Editorial

Access to higher education in South Africa has become an urgent imperative after the demise of apartheid in a bid to redress the inequities of the past. This has given rise to the massification of higher education and the phenomenal increase in the number of students participating in higher education. As a direct consequence, debates and discourses in Higher Education (HE) have foregrounded access as a key component of successful higher education transformation. However, critics have argued that debates and discourses in higher education that are only driven by access as measured by rates of participation remain lar gely ineffective if they do not pay suf ficient attention to access as measured by success and graduation rates as well as the quality of graduates produced. This is equal to saying that students of all races and social classes who participate in higher education should have equal chances of success in higher education so as to bring about social equity and equal educational opportunity in society . This paper, therefore, argues that while the issue of access to higher education is a necessary step towards social equity in South Africa, it is however, not sufficient on its own to bring about this noble ideal.

The chapter includes identification of the need for reconceptualization of architectural and urbanistic discourse in higher education and the definition of the transdisciplinary methodology for a sustainable development of the living environment. Architecture and urbanism as complex disciplines that start from the existential social needs and reach to the most complex challenges and aspirations involve complex approaches and complex relations. Professional educational environment from architecture and urbanism aspect is integral. It includes the study of forms and models of urban space planning to architectural structures, details, materials, environmental challenges, as well as new paradigms of shaping life and work in the community. This requires the involvement of various disciplines and forms of knowledge for forming a competent and productive response to modern challenges of the real world. With the development and adoption of transdisciplinary methodology in environmental higher education, a platform can be developed for sustainable urban development in a sustainable social community. Technological aspect has a central role in that process.

Social justice discourse in higher education has been increasing in recent years, the scope of which has broadened to include systemic, institutional, and grassroots levels. Exploring and creating new approaches to education is one means of creating socially just education at the grassroots level. The student voice for social justice (SVSJ) pedagogical method is one pedagogy that adopts Nancy Fraser’s framework of (re)distribution, recognition, and representation and applies it to a higher education (HE) context. At the centre of SVSJ is student voice and active participation, whereby students become co-creators and co-developers of course content and dissemination across disciplines. Developing new pedagogies is only the first step in a long process of exploration, implementation, reflection, and revision. Working with students toward a socially just education model demands reflective practices from individual lecturers and professional group dialogue. Through such reflective practices, students’ cultural, educational, and personality differences, student voice challenges, the role of humility, assessment, and different modes of teaching (face-to-face vs online) were identified as being areas of consideration that need rethinking and reworking to enhance teaching and learning through socially just pedagogy development.

The historical inequalities and imbalances, so deeply embedded in the institutional structures and discourse of higher education, continue to haunt university spaces as these institutions continue to veer along the precipice of transformation. While statues have been removed, buildings renamed, and fees adjusted, higher education in South Africa remains a largely disparate and alienating topography – no more so because of the gaping wounds left by iterative student protestations. Seemingly, the more leadership structures in higher education stonewalled student protestations, the more student resistance intensified – not only in scope, but in violence. In this sense, we are reminded of Foucault’s (1997) dyadic depiction of power and resistance – that is, that power necessarily provokes resistance, since without resistance, there can be no power. In this article, we reflect, on the necessity of resistance not only in relation to power, but as a practice that ought to be ubiquitous to higher education. And secondly, we argue that if higher education is to fulfil its ideological mandate of doing things differently for the sake of epistemological and public good, then it necessarily has to be underscored by dissonance.

Discussions around first-year experiences have been focused on student adjustment and inclusion into the culture and discourses of higher education. However, the issue is much broader and includes efforts of articulation of processes and continuity of experience. This guest-edited issue thus focuses on the wider issues and includes discussions on systemic articulation and ruptures in student experiences. Developmental shifts when entering higher education are experienced by students in a variety of ways. It is incumbent on higher education and the wider system to enable continuity of experience and articulation of systems in such a way that student success is at the centre. Thus, the core articles in this issue focus on systemic articulation, in and out of classroom experience and the operational and ontological engagement of students, beyond the first-year experience. Moreover, while discussions on university success are usually focused on higher education agency, it is essential that the silence around causality and influence of schooling and wider societal issues are recognised. The articles in this issue purposefully bring together such a wider perspective.

The multiple crises of unsustainability are provoking increasing stress and unpleasant emotions among students. If higher education is to fulfill its mission to support transformation processes toward sustainable development, it must adapt its pedagogical approaches to help students deepen their critical thinking and empower them to engage in these transformation processes. For this reason, emotions – which can also prevent critical thinking – should be carefully addressed within transformative learning journeys. However, these journeys are themselves challenging for learners and educators. They push them to abandon stable meaning perspectives, causing feelings of incoherence and tension. Learners need safe enough spaces to navigate these situations of uncertainty. The central questions of this manuscript are: What is meant by safe enough spaces? How can learners, educators, and higher education institutions create and hold such spaces? These questions are explored on three different levels: (1) the intrapersonal level, (2) the interpersonal level, and (3) the organizational and systemic level of discourses in higher education. For the intrapersonal level, perspectives inspired by neurobiology are used to discuss reaction patterns of our autonomous nervous system and present insights into stress development. Learners should feel bodily safe when engaging in transformative learning processes. This is supported by balancing the challenges learners face with the resources they have. For the interpersonal level, the manuscript argues that focusing solely on rational discourse is insufficient to support safe enough spaces for transformative learning. We call for a culture of edifying conversations supported by respectful relationships among learners, as they are more adequate for regaining self-direction. For the organizational and intertwined systemic level, the ambition is followed to make higher education institutions offer learning environments that feel safe enough for all involved. However, as these institutions are strongly influenced by dynamics of economization and competition, they do not necessarily empower learners to challenge and disrupt unsustainable and neoliberal discourses. The manuscript explores how learners and educators can cultivate engaged critique by acknowledging their own embeddedness in neoliberal dynamics and opening up so-called transformative spaces for institutional change. Finally, recommendations for educational practices in higher education for sustainable development are offered.

Reviewed by: Developing Effective Programs and Services for College Men: New Directions for Student Services (Number 107) Shaun R. Harper and Frank Harris III Developing Effective Programs and Services for College Men: New Directions for Student Services (Number 107) Gar E. Kellom (Ed.) San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2004, 112 pages, $27.00 (softcover) Gender discourse in higher education, particularly within student affairs, is unarguably lopsided. That is, conversations and corresponding institutional responses have focused almost exclusively on the needs of and challenges faced by female students and women in academe. The continuous illumination of sexism and gendered institutional structures that disadvantage women is both necessary and important. The introduction of feminist perspectives and critiques has enabled practitioners and faculty to better understand the developmental needs and unique experiences of women, which in turn has led to the provision of essential resources and services on campuses across the country. While women's concerns merit ongoing consideration and perhaps even greater attention, we argue here, as we have done elsewhere, that current and future scholarship on gender must become more inclusive of college men. Sociologists and leading men's studies scholars Michael Kimmel and Michael Messner (2004) contend that men have long been treated as if we have no gender. A cursory glance at research and published perspectives on gender issues in higher education and student affairs would confirm this assertion. Thus, Developing Effective Programs and Services for College Men is a much-needed contribution to a longstanding gap in the literature. Edited by Gar E. Kellom, Vice President [End Page 487] of Student Development at Saint John's University, this volume brings together a diverse group of scholars and practitioners who consider various aspects of men's development and college experiences. It was refreshing to see authors from a variety of institutional types, including Historically Black Colleges. The monograph emerged from the Reconnecting Males to Liberal Education symposium held at Morehouse College in 2001. Consistent with other New Directions for Student Services sourcebooks, notes from the editor precede the chapters in this issue. Kellom described the agenda and recommendations from the Morehouse symposium, including the need for stronger partnerships and additional scholarship pertaining to male collegians. He then offered a quick report of significant, but seemingly random trends and statistics regarding gender inequities that are unfavorable for college men. These data deserved fuller treatment and explication—this review would have been better situated in an actual chapter instead of the editor's notes. In the first chapter, Obie Clayton, Cynthia Lucas Hewitt, and Eddie Gaffney discussed the enrollment disparities that exist between men and women in higher education. They described how and why men of color (particularly African Americans) and male students from low socioeconomic backgrounds are underrepresented in comparison to their same-race female peers. The theories and sociocultural frameworks in which their consideration is grounded elucidate the undercurrents of low matriculation rates among racial/ethnic minority male students; this is a definite strength of the chapter. Although the issues articulated therein are indeed exacerbated for African American men, in many sections sole emphasis is placed on that population at the exclusion of others. Notwithstanding, the authors offered a useful set of implications for research and policy at the end of the chapter, along with this cautionary note: "Policies that might help male students at the expense of female [students] should be avoided" (p. 20). Rocco Capraro provided a masterful synthesis of historical and theoretical perspectives from the men's studies literature in chapter 2—the comprehensiveness of his review is both exemplary and noteworthy. He drew on seminal and contemporary works from major thinkers on masculinities and forged logical connections between male student development in higher education and widely accepted points of view from men's studies. Readers who lack prior exposure to literature on men and masculinities will find this chapter especially insightful. Chapter 3 is divided into two fragmented parts. In the first half, Cynthia Neal Spence posited that several lessons can be learned from women's colleges, particularly Spelman, regarding curriculum, pedagogy, and the creation of environments in which healthy, non-monolithic gender identities are developed. She situated this transferability primarily in the context of Morehouse...

As higher education becomes increasingly globalized, institutions face growing pressure to serve diverse student populations, including those from refugee, ethnic minority, and first-generation backgrounds. Among these, Somali Bantu students—a historically marginalized ethnic group from Somalia—encounter layered barriers in higher education, shaped by institutional invisibility and racialized refugee status. Despite being part of broader discourses on refugee student experiences, their unique positionality remains largely overlooked. Drawing on data from a larger qualitative study, this study offers a focused phenomenological analysis of seven Somali Bantu students attending predominantly white institutions in the U.S. Guided by Anzaldúa’s Borderlands Theory and using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA), it explores how they navigate intersecting identities—ethnic, racial, religious, refugee, and first-generation—within academic environments. Findings reveal a pervasive theme of ethnic invisibility, unfolding across three dimensions: the homogenization of Somali identity, institutional unawareness of Somali Bantu presence, and the overshadowing of ethnic identity by religious identity. These layers of invisibility produced deep feelings of isolation and marginalization, impacting their sense of belonging and persistence. By centering their lived realities, this study contributes to decolonial, diasporic, and refugee-centered discourses in higher education, calling for more nuanced institutional responses that affirm African refugee identities and foster academic inclusion.

The recent proliferation of DNA testing in both popular culture and higher education calls to question whether such testing reifies race as a biological construct and, in particular, whether or not it disrupts or reinforces monoracial categorizations. Graduate students, who are often at a point in their educational journeys to further question and critique commonly held ideas, provide a unique lens through which to investigate discourses surrounding DNA testing. In this qualitative study, we analyze data from four focus groups with 22 racially diverse U.S. graduate students who had recently completed an ancestry test. We identify two specific discourses that graduate student participants engaged in, including (a) a biological race discourse and (b) an agentic choice discourse. Together, these discourses produced distinct unsettled subjectivities for Black and White participants. Our findings suggest the need to more critically consider the usage of DNA ancestry testing in and out of higher education and to provide further nuance around the validity of these tests as they relate to the social construction of race.

In the UAE, although Arabic is the first and official language (L1), English has become the medium of instruction and the language of discourse in higher education in most subject domains. The pedagogical implications of English Medium Instruction (EMI) in the specific context of higher education in the UAE are not well understood, and research is needed to establish what kinds of support speakers of English as a second or additional language (L2) might need to fully access content knowledge in English without burdening learning. Our empirical work hypothesizes that learning content through L2 may lead to more favourable results if the L1 is explicitly drawn upon as a resource in addition to the L2. This study provided undergraduate students with learning materials in three experimental conditions (Arabic-only, English-only, and dual language). Students’ performance was then assessed in three areas of linguistic competence, namely translation into Arabic of a list of English words and phrases, comprehension of an English written text, and translation into Arabic of English words and phrases in context. A series of one way ANOVAs and post-hoc comparisons were carried out to determine differences between the three conditions. The study confirms that overall, for students with an intermediate language level, the presentation of dual language reading materials has a greater impact on their outcomes in comparison with the presentation of reading materials in the L1 or L2 only. This highlights the critical need for raising awareness of translanguaging practices in EMI contexts.

This paper focuses on recent and innovative moves towards flexible learning in initial teacher education programmes in England and Wales, as part of the ‘widening participation’ agenda in higher education and in response to changes in teacher recruitment patterns. We take as our perspective our own experience as two course tutors in a higher education institution that introduced flexible routes into its secondary teacher education programme at the beginning of the academic year 2002/2003. Using the university's model for our case study, we have undertaken a small‐scale research project and reviewed the literature describing flexible learning discourses in higher education, to consider the extent to which concepts of flexibility are being translated into practice. In particular we highlight some implications for pedagogy and practice that have become apparent at this early stage in the development of flexible courses and which will have an impact upon their progress in the future.

The neoliberal discourse in Higher Education (HE) is gaining momentum across Europe, under the combined pressures from various international “players” (European Union, OECD, World Bank, World Trade Organization, etc.). This paper attempts to pinpoint the major advancements of neoliberal ideology, notably the “market” rhetoric in HE institutions across the European Union (EU), with special reference to Greece, as a simultaneously exemplary and exceptional case. Two important “policy levers” will be examined: (1) The intergovernmental agreements at EU-wide level; and (2) The publication of benchmarking indices and comparative rankings, and the corresponding promotion of a “global competitiveness” ethos among academic institutions.

The idea of this book emerged from the Education Deans Forum (EDF) meeting held in Johannesburg in 2018. The forum discussed the twin issues of the 4IR and Decolonisation and how these were likely to impact the future development of Higher Education in South Africa. Essentially, this book provides scholarly analyses of a range of possible impacts of the two discourses. On one hand, the discourses are discussed as representing convergences and divergences in relation to their epistemological, ontological, axiological and methodological assumptions. On the other, they are portrayed as competing for dominance in the contemporary and future discourses in Higher Education. As a scholarly compilation of high-end research, the book is a must-read resource for academics generally and those in teacher education disciplines particularly. Issues of the automation of academic workspaces, impact of digital divides, the opportunities and constraints of the technologisation of curricula, pedagogies, teaching and learning and the intractable challenges of remote modalities of university instruction are dealt with by some of the leading thinkers in the South African academies. 

A dominant discourse in higher education has widely called for reviewing, redesigning and alignment of the curricula to suit the current and future skills demands in the labour market. In response, universities have over time been repositioning themselves to develop practical approaches to produce graduates with skills relevant to the job market. One such approach is the Student-Centered Outreach (S-C-O) model conceived and run at Gulu University in Uganda. However, little is known about the S-C-O model and thus this paper sought to develop and present a conceptual framework that underpins the functioning of the model. The structural set-up of the framework shows that students are centrally positioned between the faculty and the community. A key resource connecting the actors in the S-C-O model is knowledge which is gained through learning that takes place from either the top or bottom side of the S-C-O model and integrating feedback to close the learning loop. Examination of the implementation of the S-C-O model reveals that the model realizes three important outcomes: (i) enhancing experiential learning, (ii) promoting university linkage with the community, and (iii) enhancing transformation of the farming practices. The need for further studies as part of a process to develop an empirical methodology for examining the impacts of this outreach model remains apparent.

As a journal editor, I regularly receive questions about authorship policies and practices, both in a general context and specific to the journal. The variety of questions and cases are mind-boggling. While there has been a lot of attention paid to the topic of authorship over the years, in both the scholarly literature and the more mainstream discourse in higher education, none of it seems to alleviate the confusion around this issue (my own included).