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14 December 2023 | Story Dr Jared McDonald | Photo Supplied
Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Conference
From the left: Dr Eleanor Bernard, Assistant Director in the Centre for Teaching and Learning on the UFS Qwaqwa Campus; Dr Jared McDonald, Chief of Staff in the Office of the Vice-Chancellor and Principal; and Prof Pearl Sithole, Campus Vice-Principal: Academic and Research on the Qwaqwa Campus.

From 21 to 23 November, more than 160 delegates gathered at the Golden Gate Highlands National Park in the Eastern Free State for the fourth biennial conference on Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SOTL) in the South, dubbed SOTL 4 the South.

This year’s iteration was proudly hosted by the University of the Free State (UFS) and organised by Dr Jared McDonald, Chief of Staff in the Office of the Vice-Chancellor and Principal; Dr Eleanor Bernard, Assistant Director in the Centre for Teaching and Learning on the UFS Qwaqwa Campus; and Prof Zach Simpson, Editor-in-Chief of the SOTL in the South journal. Established and emerging scholars, as well as postgraduate students working in the field of teaching and learning from across disciplines in Southern Africa, came together to share ideas, debate perspectives, and learn from experiences related to the conference theme: Teaching and Learning for Sustainable Futures.

The programme included presentations on a wide variety of topics, such as the challenges and opportunities of artificial intelligence in higher education, academic literacy, student success, teaching and learning for sustainable development, curriculum design, and digital futures. The programme also included two keynote presentations by leading scholars in education for sustainability, Prof Heila Lotz-Sisitka, Distinguished Professor and SARChI Research Chair in Global Change and Social Learning Systems in the Environmental Learning Research Centre at Rhodes University, and Prof Kasturi Behari-Leak, Associate Professor of Higher Education Studies and Dean of the University of Cape Town’s Centre for Higher Education Development.

The organisers were delighted with the quality of the scholarship that was shared. “This conference has been 18 months in the making, and we are grateful to all the delegates for embracing, and engaging with, the conference’s theme. We are also appreciative to all the reviewers on the Scientific Review Committee who were generous with their time, reflections, and critiques in assisting us to deliver a compelling, impactful programme,” said Dr McDonald. Dr Bernard added that “the conference would not have been possible without the generous support of the University of the Free State’s Executive Management and Centre for Teaching and Learning, as well as the senior management of the Qwaqwa Campus, who have supported the conference from the time it was just an idea”.

Prof Zach Simpson expressed his gratitude to the UFS for its support and assistance. “The last in-person conference of SOTL in the South was in 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic. It was wonderful to see so many scholars come together in a beautiful location to engage with a compelling and topical conference theme.” Selected papers have been invited to contribute to a special issue of SOTL in the South, edited by the organisers and due for publication in mid-2024.

SOTL is an informal ‘body’ that is not affiliated with any particular parent organisation or institution. Its aim is to advance scholarship in teaching and learning across the Global South – conceived of not just in geographic terms – but as concerned with questions of power, access, inequity, and marginalisation, even where these might be present in the Global ‘North’. Moreover, it aims to give voice to novice SOTL practitioners and to serve as a platform for academics, particularly novice academics, to contribute their scholarly work.

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Africa the birthplace of mathematics, says Prof Atangana
2017-11-17


 Description: Prof Abdon Atangana, African Award of Applied Mathematics  Tags: Prof Abdon Atangana, African Award of Applied Mathematics

Prof Abdon Atangana from the UFS Institute for Groundwater Studies.
Photo: Supplied

 

Prof Abdon Atangana from the Institute for Groundwater Studies at the University of the Free State recently received the African Award of Applied Mathematics during the International conference "African’s Days of Applied Mathematics" that was held in Errachidia, Morocco. Prof Atangana delivered the opening speech with the title "Africa was a temple of knowledge before: What happened?” The focus of the conference was to offer a forum for the promotion of mathematics and its applications in African countries.

When Europeans first came to Africa, they considered the architecture to be disorganised and thus primitive. It never occurred to them that Africans might have been using a form of mathematics that they hadn’t even discovered yet.

Africa is home to the world’s earliest known use of measuring and calculation. Thousands of years ago Africans were using numerals, algebra and geometry in daily life. “Our continent is the birthplace of both basic and advanced mathematics,” said Prof Atangana. 

Africa attracted a series of immigrants who spread knowledge from this continent to the rest of the world.

Measuring and counting
In one of his examples of African mathematics knowledge Prof Atangana referred to the oldest mathematical instrument as the Lebombo bone, a baboon fibula used as a measuring instrument, which was named after the Lebombo Mountains of Swaziland. The world’s oldest evidence of advanced mathematics was also a baboon fibula that was discovered in present-day Democratic Republic of Congo.

Another example he used is the manuscripts in the libraries of the Sankoré University, one of the world’s oldest tertiary institutions. This university in Timbuktu, Mali, is full of manuscripts mainly written in Ajami in the 1200s AD. “When Europeans and Western Asians began visiting and colonising Mali between the 1300s and 1800s, Malians hid the manuscripts in basements, attics and underground, fearing destruction or theft by foreigners. This was certainly a good idea, given the Europeans' history of destroying texts in Kemet and other areas of the continent. Many of the scripts were mathematical and astronomical in nature. In recent years, as many as 700 000 scripts have been rediscovered and attest to the continuous knowledge of advanced mathematics and science in Africa well before European colonisation. 

Fractal geometry

“One of Africa’s major achievements was the advanced knowledge of fractal geometry. This knowledge is found in a wide aspect of Africa life: from art, social design structures, architecture, to games, trade and divination systems. 

“The binary numeral system was also widely known through Africa before it was known throughout much of the world. There is a theory that it could have influenced Western geometry, which led to the development of digital computers,” he said. 

“Can Africa rise again?” Prof Atangana believes it can.

He concluded with a plea to fellow African researchers to do research that will build towards a new Africa.

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