1.
The Scholarship of Teaching – a
Social Justice Perspective
1st International Conference on the
Scholarship of Teaching and Learning
CUT, 1- 2 October 2015

2.
Background
• Me
• SOTL at University of Johannesburg
• Draft ‘Manifesto’:
– Why we need SOTL for social justice
– What socially just teaching encompasses
– Guiding principles
– Guiding philosophies
– Implications for research approaches
• How we relate to students; colleagues
• The SOTL @ UJ project
• Concluding thoughts

3.
The trouble with SOTL…

4.
Why do we need a social justice
perspective?
Higher education in South Africa faces key
challenges in relation to teaching and learning:
• Small number of matriculating students to draw
from and simultaneously, students are drawn
from more privileged echelons of society, due to
inequality in society in general, fostered by
unequal conditions in schools across the society

5.
Why…
• Low success rate and low throughput in
institutions across the country, with significant
differences between institutions (Cooper, 2015,
“stalled” revolution)
• Higher education institutions enjoy less funding
and resourcing than universities in the global
North
• The curriculum remains by and large ‘derivative’
of the centre or metropole (Badat, 2007)

6.
Why…
• Social interaction and identity matters in
higher education in South Africa does not
reflect an integrated and socially just,
participatory formation

7.
Participatory Parity
Tripartite dimensions:
• Maldistribution
• Misrecognition
• Misframing
(Nancy Fraser, 2008)
‘there can be no recognition without
distribution’ (de Sousa Santos, 2000)

8.
Why…
South Africa’s responsibility towards the rest of
Africa
Inaugural Meeting of the Southern African Universities
Learning and Teaching (SAULT) Forum, 14 – 16 April 2014

9.
Why…
• Higher education can contribute towards
peace
social development
human flourishing
sustaining our planet

10.
SOTL in and for social justice
socially just pedagogy (equitable learning
conditions for academic success)
v.
and a pedagogy for social justice, (transformation of
learners, knowledges and contexts through critical
questioning and engagement) (Moje, 2007)
SoTL that is ‘authentic’, in and through higher
education (Kreber, 2013)

11.
SOTL for Social Justice pays attention
to ….
• Issues of access to higher education (widening
participation)
• Epistemological access to those within higher
education (‘success’ and ‘throughput’)
• Appropriate graduate outcomes (so that
graduates can find employment; so they can
flourish and contribute to society).

12.
Graduate outcomes – efficiency and
impact
knowledge as sense of what is
possible, knowledge as ethical
responsibility; education is more
than imparting skills. I don’t want a
doctor who is only a critical thinker,
when he is opening up my chest –
but I want him to be able to use
those skills in relations of inequitable
power… doctors in Germany; (Henry
Giroux)

13.
Graduate outcomes
‘teaching is transformative and really making an
impact on students' lives, particularly at first-
year level where you’re kind of at that transition
between school and university, and getting to
think about learning differently. … I suppose I've
always tried to think about producing scientists,
but different kinds of scientists. So scientists
who will be able to think more broadly about the
wider context of science. Teaching that is
transformative impacts on students’ lives’
national teaching excellence award
winner – physics lecturer

14.
SOTL for SJ pays attention to
• Values that inform our teaching
– Sense of purpose
– Sustain us when in despair
– Help us to circumnavigate obstacles
– Provide a sense of passion
– Provide a sense of autonomy, when we feel not in
control (Rowland, 2000)

15.
… and SOTL for SJ pays attention to
• Issues pertaining to knowledge and power
(whose knowledges are valued, and how
knowledge is made accessible) (de Sousa
Santos, 2001)
• Issues of communication and democracy in
relation to language – without essentialising
speakers of particular languages or languages
themselves.

16.
… and to
• Issues of voice – whose voices ‘count’ and
what are the silences? Are students heard –
which students?

17.
…and to
• How the institutional culture influences
teaching and learning interactions, ..
• How time and space are used and how they
shape the teaching and learning experience

18.
… time and space
‘like the lecture venues that …don’t support a projector, I’ve
actually done a workbook for students. ... if they can’t see
the board or they can’t hear me, they’ve still got the notes
in front of them … because I have problems with voice
projection in large classes, I end up circling the lecture
venues, so that everybody can get to hear me at some
point in time. …I spend a lot of time making my notes and
getting them printed … if I didn’t have to really do all of that,
in other words if students could see the board, … I wouldn’t
have to give them as comprehensive notes and then I
could actually spend time on research and my own
professional development. ‘
(time and space should not cage learning – nor cripple it)

19.
… and attention to
• The respectful co-production of knowledge – where co-
producers are in other institutions such as community
organisations, schools, and where we address the gap
between higher education and other institutions.
• Issues of democratic citizenship – in relation to
internationalisation and responsibilities closer to
home.
• The relationship of epistemology to ontology – we are
not just teaching students what knowledge to learn,
but how to reason and feel towards a just future.

20.
Some guiding principles
• In this project we seek to look towards the
future, a pedagogy of possibility and critical
hope. However we acknowledge
the importance of criticality and
critique

21.
Some guiding principles
• A socially just pedagogy also pays attention to
the pedagogic approaches (one cannot ‘teach’
students to become critical citizens, using
approaches which discourage independence
and criticality).
• A socially just pedagogy takes into account the
past – of the institution, of students,
academics and faces the future with a sense
of continuous possibility.

22.
Some guiding principles
• A socially just pedagogy assumes that
dialogue is never finished. Teaching and
learning fosters our becoming, not
brokenness.
• A socially just pedagogy requires academics to
explore their own assumptions and
experience the kinds of discovery and
vulnerability that they require from their
students.

23.
Guiding philosophies
 Participatory parity (Fraser)
 Capabilities approach (Sen, Nussbaum, Walker)
 Indigenous knowledge systems (‘Odora-Hoppers)
 Pedagogy of discomfort (Boler, Zembylas)
 Political ethics of care (Tronto)
 Democratic education (Waghid)
 Democratic and inclusive education (Soudien)
 Post-humanism (Braidotti)
 Socio-materialism (Barad, Deleuze-Gattari; Mazzei and
Youngblood-Jackson)
 Cognitive justice (Visvinathan; de Sousa Santos)

24.
Implications for research approaches
• Ethical approach
• Benefit students (and community)
• Students are not objects, mere data sources
• Also partners (Griffiths 2004)

25.
Research relations within social justice
approach
• Collaboration amongst staff
• Appreciation and robust debate
• Respect diverse perspectives
• Capacity building
• Conscious generation of
corporate agency (Donati)
• Symmetry of
principles at all levels
SJ

26.
SOTL @ UJ- Towards a Socially Just
Pedagogy
Team engaged in research

27.
Examples of SOTL Projects
CURRICULUM RESTRUCTURING IN HIGHER
EDUCATION SOUTH AFRICA: Is it socially just?
Judaism 101: Rethinking Teaching Approaches
and Content
Academic literacies transitions: senior undergraduate
to postgraduate
Contemplating the heart of social justice in a Teacher
Education Service Learning (TESL) module: A case
study for using “troubling dialogues” to teach social
justice.

28.
More topics
“The Sandton City of UJ” or “The Art of
Accomplishment”: Exploring the relationship
between social class, taste and student
achievement at FADA
What are the enablements and constraints
in doctoral supervision support in SA HE

29.
SOTL @ UJ Team at work
Capacity building: workshops

30.
SOTL @ UJ Project
Capacity building:
seminars

31.
SOTL @ UJ Project
Dissemination
http://sotlforsocialjustice.blogspot.com/

32.
Intended project outcomes
• Mini-conference: 1 December 2015
• Published articles
• Concept document for university on SOTL for
Social Justice
• But: the process as a learning moment

33.
In conclusion …

34.
Badat, S. 2009. “Theorising Institutional Change: Post 1994 South African Higher Education”. Studies in Higher Education 34 (4): 38 – 41.
Boler, M. and M. Zembylas. (2003). “Discomforting Truths: The Emotional Terrain of Understanding Difference”. In Pedagogies of Difference: Rethinking
Education for Social Change, edited by P. Trifonas, 110–136. Routledge Falmer, New York.
Cooper, D. 2015. “Social Justice and South African University Student Enrolment Data by ‘Race’, 1998 - 2012: From ‘Skewed Revolution’ to ‘Stalled
Revolution’”. Higher Education Quarterly 69 (3): 237 - 262.
de Sousa Santos, B. (2001) Nuestra America: Reinventing a subaltern paradigm of recognition and redistribution. Theory, Culture and Society, 18 (2-3) 185-
217.
Donati, P. 2010. “Reflexivity after Modernity: From the Viewpoint of Relational Sociology”. In Conversations about Reflexivity. Edited by M. Archer, 144 - 164,
Abingdon: Routledge.
Fraser, N. 2008.”Reframing Justice in a Globalizing World” in Adding Insult to Injury: Nancy Fraser Debates her Critics, edited by K. Olson, 273 – 291. London:
Verso.
Fraser, N. 2009. Scales of Justice: Reimagining Political Space in a Globalizing World. New York: Columbia University Press.
Gale, R.,2009. “Asking questions that matter … asking questions of value”. International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. 3(2),
http://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/ij-sotl/vol3/iss2/3
Gilpin, L. and D. Liston. “Transformative Education in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning: An Analysis of SoTL Literature. 3 (2)
http://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/ij-sotl/vol3/iss2/11
Griffiths, R., 2004. “Knowledge Production and the Research - Teaching Nexus: The Case of the Built Environment Disciplines”. Studies in Higher Education 29
(6): 709–726.
Jansen, J. 2009. Knowledge in the Blood; Confronting Race and the Apartheid past. Cape Town: UCT Press
Kreber, C. 2013a. Authenticity In and Through Teaching in Higher Education. Abingdon: Routledge.
Kreber, C. 2013b. “Empowering the Scholarship of Teaching: An Arendtian and Critical Perspective”. Studies in Higher Education 38 (6): 857 – 869.
Leibowitz, B., V. Bozalek, R. Carolissen, L. Nicholls, P. Rohleder, and L. Swartz. 2010. “Bringing the Social into Pedagogy; Unsafe Learning in an Uncertain
World”. Teaching in Higher Education 15 (2): 123 – 133.
Leibowitz, B., L. Swartz, V. Bozalek, R. Carolissen, L. Nichols and P. Rohleder, P. Eds. 2012. Community, Self and Identity: Educating South African University
Students for Citizenship. Cape Town: HSRC Press.
Mabokela, R. 2000. “’We cannot find qualified blacks’: Faculty Diversification Programs at South African Universities. Comparative Education 36 (1): 95 – 112.
Moje, E. 2007. “Developing Socially Just Subject-matter Instruction: A Review of the Literature on Disciplinary Literacy Teaching”. Review of Research in
Education 31: 1 – 44.
Rowland, S. 2000. The Enquiring University Teacher. Buckingham: SRHE and OUP
Soudien, C. 2008. ‘The Intersection of Race and Class in the South African University: Student Experiences”. South African Journal of Higher Education 22 (3):
662-678.
Tabensky, P. and S. Matthews. 2015. Being at Home: Race, Institutional Culture and transformation at South African Higher Education Institutions.
Pietermaritzburg: University of Kwa-Zulu Natal Press.
Vice, S. 2015. “‘Feeling at Home’: The Idea of Institutional Culture and the Idea of a University”. In Being at Home: Race, Institutional Culture and
Transformation at South African Higher Education Institutions, edited by P. Tabensky and S. Matthews, 45 – 71. Pietermaritzburg: UKZN Press.