016, ‘theology and the (post-)apartheid university: mapping discourses, interrogating transformation’, transformation in higher education 1(1), a5. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v1i1.5 walsh, c.e., 2018, ‘the decolonial for: resurgences, shifts and movements’, in w.d. mignolo & c.e. walsh (eds.), on decoloniality, pp. 15–32, duke university press, durham, nc. waghid, y., 2016, ‘transformation as an act of denudation: a response to petro du preez, shan simmonds and anné verhoef’, transformation in higher education 1(1), a3. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v1i1.3 zembylas, m., 2018, ‘the entanglement of decolonial and posthuman perspectives: tensions and implications for curriculum and pedagogy in higher education’, parallax 24(3), 254–267. https://doi.org/10.1080/13534645.2018.1496577 abstract introduction: gender pronoun use in higher education the politics of personal pronouns pedagogical approaches to pronoun use in the classroom considering social justice in light of post-humanism stepping back into the classroom conclusion: fostering inclusivity through the critique of anthropocentrism acknowledgements references footnotes about the author(s) marcos norris department of english, loyola university chicago, chicago, united states andrew welch department of english, loyola university chicago, chicago, united states citation norris, m. & welch, a., 2020, ‘gender pronoun use in the university classroom: a post-humanist perspective’, transformation in higher education 5(0), a79. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v5i0.79 original research gender pronoun use in the university classroom: a post-humanist perspective marcos norris, andrew welch received: 29 oct. 2019; accepted: 06 mar. 2019; published: 25 may 2020 copyright: © 2020. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract background: this article explores the political impact of using gender neutral pronouns in the university classroom. aim: we explore how the gender neutral pronoun ‘they’ denaturalises essentialist models of gender identity. we follow ‘they’ toward a consideration of the gender neutral pronoun ‘it.’ ‘it’ advances – at the same time that it problematises – the political project of non-binary communities to denaturalise gender by challenging an anthropocentric model of equal rights. setting: we examine the latent humanism of pronoun use through our contrasting approaches to gender pronoun use in our writing courses. methods: first we discuss the role of genderneutral pronouns in building a more inclusive classroom environment for gender non-conforming students. we then consider our respective pedagogical approaches to pronoun use. andrew avoids pronoun use in the classroom, addressing his students by their first names instead, while marcos makes pronoun use and gender identity a central part of his course curriculum. we then consider the pronoun ‘it’ from a posthumanist perspective, arguing that ‘it’ might help to overcome the violent legacy of humanism by building a more inclusive classroom environment for gender-nonconforming students. results: the analysis of ‘it’ as a gender neutral pronoun has revolutionary potential. deconstructing our conceptions of equal rights from a posthumanist perspective can transform higher education for the better. conclusion: the article concludes that college educators should consider discussing the significance of the pronoun ‘it.’ given its dehumanising potential, this discussion should be presented in light of the posthumanist critique of anthropocentrism, and must affirm students’ existing identifications. keywords: post-humanism; gender pronouns; trans and gender non-conforming; university culture; gender inclusive pedagogy. a man said to the universe: ‘sir, i exist!’ ‘however’, replied the universe, ‘the fact has not created in me a sense of obligation’. – steven crane, ‘a man said to the universe’ introduction: gender pronoun use in higher education in recent years, questions of gender identity on campus have moved far beyond the confines of the classrooms conducting gender studies, as colleges and universities have moved to develop institution-wide protocols to build more inclusive environments for transgender students and those not conforming to gender, whose needs and concerns have long been neglected.1 personal pronouns have emerged as a focal point in these efforts, leading to extensive discussion around best practices for establishing the pronouns that each student uses. while some students not conforming to gender use the traditional he and she with their standard declensions, others go by the gender neutral they or more recent coinages like xe, ze or ve.2 as could be expected, the use of gender-neutral pronouns in college and university classrooms has spawned controversy, mostly in the form of conservative resistance to the language protocols followed by the academic left.3 on one side of the debate are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, questioning, intersex, asexual (lgbtqia) advocates and allies who view traditional pronoun use as limiting, discriminatory and symptomatic of a deeper problem in society. the rigid application of he and she to persons, respectively, assigned as male and female at birth grows out of a patriarchal, heteronormative tradition that conceives of gender as biologically determined. under the social dictates of this normative gender ideology, transgender and non-binary people are regarded as deviant, delusional or just plain difficult. the hate crimes committed against transgender and non-binary people are largely motivated by an ideological worldview that is systematically reinforced through the daily, widespread use of normative gender pronouns.4 this is why many colleges and universities have moved beyond implementing non-discrimination policies to actively promoting the use of gender-inclusive pronouns in their student handbooks, classroom rosters and student housing assignments. cautioning against gender prejudice and other insensitive behaviour through a non-discrimination policy simply is not enough, they say; a more active approach is needed to transform how the overall society thinks about gender identity. ‘caution tape delineates where someone shouldn’t go, but it doesn’t stop someone from going there’, assistant professor of higher education and student affairs, z. nicholazzo, states in a 2017 interview with the chronicle of higher education: i can’t carry around a nondiscrimination policy and say, you shouldn’t look at me weird because look here … while that policy is necessary, it’s insufficient at actually changing the way we think about gender, and how gender structures college environments. (gardner 2017) for this reason, many instructors ask for their students’ pronouns on the first day of class, even giving short lessons on the pronoun options available to them and how they correspond to gender identity. ‘we rarely reference race, income, or other social identities unless we are actually talking about them – unlike the pervasive use of gendered pronouns’, eric anthony grollman states in a 2013 op-ed for inside higher education. frankly, i think it is worth it to push cisgender students, at least once in their entire lives, to answer the dreaded question, ‘what are you?!’, that trans* and gender nonconforming people face too often. grollman writes; ‘it is my hope of hopes that the students leave the class taking this practice, or at least knowing its importance, into other arenas in their lives’ (2013). asking for students’ pronouns on the first day of class has now become a fairly common practice among college and university professors. to keep the conversation going and reinforce its institutional authority, many instructors list their personal pronouns with their email signatures. moreover, the past 20 years have seen the emergence of a distinctive non-binary gender community within the broader queer community, characterised by linguistic innovation around gender identity and expression. this transformation of the language of gender functions both to critique a naturalised gender binary and to articulate new forms of gender experience. pronouns play a significant role in this project because conventional pronouns are a vehicle of habitual and unwitting binary gender construction. indeed, it is remarkable that we cannot use conventional personal pronouns without making gender determinations, and that gender is the only information about the referent that pronouns convey. to address this problem, activists have innovated an array of gender-neutral third-person pronouns, but they is the most popular alternative to the he or she binary, and is of particular ontological and ethical interest to us here. the politics of personal pronouns third-person pronouns have several distinctive linguistic features that shape their capacity to represent gender.5 although his work precedes contemporary discourses of transformation in gender identity and practice, the structural linguist emile benveniste proposes a lucid understanding of the function of third-person pronouns, which, he writes, ‘predicate … someone or something outside the instance [of utterance]’ (1971:221). in this account, conversation takes place between subjects who speak from the first-person subject position. by speaking, we perform the act of announcing ourselves as a first-person subject because, as j. l. austin argued, any claim is implicitly preceded at a structural level by the words ‘i declare’. when the first-person subject speaks, the second-person addressee responds in the first person and claims their own subjectivity, defining the conversation as a reciprocal exchange between subjects grounded in mutual recognition. the grammatical third person stands outside of this exchange between the addresser and addressee. in fact, the referent of a third-person pronoun cannot claim their own place in a speech situation without claiming the first person. until i join a conversation, i am relegated to the third person, but as soon as i join, i enter the dyad of first and second person, and thereby leave the third person behind. the third person thus indicates a referent that can neither address nor be addressed. for benveniste, this impossibility of address entails that ‘the “third person” is indeed literally a “non-person”’ (1971:221) – one who is structurally absent, and whose absence is amplified by the contingency that defines all shifters (including i and you). the result is that the third person is radically anonymous: the third person may become ‘an infinite number of subjects – or none’ (1971:309). yet, this expansive structure of third-person reference is quickly counteracted by the gender determination of he or she, restricting benveniste’s infinite subjectivity to a well-defined horizon of gender expectations. indeed, benveniste’s account of this anonymous and potentially infinite third-person subject seems to apply most concretely to the contemporary usage of the gender-indeterminate they, a usage he could not have foreseen. the structural exclusion that defines third-person reference will have significant consequences for the relationship between gendered pronouns and gender identity, and may suggest a renewed understanding of the distinctive political charge of gendered pronouns. put starkly, third-person pronouns designate beings that cannot speak for themselves. when we are indicated but have not yet claimed our place – or cannot claim our place – we appear in the third person. we are spoken about; we are summoned as an object for others. as barbara johnson writes in persons and things, ‘a person who neither addresses nor is addressed is functioning as a thing’ (2008:6). insofar as it cannot speak for itself, an absent and thereby objectified referent is uniquely vulnerable. it lies in the care of an exchange from which it is structurally excluded. our intuitive sense of this structural exclusion grounds the commonplace that it is wrong to speak negatively about someone ‘behind their back’ when they cannot ‘speak for themselves’. third-person pronominal reference thus confronts the ethical challenge of designating someone who, at least at the moment of utterance, cannot claim their own designation.6 we should understand the politics of gendered pronouns in relation to the exposure of being spoken about, linking gender identity to the problem of grammatical reference. the third-person pronoun appears when one is the object of an exchange between others. in traditional pronoun usage, the third-person object is not merely referenced, but also designated and reified as male or female. pronominal reference objectifies, excludes and defines in a single movement. the politics of pronoun use are thus located within the structural exclusion that defines third-person reference. by claiming non-normative pronouns, subjects of language attempt to assert agency within the structure of language. a chosen pronoun expresses a desire to define the self even in the subject’s absence, even when the subject is reduced to the voicelessness of a grammatical object. yet, the affirmative decision to claim a non-normative linguistic designation can also reduce the identity content of the subject’s presence in language. when someone claims the designation they, they decide to refrain from adding gender marking to the act of reference. while identifying with the pronoun they is often understood as the affirmation of a genderqueer, agender, trans or non-binary identity, it may also be understood as the subtraction of gender from one’s place in language, which is why many people who do not identify as non-binary may nonetheless prefer the pronoun they. they reduces the ontological freight of indication, highlighting how conventional pronouns are not simply indicative, but also evaluative. here, benveniste’s structural description of the third person as ‘non-person’ becomes prescient. the notion held by some english speakers that they is overly ‘ambiguous’ suggests that we expect our language of reference not just to indicate, but also to define the personhood of the referent. they challenges this desire to categorise the beings to which we refer. this strategy of reduced predication has been important for scholars like igi moon, who describes a shift in trans-subjectivity from identity to feeling. for moon, a ‘genderqueer or agender’ identification ‘removes the need to define social practices and meanings as cis-gendered and therefore removes the need to define the body as “feeling” male or female’ (2018). while these forms of identification do unsettle connections between gender and social practices, they do not lead to the elimination of gender as such, but rather allow gender to emerge in the practice of living, and to shift with time, either over slow duration or in periods of day-to-day flux. by reducing designation, they allows the subject space for movement and transformation within the frameworks of gender and the structure of language. this mobile identity is often indicated by the term ‘gender-fluid’. conceived along these lines, gender fluidity does not simply challenge the gender binary, but also challenges the sense of self as occupying a stable position. in this context, the reduced form of reference offered by they can become a strategy to express selfhood as malleable and multiple. the emergence of the singular they has drawn cultural fascination in recent years: to much fanfare, the american dialect society named the singular they its 2015 word of the year, and in 2017 the associated press stylebook, the standard reference for american journalistic writing and an important arbiter of usage, included its first guidelines on the use of the singular they, while explicitly proscribing other gender-neutral pronouns. yet from our perspective, it will become crucial that they remains open to a plural interpretation. pedagogical approaches to pronoun use in the classroom classroom practices concerning pronoun use are changing rapidly. the practice of requesting students’ ‘preferred pronouns’ at the beginning of class now frequently drops the adjective ‘preferred’, a response to the unwanted implication that gender identity is a preference on the order of a favourite colour. in some courses, students are invited to volunteer alternative pronouns if they wish, while in other courses everyone is asked to state their pronouns. the latter practice may help to normalise gender-nonconforming identities and establish greater solidarity with gender-nonconforming students, but as rachel levin argues in inside higher ed, this practice may also risk outing ‘young adults who are in the process of figuring out who they are’ (2018). elizabeth reis has taken up this point in the new york times: requesting each student’s pronouns ‘at best contradicts the reality that our gender may be ambiguous, and at worst forces students to reveal a potentially vulnerable part of themselves’ (2016). while some students may value the opportunity for collective affirmation of their identity, others may feel uncomfortable declaring a gender identity for which pronouns would be proxy. as colleges and universities develop policies to address gender identity across various spheres of campus life, these dilemmas surrounding pronoun practice in the classroom point towards a broader dynamic. to date, these institutional policies are largely focused on the category of ‘transgender’, under which many non-cisgendered students may find identification and recognition. yet for others, the discourse of transgenderism may fail to adequately address their gender identities. the nascent project of creating safer institutional space for trans-identities is thus already introducing its own reifications and exclusions. an initial response to this problem might begin with analysis of the discursive work of gender categorisation, recognising our attachments to gender at the same time that we scrutinise the construction of gender as such. however, as reis notes, responding to these issues could prove particularly difficult in courses that do not thematise gender because given time constraints, rigorous analysis of gender may not be possible in many classrooms. indeed, toby beauchamp (2008) has outlined the difficulty of developing a pedagogy that can recognise and affirm yet also historicise and critique emerging discourses of identity, even within a focused transgender studies curriculum. for those of us teaching outside of transgender studies, it is no less urgent that we grapple with these issues, and that we continue to reconsider, challenge and update our own practices. as educators ourselves, we have developed contrasting approaches to pronoun use in the classroom. andrew teaches writing and introductory literature courses of 18–30 students at a community college and a liberal arts university, to students that vary significantly in age, race, gender identity and economic background. these courses centre on argumentation and often engage – but do not specifically focus on – questions of gender and identity. andrew’s approach to gender identity in the classroom sidesteps many of the problems that can arise if the instructor asks students to declare their pronouns: he does not use them at all. consider, how often do we actually use the third person to refer to students in the classroom? andrew’s classes are almost entirely staged between the first and second person, addresser and addressee – i, we, you. third-person reference to someone in the class is largely limited to two circumstances: in class-wide discussion where andrew gestures to what a student has previously said, or when he mentions one student to another student, which is rare. in both cases using the student’s name has pragmatic, pedagogical and personal significance; it conveys the information that, even though it may only be the second day of class, he knows who each student is, and he remembers their contributions. names bear respect and dignity. calling a student by name and pronouncing their name correctly can have the vital effect of acknowledging the fullness of their personhood. when we reference students by pronoun, we subject them to the dynamics of anonymity that benveniste described. the use of the name returns the student from an anonymised, objectified referent to a person – a person that we identify in their singularity, by the word that stands for their particular being. in andrew’s literature courses and writing seminars, it is crucial that students feel that they are recognised immediately, and that he is with them as the class makes its way through the difficult readings and assignments of the course. in this setting, a pronoun is a superfluous shortcut for a person. it is andrew’s belief that the name is the most conceptually and pedagogically sound form of reference. yet, while this strategy may deactivate the problem of reference from instructor–student interactions, it does not remove the issue altogether. nor is it clear that the question of pronouns should be removed because, as grollman argues above, our classrooms can provide a unique space for cisgendered students to confront the challenges of self-reference that shape the experience of many gender-nonconforming people. moreover, we can refer to students exclusively by name because we need to learn their names. yet, however, we may structure the class to encourage mutual familiarity; our students do not share this obligation. there is no guarantee that they will follow our lead and make an effort to learn each other’s names, and while andrew does state that he will be calling everyone exclusively by name, this gesture does not thematise the problem of reference in the way that direct discussion of pronouns can. more fundamentally, while andrew’s pedagogy works to individuate and humanise each student, these gestures do not by themselves address ongoing historical struggles over belonging in the categories of the individual and the human. and while andrew continues to believe that the affirmation of student identity is fundamental to teaching, we also bear the responsibility to interrogate the construction of identity categories as historical phenomena. the challenge, in the words of beauchamp, is to ‘balance care for individual identities with sustained critical analysis of identity categories themselves’ (2008:32). at stake here are two contrasting forms of egalitarianism. one form strives to recognise an ever-widening scope of personhood and experience as fully human. this is the path that emancipatory movements follow, towards the admission of new entrants into the shared rights, privileges and recognitions that constitute liberal subjectivity. however, the alternative route, which has been elaborated from various theoretical perspectives but rarely emerges in historical practice, centres on the critique and diminution of the category of the human. this is the path that marcos’s pedagogy follows.7 marcos has taught a combined 20 sections of firstand second-year writing courses at community college, state school and a private research university, where he is currently a doctoral candidate of english, so his students have come from various cultural, ethnic and economic backgrounds, showing a vast range of educational training and college preparedness. marcos frames his writing classes of 18–30 students as a general introduction to public discourse, with a special focus on identity politics and social justice. on the first day of class, marcos encourages (but does not require) his students to share their pronouns during attendance, which ordinarily takes the form of a hockey icebreaker game. but the discussion surrounding pronoun use and gender identity does not end there. within the first couple of meetings, the class dives headfirst into the topics of feminism, men’s rights activism and the representation of gender in society. marcos teaches his firstand second-year writing courses from the perspective of gerald graff’s and cathy birkenstein’s they say, i say: the moves that matter in academic writing, which promotes empathy – or the capacity to view the world through someone else’s eyes – as the most important quality of strong academic writing. with this rather provocative framing in place (we say provocative because, in a move that clashes with the tendencies of our tribalist political culture, the students are asked to empathise with their enemies), marcos walks the class through a civil discourse that moves first from a discussion of feminism and men’s rights activism to the hot button issues surrounding trans, non-binary and other queer identities, which finally gives way to a discussion of sexuality, racial identity and – to nearly everyone’s dismay – a discussion of animal rights. this final transition to the topic of animal rights is unnerving for students because many of them, up until this point in the semester, have vocalised their moral commitment to feminist, queer and anti-racist positions. as they come to find out, however, these discourses derive their moral authority from humanist presuppositions about the superior value of human life, upholding a distinction between human and animal that logically justifies the latter’s objectification and mistreatment.8 the arc of the course leads the students to become invested in emancipatory humanist movements only to find those movements radically undermined by a discussion of animal rights that brings into question the brutal logic of humanism, upon which these emancipatory movements depend. while class conversations are free to wander in accordance with the students’ personal interests, the primary purpose in leading these discussions is to underscore how oppression has operated historically through the human or non-human divide. using feminism as a jumping off point, marcos shows that, from a biblical perspective that has strongly influenced nearly 2000 years of western, patriarchal society, adam was made in god’s image as superior to eve, who was created from adam’s rib. indoctrinated under this theological worldview, women have assumed the role of a ‘weaker vessel’ for centuries, for just as man is not quite god, so too, eve is not quite human, in a manner of speaking (1 pt 3:7). to compound matters, adam’s first wife, lilith, in the talmudic tradition, was banished from the garden of eden for her insubordination. she is later demonised, often being depicted with wings, horns or a serpent’s body, by a rabbinic tradition that animalises the demonic. introducing his students to various sources on the topic, marcos suggests to the class that animalisation is a tool of oppression that repeats itself time and again in the theological west, reducing marginalised people to an objectified status that logically justifies their mistreatment. among those sources is jean-paul sartre, who writes in the preface to frantz fanon’s 1961 the wretched of the earth that ‘no one can rob, enslave, or kill their fellow human beings without committing a crime’ because human beings – as superior creatures made in the image of god – are protected by european law (sartre 2013). european colonisers ‘establish the principle that the colonised are not fellow human beings’ to justify the horrific crimes they commit against their own kind, sartre says; making use of this human or non-human distinction, the european ‘strike force … reduce[s] the inhabitants of the annexed territory to the level of superior monkey’ (sartre 2013). marcos presents his class with passages like this and others for close analysis and reflection. among such passages, he will also share longer excerpts, like the following statement by frieda ekotto: fanon writes clearly in the wretched of the earth that for the colonist, the boundary between native and colonist must be actively maintained for the colonist to justify his presence within the colonies. the ‘native’ must be seen as animal – as savage – to justify the most important colonial fantasy: the dream of civilizing the savage as the ‘white man’s burden’. but for that burden to even exist, the native must necessarily be made to be savage – even if he or she may hardly be such to begin with. the mythology of savagery, of the inhumanity of the ‘native’, is at the heart of the colonial fantasy. without it, the fantasy falls apart. … the book attempts to enter – and to change – the colonial fantasy of the black ‘savage’ and white european hero through what freud considered the most important element of human psychology: sex, the suppression of which is key to becoming a subject within modern european society. freud even likened the sexual drive to the ‘dark continent’ – the disturbing id which must be contained by the ego in order for the subject to enter into society and to perform his or her proper role. the containment of this sexual drive – also known as repression – is central to the building of the individual, of turning the individual from an uncontained, uncontrolled animal into a civilized subject. (ekotto 2011:84–85) the colonial fantasy, like other instances of social oppression, is legitimised, according to fanon, through an animalisation of the oppressed. following freud, fanon argues that europeans attain their subjectivity through the censorship and repression of their animal natures, that subjectivity is itself an internal cognitive fracture that divides the human from the non-human, and the ego from the id.9 marcos uses long passages like this in combination with essays from the norton reader (e.g. orwell 2017) to help guide his students through conversations about this essential – and troubling – component of the humanist project: animalisation. we see animalisation enacted again; marcos will point out to his students as they transition to a discussion of race, in the form of american chattel slavery, which reduced enslaved africans to the status of livestock to be carted around, branded, exploited for labour and brutalised. ironically, it was southern slaveholders in search of more congressional representation who, in 1787, convinced the north to include enslaved persons in the population census as three-fifth of a person. being only 60% human, however, the enslaved population – which was widely considered evolutionarily closer to apes than to homo sapiens – was not granted the legal protection and individual rights of u.s. citizens. native americans too were reduced to an animalised status by their colonisers. the writers of the declaration of independence, in fact, referred to native americans as ‘savages’, a word that refers to wild, untamed animals, according to the oxford english dictionary. by highlighting these and similar examples of animalisation, marcos shows his students that, historically speaking, violent oppressors have relied on the human or non-human distinction to logically justify their mistreatment of marginalised people groups. as an intelligible concept, ‘human identity’ is a double-edged sword. without it, there is no basis for equal rights, as one must first standardise human identity to conceptualise a universal measure of social justice and what it means to be treated equally. with it, however, there is no escaping social inequality, as our divisive representations of human identity – and, concomitantly, of equal rights – necessarily devalue by excluding anything that is not properly human. in other words, because humanity can only ever be defined in contradistinction to the non-human, its very representation dehumanises the other as less valuable. by its very nature, then, equality breeds inequality, as the human provides the basis for dehumanisation in this zero sum game. to confront his students with this perturbing conundrum, marcos carefully walks them through post-humanist arguments of the last two decades that seek out a new form of justice beyond our violent representations of humanity, a form of justice that neutralises social hierarchies by lowering humanity from its exalted station as a superior being. it is in this context, and under the theoretical framework outlined in this section, that marcos broaches the topic of gender identity and personal pronouns with his students, exploring, among other things, how women have been dehumanised in a male-privileged society, how lesbian and gay people have been dehumanised by heteronormative society and how transgender and non-binary people have faced dehumanisation under the militant strictures of traditional gender binarism. but, as they enter the final discussion of animal rights, exploring the critique of humanism advanced by select post-humanist philosophers, students are confronted with a deeper problem, namely, that granting someone their pronoun preferences affirms their personhood by first establishing their humanity – which is to say, their inherent superiority to non-human beings. considering social justice in light of post-humanism as an academic discipline, post-humanism usually appears as a cybernetic critique of the essentialist, anthropocentric view of human identity espoused over centuries of liberal humanism. through their extensive analyses of modern technological science, donna haraway, ihab hassan, katherine hayles and others have made use of cyborg figurations to deconstruct the traditional boundary lines between the human, the animal and the technological. in contemporary scholarly discussions, post-humanism tends to focus on dismantling the boundaries between human and machine intelligence, reimagining cognition in the digital age as an interaction between a.i. and cyborg. according to haraway, however, who is often accredited with spearheading the post-humanist movement in her landmark essay ‘a manifesto for cyborgs’, the [c]yborg appears in myth precisely where the boundary between human and animal is transgressed. far from signaling a walling off of people from other living beings, cyborgs signal disturbingly and pleasurably tight coupling. bestiality has a new status in this cycle of marriage exchange. (2004:10) so, while many articulations of the post-human have focused on technological advancements in cyborg identity, particularly as they pertain to machine intelligence, other articulations have taken the form of animal studies and ecocriticism. the latter of these two schools of thought questions the boundaries between the living and non-living, while the former questions the boundaries between human and non-human life. we recognise that the discipline has taken off in multiple directions, but we maintain that, at its heart, post-humanism remains a critique of anthropocentrism, the deconstruction of human identity and its supremacy over non-human forms of existence. for pedagogical purposes, marcos focuses this critique through the lens of animalisation, even though a thorough account of post-humanism exceeds this somewhat limited scope. we find that students are already resistant to a deconstruction of the human or animal divide, so including a cybernetic critique of human intelligence as part of the classroom discourse seems like an impractical step too far, especially because this theoretical angle does not help to advance our study of social oppression. for this reason, we present the cyborg, with haraway, as a transgression of the human or non-human distinction and choose to focus our study on figures whose core purpose is the deconstruction of anthropocentrism. to this end, we look at sustained efforts by famed philosophers jacques derrida and giorgio agamben to elaborate the organisational impact of humanity on our world and the violent political endeavours to which this concept has given birth. in his 2008 lecture the animal that therefore i am, derrida challenges a tradition of humanistic philosophers from descartes to kant to heidegger and even to reputed anti-humanists like jacques lacan and emmanuel levin as, both of whom maintained a clear separation between humanity and the ‘wholly other they call “animal”’ (2008:14). derrida objects to the word animal partly because it subsumes a vast array of species under a single term that papers over their many significant differences. from the earthworm to the house cat to the rhinoceros to the deep ocean squid, what matters most to this long tradition of anthropocentric philosophers is that animal life is fundamentally non-human; in other words, its inhumanity is the animal’s defining characteristic. moreover, because animals lack a soul, in descartes’s view, he will argue that they are comparable to machines, so animal behaviour that appears to exhibit rationality or emotion is really just a chemical reaction to physical stimuli. this objectifying mechanisation of the animal stands in direct contrast with our own species’ humanisation under the cartesian tradition, which attributes to mankind the autobiographical capacity to tell its own story through language. ‘the animal is a word, it is an appellation that men have instituted, a name they have given themselves the right and the authority to give to the living other’, derrida writes (2008:23). or, as the political philosopher, giorgio agamben, says, ‘man is the animal that must recognize itself as human to be human’ (2004:26). what distinguishes mankind from the rest of the animal kingdom, for these philosophers, is not his rationality, his emotional intelligence, or his use of language, as even popular society believes to this day, but the fact that man thinks of himself as a superior form of life. very simply, the word animal designates inferior life; the word human or, alternatively – and especially when viewed from a feminist perspective – the word man designates superior life. because of this, political violence naturally emerges wherever the human or non-human distinction is instituted. for derrida as for agamben, one cannot conceive of human identity – which depends on its structural opposites for meaning – without instituting violence against non-human forms of existence. like other post-humanists, derrida and agamben question the superior station afforded to man by theological and secular humanism, both of which have contributed to the inhumane treatment and mass genocide of so-called inferior beings – the non-humans, or animals, that have been categorised as such to justify humanity’s unconscionable use of them. we quote the following passage from derrida’s the animal that therefore i am at length because it underscores for a society indoctrinated under the human or non-human divide the meticulously organised and infinitely cruel nature of animal agriculture. nothing that derrida says in the passage is exaggerated, but its length and excess should help break through the anthropocentric blinders of an audience that ordinarily fails to see just how violent the industry actually is: it is all too evident that in the course of the last two centuries these traditional forms of treatment of the animal have been turned upside down … by means of farming and regimentalization at a demographic level unknown in the past, by means of genetic experimentation, the industrialization of what can be called the production for consumption of animal meat, artificial insemination on a massive scale, more and more audacious manipulations of the genome, the reduction of the animal not only to production and overactive reproduction (hormones, genetic crossbreeding, cloning, etc.) of meat for consumption, but also of all sorts of other end products, and all of that in the service of a certain being and the putative human well-being of man. … it gets more complicated: the annihilation of certain species is indeed in process, but it is occurring through the organization and exploitation of an artificial, infernal, virtually interminable survival, in conditions that previous generations would have judged monstrous, outside of every presumed norm of a life proper to animals that are thus exterminated by means of their continued existence or even their overpopulation. as if, for example, instead of throwing a people into ovens and gas chambers (let’s say nazi) doctors and geneticists had decided to organize the overproduction and overgeneration of jews, gypsies, and homosexuals by means of artificial insemination, so that, being continually more numerous and better fed, they could be destined in always increasing numbers for the same hell, that of the imposition of experimentation, or extermination by gas or by fire. (derrida 2008:25, 26) the psychological torture and physical violence forced upon the animalised creatures of our world is because of a hierarchy of power that privileges human identity. cows, pigs and other livestock are farmed for their meat because humans enjoy eating them, or, rather, as it is often said to justify the brutal practices of the meat industry, humans need to consume animals for their protein and nutritional value. contemporary society is outraged to hear that, in the last century, black people, romani people and orphans were subjected to experimental medical testing, but, to this day, monkeys, rodents, amphibians, birds, cats and dogs are subjected to torturous commercial testing and virtually no one bats an eye. the problem here is not simply that animals have been objectified as less intelligent, unfeeling beings, but that animals have been objectified in the service of humanity, a superior being whose appetite, comfort and fashion preferences matter more than the animal itself. before orphans, black people and roma were legally granted their innate rights as equal members of society, they were dehumanised in the service of humanity just as other animals are dehumanised today. the representational boundaries of human identity shift in the service of its political aims. the human or non-human divide is a moving barrier that animalises the oppressed to the benefit of the powerful. to combat this violence, derrida does not raise up animals to the superior status of humans by attributing to animal life the same characteristics that afford humanity its privileged status, as animal rights activists are accustomed to doing. as before, the problem is not that animals lack the same rights that we have; the problem is that human beings have been given any rights at all. there is a tendency in the judeo-christian tradition to think of ‘human rights’ as a god-given reality – as moral protection only afforded to those who bear the divine image – when all such religious narratives must be taken on faith. the truth is that human beings, just like any other creature, do not have the inherent right to anything. one would think that secular society would expunge itself of this theological myth, evacuate human identity of the imago dei and demote this supercilious beast to a lower station, but human rights are nevertheless thought of as inherent by secular society, even though it lacks logical justification under a secular worldview. lagging under the weight of its long theological heritage, the secular tradition continues to think of humanity as sacred – that is, as set apart by god – despite its being just one among countless other species to naturally evolve on our planet. human rights are something we created on our own behalf in order to justify our self-importance. because these rights are unique to humanity, they come at the expense of the non-human. this is why, following in the philosophical tradition of baruch spinoza and gilles deleuze, agamben advocates, what he calls, a deactivation of the anthropological machine – by which he means an erasure of the hierarchical distinctions between man and animal, superior and inferior, that provide the basis for human rights. agamben seeks to remove human identity from the picture entirely to bring an end to the power hierarchies that mar our existence. to advocate on behalf of animal rights would only exacerbate the problem; it would mean raising up animals to the sacred status that affords human life its moral protection in the popular imagination when, to effectively combat this violence, we should instead rid ourselves of the hierarchy altogether. we can observe this tension between the anthropological machine that elevates humanity at the expense of animals and emancipatory struggles for human rights and whenever animal rights are rhetorically coordinated with human rights. the organisation people for the ethical treatment of animals (peta) has frequently been criticised for comparing the speciesism that justifies the slaughter of animals for human consumption to historical forms of human oppression. in 2018, the organisation’s twitter account proposed a series of alternatives to idioms like ‘beat a dead horse’, suggesting: [j]ust as it became unacceptable to use racist, homophobic, or ableist language, phrases that trivialize cruelty to animals will vanish as more people begin to appreciate animals for who they are and start ‘bringing home the bagels’ instead of the bacon. this prediction was mocked both within and outside of the vegan community, and cnn reported that the ‘comparison with racism and homophobia was met with anger on twitter, with some arguing that peta was trivialising race and gender issues’ (john 2018)—notably ignoring the tweet’s reference to ableism. it is true that peta’s tweet is disturbing on a number of levels. it can be read to imply a linear vision of progress in which historical forms of majoritarian violence have disappeared, consigned to an antiquated past. in the process, it seems to assume that the human communities it references are no longer engaged in massive political struggles for recognition and equality. to the contrary, the link between dehumanising rhetoric and violence is, of course, a central problem of contemporary politics across the globe. moreover, the tweet’s analogy between animals and marginalised human communities could be read to give solace to the notion that people of colour, queer people and people with disabilities are less than human. twitter user nicky clark attempted to parse this issue in response to peta, writing (clark 2018): it’s a strong enough statement to say don’t be cruel to animals @peta i’m not saying people are more important than animals, but you appear to be saying that some people are the same as animals, and that’s what racists, homophobes and ableists say. clark proposes a distinction between, on the one hand, claims about the identity of humans and animals, and on the other, claims about the relative importance of humans and animals. yet, the precise nature of this distinction is difficult to specify. as we have demonstrated, the category of the human is the vehicle through which rights are distributed, and the human is, in turn, defined against the category of the animal. within this framework, there is no secure way towards valuing animals like humans without defining animals as humans. this problem becomes especially acute in peta’s recent letter urging a publisher of children’s books to change the pronouns it uses in reference to animals from ‘the inanimate “it”’ to ‘he’ or ‘she’. here, peta claims that the pronoun it classes animals as ‘inanimate objects rather than living beings with feelings’ (2018). using the rhetoric of ‘inclusive language’, peta thus argues that only the personal pronouns he and she can properly recognise the nature of animals as sentient beings. this is a pragmatic move: while the letter does not claim that animals are human, it perceives that if animals are to be recognised as ‘living beings with feelings’, they must be humanised. and while peta knows that many species cannot be divided into stable binary sexes, it understands that the construction of the human, along with the rights that this construction entails, depends upon the naturalised gender binary exhibited in conventional human pronouns. while the tweet comparing speciesism to racism, homophobia and ableism tries to absorb animal rights into these human political struggles, this letter affirms the binary gender ideology that threatens non-cisgendered people by advocating the use of he and she. one conclusion here might be that peta seems to find it difficult to formulate arguments without animalising marginalised human communities. but these incidents also suggest how the spectre of animal rights has continually haunted the expansion of human rights. emancipatory movements towards the abolition of slavery, women’s suffrage and gay marriage have each faced the same form of reactionary concern trolling: ‘what about the animals? are you going to include the animals in your newly expansive vision of humanity?’ while this kind of questioning intends merely to deride, it does suggest the way that the subjugation of animals – and in turn, the concept of the human on which this subjugation depends – presents a radical limit to any desire for the elimination of human violence. stepping back into the classroom by the time students in marcos’s writing class reach the assigned readings on animal rights the majority of them seem to have been persuaded of the view that humanity is an inherently violent concept. they agree – women, lgbtqia, people of colour, and other oppressed communities have been animalised to justify their oppression over the centuries. but, as the ensuing discussion of animal rights activism reveals, the students are persuaded by these claims largely because they already believe that women, lgbtqia and people of colour are in fact human. actual animals, they explain to their instructor – as in real, biological animals – are not human and never can be. their animalisation is not a violent political act, but rather an accurate description of their animal nature. this is why, for many of them, the pronouns he, she, they and it are perfectly acceptable when applied to an animal, but, when applied to a person, the pronoun it is dehumanising and dangerous, especially if that person’s identity has already been subjected to dehumanisation in their lifetime.10 marcos’s students, like many critics of human objectification, often begin with the intuitive assumption that humans are ontologically distinct from non-humans and should therefore be treated differently. without this ontological distinction, objectification would not be intelligible as an ethical problem because the difference between people and animals or objects would have no particular significance.11 objectification is only a problem when applied to human beings, whose rights afford them a superior station to lifeless objects and objectified life. under this paradigm, the pronoun it sets its referent at the furthest possible distance from the speaker, who thereby emerges as a human subject in the very act of objectifying the referent. in this respect, the pronoun it objectifies the other by humanising the self. the real issue with objectification is that it aggrandises personhood and, in the process of doing so, authorises the self to make use of non-humans. when objectification works to distance the self from the other by humanising the self at the other’s expense, it should be understood as a form of ideational violence that may, in turn, licence physical violence at the hands of humanity. accordingly, calling animals it – or, more accurately and more to the point, refusing to apply it to ourselves – upholds the brutal logic of humanism, a system of oppression that produces mass genocide, horrific torture and the objectifying utilisation of our fellow creatures. even after buying into the idea that humanism only ever exists at the expense of the non-human, these students, like the vast majority of our society, participate in verbal practices that peta and other animal rights organisations regard as horrifying, immoral crimes against the dehumanised. but animals are actually non-human the students repeat, to which marcos replies (holmberg 2019): okay, but remember that, much like you, the racist slaveholder actually believed that enslaved black people were less than human, the british colonist actually believed that native americans were barbarous animals, and the homophobe actually believes that gay sex is a violation and betrayal of natural human behaviour. this is precisely how power operates. humanity believes itself to be superior to the non-human, so it affords itself inherent rights at the animal’s expense. the history of oppression is marked by a series of parallel binaries: self or other, man or woman, white or non-white, straight or gay, cisgender or transgender and gender nonconforming, human or animal, subject or object, they or it. the final pair on this list – they and it – represents opposite ends of a power hierarchy enacted everyday by the pronouns we use. this prospect got us thinking more about pronoun use in the classroom. we both encourage the use of they not only because it makes room for gender fluid, gender neutral and non-binary modes of identifying, but also because its plural form challenges us to think about identity in new and unconventional ways. while there is a journalistic discourse centred on the grammatical phenomenon of the ‘singular they’, we should not take the pronoun’s singularity for granted because the numerical ambiguity can bring to mind important questions of identity: are we, in fact, singular and autonomous, or are we multiple, shifting and self-divided – an identity or set of identities in process? the conceptual challenge of thinking persons as they thus converges with the work of thinkers like gilles deleuze, who sought to displace the traditional ontology of the one and the many (singular or plural) with an interwoven terrain of multiplicities, interlocking sets of plural entities that may enter into combination, but never reify into an ontological unity or singular state. they captures this multiplicity for gender fluid people who may take on practices, actions and expressions disembedded from their conventional gender contexts. igi moon describes this process as ‘trans-emotionality’, a sense of a fluxing relationship to bodily expression that is not the marker of a specific gender identity (e.g. ‘non-binary’), but instead may be experienced ‘in any body at any time’ (2018). in trans-emotionality, the precise significations of conventionally gendered moods, feelings, and expressions become ‘disoriented’ from their gendered meanings, and are no longer easily definable as masculine or feminine. gender here is no longer an originary ontological phenomenon, but rather an ephemeral happenstance that emerges reflexively out of sensitive practice. conclusion: fostering inclusivity through the critique of anthropocentrism our teaching needs to affirm our students’ attachments to their own understanding and language of identity. this is not simply a pedagogical matter: a gender-inclusive language is essential to those whose humanity is, at this very moment, subject to both symbolic and physical assault. but we should also seek to understand how our identifications – even at their most expansive and sensitive – rely on the power of exclusion. in this context, the indefinite nature of they becomes its most significant feature. they is reticent not only with respect to gender and number, but also towards a whole range of binary distinctions that structure our thought. crucially, they includes the plural of it, that boundary line between the human and the animal, with its history of objectification and violence. it can be read as the latent force within they, carrying within our fullest language of human identity the presence of the excluded animal, with the mass violence that exclusion licences. the most far-reaching consequence of the use of the pronoun they therefore lies in its potential to objectify, and in so doing, to call the human into question. at the point where they verges on it, its critique of discursive power proves its sharpest. rather than raise people up to an ‘equal’ status, where they become superior to the non-human others in the world, what if each of us were to step down to the level of animality, nature and objecthood, to a plane of total immanence where literally everyone is equal because no one claims the right to transcendental worth, where literally no one has ‘rights’ because everyone has surrendered their claims to superiority and exceptional value. the reimagining of gendered language advanced by non-binary communities has consequences for our understanding of the human. as we teach our students the histories of struggle that have expanded the meaning of humanity, it is worth considering how our language continues to construct who we are, and who (or what) is not counted among us. we can ask our students to consider what it might mean to move not only towards an expansion of humanity, which remains an urgent project, but also to wonder at the other egalitarianism: what would it mean to follow they all the way to it, and find our place there, in that most undistinguished and indefinite pronoun? what ethical possibilities emerge at the point where we are forced to consider ourselves stripped of the distinctions that licence our domination? pursuing these questions with our students as they pertain to pronoun use in the classroom may be our next step towards constructing a more inclusive society. acknowledgements competing interests the authors have declared that no competing interest exists. authors’ contributions both authors contributed equally to this work. ethical consideration ethical clearance was not required for this study. funding information this research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors. data availability statement data sharing is not applicable to this article as no new data were created or analysed during this study. disclaimer the views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any affiliated agency of the authors. references agamben, g., 2004, the open: man and animal, transl. k. attell, stanford up, stanford, ca. anderson, k., 2000, ‘“the beast within”: race, humanity, and animality’, environment and planning d: society and space 18(3), 301–320. https://doi.org/10.1068/d229 balhorn, m., 2004, ‘the rise of epicene they’, journal of english linguistics 32(2), 79–104. https://doi.org/10.1177/0075424204265824 beauchamp, t., 2008, ‘clutching on: teaching identity and terminology in transgender studies’, feminist formations 30(3), 25–33. https://doi.org/10.1353/ff.2018.0035 benveniste, e., 1971, problems in general linguistics, transl. m.e. meek, university of miami press. bjorkman, b.m., 2017, ‘singular they and the syntactic representation of gender in english’, glossa: a journal of general linguistics 2(1), 1–13. https://doi.org/10.5334/gjgl.374 bodine, a., 1975, ‘androcentrism in prescriptive grammar: singular “they,” sexindefinite “he,” and “he or she”’, language in society 4(2), 129–146. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0047404500004607 clark, n. (mrsnickyclark), 2018, ‘it’s a strong enough statement to say don’t be cruel to animals @peta i’m not saying people are more important than animals, but you appear to be saying that some people are the same as animals, and that’s what racists, homophobes and ableists say’, tweet, december 05. viewed 5 september 2020, from https://twitter.com/mrsnickyclark/status/1070217123706884098 derrida, j., 2008, the animal that therefore i am, fordham up, new york, ny. dinno, a., 2017, ‘homicide rates of transgender individuals in the united states: 2010–2014’, american journal of public health, 107(9), 1441–1447. https://doi.org/10.2105/ajph.2017.303878 ekotto, f., 2011, race and sex across the french atlantic: the color of black in literary, philosophical, and theater discourse, lexington books, lanham, md. flores, m.j., watson, l.b., allen, l.r., ford, m., serpe, c.r., choo, p.y. et al., 2018, ‘transgender people of color’s experiences of sexual objectification: locating sexual objectification within a matrix of domination’, journal of counseling psychology 65(3), 308–323. https://doi.org/10.1037/cou0000279 frederickson, b.l. & roberts, t.-a., 1997, ‘objectification theory: toward understanding women’s lived experiences and mental health risks’, psychology of women quarterly 21(2), 173–206. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1471-6402.1997.tb00108.x gardner, l., 2017, ‘why trans* students matter’, the chronicle of higher education, viewed 20 august 2020, from https://www.chronicle.com/article/why-trans-students-matter/239305. gastil, j., 1990, ‘generic pronouns and sexist language: the oxymoronic character of masculine generics’, sex roles 23(11/12), 629–643. https://doi.org/10.1007/bf00289252 graff, g. & birkenstein, c., 2010, they say, i say: the moves that matter in academic writing, w.w. norton & company, inc., new york, ny. grollman, e.a., 2013, ‘and your preferred pronoun?’, inside higher education, november 20, viewed 25 august 2020, from https://www.insidehighered.com/advice/2013/11/20/essay-preferred-pronouns-step-toward-inclusion. haraway, d., 2004, the haraway reader, routledge, new york, ny. hartocollis, a., 2020, ‘gender pronouns can be tricky on campus. harvard is making them stick’, the new york times, february 19, viewed 25 august 2020, from https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/19/us/gender-pronounscollege.html. hillard, g., 2019, ‘conservatives shouldn’t use transgender pronouns’ national review, april 04, viewed 20 august 2020, from https://wwww.nationalreveiew.com/2019/04/transgenderpronouns-conservatives-should-not-use/. holmberg, m., 2019, ‘to usborne publishing’, june 10, viewed 1 september 2020, from https://www.peta.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/petas-letter-to-usborne-publishing.pdf. john, t., 2018, ‘peta says phrases like “bring home the bacon” are comparable to racism and homophobia’, cnn, december 05, viewed 28 august 2020, from https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/05/europe/peta-meatidioms-scli-intl/index.html. johnson, b., 2008, persons and things, harvard up, cambridge. kapusta, s.j., 2016, ‘misgendering and it’s moral contestability’, hypatia 31(3), 502–519. levin, r., 2018, ‘the problem with pronouns’, inside higher ed, september 19, viewed 01 september 2020, from https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2018/09/19/why-asking-students-their-preferredpronoun-not-good-idea-opinion. martyna, w., 1978, ‘what does “he” mean? use of the generic masculine’, journal of communication 28(1), 131–138. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1460-2466.1978.tb01576.x moon, i., 2018, ‘“boying” the boy and “girling” the girl: from affective interpellation to transemotionality’, sexualities 22(1–2), 65–79. https://doi.org/10.1177/1363460717740260 moradi, b., 2013, ‘discrimination, objectification, and dehumanization: toward a pantheoretical framework’, in s.j. gervais (ed.), objectification and (de)humanization, pp. 153–181, springer publishing, new york, ny. nussbaum, m., 1995, ‘objectification’, philosophy and public affairs 24(4), 249–291. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1088-4963.1995.tb00032.x orwell, g., 2017, ‘shooting an elephant’, in l. peterson (ed.), the norton reader, 13th edn., pp. 784–789, w.w. norton & company, new york, ny. peta (peta), 2018, ‘just as it became unacceptable to use racist, homophobic, or ableist language, phrases that trivialize cruelty to animals will vanish as more people begin to appreciate animals for who they are and start “bringing home the bagels” instead of the bacon’, tweet, december 4. viewed 05 september 2020, from https://twitter.com/peta/status/1070066205170397184 reis, e., 2016, ‘pronoun privilege’, new york times, december 05, viewed 20 august 2020, from https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/26/opinion/pronoun-privilege.html. rudman, l.a. & mescher, k., 2012, ‘of animals and objects: men’s implicit dehumanization of women and likelihood of sexual aggression’, personality and social psychology bulletin 38(6), 734–746. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167212436401 sartre, j.-p., 2013, ‘the wretched of the earth’, in r. aronson & a. van den hoven (eds.), we have only one life to live: the selected essays of jean-paul sartre 1939–1975, pp. 384–402, new york review of books, new york, ny. williams, j., 2020, ‘standing up to the pronoun police, once and for all’, the american conservative, january 06, viewed 25 august 2020, from https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/standing-up-to-the-pronoun-police-once-and-for-all/. xiang, s., 2018, ‘narrating the human person’, in c. parikh (ed.), cambridge companion to human rights and literature, pp. 129–140, cambridge university press, cambridge. footnotes 1. according to the non-profit organisation campus pride, which strives to build queer inclusive college communities through advocacy programmes and policy reform, 259 us colleges, as of february 2020, permit students to change their first names on campus records and official legal documents, 60 colleges permit students to change their gender identity without the proof of medical intervention and 41 colleges permit students to indicate their pronouns on course rosters. see ‘colleges and universities that allow students to change the name and gender on campus records’, campus pride: building future leaders and safer, more lgbtq-friendly colleges and universities, https://www.campuspride.org/tpc/records/. 2. see hartocollis (2020). discussing the best practices of pronoun use, hartocollis notes how students at new york university can now indicate their pronouns in an online system that provides course rosters and seating charts to faculty; she notes that the university of minnesota’s faculty senate recently approved of a policy that allows students access to school facilities designed strictly for their gender identity; and she also notes that students at harvard’s kennedy school of government are now given four pronoun options (‘he/him’, ‘she/her’, ‘they/them’ and ‘ze/hir’) on official name tags distributed at the beginning of the semester. 3. for good examples of this, see hillard (2019) and williams (2020). 4. in 2016, a professor of psychology at the university of toronto, jordan peterson, uploaded a series of youtube videos protesting the canadian government’s bill c-16, which sought to revise the criminal code and canadian human rights act to protect gender identity and gender expression from discriminatory practices. peterson opposed the bill on the grounds that it would compel speech. he argued that, under the law (which was officially passed in 2017), misgendering a student or refusing to use a student’s preferred pronoun could itself result in the instructor being charged with a hate crime. others have accused peterson of mischaracterising the bill, and others still have claimed that, while peterson’s fears are valid, no court would actually rule the violation as a criminal offense. regardless of its legal repercussions, misgendering someone is still widely considered a hate crime by lgbtqia+ advocates and allies because it robs the individual of their personhood and denies them access to the goods and services only afforded to their gender. according to stephanie julia kapusta, ‘politically dominant gender categorizations have a real effect on human lives’, causing transgender and non-binary individuals ‘microaggressive psychological harms’ and exposing them to ‘possible abuse and discrimination’ (2016:505, 502, 505). 5. in 1975, the linguist ann bodine argued that ‘[b]ecause of the social significance of personal reference, personal pronouns are particularly susceptible to modification in response to social and ideological change’ (1975:130). bodine explains that the singular they was used uncontroversially from the 14th to the late 18th century, when prescriptive grammarians began to insist upon he as the generic (purportedly non-gendered) third-person singular pronoun. this account has been expanded in different directions by bronwyn m. bjorkman (2017) and mark balhorn (2004), balhorn notes psychological studies have repeatedly demonstrated that listeners interpret the generic and supposedly genderless he as male (gastil 1990; martyna 1978). in this context, the use of the singular they, advocated by feminists in the 1970s and more recently by trans, non-binary and genderqueer communities, actually represents a return to long-standing practice. 6. the grammar of personal reference is an established problem in human rights discourse; sunny xiang discusses the third person as the site of contested personhood, invoking edward said’s imperative, ‘they cannot represent themselves; they must be represented’ (xiang 2018:135). 7. the following sections summarise the content and structure of marcos’s writing classes. marcos leads his students through a series of essays and supplementary materials that help students unpack this alternate model of egalitarianism. marcos’s approach to the question of gender pronouns is clearly more suitable for humanities courses, where questions of identity, politics and social justice may be discussed at length. in classes outside of the humanities, however, where course content is information-driven and more rigidly organised, such an invested approach to the issue of gender pronouns is most likely not possible. moreover, introducing the pronoun it to students as a viable option for self-identification may be unwise in this context if the instructor is not subsequently able to contextualise its use as an equalising critique of humanism. legitimising self-objectification may be offensive to trans, non-binary and genderqueer students who have been victims of discriminating speech. for reasons both practical and ethical, then, we do not recommend implementing it in courses not suitable for its thorough discussion. 8. the animalisation of social and political difference has been subjected to various forms of analysis. one influential thread runs from hegel and freud, through fanon, into forms of feminist and postcolonial critique that see a repressed animality within the self-projected onto a racialised and sexualised other. this analysis posits a western imperialist ideology that identifies itself with reason and universality, projecting its own repressed tendencies towards domination onto an otherness considered to be base or savage, constituted variously by women, mixed race people or colonial subjects. this internal repression, once externalised, necessitates the violent suppression of difference in the name of a civilising project. accordingly, notions of animality become, as kay anderson argues, ‘a crucial reference point for constructing sociospatial difference and hierarchy in western cultures’ (2000:4). 9. significantly, freud’s english translator, james strachey, chose to replace the german terms used by freud, ich and es, with the latin terms ego and id, rather than directly translate those terms into english as i and it. why strachey made the editorial decision to replace a direct english translation with quasi-scientific latin terminology is unknown, but the freudian originals – i and it – are the more revealing, in our assessment, because they accurately frame subjecthood as the separation and repression of our animal natures. 10. to this point, studies in the field of objectification theory (fredrickson & roberts 1997; rudman & mescher 2012) have shown that trans women, and especially trans-women of colour, are more likely to be subject to sexual objectification than cisgendered women, often in concert with racial fetishisation (flores et al. 2018). bonnie moradi (2013) has argued that an integrated, ‘pantheoretical’ framework is required in order to analyse experiences of objectification for people who occupy overlapping marginal identities, since marginalised identities contribute to both the likelihood and the impact of dehumanisation. indeed, for gender nonconforming persons, objectification can have life-or-death consequences, as trans persons, and especially trans persons of mixed race, are much more likely to be victims of homicide than cisgendered individuals (dinno 2017). 11. martha nussbaum makes this point in the process of defending certain forms of objectification (including certain forms of sexual objectification) as benign or even healthy under specific conditions, where there is a mutual respect among the parties involved and the mutual assumption of risk. but nussbaum accepts the ontological distinction between human and non-human, and with it, she accepts the moral intuition that leads us to evaluate the treatment of humans according to special criteria that do not apply to the treatment of non-humans. abstract introduction literature review and theoretical argument research methods findings and discussion conclusion and recommendations acknowledgements references footnotes about the author(s) tshanduko tshilongo department of sociology, faculty of humanities, north-west university, potchefstroom, south africa jacques rothmann department of sociology, faculty of humanities, north-west university, potchefstroom, south africa citation tshilongo, t. & rothmann, j., 2019, ‘a sociological exploration of the need for safe spaces for lesbian and gay students on a south african university campus’, transformation in higher education 4(0), a77. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v4i0.77 original research a sociological exploration of the need for safe spaces for lesbian and gay students on a south african university campus tshanduko tshilongo, jacques rothmann received: 15 oct. 2019; accepted: 06 nov. 2019; published: 28 nov. 2019 copyright: © 2019. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract background: the role of safe spaces on university campuses for gay and lesbian students remains a contested issue. this is attributed to the fact that the visibility of these students on university campuses presents a duality: on the one hand, the creation of such spaces provides a sense of communal belonging, safety and visibility for these students which could contribute to de-mystifying stereotypes. on the other hand, such increased visibility may further exacerbate a backlash to those who disclose their sexual identity, which manifests in verbal and/or physical homophobia. aim: the article reports on an explorative sociological study on the need for such safe spaces for lesbian and gay students on north-west university’s potchefstroom campus. setting: the focus of the research was to explore the need for safe spaces on the north-west university’s potchefstroom campus. the aim was to investigate the perceptions of self-identified gay and lesbian students on the importance of providing such spaces. methods: a qualitative research design, informed by the meta-theoretical principles of social constructionism, interpretivism and queer theory, was applied. probability and snowball sampling methods were used along with 20 semi-structured interviews with 10 self-identified gay and 10 self-identified lesbian students. thematic analysis was used to code the data. results: participants expressed dualistic narratives regarding their experiences on campus. some indicated that they did not experience any discrimination whereas others recalled particular incidences of homophobia. these differences notwithstanding, participants provided particular definitions of such spaces, identified its preferred formations and reasons for being in favour of and against its implementation. conclusion: findings suggest that the introduction of formal policies is essential in deciding on whether safe spaces are necessary and to inform the decisions of students require this to disclose their identities. keywords: gay and lesbian students; heteronormativity; homonormativity; homophobia; queer theory; safe spaces. introduction in south africa and other african countries, discrimination against gender and sexually diverse individuals has escalated from ideological condemnation of homosexuality to physical violence (mendos 2019). some individuals have been publicly humiliated, assaulted, raped, imprisoned or killed (msibi 2009). the equity clause sections 9(3) and 9(4) in the south african constitution (rsa 1996) prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation. with the introduction of democracy came the pledge that people who identify themselves as counter-heterosexual would benefit from the constitutional provisions, including the freedom of sexual affiliation, movement and access to information (de palma & francis 2014). however, many south african institutions, including schools and universities, legitimise heteronormativity and cisgenderism (brown & de wet 2018; francis 2019; richardson 2008). this inhibits attempts at emphasising the importance of transformative agendas that foreground the acknowledgement of protecting sexually diverse persons, alongside foci on the gender and racial identity of individuals – an argument to which francis (2017a, 2017b) and msibi (2013) attest. heterosexism may further fuel homophobia. this includes any form of behaviour (verbal and/or physical) originating from prejudice, discrimination, stigmatisation or heterosexism expressed towards self-identified gender and sexually diverse persons or those who are presumed not to be heterosexual (rothmann 2014). studies undertaken on the experiences of sexual minority students in canada (grace 2015, 2017; grace & benson 2000) and america (chang 2005; fox & ore 2010; rankin 2006), among others, are well documented. there is evidence of a growing field of academic inquiry in south africa on the theme. foci in this regard centre mainly on the violence, prejudice and harassment faced by them in education contexts (francis 2017a; francis & msibi 2011; mcarthur 2015; richardson 2008; sithole 2015); exclusion of gender and sexually diverse voices in university policies and curricula (msibi 2015); negative perceptions about lesbian, gay and bisexual students (arndt & de bruin 2006; bhana 2014; butler et al. 2003; de wet, rothmann & simmonds 2016; rothmann & simmonds 2015); and the lived experiences of these students on campuses nationally (hames 2007; jagessar & msibi 2015; lesch, brits & naidoo 2017; rothmann 2014; tshilongo 2018). only a few studies have explored the need for support at the institutional level of universities to develop policies and implement support services and safe space programmes for sexual minorities (biaggio et al. 2003; finkel et al. 2003; neumann 2005) as a possible solution to address the issue of homophobia on university campuses. the current article echoes the call for a localised focus on the experiences of and possibilities for gender and sexually diverse persons in education institutions in the global south (graziano 2004; nduna et al. 2017). the writers engage the findings from a 2017 explorative sociological study on the need for such safe spaces for lesbian and gay students on north-west university’s (nwu) potchefstroom campus. the reader is provided with an overview of relevant literature and theory, the research methodology and research findings, critical discussion and recommendations for future consideration. the specific research foci that inform the article’s empirical discussion include the following themes: the positive features associated with safe spaces on the potchefstroom campus of the nwu; the limitations associated with the implementation of such safe spaces; the possible forms safe spaces take; and the reasons in favour and/or against developing safe spaces on the said campus. literature review and theoretical argument a safe space is a place where bigotry and discrimination against gender and sexually diverse individuals are not tolerated. these contexts provide places where supporting and understanding the challenges of sexual minorities are important in redressing campus contexts that leave lesbian and gay students fearing for their safety, keeping their identities undisclosed, experiencing harassment and feeling that their universities do not accommodate gender and sexual minorities (beemyn & ranking 2016; hind 2004; poynter & tubbs 2008; ratts et al. 2013). locally, safe spaces manifest in varied forms: a person, a programme or a gay and lesbian student organisation. some universities, abroad and in south africa, have developed safe spaces and ally programmes to increase visible support for gender and sexually diverse students (sanlo, rankin & schoenberg 2002). university student organisations exist across the country and courses on gender and sexual diversity are taught. the main objectives of these spaces include improving the campus climate and environment for gender and sexually diverse students, increasing awareness of homophobia, encouraging conversations around gender and sexual diversity matters, and educating its members to challenge homophobia and heterosexism (tshilongo 2018). such spaces are designed to create alliances among those who defend the rights of the sexual minorities and to limit or challenge stereotypical views by a heterosexually dominant community (fox 2007). to implement and/or restructure university policies to redress homophobia, de wet (2017:128), writing from a south african perspective, proposes a clear conceptualisation and implementation of courses focussing on ‘[h]uman rights literacies that would promote transformative action by lecturers, state and school/university officials, teachers … [and] students’ to include mastering particular skills and using specific language to encourage people to engage critically in debates on gender and sexual diversity and equality (kumashiro 2002; msibi 2015). restructuring may also require the redevelopment of the curriculum (across faculties, from undergraduate to postgraduate levels), student amenities, and faculty and staff training (francis 2013, 2017b; rothmann 2014). for the redevelopment of the curriculum, rothmann and simmonds (2015) suggest courses that address issues on sexuality (either as stand-alone courses or content incorporated into modules of mainstream programmes and curricula). classes could incorporate discussions on the contributions of gay and lesbian politicians and activists, thereby addressing the superiority and inferiority binary. self-identified gay and lesbian lecturers may facilitate a more positive atmosphere in the classroom based on their first-hand account and provide a more balanced and detailed view of the experiences of gender and sexually diverse persons (rothmann 2014). how the university culture, climate and curriculum restrict and create barriers for students should be recognised (jagessar & msibi 2015). fox (2007) critiques safe spaces for creating an exclusionary and segregated community for sexual minority students, which may lead to a ‘freezing of difference’ (fox & ore 2010:634). francis (2017b:100) and robinson and ferfolja (2001:124) argue in favour of creating a more intersectional space as individuals’ sexuality is always intertwined with the ‘whole subject’. francis’s (2017b:100) study on the lived experiences of sexual minority youth provides an example: ‘[t]he youth described their life worlds as the sum of many parts, which included but was not limited to their sexual orientation’. the discourse on safe spaces fails to justify this intersectionality; it relies on a binary logic that emphasises the eradication of homophobia/heterosexism. fox (2007) avers that this inhibits the establishment of a reciprocally beneficial relationship between the homosexual students and the broader campus community. it is essential to study the experiences of gay and lesbian students as distinct and not as homogeneous (judge 2017), and also to implore a critical investigation of how identities and experiences result along intersectional lines of ethnic, racial and gender identities in different south african institutions (bhana 2012; francis 2017b; msibi 2013, 2015; oswin 2007), regardless of the constitution. rothmann (2018) and van den berg (2016) do, however, contend that such ‘strategic essentialism’ (see the work of spivak 1987) does not necessarily solely homogenise the experiences of gay and lesbian students in a communal setting. by ‘temporarily assimilating’ into a supposed homogeneous setting, agentic students identify ‘their shared experiences [with other students], yet diverse inter-subjective life-worlds’ (rothmann 2018:6). an intersection and discursive relationship between agency and structure thus arises. such agency notwithstanding, safe spaces may still encourage the enactment of the performed rituals that retain heterosexuality as a norm, necessitating sexual minorities in academic settings to assimilate into a heteronormative culture (fox 2007; milani & wolff 2015). msibi (2013) encourages a critical view when using queer theory in studying african and south african contexts based, in part, on its western origin. this notwithstanding, a queer theoretical view aids the researcher in analysing the implications of the creation of normative identity categories (e.g. heterosexuality and homosexuality) (msibi 2013; warner 1991). in keeping with the focus of the article, it is of particular interest to focus on the use of queer theory to scrutinise the interplay of heteronormativity with homonormativity, which may ‘naturalise, normalise and legitimise some expressions of same-sex desire, at the expense of others’ (milani & wolff 2015:167) through the creation of safe spaces. this study foregrounds how safe spaces contribute to and/or challenge heteronormativity and homonormativity by decentring solely western analyses ‘to get beyond the mere derision of the purported importation of a western-style queerness’ (oswin 2007:658). research methods the research topic applied social constructionism as an ontological approach and the epistemological approach of interpretivism – both associated with the central theoretical argument’s queer theoretical focus (bryman 2016). these approaches postulate that the nature of our social (and sexual) realities are constantly constructed and reconstructed through interaction (creswell & creswell 2018). a qualitative research design provided an in-depth explanation of the gay and lesbian participants’ subjective views on the need for safe spaces on the university campus. the objective of qualitative research centres on the accumulation of in-depth descriptions and the emphasis on the researcher’s ability to understand, explain and explore phenomena (creswell & creswell 2018). the participants included 10 self-identified gay and 10 self-identified lesbian students registered as undergraduate or postgraduate students of the nwu’s potchefstroom campus. their average age was 22 years and they were all south african. the participants comprised eight white participants, nine who identified as black and three who self-identified as of coloured per racial category. their faculties entailed engineering, law, arts, natural sciences, economic and management sciences, educational sciences and health sciences. they were identified through non-probability sampling methods of purposive and snowball sampling. purposive sampling was performed on the basis that the participants had relevant and the best possible knowledge and expertise regarding the topic under investigation. this sampling method focussed on identifying participants who may form part of a minority ‘hidden’ group (rumens 2011) owing to the sensitivity of the topic (o’leary 2014). for the purpose of the study, some members of a student organisation on the campus consented to participate in the study. the participants were then requested to distribute the call to other self-identified gay and lesbian persons who might find the study of interest to participate in. after a detailed explanation of the background and the purpose of the study, participants were provided with an informed consent statement to sign. through in-depth interviews, data were obtained by conversing according to an interview schedule that comprised three subsections: the biographical and academic background of gay and lesbian students and opinion-related questions (based on themes from the literature). with regard to interviews, confidentiality was ensured by having participants choose their own pseudonym at the start of the interview. in this study, most participants chose their own pseudonyms (cf. ackerly & true 2010). this notwithstanding, in some cases, participants allowed the researcher to provide them with pseudonyms. this article foregrounds the following thematic subsections of the interview schedule: defining safe spaces, the forms safe spaces could take, arguments in favour of safe spaces and challenges associated with the implementation of safe spaces on the said campus. interviews were conducted to explore the lived experiences of the participants. each participant was informed that the duration of the interview would range from 1 to 3 h at a location of their choice. most students preferred a more private space (e.g. the researcher’s office and some students preferred the campus cafeteria). in this study, the participants were encouraged to relate their personal narratives in their own words (cf. babbie & mouton 2001:289). none of the participants opted to leave during the interview. the interview narratives were transcribed and analysed through thematic analysis. open and selective coding was used to code both existing themes and new themes from the data, comprising defining safe spaces, their forms, the arguments in their favour and their potential limitations. for the purpose of this study, the researcher adopted braun and clarkes’ (2006) model of thematic analysis. the procedure included examining the interviews conducted with gay and lesbian students in order to uncover the recurring patterns of meaning, themes and ideas used to describe and understand homosexuality in a university context. furthermore, specific codes were identified in order to highlight potential themes and patterns that emerged from the data. these themes are engaged in the subsections to follow. ethical principles were adhered to per the approved ethical clearance by the university’s faculty of arts ethics committee, including voluntary participation, no physical or emotional harm to the participants and the protection of the participants’ identity, that is, the protection of lesbian and gay students’ identity in interviews (cf. bryman 2016). information on the protection of the participants’ interests and their well-being formed part of the informed consent statement. confidentiality and privacy were included. confidentiality, as noted above, was ensured by most participants choosing their own pseudonyms. participants were not compelled to comment on issues they considered personal (wilson & maclean 2011). findings and discussion this is a quote from batso (a lesbian participant) on the position of gay and lesbian students on the potchefstroom campus: ‘i have not heard of anyone in the university who has reported a crime against discrimination because of their sexuality, this may mean that because students are not aware of the policies or laws concerning sexual orientation, they find it hard to go and report the incident because they also do not know what to expect when they report the incident.’ (batso, lesbian, arts) this introduces and underscores the discussion on the dualistic experiences of gay and lesbian students, as it centralises the absence yet presence of discrimination on the campus. to link this thought to the need for safe spaces, this subsection focusses on a critical engagement with the research findings, and it relates to the definitions of such spaces by the participants, a delineation of the varied forms safe spaces could take and the reasons in favour of and against its implementation. definitions of a safe space safe spaces were mostly described as a physical place, denoting buildings (thinus and brenda, a gay and a lesbian student, respectively) or offices and people, where ‘protection from harm’ is important; where participants feel ‘comfortable’ with themselves, with an appreciation of difference and the context is ‘free from homophobia’ (larry, a gay student). these descriptions substantiate hind’s (2004) definition of a safe space as one that manifests as a room, a person or a programme where discrimination against sexual minorities is not tolerated and where people can be themselves (cf. plummer 2015). some participants described a safe space as an environment or climate where marginalised people meet and discuss their issues on discrimination and where victimisation, hate speech and harassments are not tolerated (cf. evans 2002). forms of safe spaces the participants cited different examples of the forms of safe spaces: the university campus as a safe space or zone seven participants argued that the campus environment displays the potential to empower students in learning, progressing and networking with friends in support of sexual minorities. this echoes ghaziani’s (2015) argument on how society may contribute to the inclusion and protection of homosexual individuals in south africa and abroad (cf. reddy 2010). a gay participant in munyuki and vincent’s (2017:19) study among gay, lesbian and bisexual residency students on a largely residential south african campus noted that a positive experience of one’s campus may allow ‘you to establish your own values, it allows you to know yourself because it allows you to experience life’. evans (2000) agrees that learning is enhanced when students feel validated and experience positive interactions with peers and the faculty, in and outside the classroom. seven of the 20 participants noted that the university campus may be regarded as a safe space for gay and lesbian students, attributed from the findings of a university campus as a safe space if ally programmes that promote inclusivity of gay and lesbian students exist. participants also indicated that people must be educated and sensitised about diversity and support for gay and lesbian students (cf. de wet 2017; grace 2006, 2015); this recalls de wet et al. (2016), kumashiro (2002) and msibi’s (2015) call for education of ‘others’ (through overt support and affirmation) and education about ‘others’ (knowledge to heterosexually identified students and staff about homosexuality). according to boostrom (1998), such programmes may contribute to improved academic performance. the education and sensitisation about gay and lesbian students’ issues may result in the development of inclusive policies and ‘nurturing practices’. increased sensitisation and consciousness among students and staff about issues related to homosexuality may encourage the management of education institutions to amend their policies to protect homosexual students against discrimination (de wet 2017; macgillivray 2004). these initiatives may furthermore encourage university staff members and students, their families and friends to participate in training sessions to become so-called ‘safe spaces’ and/or ‘allies’ for potential victims (evans 2000, 2002). it was also of interest that, irrespective of their self-identified racial category, some participants argued that they were openly gay and lesbian on and off campus. this was attributed to, among others, the openmindedness of their families on a structural level and on an individual level, their own personalities, self-confidence and self-acceptance, which recalls the reference of cass (1979) to ‘identity synthesis’ as an example of experiencing identity pride. examples of this include tshiamo, a self-identified coloured gay student, who argues that: ‘[i]t is important to display characteristics associated with gay identity because it often works to your advantage, when i display characteristics associated with my identity i am saying that i am comfortable with who and what i am, unlike those who do not display it, because they are afraid of adversity. for example, i believe myself to have a feminine speaking tone and i am okay and comfortable1 with it.’ (tshiamo, gay, arts) bob, a self-identified white gay faculty of arts student, embraced particular stereotypes associated with his sexual orientation; he argues that ‘i have always seen myself as flamboyant and i think that’s what characterises my gay identity. i think the gay identity is oftentimes associated with flamboyance and outspokenness’. three self-identified lesbian students, ellen, sally and zack, irrespective of their race, also indicated that their sexuality is not only characterised by their attraction to other women but also manifests in their physical appearance and the activities they like to openly engage in. they felt free and liberated to express their sexuality and were therefore afforded an opportunity to make choices on how they live their personal lives, denoting an acceptance of their supposed ‘otherness’ rather than its subordination (plummer 2015). one-to-one consultations it should be acknowledged that one-to-one consultations with lecturers, psychiatrists, psychologists and social workers (evans 2000; nel, rich & joubert 2007) may contribute to support for gay and lesbian students. eight participants thought that one-to-one consultations might be safe spaces, an evident belief supported by evans (2002), grace (2006) and harper et al. (2007). these students noted that this requires that psychologists, psychiatrists and other mental health professionals based on the university campuses must understand the individual experiences of gay and lesbian students as well as the structural constraints presented by the campus culture (e.g. potential homophobia) (francis 2017a; jagessar & msibi 2015). six participants commented on the importance of one-to-one consultation for students’ health. zintle, a lesbian law student, noted how this could contribute to reducing depression levels and, as precious, a lesbian arts student argued, less inclination to suicidal tendencies on the part of the students. such support, according to these students, could redress the exacerbation of increased levels of internalised homophobia and marginalisation (evans 2002; harper et al. 2007). zintle stated the following in this regard: ‘[s]ome people have difficulty loving and accepting who they are; they are often depressed and counselling can help them explore barriers to self-esteem and teach them ways in which they can make their happiness a priority.’ (zintle, lesbian, law) thus, support from these professionals may contribute to students’ higher levels of self-esteem and confidence (grace 2006). the classroom as a form of safe space eleven participants cited the significance of their classrooms as safe spaces; some noted that this context may become a safe space if lecturers and fellow students discourage the use of discriminative language during lectures, which might result in sexually diverse individuals feeling less judged by others (francis 2019; grace 2006; kumashiro 2002; msibi 2015). three participants (alan, mario & lungile) noted that a classroom as a safe space may be created through educating other students about the history, lives and the experiences of gay and lesbian people (richardson 2008). according to kumashiro (2002), this is referred to as ‘education about the others’, and ‘calls educators to bring visibility to ignored issues’ (msibi 2015). brown (2018:17) reaffirms this point by foregrounding the importance of providing a more ‘sophisticated understanding of the diverse identities that are converging within these spaces in order to create a safe and inclusive learning environment for all’. according to ellen, a lesbian student in the faculty of education, an inclusive classroom is characterised by the acceptance of gay and lesbian students by including them in class discussions where they will not feel segregated. in doing so, these students may also feel free to express their views and ideas without any feeling of being judged. this acceptance may have positive impacts on students’ academic performance and they may feel free to contribute during class discussions and group assignments, supporting francis’ (2013) use of forum theatre to expose students to creative and constructive methods of teaching and learning in a south african school (and university) setting. he argues that, notwithstanding some limitations of the approach, students could enact their agency to critically reflect on the principles associated with heteronormativity (francis 2013; msibi 2015; rothmann & simmonds 2015). this underscores kumashiro’s (2002) and msibi’s (2013) arguments that the nonor under-representation of sexual minorities in higher education curricula stifles attempts to critique and transform heteronormative pedagogies. the topicality and importance of implementing such course content at the university level currently intersect with the varied reactions to proposed changes in primary and secondary schools’ gender and sexuality education curriculum.2 the proposed changes envisage foci on an introduction of learners to the male and female genitalia (grade 4); the ‘normality’ of masturbation (grade 7); and identifying different forms of sexual orientation (grade 8), among others (nel & slatter 2019:1). those against the envisaged changes, including representatives of the christian pressure group, freedom of religion south africa (for sa), have indicated their disapproval of how the curriculum ‘normalises’3 homosexuality and uses particular persons, including hiv-treatment activist zackie achmat, athlete caster semenya and former constitutional court judge edwin cameron, as role models and heroes. they consider it problematic as some of these persons are hiv-positive and some identify as ‘lgbt’.4 nel and slatter (2019) note that chris klopper, president of the south african education union, described the potential changes as ‘grossly insensitive’5 and encouraged ‘boycotting’ these views notwithstanding, proponents of the changes applaud the curriculum’s emphasis on ‘permission, boundaries and respect’6 which are in keeping with the constitution (nel & slatter 2019:1). the department of basic education (2019) critiqued what they considered to be ‘[f]alse reporting by some media organisations and fake news’ that led to the ‘unnecessary confusion and anxiety among parents in particular’ and encouraged parents and the general public to provide inputs and raise concerns on the matter directly to them (etheridge 2019).7 irrespective of the views on the matter, such reactions, particularly as it relates to sexual orientation for the purpose of the article, leave us pondering the importance and implications of the decision to include gender and sexuality course content in university curricula, and its role in critiquing cisgender approaches to the topic. it is worth quoting francis (2019) in this regard. he notes that social scientists should engage debates: [a]bout the social significance of compulsory heterosexuality in south african education and argue for the need for engagement with gender and sexuality diversity not as competing with heterosexuality but in ways that suggest that compulsory heterosexuality has inevitable costs for all8 learners (francis 2019:785). openly gay/lesbian lecturer participants noted the desirability of having an openly gay/lesbian lecturer, attributing their reasons to the role that these lecturers play in inspiring students and their positive influence through autobiographical ‘life narratives’, as favoured by, among others, grace (2006). this echoes the work of griffin et al. (2007), petrovic and rosiek (2003) and rothmann (2016, 2017) who assert that lecturers could use autobiographies in class as spaces for disclosing issues that have been historically ignored or denied by providing a ‘more nuanced, balanced and thick descriptive account of the experiences of sexual minorities’ (rothmann & simmonds 2015:8). however, participants commented on how the disclosure of their lecturer’s sexual orientation in an education context may harbour potential threats, such as anxiety over potential institutional homophobia, stigmatisation, fear of exclusion and verbal and physical threats (rothmann 2016, 2017; warren 2008). sally, a lesbian student, commented on how heteronormativity inhibited the efforts on the part of her openly gay lecturer to provide help to gay and lesbian students. she continued: [o]ften as a lesbian person i may not want to communicate my problems and experiences with, for example, straight people, but may find it constructive speaking to a lesbian or gay lecturer. and the lecturer you thought might be of help and a role model is unavailable to talk to students; it’s as if their environment restricts them from discussing issues related to their sexual orientation (as) … it might destroy their image … (or) jeopardise their career. (sally, lesbian, engineering) student organisations risks and fears faced by gay and lesbian students may be curtailed by specific organisations or programmes that decrease the rates of harassment and violence to create a university context, which is relatively safer and supportive where such students may reach their full potential (consortium of higher education lgbt resource professionals 2016). those participants who viewed affiliation with a communal student organisation group as important, echoed the precepts underlined by theorists and social scientists whose work echoes the principles of queer liberationists (eide 2010), who are argued to be dedicated to ‘improving’ (jagose 1996:30) situations for homosexuals. therefore, having a visible community and participating in such groups emphasise an organised assertion ‘against heteronormative ideologies’ (seidman 2003:65) and sexual, gender and social inequalities resulting from these ideologies. twelve participants regarded it as necessary to have such designated venues that are mainly for gay and lesbian students on campus. they indicated that such a venue may create a platform where gay and lesbian people can be visible, recognised and given the attention they need in safety, and policies against discrimination that are specific and reflective of their lived experiences. two students noted that gay and lesbian students (and their organisations or movements) require and deserve equal privileges as other societies on campus. tshiamo, a gay student, commented that: ‘[j]ust like other societies that have their venues where they discuss issues concerning themselves, gay and lesbian students have to be awarded similar venues which may also help in empowering other gay and lesbian people.’ (tshiamo, gay, arts) six gay and nine lesbian participants commented on the importance of having lesbian and gay student organisations to support and potentially persuade campus management to restructure and enact policies advocating the rights of gay and lesbian students to encourage constructive change (cf. de wet 2017); also that university management should collaborate with a gay and lesbian student organisation to know how students experience the campus climate and the steps that must be taken to address the needs, challenges and contributions of gay and lesbian students (cf. rothmann & simmonds 2015). conversely, some noted a more negative view of communal safer spaces. five participants noted that being part of a visible group is not necessarily significant. participants referenced this insignificance to these groups being the ‘culprits’ or ‘cause’ for segregation and exacerbation of homophobia, as attested by fox (2007). one participant noted that these groups, with some of their principles and ideologies, unconsciously uphold heteronormative precepts through their need for equality with heterosexual people, thus upholding the notions of assimilation which makes a case that gay and lesbian students deserve equal rights and acknowledgement (milani & wolff 2015; robson 2002). adopting a post-structuralist stance, proponents of queer theory critique this thought, referring to the fact that sexual minorities should not merely be assimilated into an uncritical acceptance of heteronormative principles and ideologies (epprecht 2010). arguments in favour of creating safe spaces on the potchefstroom campus defending the rights of gay and lesbian students and identifying and restructuring policies all participants reported that they were unaware of the policies protecting gay and lesbian rights on campus as postulated in similar studies by biaggio et al. (2003) and grace (2015). the nwu’s human rights policy (2016) and diversity statement (2006) are worth considering in this regard. the former was approved by the nwu council in 2006 and reviewed and amended in 2012 (with only editorial changes), 2016 and is up for review in 2019. guided by the democratic values of the constitution, that is, ‘human dignity, equality and freedom’, as part of its main objectives, the policy seeks to: (1) [p]romote a culture of human rights, and the observance, respect and protection thereof; [and] (2) develop an awareness of human rights among the university community and its external environment. (nwu 2016:1) although it is encouraging that this document foregrounds the importance of human rights, it is worth noting that observing the rights of persons based on their sexual identity is not mentioned explicitly in the policy. considering, however, the overt emphasis on disability, gender and race: ‘the members of the north-west university human rights committee will be representative of the university community and will be sensitive to race, gender and disability’ (nwu 2016:2). the nwu diversity statement, informed by the vision contained in the education white paper 3 (department of education 1997), echoes these sentiments as it seeks to: promote equity of access and fair chances of success to all – irrespective of race, colour, gender, creed, age or class – seeking to realise their potential through higher education; support a democratic ethos and a culture of human rights by educational programmes and practices conducive to critical discourse and creative thinking, cultural tolerance and a common commitment to a humane, non-racist and non-sexist social order (nwu 2006:2).9 in the absence of an unequivocal reference to sexual orientation in both of the above, we encourage management, as do the participants of the study, to restructure these policies and statements to include sexual orientation alongside references to gender and race, evident in arguments in the work of donaldson (2015) and munyuki and vincent (2017) on similar debates. this may, according to the participants of the study, benefit those gay and lesbian students who are struggling with their sexual identity and those who wish to defend themselves against homophobia. although some felt unthreatened on campus, they believed it was important to have policies that attended to and ‘dealt’ with the needs of gay and lesbian students and staff, as these policies create a platform for other students to come out of the closet (cf. consortium of higher education lgbt resource professionals 2016). note that the various participants underlined the importance and the positive nature of formal policies that protect the rights of gay and lesbian students. mario, a gay natural sciences student, noted that the reason why some students decide to remain in the closet is ‘because they are not aware of the policies’ that protect them, an argument to which barrett et al. (2007) attest. the student further argues: ‘[i]f the university says that it embraces diversity it (must) make sure that those diverse groups complete their education free from violence or discrimination of any kind’ (mario, gay, natural sciences). this may suggest that, without necessary policies, students are likely to feel unprotected against hate crimes or discrimination. it may further prevent them from reporting incidences of these crimes. it also became apparent that students considered the restructuring of policies to be inclusive of homosexual rights (particularly for those who have not disclosed their sexual orientation), as noted by fox (2007), particularly in deciding about disclosing their identities. the construction of these spaces or policies potentially contributes to the affirmation of their identities and also challenges the system of ‘compulsory heterosexuality’ (rich 2003). likewise, ratts et al. (2013) argue that the influence, which may arise from these spaces, may be used to benefit gay and lesbian students to positively improve the campus climate and regulate the university’s policies and their execution. some participants highlighted the importance of an organised and visible group on campus, ‘especially if the group is a revolutionary movement to restructure or change policies to be inclusive’ and ‘there is a group … willing to voice out … and support you … [in] coming out of the closet’ (cf. plummer 2015; reddy 2010). this recalls corrigan and matthews’s (2003) belief that it would benefit homosexual communities to be more visible to further their shared political and socio-economic needs. sensitisation: another theme centred on how safe spaces provide students and staff, irrespective of their sexual orientation, with education and understanding of sexuality (cf. francis 2017; kumashiro 2002; msibi 2015; payne & smith 2011). eleven students noted that safe spaces provide a platform for sensitisation, which might bring about an eradication of misconceptions and stereotypes of gay and lesbian students and may thus contribute to making the campus a ‘safer’ (fox & ore 2010) and more inclusive space (macgillivray 2004) to eradicate homophobic bullying (birkett, koenig & espelage 2009). one lesbian student argued that, through surveys or testimonials (macgillivray 2004) monitoring students’ experiences on campus, campus management may be encouraged to restructure policies to protect sexual minorities against discrimination. safe social networking and support one of the key themes that emerged on the potential positive features of safe spaces came from the six participants who commented on the importance of safe spaces in creating a positive platform for gay and lesbian students, a thought commented on by alvarez and schneider (2008) and evans (2002). batso, brenda, dee, santo, thinus and tshiamo regarded safe spaces as safe social networking and ‘fun’ places as the university climate may often not be favourable; a safe space therefore becomes a ‘safe haven’ and a comfortable context where they could securely express themselves. this is supported by hind (2004). participants cited the importance of having gay and lesbian friends for social support. while some singled out gay and lesbian friends as the most likely support, they noted that potential sources for social resilience may come from different people or allies (biegel 2010; francis 2017; rothmann 2014), including heterosexual friends and lecturers. bringing people together, according to fetner and elafros (2015:574), is one aim of safe spaces, substantiated in the narratives of the participants. according to plummer (2015), such spaces tend to question the existing orders by mobilising resources (also mentioned by one student), setting up new practices (such as annual surveys), tactics and strategies through activist performance (policies, according to findings from participants) to diffuse into varied cultures and potentially challenge and change the social order. aligned with plummer’s argument, van den berg (2016) asserts that it is a queer thinker’s task to interrogate existing unjust principles that uphold disciplinary structures of conformity and visions of heterosexuality, which intimidate and constrain people’s identities and life choices. kumashiro’s (2002) ‘anti-oppressive education’ paradigm is also evident as he too advocates providing a context where one could critically educate and sensitise individuals about the heteronormative ‘othering’ of sexual minorities (cf. francis 2017b; msibi 2015). regardless of these efforts, it would be remiss if a focus is not placed on the potential implications of creating and/or providing safe spaces on this campus. challenges associated with the provision of safe spaces on the potchefstroom campus regardless of the discussion on the importance of acknowledging sexual diversity and plurality along intersectional lines, one of the key themes raised by the participants was that safe spaces contribute to the creation of exclusive and marginalised communities (cf. fox & ore 2010). some noted that the influence of safe spaces may prevent members from concealing their identities if they so wish and how, through designated venues and organisations, these spaces tend to be segregated from the larger campus community (robinson 2012) to provide only sexual minority students with, what walsh-haines (2012:15) refers to as, their ‘place at the table’. with sexual minorities being oppressed through exclusion, these very spaces tend to engage in the practice of reverse discourse only changing the direction of power and not the foundational ideologies on which this discourse relies (cf. foucault 1980). this results in embracing an originally oppressive discourse in a larger societal space (cf. milani & wolff 2015); stereotypes, values and homogenised views of what it means to be gay or lesbian are not challenged or inhibited, but are rather intensified (fox & ore 2010); and therefore result in the reinforcement of homonormativity. as noted by alan, a gay arts student, these safe spaces resemble ‘stereotypically gay’ organisations. one can engage the preceding reference to provide gay and lesbian students with ‘similar venues.’10 to ‘discuss issues concerning themselves’. although one cannot generalise this quote, it is evidently informed by principles associated with homonormativity that do not contest the dominant heteronormative assumptions and institutions, but argue in favour of being assimilated into an existing heterosexual context, thus retaining heterosexuality as a normative ideal (brown 2018; butler et al. 2003; jagessar & msibi 2015; mwaba 2009) while potentially reinforcing a demobilised gay and lesbian constituency and a privatised gay culture (rothmann 2017). this may result in, as evident in jagessar and msibi’s (2015) research on the experiences of sexual minority students of the university of kwazulu-natal, gay and lesbian students internalising, normalising and even trivialising overt and covert heteronormative or homophobic treatment from others, as it is seemingly ‘not all that bad’ (jagessar & msibi 2015:71), thus unwittingly providing ‘organised consent’ (atkinson & de palma 2009) to the centrality of heterosexuality as opposed to homosexuality. this echoes the contributions of lesch et al. (2017) on the experiences of same-sex student couples at the stellenbosch university. their findings reaffirmed the centrality of heterosexual hegemony; irrespective of efforts on behalf of the university’s management to create a more ‘inclusive’ campus culture, lesbian students continued navigating between visibility and invisibility to encourage ‘pro-social’ behaviour towards them versus avoiding homophobia, respectively. evident in the narratives from the present study about belonging to a gay or lesbian organisation, is an attempt, as noted by alan, ‘to be like other people … what make us unique and trying to equalise myself with another person means that i regard how other people behave as normal’ (alan, gay, arts). this recalls asencio’s (2011:337) argument that homogenous homosexual spaces may reinforce homonormativity as it may reinforce ‘the norms and practices within the gay community that support heteronormativity and marginalise certain forms of gender and sexuality’. this was echoed by a gay participant, santo, who believes: ‘[t]hat visible gay groups sometimes lose their focus on being different and they start to pursue equality with heterosexuals, since heterosexuality is regarded as normal; these groups then try to reinforce normality according to what is considered normal by a heterosexual community.’ (santo, gay, engineering) according to francis (2017b), in his critical engagement with kumashiro (2002) and francis and msibi’s (2011) work, it may further reinforce heterosexism and further ‘marginalise’ sexual minorities as ‘deviant’, possibly resulting in further internalised homophobia, silence and isolation by sexual minorities (cf. francis 2017b:25). the narratives of two participants (dee and thinus) suggest that while safe spaces may be ‘safer’ for some sexual minorities, it may not be easy for those who have not disclosed their sexuality to engage with others in such spaces, particularly when they are classrooms, offices and buildings. these marginalised spaces, according to fox (2007), tend to further exacerbate the potential for homophobic discrimination and may further reinforce compulsory heterosexuality. according to van den berg (2016), this separatist stance adopted by safe spaces might be problematic, as it upholds the idea of a single and homogeneous identity category for homosexual students and its separation from a potentially oppressive and dominant heteronormative culture; also tending to, contradictorily, make them both ‘invisible’ and ‘too visible’ (cf. de wet et al. 2016). the preceding views (whether in favour of or against compulsory heterosexual roles), in fact, contradictorily challenge and uphold the centrality of heteronormativity (jackson & scott 2010), insofar as these participants, on the one hand, display liberationist and queer theoretical tendencies to challenge gender and sexual identity stereotypes and, on the other hand, tend to display assimilationist inclinations insofar as they seek to emphasise ‘sameness’ and association with heterosexuality (van den berg 2016). such laudable attempts notwithstanding, a liberationist tendency may, contradictorily, both transgress and reinforce heteronormativity, insofar as those who refute heterosexual ideals through emphasising their differences as opposed to similarities with heterosexuality, may risk further ‘othering’ and ‘objectification’ (cf. de wet et al. 2016; rothmann 2016; rothmann & simmonds 2015) of the supposedly uniquely different gay and lesbian identity within a heteronormative campus context, rather than only critiquing it. another limitation of safe spaces is the exacerbation of naiveté by students owing to the ‘false’ sense of security they may create (cf. fox & ore 2010). one lesbian arts student, batso, mentioned that she has never faced assault while on campus; she also attributed her positive experiences to the progress the campus is making in providing an opportunity for forming gay and lesbian societies, a thought evident in the work of garcia-alonso (2004). from a queer theoretical stance, one should be wary to assume that such separate (or exclusive) spaces and a student’s individual agency indicate complete acceptance by the country’s larger cultural scenario (cf. jackson & scott 2010). it may rather address the continuing efforts of sexual minorities to assimilate into either exclusively homonormative spaces or conform to the mainstream and ‘tolerant’ heteronormative gendered and sexual context to avoid potential discrimination (cf. atkinson & de palma 2009; milani & wolff 2015). joining gender and sexually diverse student organisations, students simultaneously (if unwittingly) enact heteronormative and homonormative sexual identities, as they may ‘naturalise, normalise and legitimise some expressions of same-sex desire, at the expense of others’, thus assimilating into a ‘separate, private and non-political sexual culture’ without questioning the dominance of heteronormativity (milani & wolff 2015:67). conclusion and recommendations participants emphasised the capacity of safe spaces to defend the rights of gay and lesbian students through, among others, empowerment. safe spaces were also seen as bringing about sensitisation on issues related to sexual diversity and providing safe social networking and supportive spaces, possibly contributing to improving the healthy development and functioning of gay and lesbian students and improved self-esteem and confidence. pertaining to the limitations, some of the students did not regard safe spaces as important or necessary as they may tend to create an exclusive and marginalised community and simultaneously exacerbate the potential for homophobic discrimination against sexual minorities. from the findings, it appeared that all participants were unaware of the policies that protect the rights of gay and lesbian students; furthermore, the experiences they addressed underlined the need to direct attention to the implementation and potential restructuring of institutional policies to inform students of their rights on campus. a multidimensional strategy of inclusion and support is required to move the institution beyond access and beyond safety. institutions should encourage an appreciation of diversity in these contexts and avoid the reinforcement of homonormative and gay sensibility stereotypes that may lead to further exclusion from within the gay and lesbian community (cf. brown 2018; poynter & washington 2005; rothmann 2014). in keeping with the arguments of lesch et al. (2017) at their research site, the nwu management is commended for creating an inclusionary climate for gender and sexually diverse students. management is, however, encouraged to further intervene and restructure the existing human rights policy and diversity statement, so that explicit references are made to the protection of gender and sexually diverse persons. likewise, the university should annually conduct awareness campaigns on diversity issues. management should be encouraged to initiate and support workshops, seminars, conferences and courses on the lived experiences of the gay and lesbian community, in general, and their students/staff constituents in particular. it would also be significant if student counselling centre and university health centre staff are trained on gender and sexual diversity issues. the diverse experiences of gay and lesbian students on the campus, informed by their personal fears; the impact of societal and campus culture, that separate venues or societies may exacerbate their visibility, which may be problematic for some; that allies (e.g. openly gay and lesbian lecturers) too may face adversity if they assisted students; problems associated with the ‘normalisation’ of heteronormativity – all contribute to deciding whether or not such spaces are necessary. with visibility being most important to gay and lesbian students, findings suggest that the introduction of formal policies may be essential for decisions on the disclosure of their identities. furthermore, there should be an engagement with management to encourage an awareness of the importance associated with creating awareness among students and staff about the particular policies that centre on the protection of the gay and lesbian community. restructuring these policies may also contribute to the declaration of their identities, serve as indicator of the safety measures provided for gay and lesbian students, and how these safety measures, through formal policies, may enable these students to report incidents associated with hate crimes on campus. acknowledgements this article is based on the master’s dissertation of tshanduko tshilongo at the north-west university (2018), entitled: ‘exploring the need for safe spaces for lesbian and gay students of the north-west university potchefstroom campus’ by tshanduko tshilongo, available here: https://dspace.nwu.ac.za/bitstream/handle/10394/28292/tshilongo_t_2018.pdf?sequence=1&isallowed=y. competing interests the authors have declared that no competing interests exist. authors’ contributions j.r. was the research supervisor for the master’s study. t.t. was responsible for the fieldwork, data analysis and writing-up of the master’s dissertation. j.r. and t.t. collaborated on the conceptualisation, writing-up and editing of the article. ethical consideration ethical clearance to conduct the study was obtained from the research ethics committee of the faculty of arts, north-west university, potchefstroom campus (ethical clearance number: 00471-15-a7, 2015-11-12). funding this research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors. data availability statement data sharing is not applicable to this article as no new data were created or analysed in this study. disclaimer the views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any affiliated agency of the authors. references ackerly, b. & true, j., 2010, doing feminist research in political & social science, palgrave macmillan, london. alvarez, s.d. & schneider, j., 2008, ‘one college campus‘s need for a safe zone: a case study’, journal of gender studies 17(10), 71–74. https://doi.org/10.1080/09589230701838461 arndt, m. & de bruin, g., 2006, ‘attitudes toward lesbians and gay men: relations with gender, race and religion among university students’, psychology in society 33, 16–30. asencio, m., 2011, ‘“locas”, respect, and masculinity: gender conformity in migrant puerto rican gay masculinities’, gender & society 25(3), 335–354. https://doi.org/10.1177/0891243211409214 atkinson, e. & de palma, r., 2009, ‘un-believing the matrix: queering consensual heteronormativity’, gender and education 21(1), 17–29. https://doi.org/10.1080/09540250802213149 babbie, e. & mouton, j., 2001, the practice of social research, oxford university press, new york. barrett, m., l. digiovine, holmberg, m. & gudelunas, d., 2007, the collegiate closet: a policy report, pp. 1–23, fairfield university, fairfield. beemyn, g. & rankin, s.r., 2016, ‘creating a gender-inclusive campus’, in y.m. miguel & s. tobias (eds.), trans studies: the challenge to hetero/homo normativities, pp. 21–32, rutgers university press, new york. bhana, d., 2012, ‘understanding and addressing homophobia in schools: a view from teachers’, south african journal of education 32(3), 307–318. https://doi.org/10.15700/saje.v32n3a659 bhana, d., 2014, ‘“managing” the rights of gays and lesbians: reflections from some south african secondary schools’, education, citizenship and social justice 9(1), 67–80. https://doi.org/10.1177/1746197913497663 biaggio, m., orchard, s., larson, j., petrino, k. & mihara, r., 2003, ‘guidelines for gay/lesbian/bisexual affirmative educational practices in graduate psychology programs’, professional psychology, research and practice 34(5), 548–554. https://doi.org/10.1037/0735-7028.34.5.548 biegel, s., 2010, the right to be out: sexual orientation and gender identity in america‘s public schools, university of minnesota press, minneapolis, mn. birkett, m., koenig, b. & espelage, d., 2009, ‘lgb and questioning students in schools: the moderating effects of homophobic bullying and school climate on negative outcomes’, journal of youth adolescence 38(7), 989–1000. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-008-9389-1 boostrom, r., 1998, ‘“safe spaces”: reflections on an educational metaphor’, journal of curriculum studies 30(4), 397–408. https://doi.org/10.1080/002202798183549 braun, v. & clarke, v., 2006, ‘using thematic analysis in psychology’, qualitative research in psychology 3(2), 77–101. https://doi.org/10.1191/1478088706qp063oa brown, a., 2018, ‘geographies of heteronormativity: the source of symbolic homophobic violence at a south african university’, african safety promotion: a journal of injury and violence promotion 16(2), 9–20. brown, a. & de wet, a., 2018, ‘responding to sexual diversity in education’, in a. de wet (ed.), diversity and difference in south african schools: an education law perspective, pp. 119–146, juta & co, cape town. bryman, a., 2016, social research methods, international edn., oxford university press, oxford. butler, a.h., alpaslan, a.h., strümpher, j. & astbury, g., 2003, ‘gay and lesbian youth experiences of homophobia in south african secondary education’, journal of gay and lesbian issues in education 1(2), 3–28. https://doi.org/10.1300/j367v01n02_02 cass, v.c., 1979, ‘homosexual identity formation: a theoretical model’, journal of homosexuality 4(3), 219–235. https://doi.org/10.1300/j082v04n03_01 chang, y., 2005, ‘through queers’ eyes: critical educational ethnography in queer studies’, the review of education, pedagogy, and cultural studies 27(2), 171–208. https://doi.org/10.1080/10714410590963857 consortium of higher education lgbt resource professionals, 2016, vision and mission statement, home page, viewed 22 november 2016, from http://www.lgbtcampus.org. corrigan, p. & matthews, a., 2003, ‘stigma and disclosure: implications for coming out of the closet’, journal of mental health 12(3), 235–248. https://doi.org/10.1080/0963823031000118221 creswell, j.w. & creswell, j.d., 2018, research design: qualitative, quantitative & mixed methods approaches, 5th edn., sage, london. de palma, r. & francis, d., 2014, ‘south african life orientation teachers: (not) teaching about sexual diversity’, journal of homosexuality 61(12), 1687–1711. https://doi.org/10.1080/00918369.2014.951256 department of basic education, 2019, comprehensive sexuality education: scripted lessons, viewed 17 november 2019, from https://www.education.gov.za/home/comprehensivesexualityeducation.aspx department of education, 1997, white paper 3: a programme for the transformation of higher education, doe, pretoria. de wet, a., 2017, ‘human rights and sexuality – reimagining the language of equality towards transformation in and through education’, south african journal of higher education 31(6), 113–132. https://doi.org/10.20853/31-6-1628 de wet, a., rothmann, j. & simmonds, s., 2016, ‘human rights: protecting sexual minorities or reinforcing the boundaries of “the closet”?’, south african review of sociology 47(3), 85–109. https://doi.org/10.1080/21528586.2016.1163291 donaldson, n., 2015, ‘what about the queers? the institutional culture of heteronormativity and its implications for queer staff and students’, in p. tabensky & s. matthews (eds.), being at home. race, institutional culture and transformation at south african higher education institutions, pp. 130–146, university of kwazulu-natal press, pietermaritzburg. eide, e., 2010, ‘strategic essentialism and ethnification. hand in glove?’, nordicom review 31(2), 63–78. https://doi.org/10.1515/nor-2017-0130 epprecht, m., 2010, ‘understanding homophobia in africa today’, perspectives 4(10), 10–15. https://doi.org/10.2979/africatoday.58.1.55 etheridge, j., 2019, fake news hurting debate on comprehensive sexuality education – department, viewed 17 november 2019, from https://www.news24.com/southafrica/news/fake-news-hurting-debate-on-comprehensive-sexuality-education-department-20191117 evans, n.j., 2000, ‘creating a positive learning environment for gay, lesbian, and bisexual students’, new directions for teaching and learning 2000(82), 81–87. https://doi.org/10.1002/tl.8208 evans, n.j., 2002, ‘the impact of an lgbt safe zone project on campus climate’, journal of college student development 43(4), 522–539. fetner, t. & elafros, a., 2015, ‘the gsa difference: lgbtq and ally experiences in high schools with and without gay-straight alliances’, social sciences 4(3), 563–581. https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci4030563 finkel, m.j., storaasli, r.d., bandele, a. & schaefer, v., 2003, ‘diversity training in graduate school: an exploratory evaluation of the safe zone project’, professional psychology: research and practice 34(5), 555–561. https://doi.org/10.1037/0735-7028.34.5.555 foucault, m., 1980, the history of sexuality, vol. 1, pantheon, new york. fox, c., 2007, ‘from transaction to transformation: (en)countering white heteronormativity in “safe spaces”’, college english 69(5), 496–511. fox, c. & ore, r.e., 2010, ‘(un)covering normalized gender and race subjectivities in lgbt safe spaces’, feminist studies 36(3), 629–649. francis, d., 2013, ‘“you know the homophobic stuff is not in me, like us, it’s out there”. using participatory theatre to challenge heterosexism and heteronormativity in a south african school’, south african journal of education 33(4), 1–14. https://doi.org/10.15700/201412171338 francis, d., 2017a, ‘homophobia and sexuality diversity in south african schools: a review’, journal of lgbt youth 14(4), 359–379. https://doi.org/10.1080/19361653.2017.1326868 francis, d., 2017b, troubling the teaching and learning of gender and sexual diversity in south african education, palgrave macmillan, new york. francis, d., 2019, ‘“keeping it straight” what do south african queer youth say they need from sexuality education?’, journal of youth studies 22(6), 772–790. https://doi.org/10.1080/13676261.2018.1539223 francis, d. & msibi, t., 2011, ‘teaching about heterosexism: challenging homophobia in south africa’, journal of lgbt youth 8(2), 157–173. https://doi.org/10.1080/19361653.2011.553713 garcia-alonso, p.m., 2004, ‘from surviving to thriving: an investigation of the utility of support groups designed to address the special needs of sexual minority youth in public high schools’, doctoral dissertation, dissertation abstracts international, 65(3a), (umi no. 3126026), loyola university. ghaziani, a., 2015, ‘gay enclaves face prospect of being passe’: how assimilation affects the spatial expressions of sexuality in the united states’, international journal of urban and regional research 39(4), 756–771. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2427.12209 grace, a.p., 2006, ‘writing the queer self: using autobiography to mediate inclusive teacher education in canada’, teaching and teacher education 22(7), 826–835. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2006.04.026 grace, a.p., 2015, growing into resilience: sexual and gender minority youth in canada, university of toronto press, toronto, on. grace, a.p., 2017, ‘two good gay teachers: pioneering advocate-practitioners confronting homophobia in schooling in british columbia, canada’, irish educational studies 36(1), 43–56. https://doi.org/10.1080/03323315.2017.1289701 grace, a.p. & benson, f.j., 2000, ‘using autobiographical queer life narratives of teachers to connect personal, political and pedagogical spaces’, international journal of inclusive education 4(2), 89–109. https://doi.org/10.1080/136031100284830 graziano, k.j., 2004, ‘coming out on a south african university campus: adaptations of gay men and lesbians’, society in transition 35(2), 273–286. https://doi.org/10.1080/21528586.2004.10419119 griffin, p., d’errico, k., harro, b. & schiff, t., 2007, ‘heterosexism curriculum design’, in m. adams, l.a. bell & p. griffin (eds.), teaching for diversity and social justice, pp. 195–218, routledge, new york. hames, m., 2007, ‘sexual identity and transformation at a south african university’, social dynamics 33(1), 52–77. https://doi.org/10.1080/02533950708628743 harper, g.w., omar bashir jamil, m.p.h. & wilson, b.d.m., 2007, ‘collaborative community-based research as activism: giving voice and hope to lesbian, gay, and bisexual youth’, journal of gay & lesbian psychotherapy 11(3–4), 99–119. https://doi.org/10.1300/j236v11n03_06 hind, t., 2004, being real: promoting the emotional health and mental well-being of lesbian, gay and bisexual young people accessing pace youth work services, project for advice counselling and education, london. jackson, s. & scott, s., 2010, theorizing sexuality, mcgraw hill, new york. jagessar, v. & msibi, t., 2015, ‘“it’s not that bad”: homophobia in the residences of a university in kwazulu-natal, durban, south africa’, agenda 29(1), 63–73. https://doi.org/10.1080/10130950.2015.1022984 jagose, a., 1996, queer theory: an introduction, new york university press, new york. judge, m., 2017, blackwashing homophobia: violence and the politics of sexuality, gender and race, routledge, london. kumashiro, k., 2002, troubling education: queer activism and anti-oppressive pedagogy, routledge falmer, new york. lesch, e., brits, s. & naidoo, n.t., 2017, ‘“walking on eggshells not to offend people”: experiences of same-sex student couples at a south african university’, south african journal of higher education 31(4), 127–149. https://doi.org/10.20853/31-4-893 macgillivray, i., 2004, sexual orientation and school policy, rowman & littlefield, lanham, nd. mcarthur, t., 2015, ‘homophobic violence in a northern cape school: learners confront the issue’, agenda 29(3), 1–7. https://doi.org/10.1080/10130950.2015.1056587 mendos, l.r., 2019, state sponsored homophobia, 13th edn., ilga, geneva. milani, t.m. & wolff, b., 2015, ‘queer skin, straight masks: same-sex weddings and the discursive construction of identities and effects on a south african website’, critical arts 29(2), 165–182. https://doi.org/10.1080/02560046.2015.1039203 msibi, t., 2009, ‘not crossing the line: masculinities and homophobic violence in south africa’, agenda 23(80), 50–54. https://doi.org/10.1080/10130950.2009.9676240 msibi, t., 2013, ‘denied love: same-sex desire, agency and social oppression among african men who engage in same-sex relations’, agenda 27(2), 105–116. https://doi.org/10.1080/10130950.2013.811014 msibi, t., 2015, ‘the teaching of sexual and gender diversity issues to pre-service teachers at the university of kwazulu-natal: lessons from student exam responses’, alternation 21(12), 385–410. munyuki, c. & vincent, l.d., 2017, ‘“it’s tough being gay”: gay, lesbian and bisexual students’ experiences of being “at home” in south african university life’, south african journal of higher education 31(4), 14–33. https://doi.org/10.20853/31-2-869 mwaba, k., 2009, ‘attitudes and beliefs about homosexuality and same-sex marriage among a sample of south african students’, social behaviour and personality 37(6), 801–804. https://doi.org/10.2224/sbp.2009.37.6.801 nduna, m., mthombeni, a., mavhandu-mudzusi, a.h. & mogotsi, i., 2017, ‘studying sexuality: lgbti experiences in institutions of higher education in southern africa’, south african journal of higher education 31(4), 1–13. https://doi.org/10.20853/31-4-1330 nel, j. & slatter, l., 2019, ‘skok in skole: minder seks, asseblief!’, rapport 1. nel, j.a., rich, e. & joubert, k., 2007, ‘lifting the veil: experiences of gay men in a therapy group’, south african journal of psychology 37(2), 284–306. https://doi.org/10.1177/008124630703700205 neumann, s.l., 2005, ‘creating a “safe zone” for sexual minority students in the psychology classroom’, teaching of psychology 32(2), 121–123. north-west university (nwu), 2006, diversity statement, north-west university institutional office, potchefstroom. north-west university (nwu), 2016, human rights policy, north-west university institutional office, potchefstroom. o’leary, z., 2014, the essential guide to doing your research project, sage, los angeles, ca. oswin, n., 2007, ‘producing homonormativity in neoliberal south africa: recognition, redistribution, and the equality project’, signs: journal of women in culture and society 32(3), 649–669. https://doi.org/10.1086/510337 payne, e.c. & smith, m., 2011, ‘the reduction of stigma in schools: a new professional development model for empowering educators to support lgbtq students’, journal of lgbt youth 8(2), 174–200. https://doi.org/10.1080/19361653.2011.563183 petrovic, j. & rosiek, j., 2003, ‘heteronormative subjectivities of christian preservice teachers’, equity and excellence in education 36(2), 161–169. https://doi.org/10.1080/10665680303509 plummer, k., 2015, cosmopolitan sexualities: hope and humanist imagination, polity press, cambridge. poynter, k.j. & tubbs, n.j., 2008, ‘safe zones: creating lgbt safe space ally programs’, journal of lgbt youth 5(1), 121–132. https://doi.org/10.1300/j524v05n01_10 poynter, k.j. & washington, d., 2005, ‘multiple identities: creating community on campus for lgbt students’, new directions for student services 2005(111), 41–47. https://doi.org/10.1002/ss.172 rankin, s.r., 2006, ‘lgbtqa students on campus: is higher education making the grade?’ journal of gay and lesbian issues in education 3(2–3), 111–117. https://doi.org/10.1300/j367v03n02_11 ratts, m.j., kaloper, m., mcready, c., tighe, l., butler, s.k., dempsey, k. et al., 2013, ‘safe space programs in k-12 schools: creating a visible presence of lgbtq allies’, journal of lgbt issues in counselling 7(4), 387–404. https://doi.org/10.1080/15538605.2013.839344 reddy, v., 2010, ‘identity, law, justice. thinking about sexual rights and citizenship in post-apartheid south africa’, perspectives 4(10), 18–23. republic of south africa (rsa), 1996, constitution of the republic of south africa (act no. 108 of 1996), viewed 01 november 2019, from http://www.justice.gov.za/legislation/constitution/saconstitution-web-eng.pdf rich, a., 2003, ‘compulsory heterosexuality and lesbian existence’, women: sex and sexuality 5(4), 631–660. https://doi.org/10.1353/jowh.2003.0079 richardson, e., 2008, ‘researching lgb youth in post-apartheid south africa’, journal of gay and lesbian issues in education 3(2/3), 135–140. https://doi.org/10.1300/j367v03n02_15 robinson, b., 2012, ‘is this what equality looks like?’, sexuality research and social policy 9(4), 327–336. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13178-012-0084-3 robinson, k.h. & ferfolja, t., 2001, ‘“what are we doing this for?” dealing with lesbian and gay issues in teacher education’, british journal of sociology of education 22(1), 121–133. https://doi.org/10.1080/01425690020030828 robson, r., 2002, ‘assimilation, marriage, and lesbian liberation’, temple law review 75(4), 710–820. rothmann, j., 2014, ‘(de)constructing the heterosexual/homosexual binary: the identity construction of gay male academics and students in south african tertiary education’, unpublished doctoral thesis, department of sociology, north-west university, potchefstroom. rothmann, j., 2016, ‘the (de)professionalisation of the gay male academic identity: locking the closet door on south african university campuses’, south african review of sociology 47(4), 40–59. https://doi.org/10.1080/21528586.2016.1182444 rothmann, j., 2017, ‘the role of self-reflexivity on the part of gay male academics on south african university campuses’, acta academica 49(1), 1–31. https://doi.org/10.18820/24150479/aa49i1.4 rothmann, j., 2018, ‘a social constructionist approach to resilience for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, queer and/or questioning academics and students in south african universities’, transformation in higher education 3(0), 1–8. a34. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v3i0.34 rothmann, j. & simmonds, s., 2015, ‘“othering” non-normative sexualities through objectification of “the homosexual”: discursive discrimination by pre-service teachers’, agenda 103(1), 116–126. https://doi.org/10.1080/10130950.2015.1010288 rumens, n., 2011, queer company: the role and meaning of friendship in gay men‘s work lives, ashgate, burlington. sanlo, r., rankin, s. & schoenberg, r. (eds.), 2002, our place on campus: lesbian, gay bisexual, transgender services and programs in higher education, greenwood press, westport, ct. seidman, s., 2003, the social construction of sexuality, w.w. norton and company, new york. sithole, s., 2015, ‘challenges faced by gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (glbt) students at a south african university’, the journal for transdisciplinary research in southern africa 11(4), 193–219. https://doi.org/10.4102/td.v11i4.54 spivak, g.c., 1987, in other worlds: essays in cultural politics, methuen, new york. tshilongo, t., 2018, ‘exploring the need for safe spaces for lesbian and gay students of the north-west university potchefstroom campus’, master’s dissertation, north-west university, potchefstroom. van den berg, e., 2016, ‘“the closet”: a dangerous heteronormative space’, the south african review of sociology 47(3), 25–44. https://doi.org/10.1080/21528586.2016.1182445 walsh-haines, g., 2012, ‘the egyptian blogosphere: policing gender and sexuality and the consequences for queer emancipation’, journal of middle east women’s studies 8(3), 41–62. https://doi.org/10.2979/jmiddeastwomstud.8.3.41 warner, m., 1991, ‘fear of a queer planet’, social text 9(14), 3–17. warren, c., 2008, ‘fieldwork in the gay world: issues in phenomenological research’, gender and research 33(4), 133–145. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-4560.1977.tb02524.x wilson, s. & maclean, r., 2011, research methods and data analysis for psychology, mcgraw-hill, london. footnotes 1. emphasis added. 2. the rapport newspaper reported on the leak of proposed curriculum content on gender and sexual diversity in south african schools. further meetings between the south african education union and the south african department of education are scheduled for late november 2019 to further engage these changes and their implications (nel & slatter 2019). 3. translated from afrikaans: ‘normalisering’. 4. abbreviation used in the newspaper article. 5. translated from afrikaans: ‘grof onsensitief’. 6. translated from afrikaans: ‘toestemming, grense en respek’ (nel & slatter 2019:1). 7. the department of basic education (2019) published the full lesson plans for its comprehensive sexuality education (cse) curriculum on its official website in november 2019. references to sexual orientation on primary school level included quotes of the bill of rights as part of the grade 5 and 6 learner guides, whereas grade 7 learners are introduced to short definitions for sex, gender and sexual orientation. high school foci include definitions and short discussions of concepts including ‘gay’, ‘homosexual’ and ‘sexual orientation’ and activities on sexual violence directed toward ‘innocent people’ (e.g. ‘gay women’) in the grade 8 learner guide. there is a differentiation between the different sexual and gender identities that comprise the lgbtiq+ community in the grade 10 learner guide. the references to zackie achmat, caster semenya and edwin cameron appear in the grade 11 learner guide (department of basic education 2019) 8. emphasis added. 9. emphasis added. 10. emphasis added. abstract introduction colonialism, apartheid and higher education in south africa eurocentrism and epistemic violence in ‘new’ south africa africa in the current curriculum fundamental change fit to teach at a decolonised university? conclusion acknowledgements references footnotes about the author(s) savo heleta unit for higher education internationalisation in the developing world, nelson mandela metropolitan university, south africa citation heleta, s., 2016, ‘decolonisation of higher education: dismantling epistemic violence and eurocentrism in south africa’, transformation in higher education 1(1), a9. http://dx.doi.org/10.4102/the.v1i1.9 note: dr savo heleta works at nelson mandela metropolitan university in port elizabeth, south africa. he writes this article in his personal capacity. the views expressed are his own and do not necessarily represent the views of his employer. original research decolonisation of higher education: dismantling epistemic violence and eurocentrism in south africa savo heleta received: 19 july 2016; accepted: 05 sept. 2016; published: 25 oct. 2016 copyright: © 2016. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract since the end of the oppressive and racist apartheid system in 1994, epistemologies and knowledge systems at most south african universities have not considerably changed; they remain rooted in colonial, apartheid and western worldviews and epistemological traditions. the curriculum remains largely eurocentric and continues to reinforce white and western dominance and privilege. this article traces the roots of eurocentrism and epistemic violence at universities. the author argues that south africa must tackle and dismantle the epistemic violence and hegemony of eurocentrism, completely rethink, reframe and reconstruct the curriculum and place south africa, southern africa and africa at the centre of teaching, learning and research. however, this will not be easy as opposition to change is entrenched in the university structures. the movement to radically transform and decolonise higher education must find ways to hold institutions accountable and maintain the non-violent and intellectual struggle until epistemic violence and eurocentrism are dismantled. introduction south african students and a small number of progressive academics began a campaign in 2015 to decolonise the curriculum at universities ‘by ending the domination of western epistemological traditions, histories and figures’ (molefe 2016:32). in particular, the students have called for the end of domination by ‘white, male, western, capitalist, heterosexual, european worldviews’ in higher education and incorporation of other south african, african and global ‘perspectives, experiences [and] epistemologies’ as the central tenets of the curriculum, teaching, learning and research in the country (shay 2016). students have questioned not only the lack of transformation in the higher education sector but also the settlement that ended apartheid more than two decades ago. jacobs (2016) calls the settlement between the apartheid regime and the african national congress ‘the series of political, social and economic deals in which the racial inequalities of apartheid and wealth disparities largely remain intact and which benefits whites in general’. while the 1994 settlement has brought political change, it has not done much to tackle poverty and inequality, which is an all-too-common lived experience of the black majority. thus, the student activists speak about disrupting ‘whiteness’ in society, the economy and at universities. the whiteness they are trying to disrupt has been imposed since colonial times as a ‘symbol of purity’ and has defined ‘what it means to be civilised, modern and human’ (sardar 2008:xiii). this whiteness is still engaged in daily open and/or subtle racism and marginalisation of black people. nwadeyi (2016) argues that ‘colonialism, apartheid and other vehicles for entrenching white supremacy did not only affect political rights or economic freedoms’. they have affected every aspect of life and their effects and legacies are still entrenched in south africa. writing about frantz fanon’s works in a foreword to the 2008 edition of black skins, white masks, sardar (2008:xviii) admits that much has changed in the world since fanon wrote this and other books. however, ‘the underlying structures of oppression and injustice remain the same’. this is particularly true in post-apartheid south africa. whereas political freedom was achieved in 1994, many structural imbalances, inequalities and injustices remain stumbling blocks for the emancipation of black south africans. institutions of higher learning are one of these stumbling blocks. as sardar (2008) points out: if western civilisation and culture are responsible for colonial racism, and europe itself has a racist structure, then we should not be too surprised to find this racism reflected in the discourses of knowledge that emanate from this civilisation and that they work to ensure that structural dominance is maintained. (p. xv) the universities have done very little since 1994 to open up ‘to different bodies and traditions of knowledge and knowledge-making in new and exploratory ways’. while all universities have had new policies and frameworks that speak about equality, equity, transformation and change, institutional cultures and epistemological traditions have not considerably changed. policies might be there but the willingness to implement them is lacking (department of education1 2008:41). the south african higher education system ‘remains a colonial outpost’ up to this day, reproducing ‘hegemonic identities instead of eliminating hegemony’ (mckaiser 2016). mbembe (2016:32) argues that ‘there is something profoundly wrong when … syllabuses designed to meet the needs of colonialism and apartheid should continue well into the liberation era’. this is why it is of paramount importance to bring about fundamental epistemological change at institutions of higher learning. this article traces the roots of epistemic violence at south african universities. the focus is on the curriculum, which remains largely eurocentric and continues to reinforce white and western dominance and privilege while at the same time being full of stereotypes, prejudices and patronising views about africa and its people. the article stresses that south africa must completely rethink, reframe and reconstruct the eurocentric and colonial curriculum and teaching methods at universities. this is in line with letsekha’s argument that the higher education system requires a ‘fundamental overhaul of the whole epistemological model underlying the current educational system’ (2013:9). however, this will not be easy, as there are many powerful individuals and interest groups who will do all it takes to contest, resist and water down the change in order to maintain the status quo. students, progressive academics, university staff and the concerned public must maintain the non-violent, intellectual, evidence-based, emotional and popular struggle until epistemic violence and eurocentrism are dismantled. colonialism, apartheid and higher education in south africa this section reflects on higher education during colonial and apartheid times. eurocentrism, racism, segregation and epistemic violence at south african universities were not products of the apartheid state. rather, these problems began with the establishment of the universities by the british colonialists and further evolved after 1948 (sehoole 2006:4). imperial and colonial rule included both direct and indirect socio-economic and political control, dominance and exploitation of resource-rich parts of the world by the european powers in the form of settler or extractive colonies (mamdani 1996:17). apart from exploitation, one of the drivers of colonial and imperial occupation was the belief by the colonialists that they were superior human beings on a mission to save and ‘civilise’ the ‘uncivilised’ peoples in the colonies (mudimbe 1985:181). bain (2003:64–65) writes that the colonisers believed they had a ‘paternal duty that obliged self-proclaimed trustees of civilisation to seek the good of the disadvantaged’. they saw themselves as providers of supervision and guidance to the ‘weak’ and ‘childlike’ peoples in the colonies (mamdani 1996:4; mcewan 2009:220). kelley (2000:27) writes that ‘colonial domination required a whole way of thinking, a discourse in which everything that is advanced, good and civilised is defined and measured in european terms’. in this process, colonial education played an instrumental role, promoting and imposing the eurocentric ‘ways’ and worldviews while subjugating everything else. thus, one of the most destructive effects of colonialism was the subjugation of local knowledge and promotion of the western knowledge as the universal knowledge. european scholars have worked hard for centuries to erase the historical, intellectual and cultural contributions of africa and other parts of the ‘non-western’ world to our common humanity. they have done this as part of the white supremacist project. in the process, they have reduced the ‘other’ in their texts to ‘little more than beasts of burden or brutish heathens’ (2000: 22), instilling in the colonised masses an inferiority complex (césaire 2000:43; mudimbe 1985:175). as said (1994:8) points out, the western european literature has for centuries portrayed the non-western world and peoples as ‘inferior’ and ‘subordinate’; this helped ‘normalise’ racism among the colonialists and developed a notion that ‘europe should rule, non-europeans ruled’ (1994:120). in south africa, the colonial universities2 were set up by ‘settler elites who saw them as both symbols and disseminators of european civilisation in the colonies’ (pietsch 2013). the role of universities – which were part and parcel of the colonial project – was to promote white supremacy and develop the white youth to maintain and further expand colonial society (pietsch 2013; ramoupi 2011:5). colonial universities ‘were unapologetically eurocentric, patterned on the metropolitan universities from which they drew much of their faculty and curricula’ (zeleza 2009:114). pietsch (2013) further explains how: presuming the universality and superiority of ‘western’ culture, these ‘settler’ universities established themselves as the local representatives of ‘universal’ knowledge, proudly proclaiming this position in the neo-gothic buildings they erected and the latin mottos they adopted. after the apartheid system was established in 1948, the epistemic violence and racism at universities were taken to another level. during apartheid, higher education was ‘designed to entrench the power and privilege of the ruling white minority’ (bunting 2004:52). the ‘conception of race and the politics of race … shaped the higher education policy’. this included designation of institutions for the exclusive use of particular racial groups (2004:35–36). bunting (2004:40) writes that the councils and administrators at the historically white afrikaans-medium universities gave full support to the apartheid regime and the white supremacy project. he adds that these ‘instrumentalist institutions’3 were governed in a top-down and authoritarian manner. the historically white english-medium universities considered themselves as ‘liberal’ institutions that had ‘highly ambiguous relationships with the government during the apartheid years’. they received funding from the government but argued that they were not the ‘servants of the state’. these institutions were governed in a fashion that was a ‘mix of the collegial and the authoritarian’ (2004:42–43). although the english-medium universities saw themselves as the opponents of apartheid and agents for change, in reality they were islands of white privilege that benefited from apartheid’s policies even if not openly supporting the government. gibbon and kabaki (2004:123) indicate that the entire higher education system ‘served to construct and maintain the social, political and economic features of the apartheid order’. one of the ways it did this was by contributing ‘to the systematic under-qualification of the majority black population’. while the afrikaans-medium universities worked closely with the government on this, the english-medium universities also played a role in maintaining the segregation and oppression. mamdani (1998:64) argues that ‘the south african academy, even when it was opposed to apartheid politically, was deeply affected by it epistemologically’. sehoole (2006:5) adds that during apartheid, most of the englishand afrikaans-speaking academia ‘shared whiteness – a belief in white hegemony in south africa’. historically black universities (including the universities in the homelands) were established and/or maintained to train black people to serve first the colony4 and then the apartheid state. this included developing professionals such as teachers, homeland administrators and bureaucrats. this way the black universities ‘played a role in the maintenance of the overall apartheid socio-political agenda’ (bunting 2004:45). while the white universities promoted eurocentrism and white supremacy, ‘black universities were irredeemably condemned to the mediocrity of bantu education’ (zeleza 2009:115), training students to become the servants of the white ‘masters’ (ramoupi 2014:270). as in the case of the white institutions, governance systems at black universities ‘tended to be highly authoritarian’ and dominated by white afrikaners who had graduated from afrikaans-medium universities. furthermore, the intellectual and academic agendas of the black universities ‘were set by their apartheid origins’ and driven mainly by white academics (bunting 2004:45). eurocentrism and epistemic violence in ‘new’ south africa two decades after the end of apartheid, the curriculum5 at south african universities is still largely eurocentric, rooted in the colonial and apartheid dispossession, looting and humiliation of africa and its people. the eurocentric curriculum focuses on: the idea of europe, as a metaphor, and turns all others into bit players or loiterers without intent on the stage of world history, either too lazy to do anything ourselves or always late, and running behind to catch up with western modernity. (pillay 2015) after 1994, epistemological transformation was supposed to entail a ‘reorientation away from the [colonial and] apartheid knowledge system, in which curriculum was used as a tool of exclusion, to a democratic curriculum that is inclusive of all human thought’ (department of education 2008:89). however, universities have failed to do much, if anything, to change the curriculum since the demise of apartheid. as the department of education concluded in 2008 (and there has been hardly any change since then), the transformation efforts have not ‘translated into any significant shifts in the structure and content of the curriculum’ (2008:90). the curriculum ‘is inextricably intertwined with the institutional culture and, given that the latter remains white6 and eurocentric at the historically white institutions, the institutional environment is not conducive to curriculum reform’ (2008:91). thus, what we have in most fields of study (and particularly in the humanities and social sciences) is eurocentric indoctrination, which marginalises africa and is often full of patronising views and stereotypes about the continent: ‘european and white values are [still] perceived as the standards on which the country’s education system is based and rooted’ (ramoupi 2011:5). eurocentrism, which dominates the curriculum, ‘seeks to universalize the west and provincialize the rest’ (zeleza 2009:133). such education does not critically interrogate the ‘outcomes of a history of patriarchy, slavery, imperialism, colonialism, white supremacy and capitalism’ (molefe 2016:32). quite contrary, the one-sided and subjective ‘epistemological truth’ promoted by those who are trying to maintain the status quo is a ‘reproduction of epistemological blindness that silences other knowledges and ways of creating knowledge’ (motta 2013:97). pillay (2015) argues that this kind of education ensures that the students end up: ‘ignorant of most of the world [and particularly africa] and arrogant about our ignorance’ (original emphasis). he adds that this is nothing but ‘epistemic violence’ imposed on the students by the south african academia. spivak (1994) defines ‘epistemic violence’ as the eurocentric and western domination and subjugation of the [former] colonial subjects and misconception of their understanding and perception of the world. this is a result of ‘violence of imperialistic epistemic, social and disciplinary inscription’ (1994:80). epistemic violence erases the history of the subaltern7 (1994:83) and also convinces them that they do not have anything to offer to the ‘modern’ world; their only option is to blindly follow the ‘enlightened’ colonisers, learn from them, adopt their worldviews and fit into the periphery of their world as second-class citizens. epistemic violence persists in post-apartheid south africa, where the higher education system, rooted in colonial and apartheid exploitation and racism, has obliterated nearly all the linkages that black students may have with the prescribed texts, propagated narratives, debates and learning on the one side and their history, lived experiences and dreams on the other side. in the old colonial fashion, they are the ‘other’ in their country of birth, not recognised and valued unless they conform. through education, they are expected to learn to ‘speak well’ and gain skills and eurocentric knowledge that will allow them to enter the marketplace but not allow them to fundamentally change the status quo in society and the economy. africa in the current curriculum the colonial and apartheid curriculum in south africa has promoted white supremacy and dominance, as well as stereotyping of africa. the current higher education curriculum still largely reflects the colonial and apartheid worldviews (ramoupi 2014:271) and is disconnected from african realities, including the lived experiences of the majority of black south africans. most universities still follow the hegemonic ‘eurocentric epistemic canon’ that ‘attributes truth only to the western way of knowledge production’ (mbembe 2016:32). such a curriculum does not develop students’ critical and analytical skills to understand and move the african continent forward. gqola (2008:222) asserts that since 1994, south african universities have not done nearly enough to open their students’ horizons about africa. this has ‘contributed to the ignorance of the continent we are part of and inadvertently allowed the faceless african man and woman to remain throw-away people’. jansen (1998:109) writes that the failure to increase the number of black academics and decolonise the curriculum have ‘left unchallenged the achilles heel of [previously] white institutions: the kind of knowledge (and therefore authority) which is passed on to african students as unquestionable truth and inscrutable value’. the curriculum continues to ‘reinforce the prejudice’ that there is not much we can learn from africa, developing countries and the ‘third world’ and that ‘universal’ knowledge rests in the western world (pillay 2015). when africa appears in the curriculum, it is not more than a ‘version of bantu education … students are being taught a curriculum which presumes that africa begins at the limpopo, and that this africa has no intelligentsia worth reading’ (mamdani 1998:74).8 accordingly, most south african academics who teach about africa rely primarily on western interpretations of the continent. knowledge about africa produced by african academics is largely ignored. reliance on western knowledge about africa is an old colonial and imperial notion. as mamdani (1998) points out: the idea that natives can only be informants, and not intellectuals, is part of an old imperial tradition. it is part of the imperial conviction that natives cannot think for themselves; they need tutelage. (p. 71) reflecting on the western knowledge about the african continent and its people, mbembe (2001) notes the following: reduced to impatience and ignorance, carried away by verbal delirium, slogans, and linguistic inadequacy – with some analysts, only reading french, others only english, and few speaking local languages – the literature lapses into repetition and plagiarism; dogmatic assertions, cavalier interpretations, and shallow rehashes become the order of the day. (pp. 8–9) thus, the writings by western academics and researchers, who often claim that africa is nothing but misery, corruption, ‘darkness’ and irrationality9 (mbembe 2001) and cannot survive without a ‘kind, white foreigner’ (ngozi adiche 2009), are frequently used as reference points to teach about africa at south african universities. when this kind of knowledge is used to teach about the continent, we cannot expect anything but distance, alienation and misunderstanding of the causes of the past and current problems and lack of vision for the future. fundamental change writing about decolonisation of higher education in kenya at the end of 1960s, garuba (2015) stresses that a ‘fundamental question of place, perspective and orientation needed to be addressed in any reconceptualisation of the curriculum’ and that kenya, east africa and africa needed to be placed at the centre of teaching, learning and research at kenyan universities. a more detailed account of the quest for transformation of the curriculum in post-colonial kenya is in ngugi wa thiong’o’s decolonising the mind: the politics of language in african literature (1981). ngugi writes that the transformation required looking at the curriculum in terms of the ‘relevance to our situation … [and the] contribution towards understanding ourselves’. ultimately, the goal was to establish the ‘centrality of africa’ in the curriculum (1981:94). similar decolonisation processes took place in many african countries after independence, where universities went through ‘vigorous efforts … to decolonise the disciplines, to strip them of their eurocentric cognitive and civilisational conceits’ (zeleza 2009:112). local academics used ‘reflexivity and critical analysis’ to establish themselves and their societies ‘as “subjects” of their own destiny’ as well as to reinvent their past and envision their future (mudimbe 1985:206). when we talk about and engage in reconceptualisation and decolonisation of the curriculum in south africa, we need to consider the two approaches discussed by garuba. the first approach is to ‘add new items to an existing curriculum’. the second approach is to ‘rethink how the object of study itself is constituted’ and then reconstruct it and bring about fundamental change (garuba 2015). the first approach is promoted at south african universities by those who want to maintain the status quo. this group wants to keep eurocentric worldviews in the curriculum but add to it ‘bits and pieces of africa’ and ‘the other’ previously colonised places and peoples. this approach allows for ticking of the boxes and saying ‘we are busy reforming and transforming’. pillay (2015) writes that this approach would lead to settling ‘for a supplemental concept of history, where we now add african studies onto the existing curriculum with the danger of once more ghettoizing it from the other mainstream disciplines’. the end result would be the continued dominance of eurocentric worldviews. the fundamental change can happen only if universities embark on the second approach described by garuba above. for césaire (2000:89), ‘decolonisation is about the consciousness and rejection of values, norms, customs and worldviews imposed by the [former] colonisers’. ngugi (1981:87) argues that decolonisation of the curriculum is about africans seeing themselves ‘clearly in relationship with ourselves and other selves in the universe’. he calls this ‘a quest for relevance’. the change at universities must entail ‘decolonising, deracialising, demasculanising and degendering’ the institutions as well as ‘engaging with ontological and epistemological issues in all their complexity, including their implications for research, methodology, scholarship, learning and teaching, curriculum and pedagogy’ (hesa 2014:7). kaya and seleti (2013:33) argue that decolonised academia must reject the ‘utilisation of dominant western worldview of knowing and knowledge production as the only way of knowing’ (emphasis added). it is important to note that decolonisation does not require removing white men and women, both foreign and local, from the curriculum. however, they cannot be seen as the all-knowing and all-important canon upon which the human knowledge rests and through which white and western domination is maintained. as mbembe (2016:35) points out, decolonisation ‘is not about closing the door to european or other traditions. it is about defining clearly what the centre is’. ngugi (1981:93) adds that europe cannot remain at the centre of the universe at african universities; africa must be at the centre. the south african higher education system needs what zeleza (2009:127) calls the ‘deconstructionist’ movement to ‘dismantle the eurocentric epistemic hegemonies that have dominated the study of africa’. the curriculum must be transformed ‘in the context of post-apartheid south africa and its location in africa and the world’ (department of education 2008:21). jansen (1998:110–111) further emphasises that: content matters, and it matters a great deal when a european-centred curriculum continues to dominate and define what counts as worthwhile knowledge and legitimate authority in south african texts and teaching; it matters very much in the context of the inherited curriculum, informed by apartheid and colonialism, in which only the more readily observable, offensive racism has been skimmed off the top. decolonisation of the curriculum also entails ‘linking colonial and discriminatory legacies to the here and now’ (langdon 2013:394), which in south africa is an ever-present painful reality for many. eliminating past and current injustices should not be limited to ‘material inequality, poverty and the more familiar tropes of violence. we should also aim to reduce injustices in the production of knowledge’ (mckaiser 2016). universities must completely rethink, reframe and reconstruct the curriculum and bring south africa, southern africa and africa to the centre10 of teaching, learning and research. this in no way means that decolonisation will lead to localisation, isolation or only africanisation of the curriculum. africa will not be the only ‘focus of the curriculum in the ethnocentric-particularist manner of [the current] eurocentric approaches’. decolonised curriculum will not neglect other knowledge systems and global context (department of education 2008:92). universities still have to develop globally competent graduates capable of functioning in the complex and connected world. in the decades to come, south africa aims to play an important role in africa, within the brics11 and in the world – from economics, development, international relations, politics and conflict management to peace-building and security. to do this successfully, the country’s universities will have to develop graduates who possess knowledge about the world and all its complexity.12 however, the education must be free from western epistemological domination, eurocentrism, epistemic violence and world views that were designed to degrade, exploit and subjugate people in africa13 and other parts of the formerly colonised world. in addition, south african academia must be critical of the ‘global knowledge’ and not accept anything from the global north as the norm. finally, the call for decolonisation of the curriculum ‘is neither an advocacy to be anti-west, nor is it discouragement to learn from the west’ and the rest of the world. rather, it is a call to make higher education ‘relevant to the material, historical and social realities of the communities in which universities operate’ (letsekha 2013:14). fit to teach at a decolonised university? macedo (1993:189) writes about the ‘social construction of not seeing’ that has been prevalent among white south africans for decades. in the current context, this refers to the ‘wilful blindness’ (1993:189) by whites but also many rich and middle-class black, coloured and indian south africans to the everyday realities and struggles of the poor and marginalised black majority in the country. this is also prevalent at universities, where the leaders, managers, staff members, academics and well-off students often turn a blind eye to the painful lived experiences that many black students and workers go through on a daily basis. how else to explain the lack of awareness of the blatant exploitation of the outsourced cleaning, support and security staff at universities? for years, the people who were employed to clean and take care of the campuses and ensure the safety and security of the university management, academics, staff and students have been exploited by private companies selected and paid by the universities to provide these services. hardly anyone took notice, asked about or attempted to stop this exploitation. if it wasn’t for the #feesmustfall movement, which incorporated the struggle of the outsourced workers into their own struggle, universities would not have done anything on their own to stop the ill treatment of the poorest of the poor. this leads to an important question: can those who don’t care about the poor that protect them and clean up after them at the workplace educate students to become good, ethical and critical citizens and change agents? if they don’t care about the injustice and inequality that surrounds them, how will they care and do something about the inequality and injustice in the country, on the continent and in the world? mkhize (2015) adds an equally important question: can our universities be trusted to demonstrate contextually relevant, socially intelligent responses to pressing social questions when so many in their ranks seem to be struggling with basic sociological concepts such as ‘race’ and what defines ‘racism’? decolonisation of higher education is ‘about justice that addresses the epistemic violence of colonial knowledge and colonial thought’ (pillay 2015). south africa needs a higher education system to develop graduates and intellectuals who can address the epistemic violence of the past and present and who will go on to rewrite the ‘histories and humanity [of both south africa and africa] so cruelly seized and denied by europe’ (zeleza 2009:116) throughout centuries. however, where to find leaders, administrators and academics capable of addressing deep-rooted epistemic violence? where to find academics who possess knowledge and passion about the african continent? when it comes to knowledge about africa, most of south africa’s white academics are intellectually and academically out of touch. ‘because of their racially privileged positions’ in the past, they ‘had risen up the ranks without having to engage three decades of rigorous post-independence african scholarship’ (mkhize 2015). many still assume that the western knowledge systems ‘constitute the only basis for higher forms of thinking’ (department of education 2008:91). thus, the involvement of white academics in the decolonisation project ‘requires self-reflexivity’ (langdon 2013:385), recognition of privilege, personal change and growth as well as unlearning of the old knowledge designed to subjugate and exploit ‘the other’. the epistemological transformation also depends on the significant increase of black, coloured and indian academics at universities (hesa 2014:8). however, even if black academics and administrators replace whites, this does not necessarily guarantee fundamental change. ramoupi (2014:271) argues that the leadership change at many universities – from white to black, coloured or indian vice-chancellors, their deputies or deans – didn’t lead to ‘substantial paradigm shifts meant to bring about meaningful decolonisation of the curriculum and content’. furthermore, as maserumule (2015) points out: the continent’s professoriate is schooled largely in the white tradition. this imprinted the culture of whiteness in its making, which is not surprising. western education in africa as we know it is designed to proselytise blacks. african academics may be reluctant to repudiate their very make-up. maserumule (2015) adds that fundamental change requires academics and administrators ‘with a decoloniality posture’. the challenge in south africa is that academics and administrators with a decoloniality posture are a minority at universities. many come from the old system that worked hard to maintain apartheid and white domination; some have enjoyed the white privilege while claiming to be against apartheid or, in the case of many black academics and administrators, were indoctrinated during apartheid. thus, the struggle to decolonise higher education will be a long one, possibly requiring new generations of academics and administrators – who were not part of the old system and who are representative of the country’s demographics – to reach senior positions at universities. conclusion ‘direct colonial rule may have disappeared; but colonialism, in its many disguises as cultural, economic, political and knowledge-based oppression, lives on’ (sardar 2008:xix). if one adds the term ‘apartheid’ after ‘colonialism’ in the above quote, we get a true picture of post-apartheid south africa, where colonial and apartheid marginalisation, racism and exploitation live on in many spheres of life and work, including higher education. if universities and academics want to genuinely contribute to socio-economic transformation in the country and on the african continent, they have to profoundly change what they teach and how they do it. the current eurocentric curriculum – coupled with epistemic violence – does not contribute to a much-needed reimagining of the past and shaping of the present and future on the african continent. this can only be achieved through a curriculum that ‘reconstructs’ africa from the historical, civilisational, political economy and political standpoint perspectives (mamdani 1998). however, this will not happen until the eurocentric institutional cultures and staff demographics at universities fundamentally change (department of education 2008). the opposition to change is entrenched within the university structures and will not easily allow the breaking down of the grip on power, privilege, influence and decision-making. this group will do everything in its power to contest, resist and water down the change,14 as ‘any intellectual challenges to the orthodoxy that underpins’ any field of study will ‘provoke the ire of those who benefit most from the status quo’ (lagardien 2014). thus, the debates about decolonisation make many at universities uncomfortable. this is important and necessary, as change will not happen if people are comfortable with the status quo. decolonisation requires a large mass of people demanding change on the campuses and in society. they will have to confront the ‘official orthodoxy’ (mudimbe 1985:209) and ‘consciously disrupt the status quo’ (nwadeyi 2016). social and structural change seldom happens anywhere in the world without activism, advocacy, dissent, disruption and protest. the powerful and influential don’t simply give in because it is the right thing to do; they only act when they are compelled to do so by social movements and masses. progressive academics and lecturers must take the lead and not wait until the institutional cultures and environments transform. they need to decolonise their own curriculum and democratise the learning space in which they operate. in particular, they have an opportunity to involve students in the process of transformation of the curriculum, teaching and learning. academics and lecturers can do this by creating an ‘anti-hierarchical’ space in their classrooms where everyone learns, engages, debates and critically reflects together (rouhani 2012:1731). freire (1970:69) sees this as an educational space where lecturers and students jointly work on ‘unveiling the reality’, understanding it critically and recreating the knowledge in the process. this is in line with motta’s (2013:88) notion that ‘the process of constructing knowledge needs to be reclaimed and remade as a critical act of opening possibility through developing pedagogies (as method and content) with students’. ‘radical departures from the status quo are never easy. they are always simultaneously symbolic and visceral. but they open up new possibilities for questioning what was once unquestioned and unquestionable’ (msimang 2015). this is exactly what the south african higher education system needs today – a radical departure from the status quo and questioning the colonial and apartheid knowledge systems that until now have not been questioned sufficiently, if at all. the movement to transform and decolonise higher education – a coalition of students, progressive academics, university staff and concerned public – must find ways to hold the institutions accountable and maintain the non-violent, intellectual, evidence-based, emotional and popular struggle until eurocentrism and epistemic violence at universities are dismantled. acknowledgements competing interests the author declares that he has no financial or personal relationships that may have inappropriately influenced him in writing this article. references bain, w., 2003, ‘the political theory of trusteeship and the twilight of international equality’, international relations 17(1), 59–77. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/00471178030171004 bunting, i., 2004, ‘the higher education landscape under apartheid’, in n. cloete, p. maassen, r. fehnel, t. moja, h. perold. & t. gibbon (eds.), transformation in higher education: global pressures and local realities in south africa, pp. 35–52, kluwer academic publishers, dordrecht. césaire, a., 2000, discourse on colonialism, monthly review press, new york. de wit, h., 2012, ‘africa must lead innovation in higher education internationalisation’, university world news, 16 september, issue no. 239, viewed 18 june 2016, from http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=20120912160836275 department of education, 2008, report of the ministerial committee on transformation and social cohesion and the elimination of discrimination in public higher education institutions, final report, department of education, pretoria. du plessis, t., 2006, ‘from monolingual to bilingual higher education: the repositioning of historically afrikaans-medium universities in south africa’, language policy 5(1), 87–113. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10993-005-5627-5 freire, p., 1970, pedagogy of the oppressed, 30th edn., the continuum international publishing group inc., new york. garuba, h., 2015, ‘what is an african curriculum?’, mail & guardian, 17 april, viewed 15 june 2016, from http://mg.co.za/article/2015-04-17-what-is-an-african-curriculum/ gibbon, t. & kabaki, j., 2004, ‘staff’, in n. cloete, p. maassen, r. fehnel, t. moja, h. perold. & t. gibbon (eds.), transformation in higher education: global pressures and local realities in south africa, pp. 123–152, kluwer academic publishers, dordrecht. gqola, p.d., 2008, ‘brutal inheritances: echoes, negrophobia and masculinist violence’, in s. hassim, t. kupe. & e. worby (eds.), go home or die here: violence, xenophobia and the reinvention of difference in south africa, pp. 209–223, wits university press, johannesburg. higher education south africa (hesa), 2014, ‘south african higher education in the 20th year of democracy: context, achievements and key challenges’, presentation to the portfolio committee on higher education and training, cape town, 5 march. jacobs, s., 2016, ‘student protests and post-apartheid south africa’s negative moment’, africa is a country, 18 may, viewed 2 july 2016, from http://africasacountry.com/2016/05/student-protests-and-postapartheid-south-africas-negative-moment jansen, j.d., 1998, ‘but our natives are different! race, knowledge and power in the academy’, social dynamics 24(2), 106–116. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02533959808458653 kaya, h.o. & seleti, y.n., 2013, ‘african indigenous knowledge systems and relevance of higher education in south africa’, the international education journal: comparative perspectives 12(1), 30–44. kelley, r.d.g., 2000, ‘a poetics of anticolonialism’, in a. césaire (ed.), discourse on colonialism, pp. 7–28, monthly review press, new york. lagardien, i., 2014, ‘help students challenge economics’, mail & guardian, 7 march, viewed 19 june 2016, from http://mg.co.za/article/2014-03-07-help-students-challenge-economics langdon, j., 2013, ‘decolonising development studies: reflections on critical pedagogies in action’, canadian journal of development studies 34(3), 384–399. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02255189.2013.825205 letsekha, t., 2013, ‘revisiting the debate on the africanisation of higher education: an appeal for a conceptual shift’, the independent journal of teaching and learning 8, 5–18. macedo, d.p., 1993, ‘literacy for stupidification: the pedagogy of big lies’, harvard educational review 63(2), 183–206. http://dx.doi.org/10.17763/haer.63.2.c626327827177714 mamdani, m., 1996, citizen and subject: contemporary africa and the legacy of late colonialism, princeton university press, princeton, nj. mamdani, m., 1998, ‘is african studies to be turned into a new home for bantu education at uct?’, social dynamics 24(2), 63–75. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02533959808458649 maserumule, m.h., 2015, ‘why africa’s professors are afraid of colonial education being dismantled’, the conversation, 25 november, viewed 30 november 2015, from https://theconversation.com/why-africas-professors-are-afraid-of-colonial-education-being-dismantled-50930 mbembe, a., 2001, on the postcolony, university of california press, berkeley, ca. mbembe, a., 2016, ‘decolonising the university: new directions’, arts & humanities in higher education 15(1), 29–45. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1474022215618513 mcewan, c., 2009, postcolonialism and development, routledge, new york. mckaiser, e., 2016, ‘epistemic injustices: the dark side of academic freedom’, 2016 dcs oosthuizen academic freedom memorial lecture, rhodes university, grahamstown, 30 may, viewed 17 june 2016, from http://www.iol.co.za/news/epistemic-injustices-the-dark-side-of-academic-freedom-2029747 mkhize, n., 2015, ‘anger over rhodes vindicates mamdani’, business day, 7 april, viewed 18 june 2016, from http://www.bdlive.co.za/opinion/columnists/2015/04/07/anger-over-rhodes-vindicates-mamdani molefe, t.o., 2016, ‘oppression must fall: south africa’s revolution in theory’, world policy journal 33(1), 30–37. http://dx.doi.org/10.1215/07402775-3545858 motta, s.c., 2013, ‘teaching global and social justice as transgressive spaces of possibility’, antipode 45(1), 80–100. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8330.2012.00995.x msimang, s., 2015, ‘the old is dying and the young ones have just been born’, africa is a country, 15 may, viewed 2 july 2016, from http://africasacountry.com/2015/05/the-old-is-dying-and-the-young-ones-have-just-been-born/ mudimbe, v.y., 1985, ‘african gnosis philosophy and the order of knowledge: an introduction’, african studies review 28(2/3), 149–233. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/524605 ngozi adiche, c., 2009, the danger of a single story, ted global, video recording, viewed 16 june 2016, from http://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story ngugi, w.t.o., 1981, decolonising the mind: the politics of language in african literature, east african educational publishers ltd., nairobi. nwadeyi, l., 2016, ‘we all have a responsibility to disrupt the status quo’, mail & guardian, viewed 30 june 2016, from http://mg.co.za/article/2016-06-29-we-all-have-agency-and-we-must-use-it-to-disrupt-the-status-quo pietsch, t., 2013, ‘empire and higher education internationalisation’, university world news, 20 july, issue no: 282, viewed 19 june 2016, from http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=20130718115637589 pillay, s., 2015, ‘decolonising the university’, africa is a country, viewed 16 june 2016, from http://africasacountry.com/2015/06/decolonizing-the-university/ ramoupi, n.l.l., 2011, african-centred education and african languages: content and curriculum in post-apartheid education and training in south africa, briefing no. 56, africa institute of south africa, tshwane. ramoupi, n.l.l., 2014, ‘african research and scholarship: 20 years of lost opportunities to transform higher education in south africa’, ufahamu: a journal of african studies 38(1), 269–286. rouhani, f., 2012, ‘practice what you teach: facilitating anarchism in and out of the classroom’, antipode 44(5), 1726–1741. said, e., 1994, culture and imperialism, vintage, london. sardar, z., 2008, ‘foreword to the 2008 edition. i think it would be good if certain things were said: fanon and the epidemiology of oppression’, in f. fanon 1967, black skins, white masks, 2008 edn., pp. vi–xx, pluto books, london. sehoole, c., 2006, ‘internationalisation of higher education in south africa: a historical review’, perspectives in education 24(4), 1–13. shay, s., 2016, ‘decolonising the curriculum: it’s time for a strategy’, the conversation, 13 june, viewed 15 july 2016, from https://theconversation.com/decolonising-the-curriculum-its-time-for-a-strategy-60598 spivak, g.c., 1994, ‘can the subaltern speak?’, in p. williams & l. chrisman (eds.), colonial discourse and post-colonial theory: a reader, pp. 66–111, harvester/wheatsheaf, new york. zeleza, p.t., 2009, ‘african studies and universities since independence: the challenges of epistemic and institutional decolonization’, transition (101), 110–135. http://dx.doi.org/10.2979/trs.2009.-.101.110 footnotes 1. in 2009, the south african department of education was divided into the department of basic education and the department of higher education and training. 2. a number of colonial universities were established as bilingual institutions (both english and afrikaans). this started to change in 1918, when some institutions were transformed into afrikaans-medium universities due to the rise of afrikaner nationalism and the demand for afrikaans-only higher education (du plessis 2006:97). 3. instrumentalist institutions are universities whose main aim is ‘dissemination and generation of knowledge for a purpose defined or determined by a socio-political agenda’ of the ruling elites and not for the expansion of knowledge ‘for its own sake’ (bunting 2004:40). 4. this includes missionary education, which was part of the colonial project (mudimbe 1985). 5. ‘higher education curriculum’ refers to ‘what knowledge is included or excluded in university teaching and learning programmes’ (letsekha 2013:8). 6. ‘racism and patriarchy’ were ‘key features of colonialism and apartheid’. as such, they profoundly shaped the composition of academic staff at universities. in 1994, 83% of academics in south africa were white, whereas 68% were male. in 2012, the whites still made up 53% and males 55% of full-time permanent academic staff (hesa 2014:8). 7. at universities in the colonies, ‘native’ history was devalued while the history of the colonial power was promoted and celebrated (said 1994:270). the negative effects of this would remain for many decades after independence. 8. the above quotes from jansen and mamdani, both from 1998, still to a great extent describe the south african higher education system. 9. the african continent ‘stands out as the supreme receptacle of the west’s obsession with, and circular discourse about, the facts of “absence,” “lack” and “non-being,” of identity and difference, of negativeness – in short, of nothingness’ (mbembe 2001:4). 10. south african universities currently have miniscule and often superficial institutional partnerships on the african continent. the majority of their functional partnerships are in the global north (kaya & seleti 2013:32; sehoole 2006:11). if africa is to be the central focus of the research and curriculum, increased collaboration between universities and academics from south africa and the rest of the continent is of utmost importance. 11. the brics is a geopolitical and economic grouping comprising brazil, russia, india, china and south africa. 12. this requires reading, critiquing, analysing, comparing and contrasting diverse academic and literary works and points of view and not only (or mainly) the western and eurocentric ones. 13. de wit (2012) argues that higher education in africa may need to first go through a ‘process of de-internationalisation, to liberate itself from [colonial and] external influences, before it can develop its own position in the global knowledge society’. 14. mamdani’s ‘is african studies to be turned into a new home for bantu education at uct?’ is a prime example of resistance to curriculum decolonisation at south african universities. not much has changed since he wrote about this in 1998. abstract introduction social factors and their relationship with colour-blind attitudes research methodology and design empirical results discussion conclusion acknowledgements references appendix 1: questionnaire about the author(s) jaime-lee ayford department of sociology, faculty of arts and social sciences, stellenbosch university, stellenbosch, south africa johan zaaiman school of social studies, faculty of humanities, north-west university, potchefstroom, south africa citation ayford, j-l. & zaaiman, j., 2021, ‘colour-blind attitudes of students at the north-west university, potchefstroom campus’, transformation in higher education 6(0), a97. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v6i0.97 original research colour-blind attitudes of students at the north-west university, potchefstroom campus jaime-lee ayford, johan zaaiman received: 22 sept. 2020; accepted: 03 mar. 2021; published: 08 apr. 2021 copyright: © 2021. the author(s). licensee: aosis. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. abstract background: colour-blind attitudes deny racial dynamics and can lead to resistance to transformation because there seems to be no need for it. this study investigated these attitudes amongst students at a university campus engaged with implementing its transformation agenda. aim: using a survey, the research determined the prevalence of colour-blind attitudes amongst students and evaluated the social factors that may have contributed to these attitudes. setting: the research was conducted amongst undergraduates at the north-west university, potchefstroom campus, south africa, in 2017. methods: a literature review was conducted around the occurrence of colour-blind attitudes amongst students and the associated social factors. race, gender, racial prejudice, just-world beliefs and social dominance orientation in particular were found to contribute to colour-blind attitudes. a quantitative survey was then conducted amongst a quota sample of 300 students. the data collected on the social factors and colour-blind attitudes were statistically analysed. results: the students’ colour-blind attitudes were found to be moderate. the social factor of race correlated significantly with colour-blind attitudes, but gender did not. racial prejudice presented a medium correlation with colour-blind attitudes but just-world beliefs and social dominance orientation only a small correlation. conclusion: colour-blind attitudes at the campus were related to race and racial prejudice. this demonstrates the need for students to be offered room to openly discuss and engage with race and issues concerning race. the difference between the findings in this study and extant literature indicates a necessity for further qualitative research to gain a more comprehensive understanding about racial issues amongst students at the north-west university, potchefstroom campus. keywords: colour-blind attitudes; race; gender; racial prejudice; just-world beliefs; social dominance orientation; students; north-west university. introduction the ultimate goal of transformation in south africa has been to jettison its history of racial prejudice in favour of equality and non-discrimination. however, colour-blind attitudes minimise, distort and deny the reality of racism and the role that race plays in people’s lives (neville et al. 2014:180). the problem with such attitudes is that they can entrench existing societal hierarchies and inequalities at individual, interpersonal, cultural and institutional levels. the attitudes relate to a misconception of how the concept of race has been historically used to divide and discriminate against people. they furthermore ignore the fact of the continuation of racism and ways in which race influences people negatively in their everyday lives (neville et al. 2000:60). avoiding the matter of race, therefore, may actually contribute to the continuation of past inequalities (kestner 2009:19). on the one hand, such continuation safeguards the interests and racial privileges of advantaged groups; on the other hand, disadvantaged groups are victimised when they are blamed or derogated for their backward position (kestner 2009:9). this means that colour-blind attitudes can be defined as ‘the denial of racial dynamics leading to an unawareness of the existence of racism’ (mcdonald 2016:12). in this context, the present study critically examines students’ colour-blind attitudes on a south african university campus that is working towards successful implementation of its transformation agenda. this study is the first one in investigating the colour-blind attitudes and related social factors at a south african university and presents a unique application and analysis thereof. pearson, dovidio and geartner (2009:3) wrote about aversive racism related to colour-blind attitudes. in dominative racism, racial hatred is openly shown towards others and beliefs in racial superiority are supported. in the case of aversive or covert racism, the principle of racial equality is upheld but, simultaneously, negative feelings and beliefs about certain races are maintained. these feelings are expressed in disguised, private, insidious and rationalised ways (coates 2011:1; dovidio et al. 2009:4); and individual, institutional and cultural manifestations of racism are not acknowledged. puttick (2011:5) refers to colour-blind attitudes as a kind of symbolic racism in which individuals can ‘harbour racist beliefs whilst simultaneously practicing equality’. however, it should be noted that colour-blind attitudes can also be associated with individuals harbouring a genuine desire to move beyond racism. but, as noted above, the problem with such attitudes is that they may inadvertently retain the status quo and avoid confronting racism and its outcomes. contemporary south africa is in transition from a past that was divided along racial, cultural and economic lines to a present and future that will be democratic and accepting of diversity (amoateng & kalule-sabiti 2014:623). in the past, racial politics had a major impact on south african society. unfortunately, inequality, hurt and difference in life experiences continue along the lines of the former racial divisions. according to greenstein (2015:173), despite efforts made to improve racial relations amongst south africans, racism, discrimination and racial prejudice continue to manifest themselves in the public sphere. because it has become socially unacceptable to explicitly show prejudicial attitudes, colour-blind attitudes may offer an alternative. they can, for instance, include delicate forms of racism and subtle and indirect forms of prejudice and intolerance (mazzocco 2015:3). thus, a ‘new racism’ can replace the old racism in south africa but still, paradoxically, produce racial privilege in an apparently non-racial manner (bonilla-silva 2003:68). neville et al. (2000) refer to several studies in educational and sociological literature that demonstrate the existence and effects of colour-blind attitudes in educational institutions. the student population in many south african universities is currently diverse as never before. racial tensions with cultural undertones are, therefore, present. these can manifest amongst students as colour-blind attitudes that mask underlying prejudice. this research focused on undergraduate students at the north-west university (nwu), potchefstroom campus, south africa. the campus was viewed as ideal for this study for the following reasons. a ministerial task team reported in 2008 that black and white students at the nwu differed strongly on issues of inclusion and exclusion (kamsteeg 2011:56). their report is linked to the finding of an internationally led evaluation of the nwu in 2013/2014, which found that, of the three campuses in the university, the potchefstroom campus was culturally the most homogeneous and least open to external social and political influences (pretorius 2017:272). the evaluation, therefore, emphasised the necessity of developing an integrated nwu culture and identity (prinsloo 2016:387). this relates to the nwu transformation charter (north-west university 2012) that presents the ideal of a transformation that nurtures inclusivity. kamsteeg (2008:448) argued that, to bring about such a change in culture and identity, further study was required to identify the various areas of conflict and cooperation. the present research attempted to contribute to this task. as the potchefstroom campus is mainly an afrikaans campus with mostly white students, alienation in language, symbols and culture have been organised along race identities. it is, therefore, important to understand the prevalence, amongst students, of their colour-blind attitudes because these can suppress debates about racial discrimination and hinder transformation, not only on this campus but also in the nwu as a whole. social factors and their relationship with colour-blind attitudes a variety of factors contribute to colour-blind attitudes. to investigate this on the university campus, it is important to understand what factors may contribute to them. in this way, a better understanding can be developed about what interventions the transformation processes must focus on. this study focused on the factors of race, gender, racial prejudice, just-world beliefs and social dominance orientation. the choice of these factors is explained in the following subsections. race race was the first factor included in our study. kamsteeg (2008:447) described the nwu potchefstroom campus as representing a culture of whiteness. in such a homogenic setting, the reality of racism and the role that race plays in people’s lives can be suppressed. yet the dropout and graduation rates between black and white students on the campus indicate differences in their university experience (prinsloo 2016:319). black students experienced cultural and social exclusion (pretorius 2017:269). we, therefore, viewed it as valuable to determine whether white students were blinded to this reality by colour-blind attitudes that may hinder transformation. in this study, race is understood as referring to physical features and their associated material practices and cultural meanings. race relates, therefore, to the organisation and functioning of the society. however, it follows social dynamics in a fluid manner (greenstein 2015:194). the connection between race and human differences links race with power relationships. south africa has been notorious for its use of the idea of race to rationalise political segregation and resultant social inequalities. it is, however, problematic to believe that, in the new post-apartheid dispensation, race is no longer relevant in society. such a notion constitutes colour-blindness, even as race still determines inequalities in the country (greenstein 2015:174). the argument to research race in this study was supported by other studies that found colour-blind attitudes to be more common amongst white people than amongst other groups (neville et al. 2000:60). white people, adopting a colour-blind standpoint, may guard themselves against recognising racial inequalities in their society and thus lessen experiences of dissonance or awareness of own privilege. thereby white people can uphold their positive self-esteem by suppressing ideas that undermine it (neville et al. 2000:69). it is possible that black people can also have colour-blind perspectives (burke 2019:83). this may make them unaware of racial discrimination and undermine working positively to address it (neville et al. 2000:69). in this research, students were asked to identify their race. race in this article refers, therefore, to the students’ self-identification of their race as defined above. in the research, race was operationalised through a question in which students could mark the race with which they identified. gender the second factor that we included in the study was gender. it was argued that for the transformation agenda at the nwu potchefstroom campus, it would be valuable to know whether male and female students differed in their colour-blind attitudes. this was in view of literature reporting that compared to women, men express higher levels of intolerance, including increased homophobia; greater endorsement of social dominance orientation and negative assessments of policies planned to advance increased representation in the workplace (neville et al. 2014:180). such findings may relate to the privileged position of men in the social structure and their desire to protect this position. also, men traditionally have less experience of societal oppression and thus may be less aware of its effects compared to women (neville et al. 2014:180). neville et al. (2000) found, in relation to the colour-blind racial attitude scale (cobras), that women are more sensitive to social injustices than their male counterparts. it may be that women on average are sensitised to institutional discrimination on the basis of gender and, thus, could be more aware of the existence of other types of discrimination, such as racism (neville et al. 2000:68). it was, therefore, concluded that women’s colour-blind attitudes are lower than men’s (neville et al. 2000:68). it is worth noting that the nwu transformation charter (north-west university 2012) is quiet about gender in transformation. we, therefore, viewed it as valuable to determine the applicability of the findings of neville et al. (2000) on gender and to determine whether gender affected colour-blind attitudes. gender, as the social construction of what it means to be male or female (rabe 2015:153), was, therefore, operationalised in our research through the self-identification by students in the questionnaire (see appendix 1). racial prejudice another factor included in our research was racial prejudice because, if colour-blind attitudes are found to be related to racial prejudice, their problematic nature is revealed. the nwu potchefstroom campus was, historically, a conservative university supportive of apartheid ideology (kamsteeg 2008:444). prinsloo (2016:331) reported a perception amongst nwu’s management that the white students on the campus are prejudiced. we, therefore, viewed it as important for our study to determine the extent to which racial prejudice contributes to colour-blind attitudes. racial prejudice includes the maintenance of stereotypical views about people from other race groups. in the apartheid era, it became an integral aspect of south african society (greenstein 2015:174). it relates to centuries of systematic exclusion, exploitation and cultural subversion (winant 1998:758). it is the result of discrimination through individual actions or policies. neville et al. (2000:68) found that colour-blind racism relates to the modern racism scale (mrs) and quick discrimination index, indicating that the higher one’s racial prejudice against other groups, the more likely one would be to hold colour-blind attitudes. this is confirmed by the research of mcconahay (1986), which demonstrated a significant positive relationship between cobras and the mrs. kestner (2009:19–20) also argues that rising psychological research on colour-blind racial attitudes highlights their relationship to racial prejudice. those with colour-blind attitudes seem to have higher racial and gender intolerance as well as higher anxiety and fear of other racial groups and less empathy for them. denial of this form of systemic racism may contribute to a ‘blame the victim’ mentality, which helps to maintain the status quo (kestner 2009:19, 20). in our study, racial prejudice was operationalised through an adaptation of the mrs. students had to respond to the different items on the scale, and it was refined and validated through a factor analysis. just-world beliefs this study also investigated the students’ just-world beliefs. before the higher education institution merger in 2004, what is now part of the nwu in the form of its potchefstroom campus was an independent university led by a conservative protestant elite (kamsteeg 2008:444; pretorius 2017:20). this protestant world view implies a work ethic that contributes to a just-world belief as demonstrated by furnham and rajaminickam (1992:410). as today’s afrikaans-speaking students traditionally stem from this protestant background, it is expected that there would be adherence to a just-world belief. therefore, our research attempted to determine the extent to which a just-world belief contributes to colour-blind attitudes. the answer could assist in the design of a focused transformation intervention. lerner (1977) initiated the concept of just-world beliefs, which claims that people believe in a world where, in general, if you are a good individual, good things will happen to you, and if you are a bad individual, bad things will happen to you. people have a strong need to believe that the world is a fair and just place where people obtain what they deserve, and nothing less, in order for them to determine their own fate (kestner 2009:1). beliefs in a just world can cause privileged people to hold disadvantaged people accountable for their own problems and play down existing needs; in this way, personal privileges can continue to be justified (kestner 2009:1). empirical research has found that just-world beliefs forecast prejudiced attitudes towards a variety of disadvantaged groups, including the underprivileged, people with acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, the elderly, the unemployed and refugees (kestner 2009:11). therefore, regardless of many healthy meanings related to beliefs about the world as just, these beliefs may also direct a person to deny inequality and engage in victim derogation (kestner 2009:3–4). this just-world phenomenon seems to overlap with colour-blind attitudes, as these also uphold prejudiced attitudes and underemphasise social inequality (see kestner 2009:6). studies have found that students with higher rates of colour-blind racial attitudes also held views of the world as a just place (neville et al. 2000; tynes & markoe 2010:2–3). in our research, the questionnaire items on just-world beliefs stemmed from kestner’s just world scale (kestner 2009:86–87). students answered different relevant items on the scale, and factor analysis was then applied to the results. social dominance orientation finally, our study also focused on the students’ social dominance orientation. a dominant culture of whiteness contributes to inequality in higher education institutions (kamsteeg 2008:447). this seems to exist at the campus, as it has been reported that the afrikaans culture on the campus was experienced by students from other cultures as a hostile and foreign environment that made them feel unwelcome (pretorius 2017:189–190). this kind of dominant cultural position contributes to a social dominance orientation. we, therefore, deemed it necessary to ascertain whether such a social dominance orientation reinforces colour-blind attitudes. according to kestner (2009:24), social dominance orientation is defined as the extent to which people desire and support the stance that their own group is superior to groups that do not fit in with theirs. social dominance orientation operates as a motivating aspect that justifies social inequalities. it denigrates individuals from the out-group, and members of marginal groups in particular (kestner 2009:24). a study conducted by kestner (2009) on colour-blind attitudes and social dominance orientation indicated a positive relationship between the two. worthington et al. (2008) also found a moderate positive relationship between the scores of colour-blind attitudes and social dominance orientation. many decades ago, blumer (1958:4) argued that, in racialised contexts, the dominant group is not mainly concerned with the subordinate group as much as it is concerned with their own position in society, because this is a way for them to understand intergroup relations. from this perspective, the dominant group is not ignorant of race but rather seeks out its own group interests by dismissing race as a basis of inequality (vargas 2014:2285). our study operationalised the social domination orientation by adapting questions from kestner’s social dominance orientation scale (kestner 2009:91–92). the students reacted to items on the scale, and it was refined through factor analysis. the discussion of the literature in this section has suggested the identification of race, gender, racial prejudice, just-world beliefs and social dominance orientation as social factors that can possibly contribute to colour-blind attitudes on the potchefstroom campus. deemed relevant for the research site, these social factors were selected for investigation in the present study. research methodology and design research approach the theoretical foundation of quantitative methodology is directed by a realist and objectivist ontology and by an empiricist epistemology (sarantakos 2013:31). quantitative approaches generally take on a nomothetic methodology that aims at recognising and formulating generally applicable statements (gelo, braakmann & benetka 2008:271). thus, quantitative approaches are deductive and theory driven (antwi & hamza 2015:220). according to muijs (2004:1), quantitative research ‘explains phenomena by collecting numerical data that are analysed using mathematically based methods (in particular statistics)’. a quantitative research approach is suitable for this study, because it can statistically determine the relationship between race, gender, racial prejudice, just-world beliefs and social dominance orientation on the one hand and colour-blind attitudes on the other hand. a research design can be described as a plan of how the researcher will conduct the research (babbie & mouton 2001:74). for the purpose of this study, we employed a cross-sectional survey design. according to bryman (2012), this: [e]ntails the collection of data on more than one case and at a single point in time in order to collect a body of quantitative or quantifiable data in connection with two or more variables, which are then examined to detect patterns of association. (p. 58) population and sample in this study, the population comprised undergraduate students of the nwu potchefstroom campus. on 06 june 2017, the population comprised 17 072 students, of whom 57% were males and 43% females; 71% were white, 22% black and 7% from other races. sampling can be defined as the procedure by which the researcher identifies and selects people who are representatives of the population to use in their study (babbie & mouton 2001:164). in the present study, the non-probability quota sampling method was used. according to sarantakos (2013:172), it entails dividing the target population into a number of homogeneous, non-overlapping subgroups and drawing a sample from each subgroup. in our study, the subgroups were determined by students’ sex, faculty and race, and a sample of 300 students was selected, so that the subgroups were proportionally the same as in the population. data collection strategy a questionnaire was constructed to measure the chosen variables, and it was then tested in a pilot study. the combination questions for colour-blind attitudes were based on the cobras and the questions for racial prejudice were adapted from the mrs. the questions for the just-world beliefs stemmed from kestner’s just world scale (kestner 2009:86–87), and the social dominance orientation questions were constructed from kestner’s social dominance orientation scale (kestner 2009:91–92). to evaluate the construct validity of the scales, a panel of sociologists from the potchefstroom campus examined them. they did not find the scales fully applicable to the research setting. they, therefore, selected those items in the scales that were most fitting and added others that were obvious for the setting. interviews were used to administer the questionnaires. these interviews for the survey were conducted by sociology honours students on the campus. each conducted 30 structured interviews. appointments were made with students and interviews conducted at a place that suited the respondents. a structured interview schedule was used that had been pre-tested to ensure that the items were understandable, stable, reliable and valid when answered by the undergraduate students. after the collection of the data an additional effort was made to ensure the internal reliability of the scales. for this purpose, principal axis factoring was applied. first, the kaiser–meyer–olkin (kmo) test and bartlett’s test table were used to test whether the factor analysis was acceptable based on the correlations. this was followed by applying an anti-image correlation that indicated the measures of sampling adequacy (msa). this presented the items’ correlation. only items with an msa value of 0.6 and above were retained. cronbach’s alpha, as a statistic measuring reliability, was then used to establish the extent to which the items for the factor were collectively correlated. special effort was thereby made to ensure the validity and reliability of the measurements. analysis and reporting as this was a quantitative study, the data from the interviews were statistically analysed with spss. besides the factor analysis, we used descriptive statistics, correlations and t-tests to analyse the data. correlation coefficient r was used as the effect size to determine the strength of relationship between the selected variables, where r = 0.10 was considered a small effect, r = 0.30 a medium effect and r = 0.5 as a large effect (field 2005:32). limitations the study focused on undergraduate students studying on only one of the three nwu campuses. the reason was that this campus was most assessable for the researchers and its white people, apartheid-dominant past. this means that the results can be generalised only to undergraduate students at the potchefstroom campus. furthermore, the sample was small relative to the campus population; therefore, additional care is needed when generalising from the findings. however, the homogeneity of the student population presented the potential for considered generalising. ethical considerations this research study was formally approved by the ethics committee of the faculty of arts of the nwu (ethics number: nwu-00067-14-s7). the researchers adhered to the ethical requirements. each respondent signed an informed consent form permitting the researchers to include them in the research. the informed consent form clarified the purpose of the study as well as the nature of the research and ensured the privacy, anonymity and confidentiality of the respondents. no student was forced to participate in the study, and they were informed that they could withdraw from the study at any time. appointments were scheduled by the researchers at times when the sampled respondents were free, and face-to-face interviews took place in agreed-upon venues. empirical results colour-blind attitudes as the dependent variable an exploratory factor analysis was conducted on the 12 items related to colour-blind attitudes measured with a likert-type scale. the response categories were 1 = strongly disagree; 2 = disagree; 3 = neutral; 4 = fairly strongly agree and 5 = very strongly agree. principal axis factoring was used, whereby the dimensionality of the colour-blind attitudes instrument was determined. the kmo test measured 0.86 and indicated that the sample size was adequate for factor analysis. the p-value of bartlett’s test of sphericity returned a value smaller than 0.05, suggesting that the correlation between statements was sufficient for factor analysis (field 2005:652). a factor with eight items related to colour-blind attitudes was extracted. the factor loadings of the colour-blind attitudes factor ranged from 0.459 to 0.856. the colour-blind attitudes factor showed a cronbach’s alpha coefficient of 0.87, which indicates that the result is reliable. the kolmogoroy–smirnov and shapiro–wilk tests indicated that the distribution was negatively skewed. the mean for the factor was 3.56, meaning that the respondents held a neutral-to-agree attitude on the colour-blind attitude scale. effect of race on colour-blind attitudes self-identified black students obtained a colour-blind racism mean of 2.6085, whereas white students obtained a mean of 3.9065. this seems to indicate that the black students were less colour-blind than the white students. to ascertain this, levene’s test and t-test were used by means of spss analysis. the levene’s test was applied to establish whether the variances amongst the black students and the white students were equal. the significance of levene’s test for equality of variance was 0.014, meaning that the p-value was smaller than 0.05 and, as a result, equal variances were not assumed. as a result of this, the t-test p-value used was associated with equal variances not assumed. this p-value must be <0.05 to reject the null hypothesis, which posits that groups have equal means. the p-value for the factor colour-blind attitudes measured 0.000 (p < 0.05). the results of the t-test, therefore, indicated statistically significant differences between the means of white students and black students on their colour-blind attitudes. this indicated that the colour-blind attitudes’ mean of self-identified black students was statistically significantly lower than the colour-blind mean of self-identified white students. the null hypothesis indicated that there was no relationship between undergraduate students’ race; and their colour-blind attitude was, therefore, rejected. effect of gender on colour-blind attitudes male students measured a colour-blind attitudes’ mean of 3.5830, whilst female students obtained a mean of 3.5723. this seems to indicate no significant difference between levels of male and female students’ colour-blind attitudes. to ascertain whether this was indeed so, the levene’s test and t-test were used. the levene’s test was applied to establish whether the variances amongst the male students and the female students were equal. the significance of levene’s test for equality of variance was 0.805, meaning that this p-value is greater than 0.05 and, as a result, equal variance could be assumed. in the case of the present study, the t-test p-value was 0.917 > 0.05, indicating an insignificant statistical difference between the means of male and female undergraduate students with regard to their colour-blind racial attitudes. this confirmed that no relationship existed between undergraduate students’ gender and their colour-blind racial attitudes, which indicated no significant difference between male and female students on the measurement of the colour-blind attitudes’ scale. racial prejudice a factor analysis was conducted on the six likert-type scale items to measure racial prejudice. principal axis factoring was used. the sample size was adequate for factor analysis because the kmo measured 0.72. the correlation between statements was sufficient for factor analysis because the p-value of bartlett’s test of sphericity returned a value smaller than 0.05. one factor was extracted as related to racial prejudice. the factor loading ranged from 0.626 to 0.810. the cronbach’s alpha coefficient of the factor on racial prejudice was 0.78, indicating high reliability and internal consistency. the mean score of the factor was 3.02, indicating a tendency amongst respondents towards neutrality on items measuring racial prejudice attitudes. the distribution was slightly positively skew. racial prejudice and colour-blind attitudes a correlation test, the spearman rank correlation coefficient, was used to test whether the two factors, racial prejudice and colour-blind attitudes, were correlated. the assumption was that if normality is not met, as in this case, the spearman rank correlation coefficient should be used (eiselen & uys 2016:100). the p-value of significance was 0.000, which is smaller than 0.05, and this indicated that the correlation between racial prejudice and colour-blind attitudes was significant. there was a medium positive correlation (0.365) between the two variables. this means that students who were racially prejudiced tended towards a higher colour-blind attitude score. just-world beliefs a factor analysis was conducted on the six likert-type scale items to measure the underlying dimensions of perceptions of just-world beliefs. principal component analysis was used. the kmo measured 0.68, which indicated that the sample size was adequate for factor analysis. the p-value of bartlett’s test of sphericity returned a value of smaller than 0.05, suggesting that the correlation between statements was sufficient for factor analysis (see field 2005). a factor with five items was extracted related to just-world beliefs. the factor loadings ranged from 0.534 to 0.754. the cronbach’s alpha coefficient of the factor on just-world beliefs was 0.73, indicating high reliability and internal consistency. the mean score was 3.24 indicating a tendency towards neutral to slight agreement amongst the respondents. the distribution was non-normal. just-world beliefs and colour-blind attitudes a correlation test, the spearman rank correlation coefficient, was used to test whether the two factors, just-world beliefs and colour-blind attitudes, were correlated. the assumption is that if normality is not met, as in this case, the spearman rank correlation coefficient should be used (eiselen & uys 2016:100). the p-value of significance was 0.001, which is smaller than 0.05, indicating that the correlation between just-world beliefs and colour-blind attitudes was significant. there was a small positive correlation (0.191) between the two variables. this means that students with just-world beliefs might have had a slight tendency towards colour-blind attitudes. social dominance orientation a factor analysis was conducted on the six likert-type scale items to measure the underlying dimensions of social dominance-orientation attitudes. principal component analysis was used. the kmo measured 0.76, indicating that the sample size was adequate for factor analysis. the p-value of bartlett’s test of sphericity returned a value of less than 0.05. this suggests that the correlation between statements was sufficient for factor analysis. a factor with six items was extracted as related to social dominance orientation. the factor loadings ranged from 0.377 to 0.643. the cronbach’s alpha coefficient of the factor on social dominance orientation was 0.73. the mean score of the factor was 3.67, indicating a tendency amongst respondents to agree to the items on the social dominance orientation scale. the factor had a non-normal distribution. social dominance orientation and colour-blind attitudes a correlation test, the spearman rank correlation coefficient, was used to test whether the two factors, social dominance orientation and colour-blind attitudes, were correlated. the assumption is that if normality is not met, as in this case, the spearman rank correlation coefficient should be used (eiselen & uys 2016:100). the p-value of significance calculated at 0.001, which is smaller than 0.05, indicates that the correlation between social dominance orientation and colour-blind attitudes was significant. there was a small negative relationship (‒0.191) between the two variables. this means that students with a factor-based social dominance orientation measured to a slight extent less on their factor-based colour-blind attitudes. discussion the purpose of this study was to explore the extent of colour-blind attitudes amongst undergraduate students at the nwu on its potchefstroom campus and the effect of selected relevant social factors (such as race, gender, racial prejudice, just-world beliefs and social dominance orientation) on their colour-blind racial attitudes. our results indicated that colour-blind attitudes were not strong amongst the students; the deviation of the mean score from the neutral position on the scale towards agreement with colour-blind attitudes was limited. the findings from our research that racial identification relates to colour-blind attitudes were consistent with several studies in the united states of america. neville et al. (2000:63), for instance, reported that black people would tend to report a lesser extent of colour-blind attitudes than white people because they are more sensitive to racial prejudice. their findings were supported later by cheng (2015) who reported that white and black people had dissimilar levels in adopting a colour-blind standpoint, with black people less colour-blind than white people. he argues that colour-blind racial ideology upholds the dominant white culture through a systemic process of marginalisation of people of colour (cheng 2015:3). bobo and fox (2003:323) had argued, earlier, that white people adopt a colour-blind standpoint because it may assist in guarding them against recognising racial inequalities in society, thus assisting in a lessening of any conflict or dissonance that may come into play. the denial of such inequalities can promote inaction which, in turn, helps to preserve the privileges that many white people, especially white elites, continue to receive from the current system (neville et al. 2000:69). our south african study did not aim at determining these or similar underlying motives for colour-blind attitudes amongst white undergraduate students on the potchefstroom campus of the nwu. in our case, the white students may have felt that identifying racial inequalities in society could bring about conflict between the races and, to avoid this, they might prefer not to talk about or acknowledge the existing racism. this suggestion calls for further research. although neville et al. (2000:68) reported lower colour-blind racial attitudes amongst women than amongst men, the present study did not find a similar difference between genders in our sample. kestner (2009:22) argued that women may be less likely to hold racist attitudes, given their experience of gender discrimination, and that continuing gender discrimination may make women become more aware of gender and other societal oppressions in view of their personal experiences as they progress through college (2009:22). one reason why our results did not align with the literature could be that, nearly a decade after kestner’s study in the united states of america, female students in south africa had grown up in an explicitly more democratic world than before, and that, therefore, young female undergraduate students on the nwu potchefstroom campus had not experienced the same discriminatory practices as earlier generations had experienced. such issues offer opportunities for further investigation. worth noting was the statistically significant relationship found in our study between undergraduate students’ measurements on a racial prejudice scale and on a colour-blind attitude scale. in this correlation, students who scored higher on the racially prejudiced scale tended to have a higher score on the colour-blind attitude scale. this supports previous findings elsewhere. mcconahay (1986) had argued that there is a conceptual and empirical linkage between colour-blind attitudes and racial prejudice, as demonstrated by research indicating a significant positive relationship between cobras and mrs. a decade later, carr (1997) reported a positive correlation between racist attitudes such as racial prejudice and colour-blind attitudes, followed by neville et al. (2000:68) who proposed that the greater one’s racial prejudice against other groups, the more likely one is to maintain colour-blind attitudes. bonilla-silva (2003) concurred, claiming that people who hold prejudiced views tend to endorse a colour-blind ideology. in a study conducted by richeson and nussbaum (2003) on the impact of multiculturalism versus colour-blindness on racial bias, greater levels of racial prejudice were found in people with a colour-blind perspective than in those with a multicultural perspective. the present south african study confirms the positive relationship between racial prejudice and colour-blind racial attitudes, which indicates that potchefstroom campus students may have colour-blind attitudes – thereby denying racial dynamics – whilst they continue to entertain racial prejudices. the correlation in our sample indicates only a medium relationship between the two factors, however, not a strong one. it nonetheless demonstrates that colour-blind attitudes are not innocent but can accommodate stereotypical views of people belonging to other race groups. we found a small positive correlation in our research regarding the relationship between undergraduate students’ just-world beliefs and colour-blind racial attitudes. this finding is consistent with an argument made by neville et al. (2000:63) that the belief in a just world correlates with colour-blind attitudes, and that there is a conceptual link between a belief in a just-world and colour-blind attitudes; both concepts include a level of unawareness or ignorance about negative forces in society, such as racism, and both foster a ‘blame the victim’ perspective that, whatever the circumstances, holds people accountable for their misfortunes. building on neville et al. (2000), kestner (2009:6) asserts that people who believe in a just world may also hold colour-blind racial attitudes, resulting in failure to recognise the inequalities that persist in society. our results led us to conclude that a limited tendency may be found amongst undergraduate students on the potchefstroom campus to think that people deserve what they obtain and also to maintain colour-blind attitudes. in addition, our results suggest that efforts to address colour-blind attitudes should also give attention to just-world beliefs, as these can contribute – in however small a way – to colour-blind attitudes. the relationship that we found between undergraduate students’ social dominance orientation and colour-blind attitudes showed a small negative correlation, as indicated. this deviates from kestner (2009) who indeed found a relationship between social dominance orientation and colour-blind racial attitudes. neville et al. (2005), worthington et al. (2008) and cheng (2015) also found a relationship between social dominance orientation and colour-blind racial attitudes. our results from the potchefstroom campus undergraduate student sample are different; lower levels of correlation between social dominance orientations and higher colour-blind attitudes may, perhaps, reflect the emphasis in south africa’s new constitution on individual rights over group rights, resulting in lower levels of social dominance orientation and less emphasis on group domination in their attitudes. the lesser the level on which group interests are valued, the lesser the level at which students may find it necessary to pay attention to racial issues, which would contribute to colour-blind attitudes. in summary, our study represents a contribution to the study of colour-blind attitudes in south africa that is limited in size and scope, as it focuses on undergraduate students at the nwu potchefstroom campus. its value, however, is that it gives a unique snapshot of the existence of a different form of racism after 1994 (i.e. from legislated racism to colour-blind attitudes). in view of this, we underscore some of the key contributions that it makes in shedding light on ways to measure and assess colour-blind attitudes that can undermine transformation: this study did not find a high level of colour-blind attitudes amongst the students in the sample, which may relate to the fact that they are part of the free-born generation. it would, therefore, be interesting to compare these findings with groups of older people. however, the fact that colour-blind attitudes exist amongst these students demonstrates the need for the institution to plan to provide more space for students to talk openly about race and issues concerning race, to ensure that they do not simply lapse into ignoring them. this recommendation corresponds to the emphasis in the nwu transformation charter (north-west university 2012:2) on the importance of dialogue, communication and ongoing and robust engagement. the differences between black students and white students may relate to a deeper divide around interpretations about what south african society is and ought to be. further study of the racial interpretations of relevant groupings can help universities, and also south african society more broadly, to review and improve the interventions needed to close the gaps between these groupings. our study also demonstrates the importance of the nwu transformation charter (north-west university 2012) argument for increased access and unity in student experience and equitable resource allocation. of interest, and in contrast to the literature, no difference in colour-blind racist attitudes could be found between male and female students in our study. this result emphasises the potential value of further gender studies to explore how women understand and interpret their experiences of race and their role in south african society. the absence of a gender equality agenda is salient in the nwu transformation charter (north-west university 2012) and the histories of transformation at the nwu (pretorius 2017; prinsloo 2016) and further demonstrates the necessity for research in this area, on this and other campuses. racial prejudice, just-world beliefs and social dominance orientation were shown to be interesting variables for the study of colour-blind attitudes in a racially complex society. the present study established a medium relationship between racial prejudice and colour-blind attitudes, and a limited relationship between just-world beliefs and social dominance orientation and colour-blind attitudes. in contrast to the literature, we found the significant relationship between social domination orientation and colour-blind attitudes to be slightly negative. this suggests opportunities for qualitative research that would explore these variables further and reveal the dynamics related to the interpretations that arise around them. the nwu context confirms that transformation is inextricably connected to issues of justice, culture, communal well-being, equity and increased unity. all these are emphasised in the nwu transformation charter (north-west university 2012) and can pave the way for further studies and greater understanding. conclusion this research shed light on the extent of colour-blind attitudes amongst undergraduate students of nwu’s potchefstroom campus and their relationship to the social factors of race, gender, racial prejudice, just-world beliefs and social dominance orientation. our results indicate that some degree of colour-blind attitudes exists amongst the students. furthermore, the study clearly reveals a relationship between race and colour-blind attitudes, a medium relationship between racial prejudice and colour-blind attitudes and a small relationship between just-world beliefs, social dominance orientation and colour-blind attitudes. however, in contrast to the literature, we found no relationship between undergraduate students’ gender and colour-blind attitudes. this is the first research study on colour-blind attitudes on this campus and the findings give a unique insight into students’ attitudes that relate specifically to the nwu transformation agenda. we found evidence that colour-blind attitudes have some foothold amongst undergraduate students on the university’s potchefstroom campus, which can hinder its transformation processes. the study contributes more broadly to an understanding of social factors that affect these attitudes, which potentially have relevance not only for the university in this study but more widely in south africa’s higher education institutions and in other professional contexts. this small-scale study, we believe, opens the door to further research in the field of colour-blind attitudes in the country, as it continues to grapple with the challenges of transformation. acknowledgements we would like to acknowledge the students of the 2017 sociology honours class at the north-west university, potchefstroom campus who all acted as interviewers in the survey on which this study is based. competing interests the authors declare that they have no financial or other relationships that may have inappropriately influenced them in writing this article. authors’ contributions j.-l.a. conducted the literature review as well as the empirical research and presented it in honour of the mini-dissertation titled ‘colour-blind racial attitudes of students on the north-west university, potchefstroom campus’. j.z. acted as the supervisor of the research project, assisted with the literature review, guided the statistical analysis and wrote the article. funding information this research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors. data availability original data were collected and analysed in this study. the data have no linkage to the specific interviewees. confidentiality is, therefore, protected by the data. in the case of a reasonable request, the data for the variables discussed in this article can be made available. disclaimer the views, opinions, findings and recommendations expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not reflect the policy or position of affiliated agencies of the authors. references amoateng, a.y. & kalule-sabiti, i., 2014, ‘social context factors and attitudes toward interracial relationships on a south african university campus’, african population studies. supplement on population issues in south africa 28(1), 623–635. https://doi.org/10.11564/28-0-520 antwi, s.k. & hamza, k., 2015, ‘qualitative and quantitative research paradigms in business research: a philosophical reflection’, european journal of business and management 7(3), 217–225. babbie, e. & mouton, j., 2001, the practice of social research. south africa, oxford university press, cape town. blumer, h., 1958, ‘race prejudice as a sense of group position’, the pacific sociological review 1(1), 3–7. https://doi.org/10.2307/1388607 bonilla-silva, e., 2003, ‘racial attitudes or racial ideology? an alternative paradigm for examining actors’ racial views’, journal of political ideologies 8(1), 63–82. https://doi.org/10.1080/13569310306082 bobo, l.d. & fox, c., 2003, ‘race, racism, and discrimination: bridging problems, methods, and theory in social psychological research’, social psychology quarterly 66(4), 319–332. https://doi.org/10.2307/1519832 bryman, a., 2012, social research methods, 4th edn., oxford university press, new york, ny. burke, m., 2019, colorblind racism, polity press, cambridge. carr, l.g., 1997, ‘color-blind’ racism, sage, london. cheng, s.j., 2015, ‘psychometric examination of the color-blind racial attitudes scale for use among asian americans’, phd thesis, university of illinois, chicago, il. coates, r.d., 2011, covert racism: theories, institutions, and experiences, brill, leiden, boston, ma. dovidio, j.f., pearson, a.r. & geartner, s.l., 2009, ‘the nature of contemporary prejudice: insights from aversive racism’, social and personally psychology compass 3, 1–25. eiselen, r. & uys, t., 2016, analysing survey data using spss version 22, 5th edn., university of johannesburg, johannesburg. field, a., 2005, discovering statistics using spss, sage, london. furnham, a. & rajamanickam, r., 1992, ‘the protestant work ethic and just world beliefs in great britain and india’, international journal of psychology 27(6), 401–416. https://doi.org/10.1080/00207599208246905 gelo, o., braakmann, d. & benetka, g., 2008, ‘quantitative and qualitative research: beyond the debate’, integrative psychological behavioural science 42(3), 266–290. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12124-008-9078-3 greenstein, r., 2015, ‘race’, in p. stewart & j. zaaiman (eds.), sociology: a south african introduction, pp. 174–195, juta, cape town. kamsteeg, f., 2008, ‘in search of a merged identity: the case of multi-campus north-west university, south africa’, journal for transdisciplinary research in southern africa 4(2), 431–451. https://doi.org/10.4102/td.v4i2.162 kamsteeg, f., 2011, ‘transformation as social drama: stories about merging at north-west university, south africa’, anthropology southern africa 34(1&2), 51–61, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/23323256.2011.11500008 kestner, j.m., 2009, ‘relating colour-blind racial attitudes, social dominance orientation and just world beliefs’, phd thesis, loyola university, chicago, il. lerner, m.j., 1977, ‘the justice motive: some hypotheses as to its origins and forms’, journal of personality 45(1), 1–32. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6494.1977.tb00591.x mazzocco, p.j., 2015, ‘talking productively about race in the colour-blind era’, viewed 21 may 2017, from http://kirwaninstitute.osu.edu/docs/ki-race-talk-0115-05.pdf mcconahay, j.b., 1986, ‘modern racism, ambivalence, and the modern racism scale’, in j.f. dovidio & s.l. gaertner (eds.), prejudice, discrimination, and racism, pp. 91–125, academic press, washington, dc. mcdonald, c.p., 2016, ‘the relationships among multiracial identity, colour-blind racial ideology, and discrimination in multiracial individuals: implications for professional counselling and counsellor education’, phd thesis, georgia state university, atlanta, ga. muijs, d., 2004, doing quantitative research in education, sage, london. neville, h., coleman, n., falconer, j.w. & holmes, d., 2005, ‘color-blind racial ideology and psychological false consciousness among african americans’, journal of black psychology 31(1), 27–45. https://doi.org/10.1177/0095798404268287 neville, h.a., lilly, r.l., duran, g., lee, r.m. & browne, l., 2000, ‘construction and initial validation of the colour-blind racial attitudes scale (cobras)’, journal of counseling psychology 47(1), 59–70. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-0167.47.1.59 neville, h.a., poteat, v.p., lewis, j.a. & spanierman, l.b., 2014, ‘changes in white college students’ color-blind racial ideology over 4 years: do diversity experiences make a difference?’, journal of counseling psychology 61(2), 179–190. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0035168 north-west university, 2012, ‘nwu transformation charter, 2012’, viewed 28 january 2020, from http://www.nwu.ac.za/sites/www.nwu.ac.za/files/files/i-governance-management/policy/2pr-2.7_transformation-charter.pdf pearson, a.r., dovidio, j.f. & geartner, s.l., 2009, ‘the nature of contemporary prejudice: insights from aversive racism’, social and personally psychology compass 3(3), 1–25. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1751-9004.2009.00183.x pretorius, c., 2017, forging unity: the story of the north-west university’s first 10 years, viewed 28 january 2020, from https://repository.nwu.ac.za/handle/10394/26089?show=full prinsloo, p.j.j., 2016, north-west university (nwu): a merger and incorporation story, 2004–2014, viewed 28 january 2020, from https://repository.nwu.ac.za/handle/10394/26017 puttick, k., 2011, ‘first year students’ narratives of race and racism in post-apartheidsouth africa’, ma dissertation, university of witwatersrand, johannesburg. rabe, m., 2015, ‘gender’, in p. stewart & j. zaaiman (eds.), sociology: a south african introduction, pp. 151–169, juta, cape town. richeson, j.a. & nussbaum, r.j., 2003, ‘the impact of multiculturalism versus color-blindness on racial bias’, journal of experimental social psychology 40(3), 417–423. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2003.09.002 sarantakos, s., 2013, social research, 4th edn., palgrave macmillan, new york, ny. tynes, b.m. & markoe, s.l., 2010, ‘the role of color-blind racial attitudes in reactions to racial discrimination on social network sites’, journal of diversity in higher education 3(1), 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0018683 vargas, n., 2014, ‘off white: colour-blind ideology at the margins of whiteness’, ethnic and racial studies 37(13), 2281–2302. https://doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2013.821147 winant, h., 1998, ‘racism today: continuity and change in the post-civil rights era’, ethnic and racial studies 21(4), 755–766. https://doi.org/10.1080/014198798329856 worthington, r.l., navarro, r.l., loewy, m. & hart, j., 2008, ‘colour-blind racial attitudes, social dominance orientation, racial-ethnic group membership and college students’ perceptions of campus climate’, journal of diversity in higher education 1(1), 8–19. https://doi.org/10.1037/1938-8926.1.1.8 appendix 1: questionnaire section 1: demographic and profile information are you an undergraduate student? only interview undergraduate students. yes 1 no 2 if ‘no’, thank and close interview in what faculty are you currently registered? single response. do not prompt. faculty of study arts 1 natural sciences 2 theology 3 education sciences 4 economic and management sciences 5 law 6 engineering 7 health sciences 8 what is your current year of study? single response only. first year 1 senior 2 which sex/gender do you identify yourself with? single response. do not prompt. male 1 female 2 other 3 which race do you classify yourself as?single response. do not prompt. black 1 white 2 asian 3 mixed race 4 other 5 section 13: race relations questions 41. i will read you a number of statements. please indicate the extent to which you agree or disagree with the following statements relating to colour-blind racial attitudes. using the 5-point on the card, simply read out the number. hand respondent show card. one response per line. statements strongly disagree disagree somewhat agree agree strongly agree 41.1 everyone who works hard, no matter what race they are, has an equal chance to become rich. 1 2 3 4 5 41.2 race plays a role in the quality of services that students receive on the potchefstroom campus.® 1 2 3 4 5 41.3 it is important that people begin to think of themselves as only south african and not white, black, mixed race, indian, etc. 1 2 3 4 5 41.4 as a result of apartheid racial discrimination, programmes such as affirmative action (favouring black people to redress previous disadvantages) are necessary to help create equality.® 1 2 3 4 5 41.5 racism is a problem on the potchefstroom campus.® 1 2 3 4 5 41.6 race determines who will be successful and who will not be.® 1 2 3 4 5 41.7 racism is not an important problem in south africa today. 1 2 3 4 5 41.8 on the potchefstroom campus, black students do not have the same opportunities as students from other race groups. 1 2 3 4 5 41.9 talking about racial issues causes unnecessary tension. 1 2 3 4 5 41.10 it is important for students to discuss racism on the potchefstroom campus.® 1 2 3 4 5 41.11 white students on the potchefstroom campus have certain advantages because of the colour of their skin. ® 1 2 3 4 5 41.12 white students are more to blame for racial discrimination than students from other racial groups. 1 2 3 4 5 42. i will read you a number of statements. please indicate the extent to which you agree or disagree with the following statements relating to racial prejudice. using the 5-point on the card, simply read out the number. hand respondent show card. one response per line. statements strongly disagree disagree somewhat agree agree strongly agree 44.1 it is ok if some groups in society have more of a chance in life than others. 1 2 3 4 5 44.2 group equality should be our ideal in society. 1 2 3 4 5 44.3 to get ahead in life, it is sometimes necessary to step on other groups in society. 1 2 3 4 5 44.4 all groups in society should be given an equal chance in life. 1 2 3 4 5 44.5 it is probably a good thing that certain groups in society are at the top and other groups are at the bottom. 1 2 3 4 5 44.6 in getting what you want, it is sometimes necessary to use force against groups different from you. 1 2 3 4 5 43. i will read you a number of statements. please indicate the extent to which you agree or disagree with the following statements relating to just-world beliefs. using the 5-point on the card, simply read out the number. hand respondent show card. one response per line. statements strongly disagree disagree somewhat agree agree strongly agree 43.1 i am usually treated fairly. 1 2 3 4 5 43.2 i believe that i usually get what i deserve (i get what i ought to get) 1 2 3 4 5 43.3 in my life, injustice is the exception rather than the rule. 1 2 3 4 5 43.4 i think basically the world is a just place (some are not more favoured than others) 1 2 3 4 5 43.5 i believe that often people get what they deserve. 1 2 3 4 5 43.6 i am confident that justice always prevails over injustice. 1 2 3 4 5 44. i will read you a number of statements. please indicate the extent to which you agree or disagree with the following statements relating to social dominance orientation. using 5 points on the card, simply read out the number. hand respondent show card. one response per line. statements strongly disagree disagree somewhat agree agree strongly agree 42.1 white people are emphasising equal rights too much. 1 2 3 4 5 42.2 in the past year, government benefitted black people too much. 1 2 3 4 5 42.3 black people lose out on jobs because of their skin colour. 1 2 3 4 5 42.4 white people lose out on promotions because of their skin colour. 1 2 3 4 5 42.5 in the past year, the media favoured black people too much in terms of media coverage? 1 2 3 4 5 42.6 black and white students on potchefstroom campus have different value systems. 1 2 3 4 5