1. Academic Wits Research Publications (Faculties submissions)

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Start date: 2000End date: 2009

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    Education service delivery: the disastrous case of outcomes-based qualifications frameworks
    (SAGE Publications, 2007) Allais, Stephanie Matseleng
    International trends towards outcomes-based qualifications frameworks as the drivers of educational reform fi t in well with trends in service delivery and public sector reform. Education reform in South Africa provides a particularly interesting case study of this phenomenon, because of the very comprehensive outcomes-based national qualifications framework that was implemented shortly after the transition to democracy. Problems with the framework as a basis for education reform became rapidly apparent, and the system is now deadlocked in a series of unresolved policy reviews. A key to understanding this collapse is the role of knowledge in relation to education. The outcomes based qualification framework approach turns out to have very little to do with education, and in fact to have the potential to increase educational inequalities, particularly in poor countries.
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    Designing research in environmental education curriculum policy construction, conceptualisation and implementation as exemplified by Southern African examples
    (Environmental Education Association of Southern Africa (EEASA), 2005) Dillon, Justin; Ketlhoilwe, Mphemelang; Ramsarup, Presha; Reddy, Chris
    There is increasing dissatisfaction at many levels with existing environmental education curricula in southern Africa. The resulting change and innovation is opening up possibilities for innovative research into the construction, conceptualisation and implementation of the curriculum. However, researching the curriculum offers a range of challenges to those engaged in critically examining processes and practices quite different from those faced in the past. This paper examines a series of key issues and dilemmas in the field of curriculum research in environmental education using cases contributed by active researchers in the area. In the light of the researchers’ experiences we posit a series of propositions that might reduce barriers and constraining forces faced by academics working in the area.
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    Why the South African NQF failed: lessons for countries wanting to introduce national qualifications frameworks
    (Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 2007) Allais, Stephanie Matseleng
    This article examines the South African National Qualifications Framework as a case study of a particular approach to the design of qualifications frameworks, which revolves around the specification of learning outcomes separate from educational institutions or programmes. It shows how an outcomes-led qualifications framework was seen as a desirable policy intervention by educationalists and reformers across the political spectrum, as outcomes were thought to be a mechanism for improving the quality and quantity of education as well as its relevance to the economy and society, for increasing access to education, and for democratising education. All these claims are based on the idea that outcomes statements are transparent. The article demonstrates that outcomes-based qualifications cannot provide the clear, unambiguous, and explicit statements of competence that would be required for everyone to know what it is that the bearer of a qualification can do. This lack of transparency leads to a further specification of outcomes. This in turn leads to a downward spiral of specification, which never reaches transparency, and an upward spiral of regulations, which is also caught in the logical problem of the downward spiral of specification. This model is not just unnecessary, but could in fact undermine the provision of education. The article suggests that while this type of model appears attractive particularly to poor countries, it is in these countries that it is likely to do the most damage.
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    The South African Bill of Rights and the Development of Family Law
    (Juta Law, 2002) Bonthuys, Elsje
    Family law is probably the area of South African private law which has expanded and changed most rapidly in the past nine years. Many of these changes have come about as a result of the enactment of a Bill of Rights in both the interim and the final Constitution. 1 On the one hand, this is not surprising, since family law contains many legal rules which are overtly discriminatory on the bases of sex, gender, culture, religion and sexual orientation. On the other hand, legal rules in this area represent a codification of moral and social norms in the quotidian and 'private' lives of many people, which are often resistant to scrutiny and change.
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    Substantive equality and transformation in South Africa
    (Juta and Co, 2007) Albertyn, Catherine
    This article considers whether ‘substantive equality’, as a transformative idea and legal mechanism in the South African Constitution, can generate legal solutions and court decisions that may result in transformative change. It does so by establishing a framework for analysing the ‘inclusionary’ or ‘transformatory’ effects of equality cases in relation to gender and sexual orientation. It argues that the idea of substantive equality is capable of addressing diverse forms of social and economic inequality, and that the legal form of substantive equality adopted by the Constitutional Court, emphasising context, impact, difference and values, has some potential for achieving meaningful social and economic change by and through courts. However, the manner is which the Court has engaged with this legal form suggests that the transformative possibilities of equality are constrained by a number of factors. These include institutional concerns, the capacity and willingness of judges to recognise and address the multiple systemic inequalities that still pervade our society as well as their ability to develop a consistently transformative jurisprudence that applies the ideas of substantive equality to the concepts and doctrines that underpin many equality claims.
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    Open justice and beyond: Independent Newspapers v Minister for Intelligence Services: In re Masetlha
    (Juta, 2009) Klaaren, Jonathan
    Notes on a constitutional court decision within the context of national security and openness.
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    Data to action: An overview of crime, violence and injury in South Africa
    (Medical Research Council, 2008) Suffla, Shahnaaz; Van Niekerk, Ashley; Bowman, Brett; Matzopoulos, Richard
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    The administration of justice
    (Juta, 2003) Klaaren, Jonathan; Marcus, Gilbert; Davis, Dennis
    Overview and analysis of the year's legal developments in the field of administration of justice. Includes references to legislation, cases and journal articles.
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    The administration of justice
    (Juta, 2002) Klaaren, Jonathan; Marcus, Gilbert; Davis, Dennis
    The Immorality Amendment Act 2 criminalized prostitution in 1998. It did so by the insertion of s 20(1)(aA) into the principal Act, which it renamed the Sexual Offences Act 23 of 1957.