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18 March 2020 | Story Valentino Ndaba | Photo Charl Devenish
Education
Members of the Faculty of Education Academic Advisory Board at its inaugural meeting held on the University of the Free State’s Bloemfontein Campus.
A first of its kind for the University of the Free State (UFS), the Faculty of Education Academic Advisory Board (AAB) was inaugurated on 5 March 2020 to provide guidance on developing industry-driven academic programmes.

Chairman of the Board and Dean of the faculty, Prof Loyiso Jita, explained the relevance of the structure. “Essentially, the Board is there to provide advice to the faculty on how we can be at the top of our game, connect with practitioners out there, and give ourselves an edge both in terms of our strategic research goals as well as raising the required finance to run our programmes effectively.”

A future-focused faculty
At its first sitting on the UFS Bloemfontein Campus, the Board made recommendations which the faculty has committed to implementing. The first suggestion put forward was to align the faculty to the larger higher-learning industry and education practitioners.

Bridging the gap between the institution and these stakeholders is of utmost significance: “There is still a feeling that we universities operate as ivory towers. Everything that we do, whether it is research, engaged scholarship, or teaching, has to be anchored in the practice. It has to be designed to influence and in most cases to change the practice in our communities,” added Prof Jita.

Other key focus areas identified include science and mathematics education. Prof Jita leads the South African National Roads Agency (Sanral) Research Chair that focuses on science education in the country. In the first five years of its existence, the Chair has helped graduates achieve 28 PHDs, eight master’s degrees, and has produced 66 publications. Prof Jita revealed that the Sanral Chair has challenged itself to double these statistics in the next five years.

Childhood development
Early Childhood Development (ECD), as a development zone will be championed as recommended by the Board. According to the Dean: “We have developed a strength as a faculty in that we have been leading in curriculum development in the area of ECD and have even hosted a number of workshops for other universities.”

Subsequent to that, the faculty has also decided to shine a spotlight on literacy. A project plan is pending submission to the National Research Foundation (NRF) for funding.

Long-term sustainability
The Advisory Board made a commitment to help the faculty develop more durable partnerships with industry players instead of the usual year-to-year collaborations. Undertaking the task to develop medium- to long-term partnerships of three to five years would be helpful because that could result in more sustainable projects and funding. A progress report is expected by the Board at its follow-up meeting scheduled for November 2020. 

Why an Academic Advisory Board?
Academic Advisory Boards are established across higher-learning institutions to ensure development aligned with regional, local, and global standards. Our Faculty of Education intends to use this structure to assist in terms of strategic direction and quality assurance of curriculum development and content delivery. Generally, the establishment of active AABs seeks to ensure that graduates comply with the expectations of the workplace, curriculum relevance for industry and the inclusion of the necessary knowledge, skills and attributes graduates will need in their specific fields.

Its purpose is to also assist in formulating and achieving strategic objectives, help make the connection between academic knowledge and “real work” skills, build a list of practitioners who could serve as classroom and graduation guest speakers, and create opportunities for students to learn workplace skills by providing suitable internship locations.

The Faculty of Education’s Board consists of the chief executive officers (CEOs) from the Education, Training and Development Practices Sector Education and Training Authority (ETDP SETA); the South African Council for Educators (SACE),the National Education Collaboration Trust (NECT) and Umalusi. In addition to the CEOs are six external members, three Heads of Schools, the Programme Director for Research and Engaged Scholarship, the Assistant Dean of the faculty at the Qwaqwa Campus, the Vice-Dean, as well as the Dean. 

News Archive

Lecture by Judge Albie Sachs: ‘Sites of memory, sites of conscience’
2015-03-23

Judge Albie Sachs

Human rights activist and former Constitutional Court Judge, Albie Sachs, will deliver a public lecture on the Bloemfontein Campus. The topic of his discussion will be ‘Sites of memory, sites of conscience’. This lecture will form part of a series that focuses on how the creative arts represent trauma and memory – and how these representations may ultimately pave the way to healing historical wounds.

The details of the event are:
Date: Thursday 26 March 2015
Time: 12:30
Venue: Albert Wessels Auditorium, Bloemfontein Campus
RSVP: Jo-Anne Naidoo at Naidooja@ufs.ac.za
A South African Sign Language interpreter will be present at the event.

Joining Judge Sachs on stage as respondent will be Dr Buhle Zuma, a young scholar and lecturer at the University of Cape Town's Psychology Department.

Expressing experiences of trauma
Judge Sachs is no stranger to the use of the arts as a way of expressing the inarticulable and overwhelming experiences of trauma. Targeted as an anti-apartheid freedom fighter, he lost his right arm and was blinded in one eye in a car bomb attack in 1988. As a judge of the Constitutional Court, he spearheaded conversations about the role of the arts in our constitutional democracy. This has led to the installation of some of the best artworks by South African artists at the Constitutional Court.

Vice-Chancellor’s Lecture Series on Trauma, Memory, and Representations of the Past
This lecture will launch of the Vice Chancellor’s Lecture Series on Trauma, Memory and Representations of the Past. It forms part of a five-year research project led by Prof Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela, funded by the Mellon Foundation. The event is hosted by the UFS Trauma, Forgiveness and Reconciliation Studies.

“One of the most remarkable aspects of trauma,” Prof Gobodo-Madikizela says, “is the loss of language, a moment of rupture that produces what some scholars have referred to as ‘speechless terror’. The arts, in all its forms – literary, performance, and visual – are a viable mechanism through which the unspeakable, traumatic past may be represented.”

These artistic forms of representing trauma are at the heart of this Vice-Chancellor’s Lecture Series. “We are interested not only in how experiences that transcend language are represented through the arts,” Prof Gobodo-Madikizela explains, “but also in probing the limits of trauma theory, and how the creative arts might be employed to bear witness in a way that may open up the possibility of healing.”

Dr Buhle Zuma
Former Mandela Rhodes scholar and one of the 2011 Mail & Guardian’s 200 Young South Africans, Dr Zuma is particularly interested in issues at the heart of our rainbow nation. His current research revolves around the question of freedom: what it means to be human for black people after centuries of dehumanisation, and the role of desire and fantasy in the political imagination of post-apartheid South Africa.

 

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