In the capitalist democracy, universities have been increasingly controlled by the state,
which rewards generative, rather than disseminative practice. Universities have attempted
to maximise income generation by increasing student numbers, and in many instances,
reducing staff numbers. In the last fifty years, there have attempts to increase
participation in higher education by diverse gender, racial and class groups. Since the
1980s, the disjunction between school and university education has been widening.
University graduates are expected to be critical thinkers, who have high-level
competancies when joining the workforce. Consequently, the lecturer is confronted with
an increasingly large and diverse group of students and the increasingly complex task of
teaching knowledge and skills that are relevant in an ever-changing world.
The current study evaluated the practices of teaching and learning in higher education in
South Africa through the examination of four successive cohorts of First Year Health
Sciences learners who registered for Psychology between 2000 and 2003. A unique
interpretation of L.S. Vygotsky’s ontological and epistemological framework was
presented in terms of the practices of higher education in South Africa at the beginning of
the Twenty-First century. Vygotsky’s conflictual model of development in which the
historical (what knowledge and skills have been acquired) and the social (critical thinking
in Psychology) are inextricably linked, provided the foundation of this dialectical
historical materialist analysis. The teaching practices had two parts, namely tasks and
tools, and social interaction. Students were positioned, not as customers, but as learners
who were required to learn a specific set of knowledge and skills in order to develop
understanding. A post-hoc analysis was conducted on all forms of semiotic mediation and
social interactions between the lecturer and the large group of students. The cultural tasks
(learning outcomes and essay tasks) and tools (problem-solving strategies for the essay
tasks, the general and specific lecture outlines, lecture notes, case studies and challenge
questions) were analysed in terms of Bloom’s taxonomy of educational objectives.
Naturalistic observations of interactions between the lecturer and a large group of
students were also analysed in terms of the gender and racial characteristics of
participating students and the verbal and non-verbal behaviour of the lecturer. The
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students’ cognitive and affective perceptions of all the cultural tasks and tools were
analysed, and viewed in relation to the constructions of the lecturer.
Matches, or shared practice, between the lecturer and the students related to the structure
of the process of learning; the use of examples that relate to “real” life; the Resourcepack
as a tool for the navigation of the learning process and the valuing of the interactive
dialogue between the lecturer and the students. The mismatches between the lecturer and
the students primarily concern the dialectic between knowledge and skills in the
development of understanding. For students in the First Year of higher education,
understanding is conceptualised as the reproduction of knowledge and the application of
that knowledge to a concrete experience. A surprising finding in the current study was
that no significant differences were found between the sociohistorical variables (gender,
race and degree) concerning the cultural tasks and tools.
The current study also proposed a unique method of conducting large class lecturerstudent
interactions. The evidence from both the lecturer and the students supported the
use of the small group learning techniques in the large classes. What makes the current
study’s use of the small group method is the importance placed on a hierarchy of
dialogues between the lecturer and the students in which adult guidance is of central
importance. This adult guidance is dependent upon certain characteristics of the
facilitation by the lecturer. The shortcoming of this particular method of conducting large
classes is that dominant and subordinate groups of learners still existed in the large class.
However, representivity of the subordinate groups was achieved. In addition, the students
did not relate the use of the method to increased understanding of the concepts in the
course. The current study also proposed a unique definition of participation in which
multiple forms of activity are present.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:wits/oai:wiredspace.wits.ac.za:10539/5916 |
| Date | 05 January 2009 |
| Creators | Mooney, G. A. |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | application/pdf |
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