Centre for Health Professions Education

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On borders, boundaries and being a chameleon : metaphors for reframing the academic project
(2017-09) Van Schalkwyk, Susan; Heyns, Tania; Centre for Health Professions Education
Academia is a strange place – particularly for those looking in from the outside. Those of us who reside within its borders have created, and then perpetuated, this strangeness over decades, in some instances even over centuries, by holding to very particular ways of being and doing. This has significant implications for the academic project1 – for the teaching that is practised, for the learning that occurs, and for the research that is undertaken. It also has implications for the way in which the academic project moves forward, how it evolves or ‘moves with the times’, and responds to global, national and local imperatives. In this time of significant uncertainty and instability in higher education in South Africa, the way in which academia is positioning itself in terms of the academic project requires our urgent attention. Questions need to be asked about our entrenched practices, yes, the things we hold dear, and to consider the extent to which these might be complicit in the uncertainty and instability. We also need to ask how academia can use its considerable influence to chart a new way forward, to help reframe the way in which we think about the academic project.