Browsing by Subject "agency"

Now showing 1 - 11 of 11
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Open Access
    Factors influencing Open Educational Practices and OER in the Global South: Meta-synthesis of the ROER4D project
    (African Minds, International Development Research Centre & Research on Open Educational Resources for Development, 2017-12) Hodgkinson-Williams, Cheryl; Arinto, Patricia; Cartmill, Tess; King, Thomas
    This chapter provides a meta-synthesis of the findings from the Research on Open Educational Resources for Development (ROER4D) empirical studies based on the 13 sub-project chapters in this volume as well as other sub-project research reports. It does so by analysing how three phases of Open Educational Resources (OER) adoption – OER creation, use and adaptation – are observed in the studies as forms of Open Educational Practices (OEP), identifying where there are most likely to be disjunctures that inhibit optimal OER adoption processes and their longer-term sustainability. It compares the open practices reported in the ROER4D sub-project studies to an idealised or maximal set of open processes, modelled as the Open Education cycle framework. It draws upon social realist theory to uncover agential decision-making about OER creation, use and adaptation in relation to structural and cultural environments, and seeks to answer the ROER4D project’s overarching research question: Whether, how, for whom and under what circumstances can engagement with OEP and OER provide equitable access to relevant, high-quality, affordable and sustainable education in the Global South? This chapter interrogates findings from the ROER4D empirical studies using a metasynthesis approach. Following a review of sub-project research reports (including, in some cases, primary micro data), the authors used a literature-informed set of themes to create the meta-level conceptual framework for claims about OER and OEP in relation to access, quality and affordability; the Open Education cycle; and structural, cultural and agential influences on the potential impact on access, quality and affordability. Nvivo software was used to help reveal literature-informed and emergent themes in the studies, identifying the most frequently occurring themes to provide a more comprehensive and classified interpretation of the findings across the empirical studies. Insights and recommendations were then distilled according to Archer’s (2003; 2014) social realist theoretical framework which assesses social change – and its counterpart, stasis – according to dynamically interactive and structural, cultural and agential factors. The authors used these three factors to guide their analysis of the ROER4D findings, as understood in relation to the three broad phases of OER adoption (creation, use and adaptation) proposed in the Open Education cycle. Findings show that in the Global South contexts studied, the ideal or maximal Open Education cycle is incomplete in terms of optimising the benefits of OER adoption. There are five key points of disjuncture: (1) the dependence on copying of existing OER and the corollary failure to localise; (2) the adaptation of OER, but with inconsistent curation and rehosting of derivative works on publicly available platforms or in repositories, limiting access to the derivative OER; (3) limited circulation of derivative OER due, in part, to the absence of a communication strategy; (4) inconsistent quality assurance processes; and (5) a weak feedback loop for continuous improvement of the original or derivative work. The chapter concludes with a critical exploration of the range of influences of OER and associated practices on access to educational materials, the quality of educational resources, educators’ pedagogical perspectives and practices, and student performance as well as the overall affordability and sustainability of education in the Global South. It argues that full participation in the OER movement in the Global South requires that certain structural factors be put in place – including a minimum level of infrastructural support, legal permission to share materials and OER curation platforms – to curate curriculum-aligned OER in local languages. However, these structural adjustments alone are insufficient for the full value proposition of OER to be realised. While individual educators and some institutions are sharing OER, this willingness needs to be bolstered by a much stronger cultural change where communities of educators and students are given technical and pedagogical support to enable OER uptake – especially the creation and adaptation of OER produced in the Global South.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Restricted
    From Traditional to Companionate Marriages: Women's changing expereince of divorce
    (Policy Press, 2012) Moore, Elena
    Dominant macro social theories on changing personal relationships have tended to place little emphasis on the significance of difference across individuals. This article makes a contribution to this field, drawing on data from 19 qualitative interviews with a group of middle-class divorcing women in Ireland. This research has uncovered a cohort effect in women's experience of marriage and divorce and points to a striking polarisation of women's experience of marriage and divorce in Ireland. Findings from the Ireland-wide trends on changing family practices and the case studies demonstrate that younger women, who were better educated and higher income earners, perceived separation as a form of 'liberation'. On the other hand, the older cohort of divorcees, who were less well educated and dependent spouses during the marriage, felt that they were actively abandoned and did not negotiate the ending of their marriage.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Open Access
    Harnessing agency: towards a learning model for undergraduate students
    (Taylor & Francis, 2013) Pym, June; Kapp, Rochelle
    This article describes a successful academic development programme in a Commerce faculty at a relatively elite, historically white university in South Africa. The writers argue that the programme has managed to achieve good results in recent years by moving away from deficit models of academic development for students from disadvantaged backgrounds. The article draws on five years of data to illustrate how students' home discourses have influenced their negotiations of institutional discourses. It is argued that many of the students have shown considerable agency in gaining admission to university despite their social backgrounds, but experience a crisis of confidence and self-esteem in the new environment. The article describes how the new model of academic development has responded to this context by providing a more flexible approach to the curriculum, which attempts to harness students' agency as well as foster a sense of belonging to a learning community. Also described are the range of interventions that have been put in place specifically to develop a culture of learning and to promote social connectedness, identity and agency.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Open Access
    The role of postgraduate students in co-authoring open educational resources to promote social inclusion: a case study at the University of Cape Town
    (Taylor & Francis, 2012) Hodgkinson-Williams, Cheryl; Paskevicius, Michael
    Like many universities worldwide, the University of Cape Town (UCT) in South Africa has joined the open educational resources (OER) movement, making a selection of teaching and learning materials available through its OER directory, UCT OpenContent. However, persuading and then supporting busy academics to share their teaching materials as OER still remains a challenge. In this article, we report on an empirical study of how UCT postgraduate students have assisted in the process of reworking the academics' teaching materials as OER. Using the concept of contradictions (Engeström, 2001), we endeavor to surface the various disturbances or conflicts with which the postgraduate students had to engage to make OER socially inclusive, as well as Engeström's “layers of causality" (2011, p. 609) to explain postgraduate students' growing sense of agency as they experienced the OER development process as being socially inclusive.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Open Access
    Students make a plan: understanding student agency in constraining conditions
    (Taylor & Francis, 2009) Czerniewicz, Laura; Williams, Kevin; Brown, Cheryl
    Drawing on Archer's perspectives on the agency/structure relationship, this paper explains situations where students in varied, challenging circumstances find ways to negotiate difficult conditions. It reports on a 2007 study undertaken through a survey at three quite different universities in three South African provinces, addressing inter-related questions on access and use. Our findings are that on-campus access is generally reported favourably, and off-campus access is problematic and uneven. There is a cluster of students using their cell phones to access the Internet, and using their cell phones for academic purposes, and this is true across socio-economic groups (SEGs). It is especially striking that students from low SEGs do so. The findings show the choices students are prepared to make and the strategies which they find in order to engage online or access the Internet to support their studies. Archer's nuanced approach to agency and structure helps us begin to make sense of the way that students exhibit a more complex and nuanced way of engaging with the availability of different kinds of technologies, as well as making considered decisions about using ubiquitous technologies in unexpected ways and for purposes for which they may not have been intended. Her concept of reflexivity provides a way of describing how those choices are made in relation to structural conditions and enables us to explain how students are 'persons' showing an inventive capacity to circumvent the constraints imposed by structures.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Open Access
    The digital lifeworlds of young Nigerians – Exploring rural and urban teens’ practices with, and negotiation of, digital technology
    (2019) Uzuegbunam, Chikezie E; Bosch, Tanja
    This study investigates the digital lifeworlds of rural and urban 13- to 18-year old young people in an African, specifically Nigerian, context. Children and young people’s digital lifeworlds and practices with technology in the global North is well researched and documented. By contrast, research focusing on their counterparts, particularly pre-teens’ and teenagers’ digital practices and participation in Africa is still largely limited and exploratory; and the field underdeveloped. This is more so despite the important role played by digital communication technologies in children and young people’s everyday life. Privileging the use of a mixed methods approach, this study conducted 16 focus group discussions with 175 participants and a survey of 380 respondents in public and private schools sampled across two of Nigeria’s major geopolitical zones. Supported by the child-centred approach and the domestication framework by Silverstone, Hirsch and Morley (1992), the study provides a multi-layered portrait of the ways in which Nigerian teens access, understand, work and play with and negotiate the digital technologies that are available to them. The study also broadly pays attention to how young people constitute their digital lives and the role played by contextual dynamics and community networks such as family, school and others. It was found that young people in Nigeria have a considerable access to and are predominantly using mobile phones and the Internet (via the ‘mobile internet’). However, this did not preclude the divides and marginalities between children from dissimilar social backgrounds. Teens’ significant outcomes with technology mostly centre around the need for communication and interaction with friends first, and then family. They also primarily use technology to cultivate and maintain their peer culture, for self-care, dealing with mental wellbeing, and as a critical resource for education and information-seeking. Nigerian children’s digital practices are substantially shaped and at the same time undermined by various mediators or digital gatekeepers. These include parents, teachers, guardians and older adults who are presented mostly as prohibitors and moral panic mongers. Issues such as the absence of digital literacy and skill on the part of the children, their parents and teachers also limit the teens’ agency and digital opportunities and result in unchecked risks such as access to pornography, meeting online with strangers/online grooming, distractions, identity issues/negative role modelling. Moreover, the opportunities and benefits of technology in children’s lives remain precarious, stratified and complex. This study attempts to place children’s digital lifeworlds in its wider socio-spatial context and experience, contributing an important dimension to children’s digital practices, especially as there exists a resonant paucity of and apathy towards research and scholarship in children and media studies in Africa. Techno-shaming children into silence, fear, scepticism, guilt or moral panic is a common, but flawed strategy. Instead, it is suggested that government, schools and families should reconsider the precarious subjective-subordinate and marginalised position of young people and allow them the agency to contribute to decisions relating to their digital lives. Adult decision makers must focus on expanding Nigerian teens’ digital opportunities and rights. There is equally the need to develop resources that might help empower parents, families and adults by providing knowledge of the opportunities and risks of the digital age.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Restricted
    Turning up the Volume: Dialogues about Memory Create Oral Histories
    (2008) Field, Sean
    This article sketches an overview of South African oral history since the 1970s and argues that while oral history projects have grown rapidly since 2000, insufficient attention has been given to international debates about memory, myth and subjectivity. It then explores the conception of oral history being constructed by ‘dialogues about memory’, and how this furthers our understanding of narrative, agency and identity formation. This conception also compels us to reflect on the position of the oral historian. The article then argues that ‘traces’, especially the mental imagery evoked during acts of remembrance, have implications for conducting and interpreting oral history dialogues. This is in a context shaped by post-apartheid memory politics and our anxieties over the fragility of memory traces and the urgent desire to record and conserve before these traces are lost. But dialogues about memory continue to creatively produce oral histories in the present.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Open Access
    What is a Mind Week 1 - Four defining properties of the mind
    (2015-08-15) Solms, Mark
    In this video, Professor Mark Solms outlines four properties of the mind: subjectivity, consciousness, intentionality, and agency. He briefly explores issues and questions related to these properties and states that he will unpack these properties in more detail in subsequent videos. This is video 3 in Week 1 of the What is a Mind MOOC.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Open Access
    What is a Mind Week 5 - Agency, thinking and reflexivity
    (2015-08-15) Solms, Mark
    In this video, Professor Mark Solms introduces the notion of thinking which he defines as imagined or experimental action and involves the suppression of instinct. He uses this principle to explore the property of agency in more detail. This is video 2 in Week 4 of the What is a Mind MOOC.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Open Access
    What is a Mind Week 5 - Instincts and learning
    (2015-08-15) Solms, Mark
    In this video, Professor Mark Solms introduces the fourth defining property of the mind: agency, the ability to choose between possible actions. He briefly provides a scientific perspective on what agency consists in, refering to evolutionary theories and neural circuity. This is video 1 in Week 5 of the What is a Mind MOOC.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Open Access
    What is a Mind Week 5 - The development of the human mind
    (2015-08-15) Solms, Mark
    In this video, Professor Mark Solms describes the evolution of the brain in relation to specific selection pressures and how various human capacities emerged with the the development of specific brain regions (such as the prefrontal lobe). This is video 3 in Week 4 of the What is a Mind MOOC.