This contribution reports on the design phase of the Jam, a short, fast-paced, cross-institutional online programme over three days. Its focus is on social justice and specifically access, use and management of community space, as integral part of sustainability. This novel programme aims to enable learning, generate ideas to address complex…

Community engagement (CE) has been identified as an important pillar alongside teaching and research in higher education. Despite this it has emerged slowly within the South African landscape due to a lack of understanding regarding engagement. Drawing on in-depth interviews, this study sought to explore how academics (N=14), at a University of…

Society has always understood individuals with intellectual disabilities from a stance of deficiency, resulting in limited expectations and prospects for school-going adolescents with intellectual disabilities. The study used the social model of disability to explore teachers' perceptions of enablers to enhance school-based adolescents with…

Purpose: The purpose of this empirical research paper is to investigate the self-perceived role of the community partner of a higher education service-learning and community engagement module. Design/methodology/approach: A qualitative approach was followed by distributing a questionnaire to the community partners of a community engagement module…

Many reviewers of applications for ethical approval of research at universities struggle to understand what is considered ethical conduct in community-based research (CBR). Their difficulty in understanding CBR and the ethics embedded within it is, in part, due to the exclusion of CBR from researchers' mandatory research ethics training. After…

Our qualitative interviews with 16 early-career South African researchers investigated how they view public engagement and its role in their research careers, as well as the motivations, challenges and institutional factors that shape their engagement efforts. We situate our findings in the context of high societal diversity and inequality in…

In 2008 the South African Government launched the "Kha Ri Gude" mass literacy campaign to address the country's adult illiteracy problem. The Campaign drew upon the Cuban "Yo, Si Puedo" campaign model. In 2012, an Australian non-governmental organisation, Literacy for Life Foundation, likewise informed by the Cuban "Yo, Si…

The article discusses the question of the co-construction of knowledge between the university and its communities in the pursuance of community engagement, which is one of the key mandates of universities in South Africa. It reflects on the limitations of most academic approaches to the concept and practices associated with the scholarship of…

Service-learning has, arguably, gained significant currency as a pedagogical and engagement mechanism within the broader discourse of universities and their role in community development. However, less emphasis has been placed on the human development dimensions of service--learning for community members, with the focus largely being on students'…

This study explores high school teachers' perspectives on the prevalence of school violence within a selected high school in Mthatha, Eastern Cape, focusing on bullying, substance abuse, and gang-related activities. Guided by social disorganisation theory and an interpretive paradigm, the study utilised a qualitative approach and purposive…

Since the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted in-person learning, fears about children's learning loss remain a primary concern for parents, teachers, and policymakers. These concerns, combined with longstanding issues of inequity regarding children's access to learning opportunities have sparked widespread discussion about how to reimagine education.…

South Africa faces an education crisis that has significant implications for the freedom of citizens and development of the country. A context of government incapacity necessitates that other modes of improving the education system be explored. This paper examines the Nine Tenths Mentoring Programme to gauge the potential of community-based…

Over the past few years, we have worked together in a citizen science project called "Diamonds on the Soles of our Feet" (see also Goldin et al. 2021, Goldin et al., 2023). In this project we engaged with 420 young learners in the Limpopo Province of South Africa. We came to see participating schools as collaborative ecosystems where…

Community engagement as a public mission of higher education is widely accepted in South Africa. This is articulated in White Paper 3 on the transformation of higher education and in institutional policies that promote different forms of community engagement. However, compared to the traditional roles of teaching and research, community engagement…

Unsafe and violent schools are a widespread problem in South Africa. This paper argues that Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) contribute to this phenomenon. While various individual and community-level interventions to address ACEs have been reported on, the contribution of safe parks towards preventing school violence has not yet been…