Rubby Dhunpath

The taxi industry and transportation for people with disabilities: implications for universal access in a metropolitan municipality

Abstract:This article focuses on the management of the taxi industry in the eThekwini Municipality. It examines how the financing of the taxi industry influences the provision of transport for people with disabilities highlighting the experiences of a variety of stakeholders of the Integrated Rapid Public Transport Network (IRPTN) and other interim measures to improve public transport provision. The research derives from a larger study on the factors that influence public transport service provision for people with disabilities in the eThekwini Municipality using data which was produced through semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions with a range of stakeholders. Whilst government and policy makers are desperately seeking to improve the transportation landscape, there seems to be little cognisance of the subversive power of the taxi industry as long as its interests are not acknowledged. Furthermore, the state’s constitutional mandate to provide access for people with disabilities appears to be subverted by the taxi industry, which does not seem to regard people with disabilities as economically valuable, resulting in their marginalisation, potentially compromising the successful implementation of the IRPTN. The authors also highlight concerns relating to the lack of effective interim measures and contradictory suggestions by the participants, signalling that any solution needs to acknowledge the complexity and multi-faceted nature of the problem, and that no ‘perfect’ and simplistic solution is on the horizon. The authors contend that unless sufficient consensus is reached among all stakeholders, the future of public transport service provision for people with disabilities in the eThekwini Municipality remains uncertain.

Student Success and Curriculum Reform in Post-Apartheid South Africa

Student success is an elusive aspiration in South Africa, especially for its majority African population as the country continues to endure the imprints of a racially divided higher education system. This article will critically examine various reform initiatives designed to enhance student success since 2004. The authors will demonstrate that despite successive efforts and increasing resources directed at enhancing student success, the outcomes have been minimal, largely because student failure has been pathologized as a function of student deficits rather than a consequence of systemic dysfunction, especially as it relates to the curriculum. We concede that while the impediments to student success are multifarious, using the affordances of technology to institute a less alienating curriculum structure, alongside a review of content, can catalyse the process of reform to reverse current student outcomes.

Service Learning Pedagogies to Promote Student Learning in Occupational Therapy Education

ABSTRACT The centrality of service learning in the development of students’ professional practice has received worldwide attention. Exposure to appropriately designed service learning experience determines the acquisition of graduate attributes. This article addresses a study in which the key question was: What methods and strategies do students and their clinical supervisors find beneficial in improving their learning experiences during service learning placements? Drawing on the views and experiences of a group of final year occupational therapy (OT) students and their supervisors, the initial focus is on concepts in learning relevant to service learning and professional development, including Vygotskys zone of proximal development (ZPD), the capability approach and collaborative and peer assisted learning. This is followed by an overview of the methodology and an analysis of the students’ and clinical supervisors’ experiences during service learning. The discussion focuses on the implications of the study findings for practice within a service learning context to enhance the alignment of institutional practices with students’ needs.

Early-career academic support at the University of KwaZulu-Natal: towards a scholarship of teaching

As the demand for, and access to, higher education increases rapidly around the globe and exponentially on the African Continent, higher education institutions are under immense pressure to recruit skilled professionals who are equally proficient in disciplinary knowledge and pedagogic skills. Institutions also have an obligation to provide professional development opportunities to enhance teaching capacity. This article, based on a survey of early-career academics (ECAs) at a South African university, examines the induction experiences of a group of new recruits to gain insights into their teaching capabilities and professional development experiences. The article finds that, consistent with international trends, at least half of the population sampled are 2nd career academics with an average age of 37. Notwithstanding their relative unfamiliarity with academic organisational culture, most respondents reported medium to high levels of confidence in their own teaching capabilities. This confidence signals the prevalence of the apprenticeship of observation as the dominant model of professional development. We argue that if the support for ECAs is to be meaningful and effective, support programmes must serve to adequately socialise academics into the prevalent organisational culture while simultaneously disrupting rituals of academic performance through a scholarship of teaching.

The Illuminative Potential of Organizational Ethnographies

Evaluation studies, especially of South African educational institutions and non-governmental organisations offering educational programmes have been criticised for focussing inadequately on the ethnographic and anthropological dimensions of organisations. The dominant approaches to evaluation have been structuralist and empirical-rational in orientation, serving narrow bureaucratic functions for funders and donors, based on self reports by programme participants. One way of resolving the dilemma of unreliable evaluation reports is producing richly contextualised organisational ethnographies which illuminate organisational contexts beyond superficial analyses. What are the potential benefits of an organisational ethnography, and what are the epistemological and ethical implications of such an endeavour? I shall attempt to answer these questions by drawing on an organisational ethnography of a South African non-governmental organisation offering language teacher development programmes, as I trace its mutating identity over three decades. I use insights derived from the traditions of empowerment evaluation (Fetterman, 1999) and illuminative evaluation (Parlett & Hamilton, 1976) as theoretical lenses to appraise the value of narratives in understanding organisational behaviour. Further, I appropriate Discourse Analysis to interrogate selected narrative data as a methodological lens in organisational analysis, and reflect on my experience of engaging in such a project. In the latter part of the chapter, I revisit the methodological wisdom of engaging in an institutional ethnography, highlighting some of the ethical, representational and epistemological dilemmas in negotiating a non-conventional approach. I conclude the paper with brief allusion to the potential value of organisational ethnographies in mediating an emerging performativity driven higher education culture.

Undoing Cognitive Damage

The great topmost sheet of the mass, where hardly a light had twinkled or moved, becomes now a sparkling field of rhythmic flashing points with trains of traveling sparks hurrying hither and thither. The brain is waking and with it the mind is returning. It is as if the Milky Way entered upon some cosmic dance. Swiftly the head mass becomes an enchanted loom where millions of flashing shuttles weave a dissolving pattern, always a meaningful pattern though never an abiding one, a shifting harmony of subpatterns.