Language Assessment and the National Qualifications Framework

Conference proceedings: 12 October 1995

In 2004,the HSRC s research programme on Human Resource Development launched the Working Partnerships Seriesto explore the extent to which the networked practices that are believed to characterise the knowledge economy have indeed begun to penetrate South African higher education and industry.

The past ten years in South Africa has seen many changes in education: the creation of a single department of education; common examinations for all learners in public schools in the country, a new outcomes based education curriculum which was introduced to learners in the General Education and Training Phase since 1998 and will be introduced to the Further Education and Training Phase from 2006. To evaluate the success of these changes South African researchers still use the indicator of student achievement.

The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) radio telescope is set to become the largest telescope on Earth, and also the largest science project in Africa. From September 2011 to August 2012, the SKA featured regularly in the South African media. In The Stars in Our Eyes, author Michael Gastrow dissects the representation of the SKA in the South African media in the period under discussion. Who were the main actors in this unfolding narrative? Who held the stage and who were marginalised? Where did gatekeeping occur and why? What was the relationship between journalists and scientists? How did the story unfold in the social media as opposed to the print media? Drawing on mass communication theory and science communication theory, The Stars in Our Eyes: Representations of the Square kilometre Array Telescope in the South African Media addresses critical gaps in the literature on science communication, particularly with respect to science communication in an African context.

The struggle to free South Africa from its apartheid shackles was long and complex. One of the many ways in which the apartheid regime maintained its stranglehold in South Africa was through controlling the freedom of speech and the flow of information, in an effort to silence the voices of those who opposed it. United by the ideals of freedom and equality, but also nuanced by a wide variety of persuasions, the voices of liberation were many: African nationalists, communists, trade-unionists, pan-Africanists, English liberals, human rights activists, Christians, Hindus, Muslims and Jews, to name but a few.