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UFS stakeholders reflect on multilingualism in education

14 May 2025 | Story Tshepo Tsotetsi | Photo Tshepo Tsotetsi

Multilingualism stakeholder engagement session — Prof Vasu Reddy, UFS Deputy Vice-Chancellor: Research and Internationalisation; guest speaker Prof Leketi Makalela; and Dr Nomalungelo Ngubane, Director of the UFS Academy for Multilingualism.

Multilingualism is not just a concept at the University of the Free State (UFS) – it is a growing practice, a challenge, and an opportunity all at once. This was made clear during a stakeholder engagement session on 7 May 2025, hosted by the Academy for Multilingualism at the UFS’s Bloemfontein Campus, where staff, academics, and strategic partners gathered to reflect on the university’s language journey.

In his reflections, the Deputy Vice-Chancellor for Research and Internationalisation, Prof Vasu Reddy, emphasised that, “Scholarly conversations such as these are not just simply intellectually important, but socially and politically, and it is critical to learn from each other, exchange ideas, and make change.” He described the Academy as a “novel intervention” and noted how engagements like this help “break silos that languages sometimes create” – a crucial step towards realising the promise of multilingualism and translanguaging in academic spaces.

Progress, challenges, and collective ownership

In her presentation, Dr Nomalungelo Ngubane, Director of the Academy for Multilingualism, provided an overview of the institutional language policy and its implementation status, now in its third year of a five-year plan. She highlighted key strides: the translation of 116 PhD abstracts into Sesotho, Afrikaans, and isiXhosa; the development of South African Sign Language terminology in psychology; and the training of 16 tutors in translanguaging, among others.

Dr Ngubane stressed the importance of shared ownership of the policy’s rollout. “It’s very important that the language policy is understood by all stakeholders. It’s a collective journey, and it becomes even more powerful when people own it and take it forward into their departments, faculties, and student spaces,” she said. While she acknowledged that meaningful development of African languages as academic mediums is costly and resource-intensive, she noted that small, deliberate steps are being taken.

Ubuntu translanguaging: rethinking the classroom

The keynote address was delivered by Prof Leketi Makalela, full professor and founding Director of the Hub for Multilingual Education and Literacies at the University of the Witwatersrand. A globally recognised scholar and the holder of the SARChI Chair in Advancing African Languages for Social Inclusion and Access, Prof Makalela added a powerful perspective rooted in research and teaching practice.

He began his address with a reflection: “I believe I landed on this little rock called Earth to ensure that human beings have deep access to the world in which they were born, and you can only be part of this greater world and make full sense of it through language.”

Later, he challenged the monolingual mindsets that dominate higher education. “People still want to treat languages as different entities, and that’s where the issue is. That’s where the education system is not aligning with the realities of multilinguality.”

Prof Makalela said multilingual students face dual disadvantages: compromised epistemic access [access to knowledge systems] due to monolingual bias, and diminished identity affirmation. His response? Ubuntu translanguaging – a model that embraces cohabitation of languages and student-led meaning-making.

“It’s a misconception that the lecturer must translanguage,” he said. “It is the student who should translanguage. The lecturer should only facilitate and respect that internal process.”

He outlined a clear, three-step translanguaging teaching method:

• Pre-lesson: Activate prior learning and scaffold vocabulary and concepts.

• During lesson: Create space for multilingual thinking – allow students to write, reflect, and engage in their own languages.

• Post-lesson: Validate understanding, and open the classroom to diverse linguistic expressions.

Prof Makalela stressed that the real innovation lies in normalising these practices institution-wide. “Existing multilingual tutorials are useful, but real transformation happens when every lecturer opens up their lessons to multilingual engagement.”

News Archive

UFS takes lead in improving quality of training in economics in schools

2006-06-20

The fourth international workshop for trainers in the National Council on Economic Education’s (NCEE) outreach programme for Africa, Latin America, Asia and the Middle East will be presented in Bloemfontein from 18-24 June 2006.

“Because of the rapid success we achieved in the Free State with similar workshops in Economics education that were presented by the NCEE the past year, we have now invited representatives from education departments and universities of five other provinces to attend the international workshop for trainers,” said Prof Klopper Oosthuizen, lecturer at the University of the Free State’s (UFS) Department of Agricultural Economics and initiator of the cooperative agreement with the NCEE.

The UFS and the Free State Department of Education are the NCEE’s first partners in Africa who received this training. “The attendance of the five provinces and universities is the first step in the extension of the programme to the rest of the country,” said Prof Oosthuizen.

The NCEE is based in the United States of America (USA) and the workshop forms part of the council’s effort to improve the quality of the training of Economics teachers and lecturers across the world.

“South Africa is urgently in need of efforts to improve the integration of black people into the market economy. An understanding of how markets work is one of the pillars of democracy. Equipping young people with economic understanding and skills will help empower them for responsible roles as individuals and citizens,” said Prof Oosthuizen.

According to Prof Oosthuizen representatives from the education departments of the Northern Cape, Western Cape, Eastern Cape, KwaZulu-Natal and North West will also be attending the international workshop for trainers. Representatives from the Universities of Rhodes, of KwaZulu-Natal, North West and the Durban University of Technology as well as the Cape Peninsula University of Technology will also attend the workshop.

During this workshop teachers and lecturers in Economics will receive certificates.

Various subjects will be covered during the workshop such as world trade patterns, cost and benefits of free trade, exchange rates and international finance. The training will be done by representatives from the NCEE by using methods such as direct instruction and role play.

The NCEE is also in the process of training teachers and learning facilitators in the Free State in an effort to improve the quality of Economics classes in secondary schools.

“A group of 84 teachers and learning facilitators were trained in December 2005, 50 were trained in January 2006 and the last group of 40 will be trained at the UFS Main Campus in Bloemfontein from 26 June - 1 July 2006,” said Prof Oosthuizen.

During this seminar the teachers will be trained in issues such as broad social goals in an economy, economic decision making, government’s role in a market economy and fiscal policy. The training will also be done by representatives from the NCEE.

The NCEE has been working together with international partners since 1992 to strengthen their Economics teaching systems. They have already succeeded in increasing literacy in Economics at schools in the USA and more than 20 East Block countries. More than 1,5 million learners in the East Block countries have already been served by this initiative. Since 2004 the NCEE’s focus has moved away from the East Block countries to Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East.

“Our future plans include strengthening the growing partnership between the UFS, the Free State Department of Education and the NCEE. We also want to establish a council and centres for economic education which will serve as an umbrella for our joint efforts,” said Prof Oosthuizen.

Media release
Issued by: Lacea Loader
Media Representative
Tel: (051) 401-2584
Cell: 083 645 2454
E-mail: loaderl.stg@mail.uovs.ac.za
20 June 2006

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