SUNScholar - Browsing by Author "Waghid, Yusef"

Browsing by Author "Waghid, Yusef"

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Are doctoral studies in South Africa higher education being put at risk?
(UNISA Press, 2015) Waghid, Yusef
Inasmuch as many attempts are being made in South Africa to increase the doctoral throughput rate, it appears as if the rush to produce doctoral (PhD) qualifications might just be the biggest risk that confronts the pursuit of doctoral studies. The author argues that, in the quest to accelerate the number of doctorates produced in the country, higher education institutions (HEIs), in particular administrators and – to a lesser extent – supervisors, run the risk of trivialising doctoral education: because of an over-emphasis on throughput rates alone, the purpose of the doctorate is assigned to a mere exercise of technical compliance and completion. In this article, the author offers a word of caution as to what the doctorate should not be subjected to if such a highlevel achievement is to remain an aspiration of those serious about knowledge construction, reconstruction and deconstruction.
Die behoefte aan ’n multidimensionele benadering tot dissiplineprobleme op skool
(Suid-Afrikaanse Akademie vir Wetenskap en Kuns, 2008-12) Van Louw, Trevor; Waghid, Yusef
AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Hierdie artikel beklemtoon die belangrikheid van behoorlike sosiohistoriese kontekstualisering van dissipline in skole. Die argument wat deur die skrywers ontwikkel is, is dat skole ’n spieëlbeeld is van die samelewings waarin dit voorkom en dat hierdie feit in ag geneem moet word wanneer strategieë vir die hantering van die probleem gekontekstualiseer word. In the Suid-Afrikaanse konteks vra dit vir die erkenning van die impak van eeue van onderdrukking in die koloniale en apartheidsera soos wat dit verband hou met die huidige probleme in die breër samelewing en in skole. Die argument wat deur die skrywers ontwikkel word, hou rekening met die belangrikheid van die sosiohistoriese kontekstualisering van dissiplinêre probleme in skole as ’n sosiale werklikheid en die noodsaak om probleme in die samelewing met dié in skole in verband te bring. Dit word voorts geargumenteer dat die komplekse aard van die probleem wat op hierdie wyse blootgelê word, ’n veelfasettige benadering verg waar alle rolspelers (ook dié buite die skool, op ’n geïntegreerde wyse met die skool saamwerk om gepaste strategieë te ontwikkel, implementeer, moniteer en evalueer en om dit na kritiese refl eksie aan te pas, sou die omstandighede dit vereis.
The blame game : mechanistic conceptions of teacher education and its impact on schooling
(HESA, 2015) Isaacs, Tracey.; Waghid, Yusef
With all the policy directives and reform initiatives post-democracy, education in South Africa is seemingly mechanistic and prodigiously carries productive logic: to produce students, to advance economic development, and so on. The active language of official educational policies is riddled with words such as assessment, efficient, high skills and progression that speaks to a technical rationality bent on turning everything into science to obscure the general meaning. In this way the process of education is comparable to a sophisticated, intellectual machine the more complex the machine becomes, the less control and understanding the teachers have of it (Braverman, 1974). In this article, we consider the ways classroom and university teachers have been brutalized through bureaucratic processes and an allegiance to technical rationality, even while we imagine hermeneutic rationality and emancipatory rationality as radical alternatives to recovering the subject in a bureaucratic tangle of educational control.
Coda: Beyond Critical Citizenship Education
(AFRICAN SUN MeDIA, 2015) Waghid, Yusef
Undoubtedly, this volume offers a cogent and coherent account of citizenship education commensurate with critical curriculum inquiry at universities. Using social transformation in South Africa as a backdrop, Costandius and Bitzer posit that university education ought to be framed according to theories and practices of critical citizenship education that can hopefully engender more inclusive pedagogical practices, in reference to teaching, learning, policy changes and research. Their understanding of critical citizenship education, as aptly articulated in the first chapter, is couched within the parameters of a transformative pedagogy that accentuates the importance of critical reflection, imagination, human co-existence in the face of diversity and the cultivation of social justice. Moreover, in Chapter 2, by drawing on the seminal thoughts of an illustrious scholar of critical pedagogy, Henry Giroux, they contend that the domination, exclusion and marginalisation of students in and through university curricula should be counteracted, and that appropriate epistemological, conceptual, structural, narratival and paradigmatic changes should be enacted so that higher education discourses might be attenuated more towards spaces of democratic action.
Community and democracy in South Africa : liberal versus communitarian perspectives
(Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2002-12) Waghid, Yusef; Van Niekerk, Anton A.; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of Philosophy.
ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The tradition of liberalism in South Africa has played a significant role in shaping the country's multi-party democracy. Yet, there are several gaps within the tradition of liberalism which can be associated with an aversion towards majority rule, equalising opportunities through affirmative action measures, and a focus on securing political rights as opposed to substantive rights for all citizens. It is my contention that weaknesses within the liberal tradition could be minimised if a more credible conception of liberalism is constructed within the parameters of a deliberative framework of democracy. In this dissertation I make an argument for a defensible form of liberalism which can be achieved through a rational, reflexive discourse-oriented procedure of deliberative democracy. Deliberative democracy in turn can engender a form of citizenship which recognises the need for citizens to care, reason and engage justly in political conversation with others. KEYWORDS: Liberalism, communitarianism, deliberative democracy and South Africa.
A conceptual analysis of a reflexive democratic praxis related to higher education transformation in South Africa
(Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2001-03) Waghid, Yusef; Steyn, J. C.; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Education. Dept. of Education Policy Studies.
ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The central question of this thesis is whether education policy frameworks are sufficient to transform the higher education system in South Africa. I hold that higher education policy initiatives promulgated in statutory documents such as the White Paper 3 on Higher Education Transformation of 1997 and the Higher Education Act of 1997 are not sufficient to guide educational transformation in universities. My main claim is that as higher education role players we also need to pursue practices driven from "inside" (Gutman 1998: 34) whereby we can develop the "strength of will" to contribute towards initiating equal access and development and, enhancing accountability and quality at our universities. I hold that in order to practice higher education transformation from "inside" (Gutman 1998: 34), one can justifiably pursue a reflexive democratic praxis for the reason that it involves a form of "doing action" with some worthwhile, rational end in mind. It has to do with engaging in reflexive and democratic action attuned to social experience, more specifically higher education, where possibilities may be contemplated, reflected upon, transformed and deepened. To deepen our understanding of our actions involves asking questions about "what we have not thought to think" (Lather 1991: 156). I argue that philosophy of education, more specifically conceptual analysis, is an indispensable means by which we can develop such a deeper, clearer, more informed and better reasoned understanding about the current shifts in higher education transformation in post- apartheid South Africa. Simultaneously, I use conceptual analysis to show why and how the idea of a reflexive democratic praxis can become a "satisfying sense of personal meaning, purpose, and commitment" (Soltis 1998: 196) to guide our activities as educators in the higher education realm. The general principle, which shapes a reflexive democratic praxis, is rationality. Rationality is shaped by logically necessary conditions such as "educational discourse", "reflexive action" and "ethical activity to promote the moral good" in the forms of truthtelling and sincerity, freedom of thought, clarity, non-arbitrariness, impartiality, a sense of relevance, consistency and respect for evidence and people. My contention is that appealing to moral notions of rationality is where the strength of a reflexive democratic praxis lies. In this sense I further elucidate rationality which I argue can create spaces for achieving democratic education which, in tum, holds much promise for shaping teaching and learning through distance education, research and community service in the context of higher education transformation in South Africa. I use "touchstones" which evolve out of rationality, namely access, relevance and dialogism, to show how the idea of a reflexive democratic praxis can contribute towards shaping higher education transformation in South Africa. I provide an overview of the South African higher education policy framework, in particular its concern with issues of equality, development, accountability and quality, which can be linked to and guided by "touchstones" of a reflexive democratic praxis. A reflexive democratic praxis implies a shift towards socially distributed knowledge production which in turn shapes higher education transformation. By reflecting on instances related to the institution where I work, I argue that a more nuanced understanding of higher education has the potential to initiate equal access and , development on the one hand, and to enhance accountability and quality on the other hand. I conclude with the idea that a reflexive democratic praxis can provide higher education practitioners with a conceptual frame to organise their discourses in such a way as to contribute towards transforming their activities and that of their institutions. In this way they might contribute towards addressing the demands of equality, development, accountability and quality in South African higher education. KEYWORDS: Philosophy of education, conceptual analysis, reflexivity, democracy, praxis, higher education, transformation and South Africa.
Cosmo-ubuntu: Toward a new (exterior to modernity) theorizing about the human, the cosmos, and education
(The University of Chicago Press, 2020) Cossa, José; Le Grange, Lesley; Waghid, Yusef
This essay review offers reﬂections on “vCIES 2020: Education beyond the Human.” This 64th annual conference of the Comparative and International Education Society, which was to have taken place in Miami, was instead held virtually due to the COVID-19 pandemic. We would like to acknowledge Mame D. Ndiaye, a graduate student in the Cornell Institute for Public Affairs at Cornell University, for her en-gagement with our ideas toward a future publication. 1 The word bantaba originates from the Gambia in West Africa and is a derivative of two words in the Mandinka language: bant ‘tree’ and aba ‘meeting place’. Bantaba thus signiﬁes a gathering of community members to discuss salient issues that affect the collective. Generally, under a big tree in the community, issues that matter to all are publicly discussed, with the aim to reach a consensus. 2 In 2020, ASIG submitted a proposal for the CIES Innovation Fund for a Global Bantaba to further expand access to people traveling from Africa. It was not funded due to the advent of COVID-19 and consequent budgetary constraints.
Education, democracy and citizenship revisited : pedagogical encounters
(SUN MeDIA, 2010) Waghid, Yusef
PREFACE: This book contains a revised collection of previously published articles spanning a period of five years (2004-2009) during which my seminal thoughts on democratic citizenship education have been developed. I situate myself in relation to these works on democratic citizenship education as well as on (un)pedagogical encounters throughout the major part of my life, to make a case for a communitarian conception of democratic citizenship education. Central to this book is the notion that democratic citizenship education ought to be deliberative, compassionate and friendly in order that teachers and students (learners) may respect one another and take risks in and through their pedagogical encounters. In this way, hopefully, students and teachers may become more critical, explorative and engaging, thus making democratic citizenship education a highly pragmatic experience for the sake of cultivating our civility and humanity.
Gender under-representation in teaching : a casualty of the feminisation of teaching?
(HESA, 2020) Davids, Nuraan, 1970-; Waghid, Yusef
Much has been written on the relationship between gender and schooling, and teaching. In particular, the focus has been on the significant dis-proportion between female and male teachers, which remarkably, inverts in relation to educational leadership positions. Arguments abound as to the social factors and hegemonies, which have created not only what is referred to as the “feminisation of teaching”, but the risks associated with feminised classrooms and pedagogies, particularly, in relation to boys. Not surprisingly, therefore, an equally dominant narrative calling for the (re)masculinisation of teaching has gained increasing momentum. The basis for this argument is not limited to a seeming need for male teachers as role-models. More disturbing, is the idea that the standing of the profession – invariably measured in terms of salary – might improve if more males are encouraged to become teachers. Our interest in this article is in the patriarchal hegemonies, which give shape to constructions of teaching as “women’s work” in the first place. We argue, that rather than contributing to what has been an overdue preoccupation gender-based socialisations, the concern should be on ensuring that teaching transcends framings of “feminisation” and “masculinisation” so that it serves all teachers and all learners.
Geweld in post-apartheid skole – waar lê die oplossing?
(Suid-Afrikaanse Akademie vir Wetenskap en Kuns, 2015-12) Davids, Nuraan, 1970-; Waghid, Yusef
AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Die meerderheid staatskole in Suid-Afrika het voortdurend met geweldige hoë vlakke van geweld te kampe. Die toenemende aantal insidente van fisiese geweld tussen leerders sowel as tussen leerders en onderwysers bring nie net vernedering teweeg nie, maar het ook daartoe gelei dat skole minder funksioneel geword het (Leoschut & Bonora 2007; Mncube & Harber 2013; Zulu, Urbani & Van der Merwe 2004). Die nasionale Departement van Basiese Onderwys (DvBO) het met verskeie beleide, prosedures en strategieë gereageer wat onder andere die volgende insluit: Alternatives to corporal punishment (DvBO 2000) en verskeie veiligheidsprogramme, soos A national school safety framework. Hierdie beleide en strategieë was nie net onvoldoende nie, maar het ook die onvoorspelbaarheid van geweld blootgestel. Gevolglik poog hierdie artikel om, eerstens, die aard en voorkoms van geweld in Suid-Afrikaanse skole te openbaar, en tweedens, aan die tekortkominge van huidige beleide en strategieë rakende die ontwikkeling van veilige skole aandag te skenk. Daarna poog ons om ’n interpretatiewe analise van wyses om oor geweld wat deel van demokratiese burgerskap uitmaak, te beredeneer. Die bedoeling is om die gedagte van burgerskaponderwys in wording wat die onvoorspelbaarheid van geweld in eie potensialiteit die hoof kan bied, te belig. Ons probeer nie om ŉ resep vir die hantering van geweld in skole te verskaf nie. So ŉ poging sal veronderstel dat ons die aard van geweld verstaan, wat nie moontlik is nie. In stede hiervan verwys ons na Rancière (1991:15) se mening dat leerders gemaan moet word om hulle intelligensie te gebruik, om juis deur die toepassing van spraak gewelddadige optrede die hoof te bied.
Hopeful teacher education in South Africa: Towards a politics of humanity
(SUN MeDIA, 2012) Waghid, Yusef
INTRODUCTION: In this chapter I offer an account of Nussbaum’s politics of humanity to show how teacher education programmes can be remedied as the country’s universities endeavour to address the poor quality of teacher education programmes. Since the demise of apartheid education, the development of policy in relation to teacher education in South Africa has undergone major adjustments, and yet credible change in teacher education remains elusive. By far the most prominent conceptual and pragmatic change to which teacher education has been subjected points towards the cultivation of teachers who can enact their professions as democratic citizens. This implies that teachers ought to engender in learners a spirit of democratic citizenry that can imbue in them the virtues of dialogical engagement, connecting caringly with the other, and performing their tasks in a responsible manner. So it happens that current policy on teacher education accentuates the ‘roles’ of teachers in a post-apartheid dispensation along the lines of such democratic virtues.
Knowledge(s), culture and African philosophy: an introduction
(Addleton Academic Publishers, 2016) Waghid, Yusef
In a previous work, entitled African Philosophy of Education Reconsidered: On Being Human (Waghid, 2014), a defense is offered for the notion of African philosophy as a reasoned and culture-dependent concept on the basis that any philosophical genre cannot be devoid of reasonableness and dismissive of culture. The premise on which the latter claim is built is two-fold: Firstly, any form of philosophizing involves (and ought to do so) an aspiration towards the attainment of what can be conceived as being reasonably justifiable – that is, reasons are offered and amended to elucidate meanings that can be convincing to others in the inquiry; and secondly, meanings are (re)constructed and deconstructed on the basis of people’s cultural stock (a term I borrow from Jane Roland Martin, 2013) – that is, people’s images, attitudes, backgrounds, symbols and other ways of seeing things in the world. Thus, as a combination, reasonableness and culture determine what constitutes African philosophy. In this way, it would not be implausible to embrace explications of African philosophy that connect with the reasons people offer on account of their ethical orientations, indigenous perspectives, and/or sagacious utterances. This is what makes African philosophy a reasoned and culture-dependent practice. But then, as with any form of philosophy, African philosophy foregrounds culture in so far as it provides the notion of knowledge with a distinctive form in relation to what Africa has to offer. Put differently, knowledge(s) are a manifestation of the ways in which philosophy organizes cultural understandings on the African continent. This article examines at least three ways in which culture is organized through an African philosophical discourse, and how knowledges are manifested in the practices of people on the continent: Firstly, African philosophy guides cultural practices in accordance with practices of communal interactions – that is, Ubuntu (human interdependence); and, when Ubuntu is under threat, ethnic conflict, political tension and strife seem to hold sway. Secondly, African philosophy orientates people towards an appreciation of an ethical life and, when the latter is tangibly at risk, destruction is perilously imminent; and thirdly, African philosophy inclines people towards some higher good, and when the latter is visibly absent, religious conflict seems to be hazardously omnipresent. My understanding is that Ubuntu, ethics and an inclination towards a higher good are cultural practices that give knowledge, as understood by Africans, a distinctively reasonable form. In short, the reasonableness of African knowledge(s) is guided by an appreciation of Africans’ cultures. And, when these cultures are at risk, the potential exists that African knowledge(s) will become misguided.
Reconceptualizing ubuntu as inclusion in African higher education : towards equalization of voice
(Addleton Academic Publishers, 2016) Shanyanana, Rachel Ndinelao; Waghid, Yusef
Inclusionary higher educational practices have become a topical issue in recent debates on the Africa continent. While the idea of inclusion in communal practices is embodied in the notion of Ubuntu in Africa, a number of silences and inconsistencies still remain in the way the marginalized groups (the poor, people with disabilities, women, homosexuals and so forth) are treated in African higher education (AHE). The dilemmas implicit in the idea of inclusion in contemporary higher education institutions (HEIs) in Africa restrict the marginalized group’s voices, thereby treating them as unequal members of the assumed equal society. This suggests that an African conception of Ubuntu in its current form may not bring about adequate transformation to the African higher education system. The underlying assumption in the existing conception of Ubuntu as a communal practice ‒ more specifically knowledge culture ‒ of seeing humanity in others provides sufficient grounds for the inclusion of all members of society. Employing Young’s (2000) interpretation of inclusion as exclusion, Ubuntu in dominant and current thinking and practices can be inclusive and exclusive simultaneously. The article proposes to re-examine the potentiality of an African philosophy of Ubuntu as a way of curtailing exclusionary practices in higher education (HE). As long as HE in Africa embraces Ubuntu as inclusion, a substantive form of inclusion may not be engendered. The article makes its argument using Rancière’s perspective of “equalization of voice.” By arguing for an Ubuntu of inclusion as voice, we make a cogent defense for thinking differently about African people’s communal practices, thus looking differently at their conception of a knowledge culture.
Responding to violence in post-apartheid schools : on school leadership as mutual engagement
(University of South Africa Press, 2016) Davids, Nuraan, 1970-; Waghid, Yusef
Schools in post-apartheid South Africa appear to be under siege by violence. In turn, school leaders find themselves in the unenviable position of not only having to deal with inadequate educator professionalism and learner underachievement – particularly in previously disadvantaged schools – but are under pressure to find ways to counteract the violence, and to restore schools as safe sites. Among the biggest challenges facing school leaders is that they have not necessarily acquired sufficient training to deal with violent encounters, and often have responded in equally violent and violating ways, which, to some extent, has enhanced the expulsion and alienation of learners. In drawing on our own project work at five high schools in the Western Cape, we explore the challenges school leaders experience in responding to school violence. In questioning the often equally violent responses of school leaders, we contend that they ought to adopt practices of becoming. That is, school leaders should engage in intimate encounters with the other; not based on a desire to change the other, but rather for the purpose of mutually engaging with the other in an effort to inhabit practices of coming into presence that are humane and just.
Ta'arruf as a philosophy of Muslim education : extending Abu Bakr Effendi’s pragmatism
(African Sun Media, 2020) Waghid, Yusef
In this book, Yusef Waghid constitutes his argument in defence of ta’arruf (associational knowing) as an expanded conception of ta’dib (good education). In the first part of the book he elucidates Abu Bakr Effendi’s position on a Muslim educational philosophy which can be couched as rational, pragmatic and critical. As a backdrop to this, in the second part of the book, he argues for a notion of Muslim educational philosophy according to ta’arruf (associational knowing) on the basis that it enhances the notion of an autonomous self and its capabilities; summons different people to engage in deliberative encounters; and provokes the self to be reflectively open towards that which remains in becoming. This leads him to posit that ta’arruf (associational knowing) has the potential to cultivate humanity. His notion of ta’arruf extends practices of tarbiyyah (rearing), ta’lim (learning), and ta’dib (good education) associated with Muslim educational philosophy.
Transformation as an act of denudation : a response to Petro du Preez, Shan Simmonds and Anne Verhoef
(AOSIS, 2016-10-25) Waghid, Yusef
Higher education transformation in South Africa, as correctly argued by Petro du Preez, Shan Simmonds and Anné Verhoef, should become more ‘fluid [and] open-ended’. However, even more fluidity and open-endedness might not necessarily be sufficient in enacting transformation in the higher education realm. Consequently, in this article I argue in defence of a form of denudification of higher education that would impact transformation with an unrestrained openness and concealment whereby the unexpected will remain in potentiality. It is hoped that higher education transformation in South Africa would become more open and credible as has been achieved hitherto.
Universities and public goods: In defence of democratic deliberation, compassionate imagining and cosmopolitan justice
(AFRICAN SUN MeDIA, 2009) Waghid, Yusef
One of the most significant contributions to the advancement of modern higher education is found in the work of Frank and Meyer (2007:290) who argue that the public mission of the contemporary university is to assist in addressing great social problems such as improving business organisation and capital investment, protecting the natural environment, preserving human rights and cultural diversity, resolving crises of governance and promoting democracy – all aspects that constitute what can be referred to as the public goods of higher education. In order to foreground the public mission of the modern (African) university more clearly, I offer an account of higher education as a public good which ought to build on conceptions of democratic deliberation, compassionate imagining and cosmopolitan justice.

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