Paper presented at the International Conference on Gender, Language and Education: Equality and Diversity Issues in Asia and Beyond, hosted by The Education University of Hong Kong, 2-4 Dec. , 2020
Research Background:
When it comes to social justice, leadership plays a significant role in fost... more Research Background:
When it comes to social justice, leadership plays a significant role in fostering vision, ensuring compliance with policies and their implementation, in addition to embodying a responsibility for institutional growth. This is important in the current global drive to address gender inequality, one of the Sustainable Development Goals of United Nations. Public institutions of authority, particularly higher education institutions (HEIs), play a significant role for the public good in this regard. However, the staff composition of Indian public HEIs presents a dismal picture with women occupying only 7% of positions of leadership.
Objectives:
The paper aims to study the role of institutional leaders in implementing, monitoring and evaluating gender policies. It further wants to understand the individual and systemic constraints faced by leaders in their efforts to attain the vision of gender equity in their institutions.
Methods:
We present findings from a collaborative research project studying the dominant cultures within universities in the post-colonial contexts of India and South Africa. It draws from data generated through mixed methods in 2019, with participation of 185 academic staff and leaders.
Findings:
While the leadership ensured the existence of gender policies in their universities, mechanisms of implementation, monitoring and evaluation were weak and left much to be desired. The rhetoric of gender mainstreaming covered up for the lack of awareness of the intentionality of policies for gender equity. The policies were considered more of a constitutional obligation rather than being looked upon with a politico-ethical vision to include those marginalized with regard to gender and its intersections with caste, sexuality, ability and language. The resources of ‘ghettoised’ areas of specialization were not utilized to the optimum therefore rendering the institutional functioning to remain exclusionary, elitist, sexist and casteist.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Uploads
Books
Drawing from a mixed-method study, the chapter explores the patterns which emerged from literature, questionnaire responses, and semi-structured interviews about the problematics at play within six institutions in the post-colonial contexts of India and South Africa. The two upper middle-income contexts have strong constitutional commitments to democracy and social justice at the macro-level, with bold policy interventions undertaken at meso-level to address the legacies of exclusion and oppression in student enrollment and staff composition in HE. However, recent fraught dynamics and unrest within the sector in each country have brought renewed attention to the politics of participation and a breakdown in trust of governance and management.
In this study, the standpoint of key stakeholders was prioritized, including those in assigned leadership positions and academic staff. Particular attention was paid to gender and intersectional inequalities impacting academic staff, and what they revealed about the persistence of policy-implementation gaps and their relation to principle-implementation gaps. Concerns are raised about impoverished comprehensions of, and conditions for, sustainable ethical leadership which emerged across both contexts.
Educational intention
Situate the problem of authorship more explicitly within discussions about assessment.
Be more cognizant of the significance of assessment practices on the development of authorship.
Describe the significance of such practices for the principles of metacognition and agency.
and elusive to analyse in higher education. A particular contribution of the chapter is the discussion of how the construction of research participants informed both the data generation processes, and the analytic approach to the texts they authored. An argument is made for the importance of establishing conditions which enable the possibilities of participants’ agency.
At the end of the chapter, the reader should be able to:
- situate the problem of authorship more explicitly within discussions about assessment;
- be more cognisant of the significance of assessment practices on the development of authorship;
- describe the significance of such practices for the principles of metacognition and agency.
Abstract
This chapter considers how the positioning of the artist-student’s intentionality can operate to resist closure in interpretation, bringing with it a healthy measure of uncertainty and discourse to assessment practices in the creative arts. The discussion is set within a philosophical context of constructions of authorship and creativity, and how these inform contemporary art criticism. It then extends to an analysis of the interpretative approaches adopted in the assessment practices of two art schools espousing polemically different approaches to intentionality, with emphasis on the significance for the student experience, their metacognition and agency.
Case Studies of the practice of: Caroline Khene; Helena van Coller; Jonathan Davy; Paul Mensah; Mark de Vos;
Monwabisi Peter; Nicky van der Poel; Joy Owen; Kelcey Brock; Miriam Mattison; Mosiuoa Tsietsi;
Dion Nkomo; Georgina Cundill; Brent Meistre; Dina Belluigi; Corinne Knowles; Deborah Seddon;
John Williams; Steffen Buettner; Hannah Thinyane; Tracey Chambers
Teachers often approach teaching and learning relationships by mimicking the way they were taught or the way they learnt, in a cycle where academics create images of themselves. In South Africa’s colonial and apartheid past, whiteness hegemony constructed and enabled the white, heterosexual male as the ideal, self - constraining and disadvantaging those who differed as ‘other’, creating injustices in which education was complicit. Rubbing against this grain, formal staff development can provide transformative learning spaces where unconscious assumptions and practices that privilege the status quo are excavated, and alternative teaching and learning relationships between teacher and student are re-imagined. In formal courses, for instance, facilitative roles can be modelled which provoke interactions that encourage ethical relationships between participants who differ in terms of their backgrounds, disciplines, races, gender, philosophical viewpoints and so on. Such critical ‘work’ is underpinned by a contextual mandate towards social justice and a philosophical stance which privileges difference as more than a pedagogical tool, but an ethical one.
Revisiting central concerns expressed at the beginning of this anthology, such as the purposes of the university, and quality as being about transformation, I introduce this chapter by considering how the teacher and student have been constructed in the larger context of the university. Taking cognisance of the implications of this for the roles of the intellectual, I explore some of the possibilities created by difference and disruption. To suggest that we should open our ways of thinking of the other, I draw from Derrida’s argument that the relationship between ‘self’ and ‘other’ is neither/nor in terms of sameness and difference, and psychoanalytic acknowledgements that we are strangers to ourselves. In the second part, I explore the reflective and discursive spaces of the Postgraduate Diploma in Higher Education (PG Dip (Higher Education)) staff development programme which we offer at Rhodes University, which I argue have the potential to create the disruptive conditions to productively catalyse such ethical relationships. The last part of the chapter turns to how these aspects work at a fundamental level to disrupt notions of the self, and question some of the assumptions of the critical tradition of adult education, within which I believe we at Centre for Higher Education Research, Teaching and Learning (CHERTL) are situated. Interlaced with this discussion, are insights and reflections from participants in the programme.
The development of creativity is enabled or constrained by the conditions created through teaching and learning processes. This chapter looks at how assessment practices, because of their affective import, can impact on these conditions and alter the student experience of learning. The reader’s attention is drawn to four particular areas - the role of the assessor, the assessment focus, the issue of assessment criteria, and the importance of feedback – where suggestions are made about culture, structure and agency in terms of student creativity. The chapter draws from textual and empirical research in a creative arts field.
Providing ‘safe spaces’ to enable the development of creativity may require more creative solutions than the norm. In this chapter, we explore the design and implementation process of a formative evaluation instrument which utilises visual metaphoric storytelling to encourage reflection and feedback from fine art photography students about their experience of a course.
As agents in higher education (HE), a shift is required in terms of how we conceptualise the quality of teaching and courses in relation to student learning. This chapter argues that evaluation should be approached as ethical and valid research into teaching and learning. Consideration should be given to how the conceptualisations of curriculum development and of student learning inform our choices and designs of data collection instruments. Alternative methods to standardised instruments and questionnaires are explored. The central principle underpinning this chapter is that, as a teacher-learner interaction, the processes of evaluating teaching/ courses should both focus on and facilitate student learning. Just as the assessment of student learning is now recognised as an integrated part of curriculum design, so too should the potential benefits of the evaluation of teaching and/courses be maximised in a sensitive and responsive manner.
Papers
Drawing from a mixed-method study, the chapter explores the patterns which emerged from literature, questionnaire responses, and semi-structured interviews about the problematics at play within six institutions in the post-colonial contexts of India and South Africa. The two upper middle-income contexts have strong constitutional commitments to democracy and social justice at the macro-level, with bold policy interventions undertaken at meso-level to address the legacies of exclusion and oppression in student enrollment and staff composition in HE. However, recent fraught dynamics and unrest within the sector in each country have brought renewed attention to the politics of participation and a breakdown in trust of governance and management.
In this study, the standpoint of key stakeholders was prioritized, including those in assigned leadership positions and academic staff. Particular attention was paid to gender and intersectional inequalities impacting academic staff, and what they revealed about the persistence of policy-implementation gaps and their relation to principle-implementation gaps. Concerns are raised about impoverished comprehensions of, and conditions for, sustainable ethical leadership which emerged across both contexts.
Educational intention
Situate the problem of authorship more explicitly within discussions about assessment.
Be more cognizant of the significance of assessment practices on the development of authorship.
Describe the significance of such practices for the principles of metacognition and agency.
and elusive to analyse in higher education. A particular contribution of the chapter is the discussion of how the construction of research participants informed both the data generation processes, and the analytic approach to the texts they authored. An argument is made for the importance of establishing conditions which enable the possibilities of participants’ agency.
At the end of the chapter, the reader should be able to:
- situate the problem of authorship more explicitly within discussions about assessment;
- be more cognisant of the significance of assessment practices on the development of authorship;
- describe the significance of such practices for the principles of metacognition and agency.
Abstract
This chapter considers how the positioning of the artist-student’s intentionality can operate to resist closure in interpretation, bringing with it a healthy measure of uncertainty and discourse to assessment practices in the creative arts. The discussion is set within a philosophical context of constructions of authorship and creativity, and how these inform contemporary art criticism. It then extends to an analysis of the interpretative approaches adopted in the assessment practices of two art schools espousing polemically different approaches to intentionality, with emphasis on the significance for the student experience, their metacognition and agency.
Case Studies of the practice of: Caroline Khene; Helena van Coller; Jonathan Davy; Paul Mensah; Mark de Vos;
Monwabisi Peter; Nicky van der Poel; Joy Owen; Kelcey Brock; Miriam Mattison; Mosiuoa Tsietsi;
Dion Nkomo; Georgina Cundill; Brent Meistre; Dina Belluigi; Corinne Knowles; Deborah Seddon;
John Williams; Steffen Buettner; Hannah Thinyane; Tracey Chambers
Teachers often approach teaching and learning relationships by mimicking the way they were taught or the way they learnt, in a cycle where academics create images of themselves. In South Africa’s colonial and apartheid past, whiteness hegemony constructed and enabled the white, heterosexual male as the ideal, self - constraining and disadvantaging those who differed as ‘other’, creating injustices in which education was complicit. Rubbing against this grain, formal staff development can provide transformative learning spaces where unconscious assumptions and practices that privilege the status quo are excavated, and alternative teaching and learning relationships between teacher and student are re-imagined. In formal courses, for instance, facilitative roles can be modelled which provoke interactions that encourage ethical relationships between participants who differ in terms of their backgrounds, disciplines, races, gender, philosophical viewpoints and so on. Such critical ‘work’ is underpinned by a contextual mandate towards social justice and a philosophical stance which privileges difference as more than a pedagogical tool, but an ethical one.
Revisiting central concerns expressed at the beginning of this anthology, such as the purposes of the university, and quality as being about transformation, I introduce this chapter by considering how the teacher and student have been constructed in the larger context of the university. Taking cognisance of the implications of this for the roles of the intellectual, I explore some of the possibilities created by difference and disruption. To suggest that we should open our ways of thinking of the other, I draw from Derrida’s argument that the relationship between ‘self’ and ‘other’ is neither/nor in terms of sameness and difference, and psychoanalytic acknowledgements that we are strangers to ourselves. In the second part, I explore the reflective and discursive spaces of the Postgraduate Diploma in Higher Education (PG Dip (Higher Education)) staff development programme which we offer at Rhodes University, which I argue have the potential to create the disruptive conditions to productively catalyse such ethical relationships. The last part of the chapter turns to how these aspects work at a fundamental level to disrupt notions of the self, and question some of the assumptions of the critical tradition of adult education, within which I believe we at Centre for Higher Education Research, Teaching and Learning (CHERTL) are situated. Interlaced with this discussion, are insights and reflections from participants in the programme.
The development of creativity is enabled or constrained by the conditions created through teaching and learning processes. This chapter looks at how assessment practices, because of their affective import, can impact on these conditions and alter the student experience of learning. The reader’s attention is drawn to four particular areas - the role of the assessor, the assessment focus, the issue of assessment criteria, and the importance of feedback – where suggestions are made about culture, structure and agency in terms of student creativity. The chapter draws from textual and empirical research in a creative arts field.
Providing ‘safe spaces’ to enable the development of creativity may require more creative solutions than the norm. In this chapter, we explore the design and implementation process of a formative evaluation instrument which utilises visual metaphoric storytelling to encourage reflection and feedback from fine art photography students about their experience of a course.
As agents in higher education (HE), a shift is required in terms of how we conceptualise the quality of teaching and courses in relation to student learning. This chapter argues that evaluation should be approached as ethical and valid research into teaching and learning. Consideration should be given to how the conceptualisations of curriculum development and of student learning inform our choices and designs of data collection instruments. Alternative methods to standardised instruments and questionnaires are explored. The central principle underpinning this chapter is that, as a teacher-learner interaction, the processes of evaluating teaching/ courses should both focus on and facilitate student learning. Just as the assessment of student learning is now recognised as an integrated part of curriculum design, so too should the potential benefits of the evaluation of teaching and/courses be maximised in a sensitive and responsive manner.
Broken Vessels was conceived as “a pilot exhibition project for a long-term art biennial” of collaborative creative arts projects between Irish and African artists. For the inaugural exhibition, which ran from the 14th September to the 15th October 2021, a small group of six artists were selected to engage with the curatorial thematics, the installation site and western Ireland. Three were artists working within the immediate local spaces and concerns, Anne Marie Daecy, Noelle Gallagher and Louise Manifold; and three worked remotely, based in South Africa, Christine Dixie, Monique Pelser and Lesego Rampolokeng. The exhibition was curated by the South African artist Brent Meistre, curator of Analogue Eye: Video Art Africa, as part of the Interface programmes directed by Alannah Robins and produced by Jill Murray.
academic enquiry in many contexts around the world. While that may be the case,
in one devolved region of the United Kingdom (UK), that of Northern Ireland (NI), these are significantly under-studied when it comes to local populations and issues. This study sought to comprehend how such localised research enquiry is constructed, perceived and impacted by the various stakeholders who influence that contexts’ higher education ecology.
The study was conducted in order to gain an understanding of the state of the discipline of education in the interests of addressing inequalities. It explored where certain markers of sameness and difference – in terms of characteristics of sex, ethnicity, age, disability, religious belief and nationality – may have affected staff employment between 2015 and 2020. This included analysing the percentages of staff, the proportions of groupings, and the rate of change in employment conditions, as captured in HESA data during the period researched. This enabled the researchers to identify the differential and, where possible to ascertain, the intersectional impacts on the access, positioning, attainment, progression and attrition of education staff. Main findings are summarised below.
Based on findings of a mixed methods study conducted with four higher education institutions in India in 2019, the paper deconstructs the umbrella category of “socio-economically disadvantaged groups” articulated in the National Education Policy 2020. In view of addressing the issues of gender inequality (SDG 5) and quality education (SDG 4), we locate our argument in the discourse of the rise of the „New Middle Class‟ in India from the 1990s. Rather than practicing social justice, the enactment of policies of affirmative action have altered public universities into producers of the „New Middle Class‟, all the while they claim to be expansive and inclusive. These policies „allow‟ the subalterns to be clothed with the veneer of modernity of the intellectual class as they enter higher education institutions on condition that they conceal their sociocultural identities, norms and unprivileged social positioning. This ensures that the university can continue with its claim to be a secular and neutral zone unmarked by difference or hierarchy. Thus, terms such as „quality‟ and „equality‟ seem to become more a tool for social control than social justice. While the entry of gendered subalterns is framed as a brand of the „New Middle Class‟ modernity, mobility and development, any assertion or retention of their gendered, caste or minority identities are simultaneously repudiated and misrecognised. It is the „unmarked‟ and
„universal‟ „New Middle Class‟ who want to be in control, though not always with success, of defining the limits of „legitimate‟ participation of the subalterns in the university space, and in turn the world beyond. The paper uses feminist analysis to understand the insider perspectives of academic staff and leadership belonging to the NMC and their participation in the processes of incorporation of subalterns in university spaces.
In each of these contexts, a critical mass of those from groups and knowledge systems misrecognised and oppressed have negotiated radical changes in the figures and institutions of authority in their countries. Authorship is central to such power and to agency. This paper deliberates such questions and politics of authorship alongside those entanglements of author-ing inherent to the interpretative processes of storytelling, artistic research and interpretation within The ‘Counter // Narratives’ Project itself - which sought to explore how counter-stories may see a way through the myopia of the social delegitimation of the western-oriented academy, provide challenge to reproductions of internalised oppression, and openings to engagement with more just notions of authority.
Against the dominant hero narratives of social mobility and exceptionalism, and the looming spectres of colonial universities’ mythologies of quality, the artists grappled with the ethico-historical responsibility of bearing witness, but also creating generative and equitious imaginaries through their creative arts research practice. Drawing on reflective interviews with the artists, participants and ourselves as the research-curatorial team, in this video we offer a synopsis of the paper for this conference. Within it, we highlight insights into the layers of narration negotiated, including the relations between those layers and the visual discourses and micro-textuality of the final videos. Excerpts and stills from the video artworks, and extracts from correspondence, transcripts and audience reception responses are referenced by the research-curatorial team, to provide a rich and complex dialogue about the im-possibilities of representing and visualising emancipatory imaginaries.
When it comes to social justice, leadership plays a significant role in fostering vision, ensuring compliance with policies and their implementation, in addition to embodying a responsibility for institutional growth. This is important in the current global drive to address gender inequality, one of the Sustainable Development Goals of United Nations. Public institutions of authority, particularly higher education institutions (HEIs), play a significant role for the public good in this regard. However, the staff composition of Indian public HEIs presents a dismal picture with women occupying only 7% of positions of leadership.
Objectives:
The paper aims to study the role of institutional leaders in implementing, monitoring and evaluating gender policies. It further wants to understand the individual and systemic constraints faced by leaders in their efforts to attain the vision of gender equity in their institutions.
Methods:
We present findings from a collaborative research project studying the dominant cultures within universities in the post-colonial contexts of India and South Africa. It draws from data generated through mixed methods in 2019, with participation of 185 academic staff and leaders.
Findings:
While the leadership ensured the existence of gender policies in their universities, mechanisms of implementation, monitoring and evaluation were weak and left much to be desired. The rhetoric of gender mainstreaming covered up for the lack of awareness of the intentionality of policies for gender equity. The policies were considered more of a constitutional obligation rather than being looked upon with a politico-ethical vision to include those marginalized with regard to gender and its intersections with caste, sexuality, ability and language. The resources of ‘ghettoised’ areas of specialization were not utilized to the optimum therefore rendering the institutional functioning to remain exclusionary, elitist, sexist and casteist.
Along with the facilitator(s), participants will be prompted to create visual narratives from a provided bank of images, which they will show and discuss with a small group of fellow participants. They will then choose one of the visual narratives to re-present in a postcard, articulating thoughts about either the narrative or the participation process for a reader of his/her choice, to whom the postcard will be addressed. Through this process, participants will act as authors and readers of the texts constructed.
All original artifacts will remain in the possession of the participants. Those who are willing, will be invited at the end of the workshop to contribute images of their artifacts for research purposes [2]. However, participating in the workshop process is in no way dependent on participating in the research.
The recording was produced by these academics. It is in no way representative of the institutions to which they are affiliated.
Please click CC to access captions if necessary. We welcome translation contributions.
For more on the project and its collaborators see https://counternarrativefilm.wixsite.com/counter