Teaching university postgraduate students has been a lifelong fulfilling career. Drawing on theoretical frames from autoethnography, the aim of this paper is to share my autoethnographic reflections on 30 years of teaching psychodynamic psychotherapy to senior postgraduate students in professional psychology training. Far from being an indulgent trip down memory lane, sharing my teaching experiences has the intention to offer value in terms of documenting the socio-cultural and historical changes that took place during this period, and in so doing, to offer educators a personal understanding of the impact of such developments on teaching. Three key areas of change have been identified. These are in classroom demography, curriculum, and technology. Using these key areas of change as themes that traverse the time periods of my teaching, I write about my development of a sense of identity as a lecturer and also about three main lessons learned along the way. The first lesson is the power of experiential learning; the second lesson is teaching students about empathy, a core concept in psychotherapy; and the third lesson is the power of personal growth and awareness of self. It is suggested that these lessons have implications for pedagogy.
This article revisits the lived experiences of South African Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) students through a Freirean lens, foregrounding the praxis of listening as a transformative act of conscientisation. Drawing on participatory action research (PAR) with National Certificate (Vocational) [NC(V)] graduates, the study explores how students reflect on and act against systemic inequities within their learning environments and labour market transitions. Moving beyond the idealism often associated with Freirean applications, the paper offers grounded evidence of how students mobilise dialogical spaces, peer learning networks, and collective activism to contest exclusionary pedagogies and institutional neglect. It distinguishes between hearing - a tokenistic recognition of students’ voices - and listening, which entails dialogical engagement that generates agency and systemic critique. Positioned within South Africa’s evolving TVET landscape, including post-Quality Council for Trades and Occupations (QCTO) reforms and shifting policy frameworks, the study argues that genuine listening can reframe employability as a humanising and emancipatory process rather than a narrow economic imperative. By integrating students’ praxis with recent critical debates on vocational justice and transformation, the paper contributes to reimagining TVET as a site of collective empowerment and social change. The findings advance a Freirean pedagogy of transformation rooted in listening, action, and liberation.
This study uses the lens of Activity Theory to explore the dynamics of a capacity development relationship among educators in the Global South. The research employed a qualitative approach, including questionnaires and interviews with educators from two recipient higher education institutions (HEIs). The findings highlight the importance of a staggered, structured approach to capacity development, where incremental responsibility transfer enables recipient educators to acquire essential skills in teaching, assessment, and curriculum design. Furthermore, the study underscores the importance of mutual respect, collaboration, and continuous professional dialogue within South-South teaching collaborations, contrasting this approach with traditional North-South models. The contribution of this study lies in its novel application of Activity Theory to capacity development, providing valuable insights into how shared responsibilities, tools, and feedback loops facilitate sustainable growth. This research also offers guidance on implementing a staggered capacity development approach, emphasising the benefits of long-term, contextually relevant collaborations in strengthening educational practices and institutional quality.
The discipline of religious studies is at a critical juncture globally, and particularly in South Africa, where calls for decolonisation in higher education (HE) have gained momentum since the mid-2010s. Despite being shaped by the World Religions Paradigm (WRP), a framework rooted in Western epistemologies, the discipline continues to grapple with the need for a more inclusive and context-sensitive curriculum. This article reports on a pilot study exploring how the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) can inform the teaching of religious studies in South African HE. This investigation compares two consecutive cohorts of students enrolled in an introductory Religious Studies module during 2021 and 2022, respectively, at a public university in South Africa. The 2021 cohort was taught using the WRP, and the 2022 cohort was taught using a thematic approach. Guided by a constructivist perspective, the research examined how the different pedagogical approaches influenced students' understanding of religion. The findings provided insight into how diverse teaching methodologies might support the decolonisation of religious studies. This study argues that constructivist pedagogy can empower students to actively participate in discussions about religion, drawing on their lived experiences. While the sample size limits generalisability, this pilot offers valuable methodological insights for future larger-scale studies, examining how constructivist pedagogy might support the decolonisation agenda in HE.
Simulation-based education (SBE) has become a cornerstone of health professions education, with the methods and strategies used continually evolving as new applications for SBE are realised. In conjunction with this ever-growing aspect of health professions education is the ongoing development and refinement of core competencies embedded in the practice of SBE, one of which is debriefing. In this reflective piece lessons learnt in the art of debriefing, garnered through the observations of the debriefing practices used during a multinational rescue simulation exercise, are shared. Drawing on the lessons learnt, practical recommendations are shared, with the purpose of promoting effective debriefing practices in the SBE space.
