Faculty of Humanities (Research Outputs)
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Item E-learning assessment framework for the public service sector(Public Service Sector Education and Training Authority (PSETA), 2021) Centre for Researching Education & Labour (REAL); University of the Witwatersrand, JohannesburgThe purpose of this research project was to develop an understanding of the change drivers and difficulties linked to implementing e-learning in the South African Public Service Sector in line with policy imperatives and global trends. The project aimed to investigate specific challenges and contextual variables that need to be addressed to strengthen skills development within the public sector. It also aimed to explore how to enhance ways in which the public sector utilises e-learning to upskill and re-skill its workforce. The research was undertaken over a 12-month period, from September 2020 to September 2021, and involved five main phases. Phase One comprised the inception and orientation of the project. The second phase involved a literature review on e-learning including an analysis of relevant public sector documents, reports, and policies on e-learning practices within the public and private sector. This contextual profile describes e-learning practices in the sector and enabled us to structure the public e-learning system as an activity system. The third phase consisted of the development of mediating tools including a comprehensive evaluation tool to offer a potential way forward to enhance strategic planning implementation for e-learning. This will assist with addressing the challenges faced by the public sector in terms of training and the processes of change involved in transitioning the conceptualisation of e-learning to contextualised capacity building. The e-learning criteria framework provides basic guidelines for designing an optimum e-learning experience in the public sector. The elearning review tool (Appendix A) supports and complements the criteria as a tool for analysis of the e-learning programme. The e-learning criteria and tool were sent to ten e-learning experts in the same field of research for comments on further development and improvement. Phase Four consisted of data analysis. Insights from stakeholder engagement and framework development processes were assessed and key emergent themes to inform the e-learning needs of the public sector were identified. In the final phase the findings were reviewed and recommendations proposed and the final report presented here is based on reviewer feedback.Item Digestible memories in South Africa’s recent past: processing the Slave Lodge Museum and the memorial to the enslaved(Taylor and Francis Group, 2021-07) Cloete, NicolaGiven the recent oppressive histories of apartheid and colonialism, the legacies of slavery in South Africa are often overlooked in thinking about aspects of post-apartheid democracy’s discursive formulation of race, nation, and reconciliation. This paper analyses how two examples in Cape Town – the permanent exhibition Representing Slavery at the Slave Lodge Museum and the Memorial to the Enslaved in Church Square – represent the historic event of slavery in South Africa. The paper argues that the museum exhibition and the memorial site are instances of memorialisation and simultaneously function as political processes that offer insight into discourses of race and reconciliation in South Africa during the early stages of democracy.Item Distrust, accountability and capacity in South Africa's fragmented eduction system(Taylor & Francis Group, 2020) Chilenga-Butao, Thokozani; Pakade, Nomancotsho; Ehren, Melanie; Baxter, JacquelineSouth Africa's current basic education system is a product of the apartheid education bureaucracy that was fractured along racial lines, and later significant efforts to amalgamate this fragmented system into a single, inclusive and equal system. This chapter demonstrates how negative apartheid legacies of distrust and a lack of both accountability and capacity took root in apartheid's oppressive and unequal system, as well as efforts by the Department of Basic Education to overturn these legacies in the democratic era. The central argument of this chapter is that, despite formal bureaucratic procedures, expressed through regulations, which should produce more capacity and accountability in the education system, there are also codified practices of governance at the provincial and district levels that produce different outcomes from the intended goal of improved education. This argument is illustrated through a case study of the Schools Rationalisation Project in the Eastern Cape province, South Africa.Item Decentralisation and recentralisation in South Africa's local government: case studies of two municipalities in Limpopo(Published by Transformation, 2020) Chilenga-Butao, ThokozaniDemocratic decentralisation was introduced in South Africa during the transition to democracy (1990-1994). It followed a long trajectory of centralisation and decentralisation processes that took place during apartheid. This paper argues that in order to more adequately understand the prospects for decentralisation to achieve its intended outcomes in South African local government, one has to understand some of the complexities and political dynamics present in this sphere of government. In so doing, it shows that the intended outcomes of decentralisation are far from the realities of local government on the ground, specifically municipalities. Case studies of two Limpopo mining town municipalities, Lephalale and Mogalakwena, are used to demonstrate some of these complexities and political dynamics. The Mogalakwena case study will show that, despite the codification of recentralisation in the South African constitution, regional and political party elites misuse the policy to politically interfere in municipalities. The effects of this are that service delivery slows down and local government is subjected to localised national and provincial political battles. The Lephalale case study shows how the layers of decentralisation between apartheid and democracy have led to this municipality being dependent on private and parastatal mining companies for the provision of and access to public goods and services.Item Beyond ‘supply and demand’: moving from skills ‘planning’ to seeing skills as endogenous to the economy(2022-11) Allais, Stephanie MatselengThis article questions the notion of supply and demand of skills, and, accordingly, the rules and tools that have been developed for skills anticipation in South Africa. I argue that there is nowhere ‘outside’ of the economy where skills are produced. Rather, a society and an economy need to be seen as an organism, where skill formation is a complex set of moving parts. The concept of supply and demand is unhelpful to think about skill formation because it directs our attention towards specific moving parts in isolation from the broader factors that shape them. This explains why, despite the existence of extensive tools and institutions for skills anticipation, and numerous institutions for social dialogue and stakeholder engagement, researchers and policy-makers argue that South Africa has an inadequate supply of the skills that are needed in the workplace and concomitant skills mismatches. The article also presents more specific problems with the rules and tools, particularly in the way the systems and institutions for understanding labour market demand interact with the systems and tools for the supply of skills – especially those tools that govern and shape skills provision. It argues further that, whereas there are real problems with these rules and tools, and while they can certainly be improved, the broad goals that they are intended to achieve will not be attained even with better tools, but that different conceptual lenses are required instead.Item Building capacity for green, just and sustainable futures – a new knowledge field requiring transformative research methodology(2020) Rosenberg, Eureta; Presha Ramsarup; Sibusisiwe Gumede; Heila Lotz-SisitkaEducation has contributed to a society-wide awareness of environmental issues, and we are increasingly confronted with the need for new ways to generate energy, save water and reduce pollution. Thus new forms of work are emerging and government, employers and educators need to know what ‘green’ skills South Africa needs and has. This creates a new demand for ‘green skills’ research. We propose that this new knowledge field – like some other educational fields – requires a transformative approach to research methodology. In conducting reviews of existing research, we found that a transformative approach requires a reframing of key concepts commonly used in researching work and learning; multi-layered, mixed method studies; researching within and across diverse knowledge fields including non-traditional fields; and both newly configured national platforms and new conceptual frameworks to help us integrate coherently across these. Critical realism is presented as a helpful underpinning for such conceptual frameworks, and implications for how universities prepare educational researchers are flagged.Item Crediting worker education? insights from South African experiences(2021) Allais, StephanieThis paper explores South African experiences in using formal credentials in worker education. In specific, it analyses the value and use of the outcomes-based, unit standards-based qualifications registered on the South African national qualifications framework for “trade union practice.” Creating formal qualifications for worker education programmes was hotly debated for many years in the labour movement. The paper finds little evidence of positive achievement of the creation of a formal qualification route for trade unionists. The main stated reason for the introduction of the formal qualification route was to support the educational and labour market mobility of union activists. There is no evidence of this to date, and the paper argues that the design of the qualification makes it unlikely to become a possibility. The existence of the qualification has facilitated funding for worker education, but a greater success would have been to convince public bodies to fund worker education according to its intrinsic logic. The paper also finds that to date the negative consequences that many unionists predicted in these debates have not arisen. However, this seems to be in spite of and not because of the qualification model and may be attributable to the strength of the single provider of the qualification.Item Education and work - what can and what can’t be learnt from and at work, and why?(Centre for Researching and Education labour (REAL), University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2020) Shalem, Yael; Ramsarup,PreshaThe EWSETA is being a provider or accreditor of short courses as part of the broader effort in South Africa to improve the provision of professional education in preparation for work as well for development during employment. Whilst there is a consensus that education in necessary for preparation and for development of occupational workers (henceforth ‘workers’) there is debate on what form of training is more meaningful, educationally, and more productive in terms of improvement of work.Item An assessment of skills supply and demand for renewable energy, energy efficiency, and regional energy integration(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2022) Centre for Researching Education & Labour (REAL); University of the Witwatersrand, JohannesburgThe SADC region relies heavily on energy produced from coal and water and has grappled with an energy crisis over the years, seen through insufficient and inefficient energy supply. This crisis is mostly a result of a changing climate, including droughts, outdated infrastructure, and the depletion of natural resources. These natural resources include coal and gas, and their use for power generation further contributes to climate change, who’s impacts are being faced globally. There has therefore been a desire and a call to shift towards renewable energy (RE) in the SADC region, which has the resources and conditions to make this shift. This is driven by the SADC Protocol on Energy and the various national policies. The SADC Protocol on Energy (SADC 20) identifies a number of strategic plans over the last 10 years which build on previous policies. These include “the Regional Energy Access Strategy and Action Plan 2020 to 2030 (SADC, 2020), the Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Strategy and Action Plan 2016 to 2030 (SADC, 2016), the SADC Industrial Energy Efficiency Programme and the development of the Regional Gas Master Plan” (SADC, 1996). Implementation has occurred at different rates in the various member states, and the 2018 SADC Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Status Report states that “Since 2015, SADC Member States have greatly increased their commitment to renewable energy and energy efficiency, including important innovations to stimulate mini-grids and distributed renewable energy” (SADC, 2018). This is also the case in regional integration as per the SADC Regional Indicative Strategic Development Plan (RISDP) 2020–2030 (SADC 2020) and through the Southern African Power Pool (SAPP) and its regional electricity plans, trading platforms, and policy and regulatory alignment initiatives (SAPP, 2017) together with the SADC Regional Electricity Regulatory Association (RERA, 2022). This transition to RE, however, needs to be just, thereby ensuring that the current workforce is protected and that the skills ecosystem is prepared not only to respond to current demands but those required to transition to a more just and resilient energy system.Item Linking knowledge, education and work: exploring occupations(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2022) Centre for Researching Education & Labour (REAL); University of the Witwatersrand, JohannesburgTo have an occupational identity is to occupy a social and moral as well as economic position, to have mastered bodies of knowledge (both theoretical and practical), and earned a jurisdiction over practice.