Ethical Quandaries

In social research

A collection of papers presented at the Colloquium on Sciences and Evolution in 2001, this volume attempts to answer the moral and ethical, social, religious and educational questions about the teaching of evolutionary theory in schools.

How do actors in the educational field respond to the changing skills demands of the future? Research teams from the Labour Market Intelligence Partnership (LMIP) undertook a set of experimental and innovative case studies to improve our understanding of how current research intersects with a rapidly changing future.

Decolonisation as democratisation considers three factors that define the debate in South Africa on the decolonisation of the academy: educational aspiration, competing interests and political contestation. The book explores an academic system that attempts to serve two masters, the first being the historical beneficiaries of the academy (i.e. whiteness) and the second being those who pin their hopes on the system in order to escape abjection (i.e. blackness or indigeneity). The book highlights how the recent thrust of decoloniality protects the ideal of academic freedom and presents an argument that this ideal should not be used to protect the interests of the historical beneficiaries.

This volume seeks to critically engage with South Africa's current skills development strategy and to analyse the prospects for a successful upskilling of the population. As the first major South African study within the current international debate on high skills, it is an important and original contribution to the international literature, as well as a major addition to the discourse on South African education, training and development. With chapters by leading South African academics, this collection also includes articles by world-recognised experts on skillsformation systems.