Transformation of higher education, both internationally and within South African
higher education (SAHE) is an on-going process. Higher education institutions
(HEIs) always need to change the way in which they conduct their daily business,
both academically and socially. Some of the issues that constantly warrant attention
from these institutions are policy development, curriculum development, issues
pertaining to community engagement and issues pertaining to creating a welcoming
institutional climate for all constituencies. Within the South African context, as more
and more diverse staff and students enter the SAHE system, the system needs to
change to accommodate the new direction. This is especially the case within the
historically white Afrikaans-medium institutions, which face a huge responsibility to
change their academic and social landscape to accommodate the new education
system.
This study explored how black women academics (BWAs), as part of the masses
entering the historically white Afrikaans-medium higher education institutions,
perceived the on-going social transformation attempts within the institutions. Using
the University of the Free State (UFS) as a case study, the focus was on how this
particular constituency viewed social transformation from race and gender points of
view. An action research (AR) approach was used, which engaged BWAs, together
with a complementary group of white women academics (WWAs) in individual faceto-
face interviews and focus group discussions. The main questions that formed the
heart of the discussions were:
· What is our concern regarding social transformation at the UFS? And
· How can we improve our work environment?
Findings from the study indicate that BWAs have a negative view of social
transformation at the UFS. Issues that contributed to their negative perception
included, inter alia, problems pertaining to the dual language policy, scarcity of
capacity building initiatives, power dynamics and interpersonal problems, all of which
seemed to hamper successful social transformation at the UFS. Interesting though was this groupâs awareness that the responsibility to improve the UFS did not only lie
with the university management but that, as part of the institution, they too were
responsible to act as agents of change in creating a space where everybody could
feel a sense of belonging.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:ufs/oai:etd.uovs.ac.za:etd-08192014-123211 |
| Date | 19 August 2014 |
| Creators | Ramohai, Juliet |
| Contributors | Prof A Beylefeld, Pro R Niemann |
| Publisher | University of the Free State |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | en-uk |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.uovs.ac.za//theses/available/etd-08192014-123211/restricted/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to University Free State or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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