Beyond the pandemic: Lessons for the future of SOTL in the global South (part two)

The third biennial SOTL in the South Conference took place online between November 22 and 25, 2021. The theme of the conference was 'Beyond the Pandemic: Lessons for the Future of SOTL in the Global South'. This theme was in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which raised fundamental and urgent questions for the scholarship of teaching and learning. Emerging from the conference were a number of papers that sought to address questions regarding the challenges associated with academic life in lockdown and the transition to online teaching and learning. These papers examined these questions from a diversity of perspectives: student, lecturers, support staff, and academic managers. A first collection of these papers was released in April 2022. This collection privileged the perspectives of university management, lecturers, academic advisors, doctoral supervisors and tutors. In this, the second part of our collection of papers emerging from the 2021 SOTL in the South conference, greater focus is placed on student perspectives in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. © 2022 Archivos de Medicina del Deporte. All rights reserved.

Pandemic Disruptions to Access to Higher Education in South Africa: A Dream Deferred?

The COVID-19 pandemic and the shift to emergency remote teaching (ERT) and online learning highlighted issues of social justice, pedagogical inclusion and epistemic access in higher education. The research underlying this article analyses the complexities of access to learning and the effects of the shift to ERT and online learning on the social justice agenda in South Africa, using the case study of the University of Johannesburg.The article uses the conceptual frameworks of epistemic access, equity and inclusive pedagogy from the theories of Fraser (2008), Mbembe (2016) and Mgqwashu (2016). Pedagogic continuity and inclusion (Motala and Menon 2020;Menon and Motala 2021), hard-won by many institutions during the pandemic, will need to be sustained and secured as the world adapts to a "new normal" in higher education and other spheres of life.Czerniewicz et al. (2020, 957) refer to the maxim "Anytime, anyplace, anywhere" characterising ERT as a "brutal underestimation of the complexities and entanglement of different inequalities and structural arrangements". Fataar (2020), Czerniewicz et al. (2020) and Hodges et al. (2020) advocate an alternative pedagogy that is "trauma-informed" and offers parity with the pedagogies that prevailed pre-pandemic.The article concludes that the pre-existing conditions of deep inequality and inequities, and a highly differentiated higher education system with uneven pedagogical practices, were exacerbated by the pandemic. While we acknowledge the achievement of avoiding the loss of the academic year during the pandemic, we argue that it is important to learn lessons from the initial implementation of ERT and the fractures that it highlights in higher education. Heading into an uncertain future, the sector needs explicit equity-driven approaches to ensure pedagogical inclusion beyond physical and epistemic access.

Beyond the pandemic: Lessons for the future of SOTL in the global South (part one)

The third biennial SOTL in the South Conference took place online between November 22 and 25, 2021. The theme of the conference was 'Beyond the Pandemic: Lessons for the Future of SOTL in the Global South'. This theme was in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which raised fundamental and urgent questions for the scholarship of teaching and learning. This special issue of the SOTL in the South journal addresses the question of how the challenges associated with academic life in lockdown and the transition to online teaching and learning have been experienced by students, lecturers, support staff, and academic managers in institutions and across society more broadly. The contributions to this special issue grapple with questions such as: what will the longer-term impact be on our institutions, our students, and ourselves as teachers and learners? Will there be a return to 'normal' and, if not, what will the 'new' normal look like - and will it foster greater fairness, justice and equality? This is the first part of what will be a two-part special issue. In this first part, the lens offered privileges the perspective of university management, lecturers, academic advisors, doctoral supervisors, and tutors. The second part of the special issue, to be published in a few months' time, will place greater focus on student perspectives in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. © 2022 by the authors.

Pedagogical continuities in teaching and learning during COVID-19: Holding up the bridge

2020 and 2021 in higher education were characterised by pandemic-related disruptions to conventional modes of teaching and learning. These prompted discussions about pedagogic shifts, academic continuity and the future of teaching and learning. Debates on the 'future-focused' university have raised questions about system-level and resourcing issues, teaching and learning practices and new ecologies of e-learning. This paper engages with these debates to better understand the continuities and discontinuities in the new pedagogies and how these affect what universities may do differently going forward. The pandemic prompted exploration of hybrid models of teaching and learning, with radical changes to traditional face-to-face teaching. The theoretical framework of the paper synthesises the concepts of pedagogical continuity and social justice to analyse the research findings. The research is based on data collected from interviews with 15 senior academic leaders at the University of Johannesburg (UJ) about how they negotiated pedagogy during the transition to emergency remote teaching (ERT) and online teaching and learning. The findings indicate that academic staff were able to draw significant gains in the transition to ERT that may offer new opportunities and possibilities for learning in an uncertain future. © 2022 by the authors.

Pandemic Leadership in Higher Education: New Horizons, Risks and Complexities

The disruption of the academic year by the COVID-19 pandemic required higher education institutions to manage and lead under untenable conditions. This article is a case study of a leadership model adopted at the University of Johannesburg (UJ) located in South Africa. It offers insights into how the leadership and governance evolved and enabled management of the crisis presented by the pandemic. This article presents the relevant theory and concepts on leadership followed by a review of the impact of COVID-19 on higher education. This is followed by an interpretation of the sequence of events as they unfolded at UJ propelled by the mandate to leave no student behind and continue with the academic year. The UJ experience was characterised by the values of social justice, equity, access and teaching excellence. This article explores the University of Johannesburg's response in relation to these values and leadership theories.

School governance and funding policy in south africa: Towards social justice and equity in education policy

Equity and redress, in and through education, are fundamental commitments of the new South African democratic government that ensued in 1994 after a brutal and protracted history of colonial and apartheid segregation and oppression denied the majority black population the fundamental right to equitable and quality education. A raft of ambitious and far-reaching policies were put in place to achieve these laudable goals. Yet more than 26 years after the ending of colonial and apartheid rule, the South African education system, and society in general, remain, far from equal – made apparent by the current COVID-19 pandemic. In this paper we take a critical (re)look at South African education governance and funding policies, considering why the South African Schools Acts (SASA) and the National Norms and Standards for School Funding (NNSSF), first promulgated in 1997 and 1998 and subsequently amended, have not delivered as expected on the promises of equity, redistribution and redress. The paper advances conceptual flaws, operational failures and implementation naivety as to why these promises have not been realised, advocating for an alternative social justice model for school governance and funding. © 2020, South African Journal Of Education. All rights reserved.