Books

The post-school education and training system in South Africa has been the focus of much attention since the establishment of the Department of Higher Education and Training in 2009. In the context of deepening inequality, poverty and unemployment, the need for a humanising, liberating and critical approach to learning and pedagogy in post-school education is becoming urgent. The rural and urban voices that speak in this book tell us that the current system is out of touch with the ways in which they are making a life.

Learning to Teach in South Africa is a collection of key texts by one of South Africas most respected thinkers in education. The essays span the crucial years of democratic transition in South Africa and display the essential unity of the authors thought as he reflects on the idea of epistemological access, a prominent feature of disciplined thinking about education in South Africa, as well as teacher education, the primacy of the practice of teaching in any system of education, and the continuing struggle with relativism, one of the strands of the Apartheid and colonialism legacies. The collection bears the authors hallmark intellectual passion and incisive thinking which has helped sculpt the landscape of educational debates over three decades.

The contributors discuss the hybridal political systems that exist in post-independance Africa; the role allotted to or pursued by former African presidents; transitional politics and justice, and political stability. The book stimulates careful further observation and analyses concerning progress in this contested arena of institutionalised political power in Africa.

This regional study forms part of a survey of public perceptions in three southern African countries. It outlines the opinions of a representative sample of adult residents of Lesotho on a range of socio-political, economic and other issues. It will be of interest to students, scholars, policy-makers and NGOs throughout the SADC.

In Liberating Masculinities, Kopano Ratele posits that all masculinities are working models, and some models might be more unworkable given the prevailing structural conditions.

Is authoritarianism built into liberation structures? Is it inherited from colonial systems? Is liberal democracy inherently elitist? This ground-breaking collection of Essays on Zimbabwe, Namibia, Lesotho, Botswana and South Africa opens a long-awaited debate on these and other related issues.

Linking Universities and marginalised communities examines how South African universities engage with the informal sector in marginalised communities to improve livelihoods through inclusive innovation. The knowledge imperatives of universities are explored in relation to the public good and social justice, and the roles of innovation and technology transfer. Case studies provide examples of coherence between teaching, research, innovation and community engagement, and illustrate the enablers and constraints to such interaction. These insights find policy application in the spheres of higher education, science and technology, and economic development. The analysis also provides lessons for innovation studies, pointing out the need to refine the notion of innovation so that it may be more appropriate for the developmental challenges of countries such as South Africa.

Since 1994, local government in South Africa has become more important than ever before. It has been described as the 'hands and feet' of government, and is expected to play a key role in development.

But to what extent does local government support women's empowerment and gender equity? Do integrated development plans (IDPs), which give strategic direction to the work of a municipality, benefit gender equity or women's rights?

This is an examination of the transformation of South Africa's apartheid local government system into a development-oriented system of municipal governance. Continuing short and long-term interventions by both the central and provincial governments will be needed if local government is to deliver its desired outputs.

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.