Overview

Between 2013 and 2017, a team of researchers from the Human Sciences Research Council undertook a longitudinal qualitative study that tracked eighty students from eight diverse universities in South Africa and documented their experiences at these higher education institutions. Midway through the study, the student protests erupted and focused national attention on many of the stories we had already heard. In the subsequent years of the study, we also heard from students who were actively involved in these transformation struggles as well as those who sat on the side-lines. Studying While Black is an intimate portrait of the many ways in which students in South Africa experience university, and the centrality of race and geography in their quest for education and ultimately emancipation. Students voices can be heard directly in a 45 minute documentary that accompanied this study entitled Ready or Not!: Black students’ experiences of South African universities – freely available on social media.

Full Product Details

Author:   Sharlene Swartz ,  Alude Mahali ,  Relebohile Moletsane ,  Emma Arogundade
Publisher:   HSRC Press
Imprint:   HSRC Press
ISBN:  

9780796925084

ISBN 10:   0796925089
Pages:   272
Publication Date:   01 March 2018
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Undergraduate ,  Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In Print  
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Table of Contents

Acknowledgements Introduction Abbreviations and acronyms A note on ‘race’ in South Africa Chapter 1 South African students and their struggles: An in-depth view Literature review Conceptual framework Research questions and study design Navigating the annexes of this book Chapter 2 Participants and their institutions: Individuals in context Findings Family Community Schools Perceptions of success Visions for life Institutions of higher learning Discussion Chapter 3 Navigating race in higher education and beyond Findings Inclusion and identity politics Understanding legacies of apartheid Decolonisation and rethinking the university Discussion Recommendations Chapter 4 Gender dynamics and (in)equality of experiences Findings Understanding the meaning of patriarchy and gender difference on campus Progress and challenges in addressing gender equity on campuses Gender identity, gender expression and sexual orientation at university Discussion Recommendations Chapter 5 Language and power as structural barriers Findings Language privilege Background disadvantage ‘Good English and accents’ Discussion Recommendations Chapter 6 Obstacles to access and participation in universities Findings Academic obstacles Financial obstacles Financially interlinked obstacles: Accommodation and travel Additional challenges Discussion Recommendations Chapter 7 Students’ perspectives and strategies for success Findings Individual factors: Focus, self-reliance and academic interest Micro factors: Supportive networks Educational resources Macro factors: Religiosity Discussion Recommendations Chapter 8 Interventionist research strategies for emancipation Strategies for emancipation Discussion Recommendations Chapter 9 Conclusion: Skills and systemic change needed How inequality is manifested Overall findings of the study Recommendations Conclusion Appendix 1 Ethics: Sample information sheet and consent form Appendix 2 University sketches Appendix 3 Recruitment poster Appendix 4 Annual participant interview schedules Appendix 5 Participant profiles and biographies Appendix 6 Social network interview questions Appendix 7 Recommendations by stakeholder category References About the contributors Index

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Author Information

Emma Arogundade is a former senior researcher at the Human Sciences Research Council and a PhD candidate in the Department of Sociology at the University of Cape Town. Her thesis explores issues of morality, racialised identity and restitution in South Africa. She holds an MPhil in Critical Diversity Studies from the University of Cape Town and has lectured extensively on diversity, race, class and gender and on community development, both at UCT and at the School for International Training. She is the co-author of Moral Eyes: Cultivating Youth Engagement on Privilege, Injustice and Restitution (2018), has edited three volumes in the ‘Celebrating Africa’ series at the University of Cape Town, and has published two journal articles and two book chapters. Her work centres on identities, feminisms and narrative theory, using these frameworks to explore issues from community development, to motherhood, and moral identities to intersecting axes of privilege, oppression and forms of resistance. Adam Cooper is a research specialist at the Human Sciences Research Council and research associate in the Department of Education Policy Studies at Stellenbosch University. Before joining the HSRC he was a National Research Foundation of South Africa postdoctoral scholar abroad, based at the Graduate Center at the City University of New York. He was the recipient of a Commonwealth Split-site PhD scholarship between the University of Cambridge (Faculty of Education) and Stellenbosch University (Department of Education Policy Studies). In 2017, Routledge published his first monograph, Dialogue in Places of Learning. He has published peer-reviewed journal articles on South African youth with a focus on masculinities, young offenders, curriculum development and critical pedagogy. Candice Groenewald is a research specialist at the Human Sciences Research Council. She holds a PhD in Psychology from the University of KwaZulu-Natal and a Master’s degree in Research Psychology from the University of the Western Cape. She has six publications in local and international journals and has also co-authored two book chapters as well as three technical outputs on the epidemiology of substance abuse in South Africa. She has presented 25 papers at local and international conferences and has lectured in psychology and research at the University of the Western Cape. She has been a co-investigator on various research projects, including studies related to adolescent substance abuse, families affected by adolescent substance abuse, early childhood development and education in African communities, youth and homelessness in Durban, race and identity studies, and adolescent exposure to community violence in the Western Cape. She is also interested in diverse research methodologies, including survey methodologies, phenomenological investigations, programme evaluation, life history approaches and participatory action research. Ernest Nene Khalema is the Dean and Head of the School of Built Environment and Development Studies at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. He holds a PhD from the University of Alberta in Canada. Before joining UKZN, he was a professor in various Canadian universities since 2001 and served as chief research specialist at the Human Sciences Research Council where his groundbreaking work on participatory action methodologies (quantitative and qualitative), social epidemiology, critical race and gender studies, migration and mobilities, and development studies received international recognition. He is the author of several books including the forthcoming monograph entitled Affirming their Resilient Lives: Migrant Youth in Africa and the Diaspora (Sense Publishers, 2018); and co-editor of Crisis, Identity and Migration in Post-Colonial Southern Africa (Springer, 2017); Children in South African Families: Lives and Times (Cambridge Scholars Publishers, 2016); Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in Retrospect: African Development Beyond 2015 (Springer, 2015) and Africa Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow: Exploring the Multi-dimensional Discourses on Development (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013). Alude Mahali is a research specialist at the Human Sciences Research Council and an honorary lecturer in the Department of Drama and Performance Studies at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. She holds a PhD in Performance Studies from the University of Cape Town and an MA in Theatre Making, also from the University of Cape Town. Before joining the HSRC, she taught at the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts in Kingston, Jamaica. She has convened an international conference in the area of African theatre and performance, served as keynote speaker at youth symposia and presented at numerous international conferences. She has published several peer-reviewed articles in her research areas, which focus on intersectional identities: race, class, gender, language and youth navigational capacities. Her most recent publications look at the domestic worker trope, black womanhood, social protest and youth activism in contemporary South Africa. Relebohile Moletsane is Professor and the JL Dube Chair in Rural Education and the Acting Director of the Centre for Critical Research on Race and Identity (CCRRI) at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. Her research interests include rurality, gender and education, sexual and reproduction health, education, and participatory visual research. She is the principal investigator of the project: Education and Emancipation: A critical, intervention-oriented investigation of obstacles and opportunities within the higher-education-and-training sector in South Africa (2013–2017). She is the co-author (with Claudia Mitchell and Naydene de Lange) of the 2017 book, Participatory Visual Methodologies: Social change Through Community and Policy Dialogue (SAGE); and co-editor (with Barbara Pini and Martin Mills) of the 2016 book, Education and the Global Rural: Feminist Perspectives (Routledge). Sharlene Swartz is a Deputy Executive Director at the Human Sciences Research Council in South Africa, an honorary Professor of Philosophy at the University of Fort Hare and an adjunct Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Cape Town. She holds undergraduate degrees from the University of the Witwatersrand and the University of Zululand in South Africa; a master’s degree from Harvard University and a PhD from the University of Cambridge. Her expertise and current research centre on the just inclusion of youth in a transforming society and on interpersonal and communal notions of restitution. Her work is characterised by a focus on Southern theory, emancipatory methodologies and critical race theory. She is the author or co-author of nine books, including Another Country: Everyday Social Restitution (HSRC Press, 2016); Ikasi: The Moral Ecology of South Africa’s Township Youth (Palgrave, 2009); Teenage Tata: Voices of Young South African Fathers (HSRC Press, 2009); Youth Citizenship and the Politics of Belonging (Routledge, 2013); and Moral Eyes: Cultivating Youth Engagement on Privilege, Injustice and Restitution (HSRC Press, 2018).

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