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Film club study gets nod as head of CTL Qwaqwa Campus obtains PhD

08 December 2021 | Story Nonsindiso Qwabe

Dr Bernard — Dr Eleanor Bernard heads the Centre for Teaching and Learning on the Qwaqwa Campus.

“I realised that our students are not regularly exposed to and immersed in an English first language environment. So, for two years, I created control groups and tested how to implement a film club to support their language learning as well as engage them. In the end, I created a framework that university language teachers can use, with very specific guidelines as to how to make it successful.”

For her PhD study in Higher Education Studies, Dr Eleanor Bernard created a play on traditional learning by implementing a film club as a way of enhancing the basic interpersonal communicative and English literacy skills of non-native speakers on the Qwaqwa Campus. Dr Bernard is the Assistant Director of the Centre for Teaching and Learning on the Qwaqwa Campus. She will be graduating with her PhD in Higher Education Studies during the December 2021 graduations. The title of her study is: Implementing a film club to enhance English second-language students’ basic interpersonal communicative and basic English literacy skills.

Building on her passion for language learning and acquisition, Dr Bernard wanted her study to be a fun and interesting way of enhancing the already existing General English language module by creating a space for exposure and social interaction. She did this by forming student groups that would regularly watch films and opened spaces for engagement as a way of focusing on the language development of the students.

“The highlight for me was sitting in a university lecture venue, while watching Tsotsi or Pitch Perfect with students, and seeing them interacting, laughing, and enjoying a usually very serious space. Also, the wonderful discussions they shared on Blackboard around elements such as lobola, or stereotypes. Lastly, seeing how by the end of the year, they would walk into my office and interact with me more confidently in English,” she said.

Language studies has been a part of her academic journey from her Honours qualification. She has an MA degree in Language Studies from the UFS. She said working on the Qwaqwa Campus with language and literacy modules, she loved the process of watching students blossom as they gained more confidence in using the English language. “I especially love receiving a student at the beginning of the year, who you can see struggling and almost battling through the content and the skills. And then to see the change by the end of the year, and how their confidence increased.”

‘No learning can take place without engaging students’
She said she hoped faculties would also see the value of focusing on the language development of students as a baseline for academic literacy skills development.

“No learning can take place without engaging students, and there are so many guidelines and practical ways to ensure this engagement, including in language learning. Student success is not just about performance or final marks, but also about students completing a year where they have interacted with others and learned to care for them, where they have been changed to want to impact societies and communities, and where they have acquired skills that they will use when they enter the world of work.”

News Archive

UFS awards honorary doctorate to global peace ambassador Dr Lakhdar Brahimi

2015-07-07

Professor Heidi Hudson, Director of the Centre for Africa Studies at the UFS and Dr Lakhdar Brahimi.
Photo: Mike Rose from Mike Rose Photography

The Faculty of the Humanities and Centre for Africa Studies rewarded the contributions of Dr Lakhdar Brahimi, a prominent global peace leader, with an honorary doctorate on Thursday 2 July 2015.

The conferment formed one of the highlights of the 2015 Winter Graduations. Dr Brahimi’s work as a United Nations’ (UN) envoy, and African peace leader of note, was deeply respected by the university. Professor Heidi Hudson, Director of the Centre for Africa Studies at the UFS, accepted the PhD on his behalf.

In his acceptance speech, read by Prof Hudson at the Chancellor’s Dinner the same evening, Dr Brahimi expressed his gratitude to the university. “I deeply appreciate your generous recognition, and even now, in the twilight years of my life, I shall try to be worthy of your confidence in everything I say or do.”

“My generation did its share: its successes and its failures are things of the past. We must accept to be judged by you, the graduates. You, the young graduates here at the University of the Free State, and your fellow members of the African intellectual elite, have an exciting opportunity to take on the challenges and fulfil the dreams you have. We must accept to be judged by you.”

Algerian-born Dr Brahimi was first involved with the UN in 1992 as rapporteur to the Earth Summit. Distinctively, he is the most-frequently appointed special envoy of the UN. Amongst many other countries, he has worked as a mediator for South Africa, Haiti, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Democratic Republic of Congo, Cameroon, Burundi, Angola, Liberia, Nigeria, Sudan, and Côte d’Ivoire on behalf of the UN.

Significant peacekeeping efforts in South Africa (1993- 1994)

The ambassador– in his capacity as special representative to South Africa from December 1993 to June 1994 –played a direct role in South Africa’s democratic transition.

Prof Hudson expressed appreciation for the ambassador’s role in facilitating a peaceful transition from South Africa’s Nationalist government into the current democratic dispensation.

“One of the reasons we selected him as recipient of the honorary doctorate, is because of what he did for the African continent,” she said.

In addition, she commented Dr Brahimi for being a living testament of Ubuntu. “He has displayed an ethic of humanism in everything that he has done, in the way that he has mediated in certain conflicts - his main contribution is as a mediator.

According to Hudson, his humility, modesty, and generosity are the epitome of Ubuntu which states that “I am because we are.”

Dr Brahimi as a global peace practitioner

Dr Brahimi served as Undersecretary-General of the Arab League, Arab League Special Envoy for Lebanon, and Foreign Minister of Algeria.

The UN Peace-building Commission was established as a result of recommendations in his2000 Report of the Panel on United Nations Peace Operations (Brahimi Report).

Since 2007, Dr Brahimi has been a member in The Elders - an alliance chaired by Kofi Annan -of peace and human rights advocates including Desmond Tutu, Graça Machel, Mary Robinson, and Jimmy Carter. His passion for justice led to his membership in the Commission on Legal Empowerment of the Poor.

In 2010, he was Laureate of the Special Jury Prize for Conflict Prevention, awarded by the Chirac Foundation (France), which promotes international peace and security.

Dr Brahimi’s influence in Peace Education

The Brahimi Report has had an indelible impact on scholars specialising in the broad field of peace operations. Dr Brahimi’s writings have also contributed to knowledge on post-conflict reconstruction and development (PCRD), a signification part of the African Union’s narrative.

He is a distinguished senior fellow at the Centre for the Study of Global Governance at the London School of Economics. He has taught a postgraduate course on Conflict Resolution at Sciences Po, Paris (2011); is Andrew D. White Professor-at-Large at Cornell University; and is affiliated to the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton, where he was a visiting professor from 2006 to 2008.

In addition, Dr Brahimi is a founding member of the French-language Journal of Palestine Studies, and a board member of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

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