The discourse of mastery is prominent in applied linguistics. The idea of mastery, however, does not remain only on the discourse level: curricula and policies are meant to be implemented, and therefore mastery and all that is associated with it (near perfection, dominance over something, etc.) is also practiced. In this paper, I argue that we…

Medical students' transition from high school to university can lead to academic and social challenges, disconnection from university life, and possible drop out. Hence, some medical education institutions use remediation programmes to address these transition challenges. This study used a social learning and integration theory to identify factors…

Curriculum reform was high on the agenda of South Africa's post-apartheid governments. Yet as time passed, the initial reforms were seen as increasingly problematic, especially when pedagogical realities met policy priorities. There was reluctance on the part of policymakers to give up what was seen as the democratic imperative behind the reforms.…

Low completion rates amongst students from Black working-class backgrounds remain a persistent challenge to post-apartheid university transformation in South Africa. Notions of universities as colour-blind, meritocratic, and post-racial have developed around a deficit and victim-blaming majoritarian narrative that individualises educational…

Background: Scholars have long emphasised the complexities and difficulties of educational policy transfer as educational systems develop path dependent. Purpose: The case study of the Quality Physical Education (QPE) pilot project in South Africa aims to show that besides a lock-in effects in national educational policies, decoloniality, that is,…

Purpose: The study aimed to examine the relationship between self-regulation failure and academic achievement in an emergency remote teaching (ERT) and learning environment compared to a face-to-face setting. Design/methodology/approach: This study conducted an analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) to investigate the impact of students falling behind…

The community colleges in many countries contribute enormously to skills development and job creation among the youth. In order to achieve these objectives, many governments play an active role in the establishment of community colleges. The purpose of this paper was to investigate the extent to which the Community Education and Training College…

In recent times, students in higher education institutions have raised their expectations and are becoming less tolerant to poor service. The reality is that service failures are bound to happen. However, effective service recovery strategies could minimise the impact of service failure. The aim of this research was to analyse the influence of…

"Voluntourism," or "volunteer abroad," is a form of travel involving unpaid work intended to benefit a local community. Critiques of voluntourism as reproducing and, indeed, perpetuating global inequities are yielding a re-framing of voluntourism around principles of "partnership" and "equality." Drawing…

Research on student support in the global North indicates possible benefits of life coaching interventions in improving students' persistence and well-being. There is emerging research on life coaching interventions and their potential benefits in the South African higher education context, but empirical evidence is scarce. We report results from…

Continuous professional development is essential for upgrading and updating teachers because the rate of social and educational change makes pre-service training an inadequate basis for long term professional competence. The design of these continuous professional development programmes must be informed by an effective needs analysis that…

Because of its history from apartheid to democracy, the aspiration to reform schools is a recurrent theme in South African education. Efforts to reform education in schools based on the outcomes-based education (OBE) curriculum approach created major challenges for policy makers in South Africa. The purpose of this exploratory research was…

The purpose of this study was to expand the previous limited locus of control focus of gender differences cross-nationally by shifting to an attributional model for both successes and failures in both achievement and affiliation domains in order to test the hypothesis that women differ from men in their attributional patterns for achievement and…

Addresses the poor functioning of the previously black schools in South Africa spawned by apartheid that is commonly termed as 'the breakdown of the culture of teaching and learning.' Analyzes the schools' organization in order to understand why 'the breakdown' and explores interventions to remedy it. (CMK)

Recently, increasing attention has become focused on the inadequacy of the American high school experience for adequately preparing individuals for the jobs of the future as well as for life more generally. This inadequate preparation is explored primarily through the findings from the twelfth grade portion of the Third International Mathematics…