Browsing by Author "Ngwenya, Memoria Celiwe"

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    Disruption of higher education policy through an ethics of care in South Africa
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2020-03) Ngwenya, Memoria Celiwe; Waghid, Yusef
    ENGLISH ABSTRACT : The study on which this dissertation reports, argued that the newly reformed university policies and practices of the four public universities in the Western Cape still affect students from poor schools in a considerable way, as they still seem to struggle to gain access into higher education, even after the enactment of the White Paper for Post School Education of 2013. My argument is corroborated by findings and conclusions that ensued after the conceptual analysis of policy structures of the four public universities under study. The findings also exposed the university system in general as an elitist institution that is unable to change or be changed to recognise the poor. The argument is that the strategies the universities utilise to integrate students into the university system intensify this setback, as those strategies do not attempt to increase universities’ capacity to grant access to poor students, who are incidentally fatalities of the apartheid system. Instead, the universities want the students to bring the same capabilities as their private and former Model C-schooled counterparts. Because of this practice, the university system appears to favour affluent students, which then compounds the social inequity at universities. My contention in the study therefore was that the university system ought to embrace approaches such as an ethics of care to disrupt the alienating culture within their policy processes. The ethics of care as the disruption paradigm may achieve a reconceptualised notion of external inclusion by which lived experiences of the vast majority of poor students can be accommodated, and may also introduce a conciliatory paradigm to higher education, from which social justice can be attained. In the study, I have used ‘poor students’ interchangeably with ‘black students from poor schools’, as the colour of poverty in South Africa, even after 25 years of democracy, is still predominantly black.
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    External and internal exclusion of black undergraduate students from impoverished township schools in historically advantaged universities in the Western Cape
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2014-12) Ngwenya, Memoria Celiwe; Waghid, Yusef; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Education. Dept. of Education Policy Studies.
    ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The notion of inclusion refers to one of the normative ideals that may be used as a means to promote justice in a democracy. Equally so, the norm of inclusion is capable of exploring the legitimacy of the democratic processes set up for the promotion of equity and redress. The implication thereof is that the notion of inclusion is also an adequate measure for monitoring whether processes practised by polities do embrace the norms of recognition, redistribution, empowerment and justice as we come to understand them within the broader concept of inclusion. Grounded in the theory of inclusion and democracy, this study is set against the backdrop of momentous political changes in South Africa that set the tone for transformation in higher education, amongst other democratic changes. Higher education institutions, alongside all other South African polities, introduced new open policies chock-full of democratic ideals to promote equity so as to ensure that those who previously suffered the injustice of being excluded from gaining entry to higher education are able to access it. Based on this understanding, this study has been conducted from a conceptual point of view to investigate the approach by which two historically advantaged institutions in the Western Cape have conceptualised the inclusion of black students from impoverished schools into their institutions. I have also examined how these institutions articulate their support programmes to keep these students in the higher education system. University policy documents such as admissions policies, financial aid policies, student diversity and equity policies, and student retention and throughput rate provided information for interpretation and data analysis.