Moeketsi Letseka

The challenges and prospects of access to higher education at UNISA

This article debates access and success at the University of South Africa (UNISA). UNISA is an open distance learning (ODL) institution that provides higher education opportunities to working adults who would otherwise not have the opportunity to acquire a higher education qualification at full-time contact institutions. The article sketches the challenges and prospects of ODL. It teases out the challenges of ODL articulation, learner support, recognition of prior learning, and poor throughput rate. Substantively though, the article argues a case for well managed ODL programs to provide access to quality higher education to previously marginalised individuals and to enable developing countries such as South Africa to make a meaningful contribution to the global economy through knowledgeable citizenry and workforce.

Quality Assurance and Global Competitiveness in Higher Education

The quality, and quality assurance, movements have become highly contested issues in the advent of new managerialism1 in higher education. This is because while the notion of quality is critical to institutional autonomy and academic freedom, there are no universal criteria to determine quality in the current conditions of global competitiveness and new managerialism. In this chapter we analyze quality measures and the quality assurance movement in the current global market economy. We investigate ways in which the quality assurance movement has shaped higher education policy and practice and impacted national, regional, and international priorities. The chapter’s emphasis is on the following areas: (a) policy borrowing on criteria to measure quality and quality assurance movement, (b) the impact of globalization and new managerialism on perceptions of quality and equity imperatives, (c) institutional ranking and the rating of individual academics as criteria for determining quality in higher education, and (d) implications for policy and theory.

South African Teachers Caught between Nation Building and Global Demands: Is There a Way Out/Forward?.

In this article, we explore the impact of the nation-building and global demands on teachers’ work and how they survive the pressure of, and reconcile, these various demands that impact their work. We draw on two separate data sets that emerged from studies undertaken in the Eastern Cape Province (EC), South Africa. Findings reveal a rift between the nation-building and global mandates. Most intended changes assumed that teachers are ready and prepared for whatever changes that are introduced. Consequently, teachers are in a constant struggle to come to terms with them, thus resulting in slow implementation or the nonimplementation of reforms in classrooms. We argue that recognition and acknowledgment of existing realities, classroom cultures, and implementation requirements or support should be the first step in improving education. Also, a strong visionary leadership becomes pivotal to achieve the desired reform success. Additionally, policy development and programs need to recognize the countrys history and the murky terrain that still has to be navigated to ensure successful curriculum reform implementation.

The History of Initial Teacher Preparation in International Contexts

This chapter examines the history of teacher education in five nations – South Africa, Singapore, Chile, Finland, and United States – representing different continents, histories, political structures, cultures, levels of wealth, and economies. The nations were selected, in fact, because of this variability; Table 2.1 shows how widely they differ on a number of indicators. We hope the chapter will generate discussions about the role teacher education has played in national development and what teacher educators in different nations might learn from each other.