Bounds of Democracy

Epistemological Access in Higher Education

Broadly concerned with grade 12 learner aspirations for the future, this monograph hones in on the aspiration to study education and to enter the teaching profession. The National Policy Framework for Teacher Education and Development in South Africa highlights this as a crucial area for further research - a need which this study attempts to address.

Sectors & Skills: The Need for Policy Alignment presents the results of a large-scale study of the skill demands of five economic clusters in South Africa:

The Low Achievement Trap is an empirical study of student mathematics learning in Grade 6 classrooms that is unique in its focus on two school systems shaped by different political histories on either side of the Botswana-South Africa border. The study provides a detailed examination of the capacity of teachers - how they teach, how much they teach, and what they teach. Because of this wealth of detail, The Low Achievement Trap gives us much greater insight than previous research into why students seem to be making larger gains in the classrooms of South Eastern Botswana than in those of North West Province, South Africa. Rather than identifying a single major factor to explain this difference, the study finds that a composite of inter-related variables revolving around teachers mathematics knowledge and their capacity to teach mathematics are crucial to improving education in both regions. The message is a hopeful one: good teachers can make a difference in student learning.

Increasing learner access to information and communication technologies (ICT) in the curriculum is strategically important to ensure that school leavers moving into the labour market or into further study have the appropriate background and capacities to succeed, as work and educational environments becoming increasingly information intensive.