The COVID-19 pandemic imposed a quick change to online teaching and learning, emphasising the importance of the community of inquiry (CoI) framework in reimagining the quality of higher education in an online setting. In the study reported on here I focused on how lecturers adopted the CoI to enhance the quality of online learning and teaching of…

Are teachers and principals aligned in their perceptions of the core components of the theory of Leadership for Learning across countries, or are there subgroups of schools in which there is misalignment? The purpose of this study is to examine the extent to which a congruency-typology model of leadership for learning is distributed across…

Since 2012, the Curriculum Assessment Policy Statements (CAPS) comprise the new National Curriculum Statement currently implemented in South African schools. CAPS encapsulates a series of radical curriculum changes since the dawn of a new democratic dispensation in 1994. This study aims to understand how Grade Three educators in Limpopo, South…

The challenge of low performing schools continues to rear its ugly head in many countries, including South Africa. The responses to low performance differ from country to country, but none of these have included the enhancement of collective teacher efficacy in their repertoire. Research shows that collective teacher efficacy is positively related…

Mathematics proficiency has an acknowledged impact on students' accounting grades. Success in this core business subject is dependent on students' mathematical aptitude, attitude and type of secondary schooling. Our study investigated accounting students' attitudes to mathematics on domains of the Fennema-Sherman Mathematics Attitudes Scales…

The teaching profession has a long history of providing mentorship to mentees (budding lecturers) through focused, collaborative, and one-on-one relationships. However, despite new lecturers' ongoing need for guidance and assistance, mentoring is relatively neglected as a concept in institutions of higher education. This study explores the concept…

Global transformation in higher education over the past two decades has led to the implementation of national policies in order to measure the performance of institutions in South Africa. The Higher Education Quality Council (HEQC) adopted the quality assurance (QA) model for the purposes of accountability and governance in South African Higher…

This paper explores novice foundation phase teachers' descriptions of their experiences in the liminal stage between being a student teacher and entering the professional world of the early grade classroom. The term "liminality" was popularised by anthropologist Turner (1969), building on the early work of Van Gennep (1960), in his work…

The roles of distance education teaching staff are changing, necessitating role clarity and the development of appropriate competency frameworks. This article investigates the perceptions of the teaching and research staff at the University of South Africa, regarding the current and future roles of distance educators, their own competencies in…

In South Africa, the common law principle of "in loco parentis" entitles teachers, as the guardians in the school environment, to discipline learners. However, in view of new legislation advancing children's rights, it is unclear as to the extent to which teachers can or do enact the "loco parentis" role. This study employed a…

Three lecturers respectively in Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology, Occupational Therapy and Physiotherapy (SLPA, OT and PT) at a public Higher Education Institution in South Africa collaborated to determine thinking preferences. The Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument (HBDI®) was used to collect data from three lecturers while an adapted…

The purpose of this study was to find out teachers' preferred teaching sequence for basic chemistry topics in Physical Science in South Africa, to obtain their reasons underpinning their preferred sequence, and to compare these sequences with the prescribed sequences in the current curriculum. The study was located within a pragmatic paradigm and…

As the demand for, and access to, higher education increases rapidly around the globe and exponentially on the African Continent, higher education institutions are under immense pressure to recruit skilled professionals who are equally proficient in disciplinary knowledge and pedagogic skills. Institutions also have an obligation to provide…

Internationally, there has been increasing emphasis on the teaching of the academic literacies, particularly reading and writing, in higher education institutions. However, recent research is highlighting the need for more explicit teaching of multimodal forms of communication, such as the visual literacies, in undergraduate courses in a wide…

Physical sciences education comes with high expectations for learners to be successfully placed in tertiary institutions in related fields, and developing countries' aspirations to develop advanced and specialised skills to drive economies. However, some of the prevailing instructional strategies in science classrooms work to marginalise learners.…