The link between marriage and premature school-leaving among females in the Global South is a major preoccupation within the field of international development and education, yet theoretically-grounded qualitative scholarship unpacking this relationship remains scarce. This paper uses models developed to conceptualise female agency in constrained…

The perceived dichotomy between public or private benefits to higher education remains of growing interest in higher education research and policy. In this paper, I borrow from the African philosophy of "Ubuntu" as a conceptual lens to interrogate this binary within the South African context using the 'black tax' phenomenon. Gleaning…

This study investigated the tensions present in an intercultural education model designed to offer an indigenous knowledge course alongside the national curriculum at Noonkodin School in Eluwai, Monduli, Tanzania. The study employed an ethnographic research design involving mainly in-depth classroom observations, interviews with the head and…

This article identifies the challenges of developing active citizens based on the latest revised social studies curriculum in Malawi (2015) in the context of Malawi's secondary school classrooms. By using collected data from interviews with teachers and students and classroom observation, the paper examines the extent to which social studies…

Well-being is realised through the interaction of the individual's desires and capacities, and external contexts. Contexts in postcolonial societies diverge from the assumptions of functioning liberal democratic states and capitalist economies often assumed in theories of schooling. Instead, these contexts are characterised by poverty and…

My decade-long research on democracy and schooling in a Xhosa township has led to an examination of epistemological influences on democratic citizenship from Western and non-Western (i.e. African) perspectives. While Max Weber advanced the notion of an autonomous citizen within Western democratic states, different philosophical and cultural…

This article reports on a study that focuses on students from rural areas of South Africa and their experiences of higher education. These students have attracted little attention in widening participation research in South Africa, despite being one of the most marginalised groups. The article, drawing on the experiences of student co-researchers…

This paper aims to challenge limited notions of literacy and argues for the recognition of Maasai women's self-determined learning in order to bring about human development in Kenya. It also seeks to construct a complex picture of literacy, drawing on postcolonial feminist theory as a framework to ensure that the woman's voice is heard. Through…

This paper explores the setting up of the partnership across the Mauritian and South African higher education contexts with respect to the development of a postgraduate PhD doctoral studies programme. The Mauritian Institute of Education (MIE) aims to develop staffing capacities through engagement with doctoral studies, especially in the context…

Taking the Institute for Housing Studies in Rotterdam as a case study, this paper aims to theorise the ways non-Western, international students construct and negotiate knowledges in Western institutions of higher education. It describes the types of knowledges these students identify as characteristic of their learning abroad, distinguishing…

This article considers the status of indigenous knowledges as forms of knowledge in the multicultural context of Sudan, through exploration of Sudanese adult education teachers' perceptions of culture, language and knowledge in education. Drawing on critical and poststructural theoretical concepts, cultural discourses in education are shown to…