Browsing by Subject "social justice"

Now showing 1 - 20 of 34
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    Deconstructing the boundary between environmental sustainability and social justice: decision-making and obscured rationalities in government-led housing in Johannesburg
    (2024) Fatti, Christina Culwick; Patel, Zarina
    The idea of ‘just sustainability', which is based on the aspiration of aligning social justice and environmental sustainability imperatives, has become a focus among scholars and practitioners in addressing contemporary social and environmental crises. Despite claims that environmental sustainability and social justice can coexist, reconciling these goals proves challenging in theory and practice. The disjuncture between policy commitments and the practical achievement of just sustainability is rooted in the need for deeper engagement with how the boundary space between social justice and environmental sustainability is theorised. There's a growing acknowledgement among scholars of the need for a nuanced understanding of this boundary space for identifying trade-offs and understanding how conflicting rationalities impact decision-making within cities. Given that urbanisation, poverty, and climate change impacts are concentrated in cities in the global South, the challenge of building socially just and environmentally sustainable cities predominantly lies with Southern cities. As a coalescing point for infrastructure and urban development, government-led housing has been linked explicitly to building just and sustainable cities. South Africa's government housing programme is responsive to both environmental sustainability and social justice concerns through improving access to shelter and basic services, and facilitating access to amenities and opportunities. However, there is little consensus among scholars or practitioners regarding how government in South Africa should balance the immediate need for housing while addressing unsustainable and unjust urban forms, resource constraints and high levels of inequality. This project uses government-led housing in Johannesburg, South Africa, to examine the boundary space between social justice and environmental sustainability, and how knowledge and decision-making interact with this space. The study first examines the practical outcomes of government-led housing. Second, it considers the policy and decision-making processes involved in developing government-led housing projects, and third, it interrogates the theoretical challenge of bringing social justice and environmental sustainability together in Southern cities. This multidisciplinary study, which uses two case studies, Lufhereng and Pennyville housing projects, employs various analytical and data collection methods, incorporating qualitative and quantitative approaches, to undertake a dynamic assessment of government-led housing outcomes and decision-making processes. This research innovatively combines photo essays with traditional research methods, creating a unique synergy between objective and subjective perspectives on government-led housing projects. By underscoring the intricate interplay between justice and sustainability in government-led housing projects, instances are revealed where outcomes are aligned in some instances and conflictual in others. The research argues that linear, reductionist relationships between social justice and environmental sustainability are unhelpful in building nuanced understandings of the interaction between these imperatives. Furthermore, Watson's (2003) concept of conflicting rationalities, which represents irreconcilable perspectives, is extended and applied in new ways. The idea of ‘obscured rationalities' is developed to denote subtle conflicts within decision-making processes, and how these can influence outcomes, rather than obvious conflicts, such as those between social justice and environmental sustainability. The argument is made that developing nuanced understandings of the interplay between social justice and environmental sustainability is crucial for theory development, policymaking, and practical outcomes. Highlighting uneven knowledge approaches and addressing this through expanding theorisation from the global South is necessary for realigning the structural elements leading to inequality and unsustainability.
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    Designing multimodal classrooms for social justice
    (Taylor & Francis, 2014) Archer, Arlene
    This paper explores the ways in which multimodal classroom discourse could inform a social justice agenda through broadening the base for representation in the classroom. It identifies some of the challenges and opportunities of designing multimodal classrooms in diverse and developing contexts, where there are vast differentials in terms of access to resources. It focuses on the ways in which multimodal classrooms could recognise a range of student resources, whilst at the same time enabling access to dominant forms. This includes access to the discourses and knowledges of official curricula and formal methods of assessment, as well as the creation of dispositions towards meaning-making outside of the classroom. Formal education often closes down access to a range of semiotic resources and multimodal classrooms can potentially recover 'recognition' of these. This paper explores ways of designing multimodal classrooms for social justice in order to bring to the surface the range of students' resources which are often not noticed or valued in formal educational settings. It proposes the following: the questioning of boundaries between domains, harnessing students' representational resources, developing metalanguages for reflection and creating less regulated classroom spaces.
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    Digital open textbooks for social justice: Collaboration and student co-creation
    (Digital Open Textbooks for Development, 2023-03) Cox, Glenda; Masuku, Bianca; Willmers, Michelle
    This is a presentation by members of the Digital Open Textbooks for Development (DOT4D) initiative, Dr Glenda Cox, Bianca Masuku and Michelle Willmers, at the UCT Open Textbook Conversation event as part of Open Education Week in March 2023.
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    Diversity, inclusion, and social justice in the information context: global south perspectives
    (2020) Raju, Jaya
    This is an editorial of the special issue of the International Journal of Information, Diversity, & Inclusion 4(3/4), 2020 authored by the guest editor (Jaya Raju).
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    Educating for citizen leadership: exploring the University of Cape Town’s global citizenship programme
    (2019) Joseph, Loren; Ward, Catherine
    This dissertation explores the University of Cape Town’s Global Citizenship (GC) Programme as a site for teaching citizen leadership. We live in times that are marked by complexity, uncertainty, and a plethora of global challenges, many of which have resulted in injustices in people’s lived experiences. Increasingly ordinary citizens are calling for new ways of leading change which combats social injustices. This form of leadership values social justice, democracy, equity, shared agency, active and engaged citizenship – this is regarded as citizen leadership. Higher education institutions have a role to play in developing student leaders who are equipped with the capacities to confront uncertainty and thrive in a changing world. This study recruited student participants of the GC programme courses. In total, ten students participated in one of four focus group discussions which were guided by semi-structured interviews, and ninety students consented to have their reflective essays on the GC programme courses analysed. Using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis, the participants’ experience of the programme, in the focus group discussions and reflective essays, was examined to determine how they understood citizenship, social justice and leadership in relation to the programme’s teachings. The findings revealed that most students regarded the programme as developing their capacities for active and engaged global citizenship. Most students did not view the programme as teaching leadership; however, based on the definition of citizen leadership, I argue that the programme is indeed a site for teaching this form of leadership. It is recommended that the programme staff make the connection between active and engaged citizenship, social justice, and leadership more explicit in their curricula and teaching. It is believed that this change to the programme will enable students to have a clearer understanding of themselves as leaders prepared for the world beyond university and enabled to bring purposeful change to the world.
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    Educating for citizen leadership: exploring the University of Cape Town’s global citizenship programme
    (2019) Joseph, Loren; Ward, Catherine
    This dissertation explores the University of Cape Town’s Global Citizenship (GC) Programme as a site for teaching citizen leadership. We live in times that are marked by complexity, uncertainty, and a plethora of global challenges, many of which have resulted in injustices in people’s lived experiences. Increasingly ordinary citizens are calling for new ways of leading change which combats social injustices. This form of leadership values social justice, democracy, equity, shared agency, active and engaged citizenship – this is regarded as citizen leadership. Higher education institutions have a role to play in developing student leaders who are equipped with the capacities to confront uncertainty and thrive in a changing world. This study recruited student participants of the GC programme courses. In total, ten students participated in one of four focus group discussions which were guided by semi-structured interviews, and ninety students consented to have their reflective essays on the GC programme courses analysed. Using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis, the participants’ experience of the programme, in the focus group discussions and reflective essays, was examined to determine how they understood citizenship, social justice and leadership in relation to the programme’s teachings. The findings revealed that most students regarded the programme as developing their capacities for active and engaged global citizenship. Most students did not view the programme as teaching leadership; however, based on the definition of citizen leadership, I argue that the programme is indeed a site for teaching this form of leadership. It is recommended that the programme staff make the connection between active and engaged citizenship, social justice, and leadership more explicit in their curricula and teaching. It is believed that this change to the programme will enable students to have a clearer understanding of themselves as leaders prepared for the world beyond university and enabled to bring purposeful change to the world.
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    How to make 'diamonds' standout amid the rush for fools' gold
    (2024) Muthukumaraswamy , Madhan
    The presentation shares developments in Open Access and frustrations experienced in the past 25 years.
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    Inclusivity, collaboration and student co-creation: Open textbook production models for social justice
    (Digital Open Textbooks for Development, 2022-03) Cox, Glenda; Masuku, Bianca; Willmers, Michelle
    This is a presentation by the DOT4D project for Open Education Week in March 2022
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    Inclusivity, collaboration and student co-creation: Open textbook production models for social justice
    (2022-02) Cox, Glenda; Masuku, Bianca; Willmers, Michelle
    Presentation from the Open Textbook Conversation event hosted by the Digital Open Textbooks for Development initiative at the University of Cape Town on 10 March 2022 as part of international Open Education Week. The event was focused on launching the UCT UNESCO Chair in Open Education and Social Justice, profiling the UCT Open Textbook Award, addressing issues related to institutional support and the transformation agenda, and sharing findings from the DOT4D open textbook models for social justice articulation process.
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    Open education and social justice: Collaboration and student co-creation at the University of Cape Town
    (Digital Open Textbooks for Development, 2023-01) Cox, Glenda
    This is a presentation by the Digital Open Textbooks for Development (DOT4D) initiative's PI, Dr Glenda Cox, at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute in January 2023.
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    Open education and social justice: Future imperatives
    (Digital Open Textbooks for Development, 2023-05) Cox, Glenda
    This is a presentation by Digital Open Textbooks for Development (DOT4D) PI, Dr Glenda Cox, at the Future of Open Education in May 2023.
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    Open education for social justice: Students as partners in transdisciplinary research
    (Digital Open Textbooks for Development, 2022-11) Cox, Glenda; David, Tom
    This is a presentation given by the PI of the Digital Open Textbooks for Development (DOT4D) initiative, Dr Glenda Cox and a collaborator, Tom David, at the UNITWIN/ UNESCO Chairs Programme in November 2022.
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    Open textbook authorship, quality assurance and publishing: Social justice models of participatory design, engagement, co-creation and partnership
    (Digital Open Textbooks for Development, 2022-05) Cox, Glenda; Masuku, Bianca; Willmers, Michelle
    A presentation by the DOT4D project for the OE Global Conference held in Nantes, France on the 23-25 May 2022 on collaborative open textbook development models at UCT.
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    Open textbook case studies: social justice, agency and intersectionality
    (2019-11) Cox, Glenda; Willmers, Michelle; Masuku, Bianca
    Open textbook initiatives have been successful in the United States and Canada as a means to save money for students. At the University of Cape Town (UCT), the Digital Open Textbooks for Development (DOT4D) project, which began in July 2018, has also looked at cost savings. However, the impetus for this project is premised on the potential for open textbooks to transform curriculum, a current imperative in the South African higher education system. This presentation, delivered at the OE Global 2019 Conference, outlines the application of the DOT4D project social justice, social realist and intersectional approach.
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    Open Textbooks and Social Justice: Open Educational Practices to Address Economic, Cultural and Political Injustice at the University of Cape Town
    (2020-05) Cox, Glenda; Masuku, Bianca; Willmers, Michelle
    This paper provides evidence from the Digital Open Textbooks for Development (DOT4D) project at the University of Cape Town (UCT), on the potential of open textbooks to address social injustice in South African higher education and the practices utilised by UCT staff to address these challenges. The paper uses Nancy Fraser’s (2005) trivalent lens to examine inequality, specifically as relates to the following dimensions: economic (maldistribution of resources); cultural (misrecognition of culture and identities); and political (misrepresentation or exclusion of voice). The findings demonstrate that open textbooks have the potential to disrupt histories of exclusion in South African higher education institutions by addressing issues of cost and marginalisation through the creation of affordable, contextually-relevant learning resources. In addition to this, they provide affordances which enable lecturers to change the way they teach, include student voices and create innovative pedagogical strategies.
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    Open textbooks as a technology
    (Digital Open Textbooks for Development, 2023-09) Masuku, Bianca
    This is a presentation created by Digital Open Textbooks for Development (DOT4D) Researcher, Bianca Masuku, for a Learning Designers Trainee Learning Time session in September 2023.
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    Open Textbooks, Intuitive Pedagogy and Social Justice
    (Digital Open Textbooks for Development, 2021-04) Cox, Glenda; Willmers, Michelle; Masuku, Bianca
    The Digital Open Textbooks for Development (DOT4D) project is a grant-funded research, advocacy and implementation initiative based in CILT. This presentation provides insight into the DOT4D project’s recent work at UCT exploring the nexus between social (in)justice in the classroom, the textbooks and resources used in teaching and learning, and the pedagogical approaches of open textbook authors.
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    Open, Inclusive Education and Social Justice: The Role of Open Textbooks
    (Digital Open Textbooks for Development, 2021-11-24) Cox, Glenda
    Presentation by Digital Open Textbooks for Development (DOT4D) Principal Investigator, Dr. Glenda Cox, at a webinar for the World Universities Network on Open and Inclusive Education (WUN OpenEd), a WUN-UNESCO/ICDE collaboration aiming to offer open online education to mitigate the global COVID-19 impact on education, in November 2021.
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    Participatory Pedagogy and Open Textbook Publishing Journeys: Emerging Models at the University of Cape Town
    (2020) Cox, Glenda; Willmers, Michelle; Masuku, Bianca
    The presentation gives insight into the emerging models of open textbook production employed by lecturers in the DOT4D grants programme at UCT and describes the journeys these authors have embarked on in collaboration with students, academics and practitioners in their various fields. It also provides insight into emerging open textbook publishing models and the various formats and genres of open textbooks currently being produced at UCT. The discussion on publishing models addresses the partnerships for publishing required in the new open textbook production landscape in which academics and institutions take on the role of publisher in order to drive institutional transformation and alleviate injustices inherent in the South African higher education system.