Faculty of Education
Prof JD Jansen, Dean
Telephone number: 012 420 3513
Fax number: 012 420 4215
E-mail address: jonathan.jansen@up.ac.za
Message from the Dean
For five successive years, the Faculty of Education has achieved a constant upward growth or increase in publication research outputs in high quality national and international journals. Not only are more academics publishing research of high quality, but individual scholars are more productive in a wider range of journals than before.
While starting from a low base in a faculty with strong professional rather than research traditions, this trajectory in research output reflects the millions of Rands invested in the development of promising young scholars and the recruitment of leading talent in educational scholarship within and beyond the borders of South Africa.
A major drive in recent years was to shift the emphasis in publication towards the production of high quality scholarly books since this kind of output often counts more heavily in the social sciences and education.
The scholarly book is, in such fields, a marker of international standing in leading universities. In response to training of young academics on the subject Writing Your First Scholarly Book, more than a dozen such publications have emerged in the past two years through publishing outlets such as Routledge, Springer (formerly Kluwer), University Press of America, Trentham Books, and many others.
No research is possible at this level without sustained international funding and the Faculty again achieved the feat of raising major funding, and in some cases renewing research funding contracts, from sources such as the Norwegian government, the European Union, the National Institutes of Health (USA) and many others.
The National Research Foundation (NRF) has made special scholarships available to staff and students on the basis of the top research dissertations delivered at The Annual Post-Graduate Research Indaba. The postgraduate student Indaba, now an institution in the faculty, provides a platform for emerging scholars to share their research among peers before venturing out onto the national stage, and for some, international conferences, to present their research designs and findings.
The faculty continues to produce relatively large numbers of highly qualified doctoral graduates, compared to other Faculties of Education, with the mandatory international examiner as part of the final assessment.
The PhD graduates are consistently highly rated by leading international scholars, again a result of an intensive doctoral support programme that enables education students to develop excellent research dissertations.
The introduction of undergraduate research initiatives was fully implemented in 2006 where student teachers are encouraged to introduce structured reflection into their daily practice and to ask and investigate practical questions about their teaching. Research is placed in context, and designed to improve the practice of teaching. For students who decide to continue into postgraduate training, this initial exposure to research thinking has the added benefit of preparing them for advanced study.
The growing number of international postgraduate students contributed to a strengthening of the comparative research interests in the faculty. The registration of students from Namibia, Kenya, Mozambique in Africa, as well as students from Europe, North and South America and Asia, have together created research interests in education systems way beyond our borders.
The internationalisation of research, through such students, have enriched the quality of research and enhanced possibilities for international research collaboration—a prominent example being the Norwegian partnership in research development.
A foundation has been laid for strengthening the faculty’s three major research niche areas in the next five years; these concentrated research areas are studies in assessment, educational change, HIV/AIDS and education.
In each of these three areas book contracts have been won, and a major scholarly monograph will appear in 2007. A fourth area has recently been added, namely, research in distance education, and a special focus of this work has been on the uses of mobile technologies in advancing learning in distance education.
The dramatic growth in the research activities and the research outputs of the Faculty of Education during 2006 has been phenomenal, by any account. The strong research capacity building logic that infuses all these actions makes these investments highly sustainable and satisfactory.
Prof Jonathan D. Jansen
Dean
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