Research Articles (Education Studies)

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/10413/7178

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Accountability to whom? For what? : teacher identity and the Force Field Model of teacher development.
(University of the Free State, 2008) Samuel, Michael Anthony.
The rise of fundamentalism in the sphere of teacher education points to a swing back towards teachers as service workers for State agendas. Increasingly, teachers are expected to account for the outcomes of their practices. This article traces the trajectory of trends in teacher education over the past five decades arguing that this "new conservative trend" is but one of the many forces that characterise present interpretations of the goals of teacher education and development. A de-professionalisation of teaching as a career looms on the horizon. Each era has progressively provided new insights into what the goals for teacher education could and should be. These have become increasingly layered into expanding roles and responsibilities being foisted on teachers. The article argues that this could threaten teaching as a career and fewer individuals now willingly choose the teaching profession. If they do, their accountability is seldom to quality teaching and learning as professional teachers find themselves threatened on a number of fronts by contradictory and often competing forces. The article presents a model for understanding the complexity of forces influencing teachers' identities, and shows why there is a need for creative discursive spaces for the coexistence of these many forces. Rather than capitulate to the forces of conservatism, the article argues that teacher professional growth can flourish when it is able to understand deeply the biographical, contextual, institutional and programmatic forces that impinge on teacher identity. The Force Field Model of Teacher Development thus provides stimulus for creative dialogue and renewal.
African Students who Excel in South African Higher Education: Retro(Pro)Spectivity and Co-Regulation of Learning.
(University of KwaZulu-Natal., 2015) Samuel, Michael Anthony.; Munro, Nicholas.
In addition to being more likely to fail and dropout, African students are also less likely to succeed academically, let alone excel while doing so. In a critical move against a dominant deficit, failure, and drop-out discourse that surrounds African students in South African higher education, this paper reports on a study that explored exceptional academic achievement in African students. Specifically, using the data production strategies of auto-photography and photo-elicitation, eight academically exceptional undergraduate African students in a South African university explored the (academic) activities that were associated with their academically exceptional outcomes. Interpretative thematic analyses of the auto-photographical accounts highlighted not only how the participants excelled academically, but also who they were becoming in the process. Data from three of the eight participants is drawn upon in this paper to introduce the notion of retro(pro)spectivity, and to show how co-regulation of learning can be centralised when explaining an exceptional academic achievement trajectory for African students in South African higher education.
Beyond Narcissism and Hero-worshipping: life history research and narrative inquiry.
(University of KwaZulu-Natal., 2015) Samuel, Michael Anthony.
Available in pdf article.
Beyond the Garden of Eden: deep teacher professional development.
(Taylor & Francis., 2009) Samuel, Michael Anthony.
Becoming a professional teacher is falsely understood to be a simple process: usually consisting of a transference of skills to execute classroom pedagogy or classroom management. This article begins by exploring the many forces which influence the curriculum of teacher education in higher education, signaling the complexity of the practice of teaching and the expected roles of teachers within a charged socio-political, ideological as well as educational research arena. It offers a definition of the scope of deep teacher professional development which embraces the complexities of these forces. It particularly addresses the theoretical underpinning that could inform the design and delivery of Initial Professional Education of Teacher (IPET) higher education curricula. The article draws on the experiences of enacting a reconceptualized teacher education curriculum at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, Faculty of Education showing the translation of these theoretical conceptions within a curriculum geared towards deep professional learning.
Critical dialogues with self: developing teacher identities and role.
(Pergamon., 2000) Samuel, Michael Anthony.; Stephens, David.
Abstract available in PDF file.
De-colonising international collaboration: the University of KwaZulu-Natal-Mauritius Institute Education Cohort PhD Programme.
(Routledge., 2014) Samuel, Michael Anthony.; Mariayeb, Hyleen.
This paper explores the setting up of the partnership across the Mauritian and South African higher education contexts with respect to the development of a postgraduate PhD doctoral studies programme. The Mauritian Institute of Education (MIE) aims to develop staffing capacities through engagement with doctoral studies, especially in the context of limited experience in doctoral supervision. The South African model of doctoral cohort supervision at The University of KwaZulu- Natal (UKZN) School of Education is a recent alternative model of delivery in the building of these student and staff capacities through shared ownership of the process and products of doctoral education and development. This paper highlights the expectations, constraints and enabling features of the setting up of the UKZN-MIE PhD programme across international boundaries, driven by mutual reciprocity through valuing of indigenous local knowledges, a non-colonising engagement and innovative methodologies for postgraduate education. Adapting the UKZN cohort model for the international context is the subject of this paper. The paper draws on the experiences of the designers and deliverers as well as users of this programme. The paper explores what drives this form of international collaboration for both contracting partners in the context of shifting conceptions of a teacher education institution.
Educational leadership: the audience creates the text.
(University of South Africa., 2014) Samuel, Michael Anthony.
Alternative conceptions of educational leadership that challenge the performativity culture do not appear substantively to alter the trajectory of practitioner’s everyday choices. This article uses as data the responses from three different audiences to a presentation on such alternative conceptions. The three groups were academics attending an educational leadership conference, circuit managers as part of a post-project workshop, and a group of aspirant school rectors in a training diploma programme. The first two groups were South African and the third a Mauritian audience. The audience responses show how they subverted, re-interpreted and jettisoned the message of the presentation. Three vignettes constitute the analysis of the audiences’ foregrounding of the lived complexities of making alternative leadership choices. The article suggests we need to be aware of how and why practitioners will choose or not to become alternative proponents of the dominant discourses around ‘educational quality’.
Emergent frameworks of research teaching and learning in a cohort-based doctoral programme.
(University of the Free State, 2011) Samuel, Michael Anthony.; Vithal, Renuka.
This article argues that alternate models of doctoral research teaching and learning pedagogy could address the challenge of under-productivity of doctoral graduands in the South African higher education system. Present literature tends not to focus on the models of research teaching and learning as a form of pedagogy. The article presents a case study of a doctoral cohort model programme where attention to both quantity and quality of doctoral “production” are engaged in the curriculum design and methodological approaches employed. In this alternate to the traditional “master-apprenticeship”, epistemologies that the programme creates are influenced by its pedagogical methodologies. This reflective theoretical exploration draws on the experiences of supervisors, staff and students as co-producers of knowledge involved in the research pedagogical process. The doctoral graduands that emerge are able to embrace the roles and responsibilities as researchers and knowledge makers. Rather than the PhD being about individualistic learning, the programme attempts to infuse multi- and interdisciplinary notions of responsiveness to knowledge production in community. It concludes with emergent frameworks for doctoral pedagogies –“democratic teaching/learning participation”, “structured scaffolding”, “Ubuntu” and “serendipity”– as useful explanatory shaping influences which underpin and frame the model promoting a contextually relevant and appropriate doctoral research teaching and learning pedagogy.
Opening Address by Prof. Samuel of the Journal of Education.
(South African Education Research Association., 2015) Samuel, Michael Anthony.
The Other and I : Turkish teachers in South Africa.
(Routledge, 2013) Samuel, Michael Anthony.
Traditionally the analysis of school curriculum draws from the literature of ‘policy implementation analysis’. Instead, this paper focuses on a humanistic and socially responsive philosophy guiding curriculum action, especially where policies are seen to be unable to dent the educational outcomes or emancipate schooling from the stranglehold of performativity. The paper draws on the life histories of teachers teaching in a case study school inspired by the Gülen philosophy of Hizmet (serving humanity), indicating how their philosophical orientation to the subject matter, to learners, to colleagues, to parents and to the community, is yielding a qualitative impact on the school curriculum. The paper draws from interviews with the managers, teachers and student teachers employed within the school. The philosophical constructs of respect, understanding, dialogue and tolerance are the underpinning principles of this secondary school. The school draws on the philosophical dialogue between the inner sense of self (‘I’) and the outward projection towards serving humanity (‘the other’). It works consciously to erase the boundaries between ‘others’ and ‘I’. It fosters dialogue across historical divides of ‘race’, religion and class towards service of each one to the other.
The Writing Centre: a site for discursive dialogue in Management studies.
(University of South Africa., 2015) Samuel, Michael Anthony.; Arbee, Aradhna.
This article contributes to the ongoing conversation, in the South African Journal of Higher Education (SAJHE) and other journals, about academic literacy development in higher education. It reports on a small-scale quantitative study on the effect of writing centre support on students’ academic performance, in the disciplinary context of management studies. The study generated questions and areas for reflection about how to assess the ways in which writing centres can become more valuable programmatically, institutionally, theoretically and methodologically. Its uniqueness arises from the attempt to look at the development of academic literacy writing competences not during the transition from school to university, but at the exit point of an academic bachelor’s degree programme. It raises questions, such as: Is there a value for academic discourse induction even at this exit stage, and what impact does it have on the development of writing competences? How does this impact become known?

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Browsing Research Articles (Education Studies) by Author "Samuel, Michael Anthony."