Background: Elmarie Costandius was passionate about pedagogy, particularly from a social justice perspective, throughout her career in higher education. Although located as a senior lecturer in the visual arts programme at Stellenbosch University, she pursued the field of education in her postgraduate studies, when she completed a second Masters Degree in Adult Learning and Global Change in 2007 at the University of the Western Cape, as well as a PhD in Curriculum Studies at Stellenbosch University, graduating in 2012. She received multiple teaching awards both from her own institution, Stellenbosch University, as well as nationally. Elmarie was also a teaching fellow in the Centre for Teaching and Learning (CTL) at Stellenbosch University and was chosen to be part of the Teaching Advancement at Universities (TAU) Fellowship programme, a national programme for outstanding teachers in higher education. In 2023, she won the TAU Fellows Award, which she felt honoured to receive-as she expressed it:
Clift, B.C., Costas Batlle, I., Bekker, S., & Chudzikowski, K. (Eds.). (2023). Qualitative Researcher Vulnerability: Negotiating, Experiencing and Embracing (1st ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003349266
South African writing centre scholarship reveals how writing centres have responded to changing circumstances in higher education. Much of this scholarship reflects processes of ongoing reflection and reflexivity, engaging and interrogating notions of resilience, agency and literacy in different ways. In this paper, we identify three broad writing centre narratives apparent in this scholarship. We then trouble some of these stories, including our own, by turning to bystander theory as a lens and diffraction as a methodology. This allows us to question how writing centre narratives assign the roles of victim, perpetrator and upstander in higher education, and in writing centres specifically. We wonder together about the roles assigned in these stories and their effects. We call for a more critical approach to understanding South African writing centre work and argue that our stories and roles, by over-focussing on the micro-level and neglecting the meso- and macro-levels, may unintentionally shield universities from having to enact systemic transformation.
While the effects experienced by the leaders of radical transformative movements at universities in South Africa and other countries have become evident over the last decades, the scholarly discussion and theorisation thereof, especially by those directly involved in these movements, has been scarce. This article addresses this knowledge gap and discusses the consequences suffered by the leaders of a small, albeit no less radically transformative, movement that took place at a middle-size department at a historically white South African university in 2022: #Masivule_i-Antieke_Studies. By exploring an auto-ethnographic method and couching their personal experiences within decolonial theory, the authors – who were among the six Masivule founders and activists – conclude that: contesting (post-/epi-)colonial powers at universities has both negative and positive effects on the architects/leaders of decolonial movements, which are visible in four domains: structural, epistemic, personal, and relational. While structural, epistemic, and relational effects gradually become mostly positive, personal effects remain profoundly (albeit not exclusively) negative. The authors propose that the most promising or effective way to deal with traumatic experiences and render them generative is to embrace decoloniality – not only as a method of transforming a particular department, university, or field, but as a philosophy governing one’s professional career and life.
Summary writing is a core academic activity essential for success in higher education. Proficiency in this skill is crucial for students to perform various academic tasks. However, summary writing poses significant challenges for multilingual students in South Africa, particularly in contexts where monolingual practices prevail. This qualitative study investigates the impact of translanguaging on the summary writing skills of multilingual students at a South African university. Eight participants, who wrote summaries of an English text in English and their home languages, were interviewed in semi-structured interviews. The findings reveal that translanguaging enhances comprehension and engagement with texts, as it allows students to use multiple languages freely. Consequently, this paper recommends implementing language policies that treat all languages equally and encourage the use of students’ home languages as learning resources. Future research should focus on incorporating texts in multiple languages for reading and summary writing in literacy education.
