OpenUCT :: Browsing by Author "Jawitz, Jeff"

Browsing by Author "Jawitz, Jeff"

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Open Access
Academic identities and communities of practice in a professional discipline
(Taylor & Francis, 2009) Jawitz, Jeff
This paper explores the dynamics surrounding the formation of academic identities in a context where the nature of academic work is contested both as a result of tensions within the discipline and in response to pressure from both the institution and the field of higher education. It is based on a case study which investigated the process of academic identity formation at the micro level of a department at a South African university. The study revealed a complex relationship between identity construction and participation within the particular configuration of teaching, professional and research communities of practice that defined the academic field in the department. Multiple identity trajectories were evident, indicating the role of individual agency, despite the dominance of a professional community of practice within the department. The arrival of new academics in the department without professional practice experience was found to have created the possibility of a changed notion of the academic within the discipline.
Open Access
The challenge of teaching large classes in higher education in South Africa : a battle to be waged outside the classroom
(SUN MeDIA MeTRO, 2013) Jawitz, Jeff; Hornsby, David J; Osman, Ruksana; De Matos-ala, Jacqueline
In this chapter, I explore the size and discipline of the largest classes offered at two higher education institutions in South Africa and based on the evidence at four institutions make the case that large classes is a minority phenomenon with less than 28% of courses offered having more than 100 students registered. I suggest that large classes offer unique opportunities for delivering the quality learning experience we wish for our students. However, taking advantage of these opportunities require significant planning, support and expertise. I also discuss current practices that undermine the efforts of individual lecturers to achieve effective learning in their large classes.
Open Access
Communicating your findings in engineering education: the value of making your theoretical perspective explicit
(Taylor & Francis, 2009) Jawitz, Jeff; Case, Jennifer
The authors observe that many research papers in engineering education do not explicitly state the theoretical perspective underpinning their work. In this article they argue for the value of theory in assisting researchers in communicating their research findings. Three theoretical perspectives that can be used to support one's research are described, namely; positivism, constructivism and critical inquiry, and in each case examples of research questions that best match the particular framework are given. Researchers are advised to be aware of the limitations of each perspective and to use the one that best assists them in understanding and solving the problems they wish to address.
Open Access
Grappling with methodologies in educational research: science and engineering educators finding their way
(Nova Science Publishers, 2009) Jawitz, Jeff; Case, Jennifer; Marshall, Delia; Kgeti Setati; Renuka Vithal; Cliff Malcolm; Rubby Dhunpath
Science and Engineering faculties at South African tertiary institutions have seen dramatic changes since the 1980’s due to a changing student body as a result of equity and redress measures. There has also been an increasing interest in educational research that might help improve student learning. Some of these researchers are disciplinary experts taking an interest in teaching and learning, while others have moved from undergraduate scientific work to postgraduate educational qualifications. Many of these researchers have no foundations in social science research. As a result much of the research produced by this group tends to unproblematically apply the ‘scientific method’ to problems in the social sciences. As authors of this chapter, we fit the above description, and describe our journeys in developing more appropriate and critical ways of conducting research in these complex and changing higher education contexts. Our initial research efforts were conducted in largely positivist frames. While there were many opportunities to develop (and publish) within this framework, we became increasingly aware that this framework offered superficial understandings of the student experience and failed to engage with broader societal issues. Interpretivist and critical perspectives appeared to offer more productive frames within which to work, yet we struggled to make sense of and gain access to these discourses. In this chapter we analyse and describe the experiences gained from two different research projects we have pursued during the 1990’s. The first theme concerns issues around gender and engineering education, and began with a narrow focus on why women choose to study engineering and shifted to grappling more critically with notions of gender and race. The second theme concerns students’ experiences of learning, initially exploring the approaches to learning framework and in later work responding more critically to the dominant theories in this area. Some of the questions which we address include: What are the methodological challenges involved in shifting to a more interpretive and critical paradigm? Is critical theory a useful framework for researching tertiary science and engineering education?
Open Access
An investigation into the performance and problems of first-year engineering students at the University of Cape Town
(1992) Jawitz, Jeff; Martin, JB; Cowan, Bill
The first- and second-year results of the 1989 engineering student intake were analysed and revealed that matriculants from Black Education Departments performed significantly worse in the first year than those from White Education Departments. Matric point scores were found to be good predictors for White Education Department matriculants, but less so for Black Education Department matriculants, with matric Physical Science a better predictor than matric Maths, for both first- and second- year courses. Using interviews and a survey of students, a set of academic and non-academic problems experienced by first-year engineering students were identified with black students found to have experienced a particular set of problems to a greater degree than white students. The data produced a portrait of the interaction between first-year engineering students and the academic and social systems of the university. The dominant feature that emerged was one of distance between the individual students and elements of the university environment, including staff, fellow students and the academic material. Factors from the student's personal and educational background that appeared to accentuate this experience of distance were identified. Recommendations to the Engineering Faculty were compiled on the basis of this analysis together with student suggestions for improving the first-year engineering programme.
Open Access
An investigation of the assessment of the continuous assessment portfolio component of art, craft and designs in Botswana junior secondary schools
(2017) Kontle, Bitha; Jawitz, Jeff
In this study, I undertook to investigate how the requirements of formative and summative assessment influence the practices of teachers of art, craft and design in Botswana junior secondary schools (BJSS) in relation to the continuous assessment portfolio (CAP). I used qualitative research methods for data collection, mainly using in-depth interviews with individual teachers of art, craft and design. I also used grounded theory approach to interpret and analyse the collected data. The sample was chosen from different junior secondary schools near Gaborone, in Botswana. Interviewees had common qualification entry requirements while their experiences and backgrounds were different. The theoretical and conceptual frames underpinning the study are mainly Bourdieu's theory of practice and Lave and Wenger's theory of communities of practice. I focused my study on using these theoretical and conceptual frames to help describe the basis for the participants' choice in their judgements during their development of students' CAP. The outcome of this study makes claim that the teachers of art, craft and design who participated in the study clearly understood the requirements of the CAP. However, they chose to ignore these requirements due to the pressures originating from the tensions between formative assessment at school level and summative assessment at the level of the national examinations. These choices result in teachers undertaking activities which emphasize doing well in the national examinations rather than developing the students' skills for future use. This practice results from teachers' efforts to gain recognition for themselves and their schools as a result of outstanding national examination results. Good performance by their students in national examinations enhances their reputation as teachers and makes them eligible to be entrusted with national responsibilities such as being appointed moderators and examiners.
Open Access
Investing in Teaching Development: Navigating Risk in a Research Intensive Institution
(International Journal for Academic Development, 2015-06-01) Jawitz, Jeff; Perez, Theresa
It is often assumed that academics working in a research intensive university are unlikely to invest in the professional development of their teaching. Institutional structures and culture tend to undermine investment in academics’ teaching role. This study, conducted at the University of Cape Town, draws on an analysis of the environment within which academics make decisions to invest in their role as teachers. While acknowledging the privileging of research embedded in the institution, a significant group of academics have found ways to assert their academic identities as teachers despite the possible consequences and risks that this position entails. This is the pre-print for an article which first appeared in the International Journal for Academic Development.
Open Access
Learning as acquiring a discursive identity through participation in a community: improving student learning in engineering education
(Taylor & Francis, 2009) Allie, Saalih; Armien, Mogamat Noor; Burgoyne, Nicolette; Case, Jennifer M; Collier-Reed, Brandon I; Craig, Tracy S; Deacon, Andrew; Fraser, Duncan M; Geyer, Zulpha; Jacobs, Cecilia; Jawitz, Jeff; Kloot, Bruce; Kotta, Linda; Langdon, Genev
In this paper, we propose that learning in engineering involves taking on the discourse of an engineering community, which is intimately bound up with the identity of being a member of that community. This leads to the notion of discursive identity, which emphasises that students' identities are constituted through engaging in discourse. This view of learning implies that success in engineering studies needs to be defined with particular reference to the sorts of identities that students develop and how these relate to identities in the world of work. In order to achieve successful learning in engineering, we need to recognise the multiple identities held by our students, provide an authentic range of engineering-related activities through which students can develop engineering identities and make more explicit key aspects of the discourse of engineering of which lecturers are tacitly aware. We include three vignettes to illustrate how some of the authors of this paper (from across three different institutions) have applied this perspective of learning in their teaching practice.
Open Access
Learning in the academic workplace: the harmonization of the collective and the individual habitus
(Taylor & Francis, 2009) Jawitz, Jeff
One of the challenges of research into social practice is finding a way to take both the structural aspects of the social contexts and individual agency into account. This article describes the use of Bourdieu's social practice theory, together with Lave and Wenger's situated learning theory, to understand how the learning of practice takes place within the academic workplace. Drawing on interviews with academics across three departments at a research‐intensive, historically white university in South Africa, the author explored how new academics engaged with the assessment practices in their departments, and developed their confidence to judge student performance of complex assessment tasks. The study provides a set of conceptual tools for academic staff development practitioners to use in supporting academics in their learning to teach. An argument is made for the process of learning in the workplace to be understood in terms of the harmonization of the individual habitus with the collective habitus in departmental communities of practice. Evidence is also provided of the importance of context in understanding how academics learn.
Open Access
Learning to assess in the academic workplace: case study in the natural sciences
(Unisa Pres, 2008) Jawitz, Jeff
A study into how academics learn to assess student performance affirms the significance of context in understanding learning in the academic workplace. The study involved three case studies in academic departments with significant differences in the teaching, research and professional dimensions of academic life. This article reports on the experiences of new academics in one of the case studies, a department in the Natural Sciences. This case study highlights how relationships between colleagues, opportunities for conversations about assessment practice, and the alignment of assessment practices with the kinds of capital valued in each context are important considerations in understanding the ease, or difficulties, new academics experience in learning to judge student performance. Programmes that aim to help academics develop their assessment practice need to recognise that learning to judge student performance involves developing confidence to create and use opportunities to learn within the academic workplace.
Open Access
New academics negotiating communities of practice: learning to swim with the big fish
(Taylor & Francis, 2007) Jawitz, Jeff
This paper explores the use of situated cognition theory to investigate how new academics learn to judge complex student performance in an academic department at a South African university. The analysis revealed the existence of two largely separate communities of practice within the department, one centred on the provision of undergraduate teaching and the other on the production of research. Newcomers follow a range of trajectories in the course of their identity construction as academics and their learning is strongly shaped by their histories and individual experiences of negotiating their way into and across these key communities of practice. Learning to assess student performance in an Honours research paper was found to be integrally linked to the process of gaining entry into the research community of practice with limited opportunity for legitimate peripheral participation given the high stakes context within which assessment decisions are made.
Open Access
Presence and Absence: Looking for Teaching and Teaching Development in the Website of a 'Research-led' South African University
(University of the Western Cape, 2015) Jawitz, Jeff; Williams, Kevin
This article arises out of a broader study into the contextual influences on the professional development of academics as teachers in higher education in South Africa. Using Fairclough’s critical discourse analysis we examine the website of a ‘researchled’ South African university. We examine the choices made in the use of website space and the presence and absence of texts which refer to teaching or the development of teaching. We compare these choices with those made about portraying other aspects of the university’s self-described mission on the website as a proxy for the valuing of teaching. We recognise that marketing spaces cannot be seen to equate to the commitment of institutions, departments or individual academics, but our concern in this project was to understand what publicly accessible claims the university makes about teaching, and whether such claims are borne out by its own self-description. With regard to teaching we found that absences are more frequent than presences, especially in comparison with the way other ‘core functions’ of the university are presented. Taken together it is difficult to find support for the rhetoric of the valuing of teaching that is conveyed in the university’s self-description. We suggest that this lack of valuing of teaching may have an effect on the choices academics make in responding to calls to invest time in developing their teaching.
Open Access
Student-centredness: the link between transforming students and transforming ourselves
(Taylor & Francis, 2010) Blackie, Margaret A L; Case, Jennifer M; Jawitz, Jeff
It is widely accepted in the higher education literature that a student-centred approach is pedagogically superior to a teacher-centred approach. In this paper, we explore the notion of student-centredness as a threshold concept and the implications this might have for academic staff development. We argue that the term student-centred in the Rogerian sense implies a focus on the person of the student and is deeply resonant with Barnett's assertion that the emergent being of the student is as important as the development of skills and knowledge. To facilitate transformative learning in higher education an academic must know how to value the person of the student in the learning process. Academic staff development initiatives need to work with the person of the academic and take into account the level of personal development required for each academic to be able to facilitate this kind of learning.
Open Access
Understanding facilitator practice in the problem-based learning classroom
(2014) Davids, Nawaal; Jawitz, Jeff
This study looks at eight individual PBL facilitator cases in the field of medical education at the University of Cape Town (UCT). The aim of this study is to gain an understanding of what affects facilitation practice in a problem-based leaning (PBL) classroom. The facilitators come from various backgrounds and have different levels of knowledge and experience. They are, however all employed in a course on a part-time basis during the second semester of the MBChB first year programme. Each facilitator was observed during their facilitation of a PBL tutorial and thereafter they were interviewed about their actions in the classroom. Bourdieu's theory of practice was used as the theoretical and descriptive framework in this study of educational practice in PBL. Bourdieu speaks of 'habitus' or the 'dispositions' of facilitators that influences their practice. He describes the 'field' as the specific area where interactions occur that are shaped by the habitus of its participants and in turn shapes their habitus. He also describes 'capital' or assets that the facilitators may possess from their previous or current fields that shape the interactions in a field. This theory offers insight about who the facilitators are, how they behave in the teaching practice setting and provides an understanding of what contributes to their practice in PBL. The findings are that facilitator actions in the classroom were shaped by a number of factors including their personalities, social backgrounds, qualifications, experience, beliefs and perspectives, their fields of practice as well as the medical education field at UCT with its institutional factors and values. Theory of practice not only illustrates the principles underlying facilitator practice in the PBL classroom, but allows a description of the interactions between unique facilitator dispositions, experiences, assets and values within a field of medical education. This study forms the basis for future studies in the area of PBL facilitator practice and will contribute to improved staff development, placement and appreciation of PBL facilitators.
Open Access
Unearthing white academics’ experience of teaching in higher education in South Africa
(Taylor & Francis, 2016-06) Jawitz, Jeff
The real and imagined racial differences and similarities between groups of students and staff have consequences in everyday experiences in South Africa. One aspect of engaging with the challenges facing higher education transformation post-Apartheid is through understanding how the racialized context interacts with the experience of teaching. This paper reports on what the narratives of four white academics reveal about their experience of teaching at the University of Cape Town (UCT). It analyses indicators of their identity as white academics and how they are both positioned and actively position themselves in relation to students and other academics at UCT. Their narratives reveal how academics simultaneously grapple with the privileges and limitations that accompany identifying as white. These tensions are explored through issues of black student development amid an alienating institutional culture and opposition to the behaviour of their white colleagues.

Browsing by Author "Jawitz, Jeff"

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