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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

Sites of memory. Sites of trauma. Sites of healing.
2015-04-01

Judge Albie Sachs – human rights activist and co-creator of South Africa’s constitution – presented the first Vice Chancellor’s Lecture on Trauma, Memory, and Representations of the Past on 26 March 2015 on the Bloemfontein Campus.

His lecture, ‘Sites of memory, sites of conscience’, forms part of a series of lectures that will focus on how the creative arts represent trauma and memory – and how these representations may ultimately pave the way to healing historical wounds. This series is incorporated into the five-year research project, led by Prof Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela, and funded by the Mellon Foundation.

Sites of memory and conscience – and healing

“Deep in solitary confinement, I read in the Bible: ‘the lion lay down with the lamb … swords will be beaten into ploughshares.’” And with these opening words, Judge Sachs took the audience on a wistful journey to the places in our country that ache from the past but are reaching for a better future at the same time.

Some of the sites of memory and conscience Judge Sachs discussed included the Apartheid Museum, Liliesleaf, District Six Museum, and the Red Location Museum. But perhaps most powerful of them all is Robben Island.

Robben Island

“The strength of Robben Island,” Judge Sachs said, “comes from its isolation. Its quietness speaks”. Former prisoners of the island now accompany visitors on their tours of the site, retelling their personal experiences. It was found that, the quieter the ex-prisoners imparted their stories, “the gentler and softer their memories; the more powerful the impact,” Judge Sachs remarked. Instead of anger and denouncement, this reverence provides a space for visitors’ own emotions to emerge. This intense and powerful site has become a living memory elevated into a place of healing.

After Judge Sachs visited the National Women’s Memorial in Bloemfontein some years ago, he came to an acute realisation as he read the stories, experienced the grief, and saw the small relics that imprisoned commandoes from Ceylon and St Helena sculpted. “It’s so like us,” he thought, “our people on Robben Island making a saxophone out of seaweed, our people carving little things. It was so like us. It was another form of inhumanity to human beings in another period.”

The Constitutional Court

The Constitutional Court next to the Old Fort Prison is also a profound site of trauma and healing. Bricks from the awaiting trial lock-up were built into the court chambers. “We don’t suppress it, we don’t say let’s move on. We acknowledge the pain of the past. We live in it, but we are not trapped in it. We South Africans are capable of transcending, of getting beyond it,” Judge Sachs said.

Transforming swords into ploughshares

Judge Sachs had great praise for Prof Gobodo-Madikizela’s research project on Trauma, Memory, and Representations of the Past. “You convert and transform the very swords, the very instruments, the very metal in our country. In a sense, you almost transform the very people and thoughts and dreams and fears and terrors into the ploughshares; into positivity.”

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