Whose Fault Is Failure? Contested Perspectives of Academic Support in Tertiary Educational Institutions in South Africa

Autor/inn/en	Jeffery, David; Johnson, David
Titel	Whose Fault Is Failure? Contested Perspectives of Academic Support in Tertiary Educational Institutions in South Africa
Quelle	In: Research in Comparative and International Education, 14 (2019) 3, S.376-393 (18 Seiten)Infoseite zur Zeitschrift PDF als Volltext Verfügbarkeit
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	1745-4999
DOI	10.1177/1745499919864731
Schlagwörter	Foreign Countries; Higher Education; Academic Support Services; Disadvantaged; Ethnography; Academic Achievement; Vocational Education; Student Attitudes; School Responsibility; Comparative Analysis; Guides; Cognitive Style; Student Responsibility; Academic Failure; Learning Processes; Outcomes of Education; College Students; South Africa + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? Ausland; Hochschulbildung; Hochschulsystem; Hochschulwesen; Ethnografie; Schulleistung; Ausbildung; Berufsbildung; Schülerverhalten; Handbuch; Leitfaden; Cognitive styles; Kognitiver Stil; Learning process; Lernprozess; Lernleistung; Schulerfolg; Collegestudent; Südafrika; Süd-Afrika; Republik Südafrika; Südafrikanische Republik
Abstract	This paper explores the argument that to widen participation in higher education, educational institutions should bear a greater responsibility for students' learning. Central to this debate is the notion of 'academic support'. There are many perspectives on what works to scaffold student participation and learning but rarely are the perspectives of those receiving support taken into account. This paper reports the findings of an exploratory ethnographic study in which students in a vocational college in South Africa reflected on the nature of academic support and access to it. Student narratives that underpin their understandings of how the support system 'worked', and what responsibilities they and the college respectively bore for their studies, are compared to the official prescript on student support services in South Africa -- the so-called 'Student Support Services Manual' which was developed by the South African Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET). The data indicate sharp incongruences in thinking. While the student support services manual maintains that students are a product of their disadvantaged contexts and therefore require an institutional form of academic support, students themselves placed much less responsibility for the provision of academic support on the colleges. Instead, they attributed their success or failure to 'character' and their own dispositions towards learning. This is an unexpected finding in the context of an often highly charged debate on the factors that constrain learning and learning outcomes. This paper argues that it is this 'locus of control' that undermines the idea that student success is dependent on prescription alone. (As Provided).
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Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2020/1/01