Challenging The Apartheids Of Knowledge In Higher Education Through Social Innovation

In order to understand the relationship between social innovation and the reimagining of the knowledge economy necessary to reorient higher education most fully towards the public good, we must draw from the experiences of those working on the front lines of change. This collection represents diverse voices and disciplines, drawing together the critical reflections of academics, students and community partners from across South Africa. The book seeks to bring together theoretical and practical lessons about how research methods can be used in socially innovative ways to challenge the ‘apartheids’ of knowledge in higher education and to promote the democratization of the knowledge economy.

In order to understand the relationship between social innovation and the reimagining of the knowledge economy necessary to reorient higher education most fully towards the public good, we must draw from the experiences of those working on the front lines of change. This collection represents diverse voices and disciplines, drawing together the critical reflections of academics, students and community partners from across South Africa. The book seeks to bring together theoretical and practical lessons about how research methods can be used in socially innovative ways to challenge the ‘apartheids’ of knowledge in higher education and to promote the democratization of the knowledge economy.

This open access book offers unique and novel views on the social innovation landscape, tools, practices, pedagogies, and research in the context of higher education. International, multi-disciplinary academics and industry leaders present new developments, research evidence, and practice expertise on social innovation in higher education institutions (HEIs), across academic and professional disciplines. The book includes a selected set of peer-reviewed chapters presenting different perspectives against which relevant actors can identify and analyse social innovation in HEIs. The volume demonstrates how HEIs can respond to societal challenges, support positive social change, and contribute to the development of international public policy discourse. It answers the question ‘how does the present higher education system, in different countries, promote social innovation and create social change and impact’. In answering this question, the book identifies factors driving success as well as obstacles. Furthermore, it examines how higher education innovation assists societal challenges and investigates the benefits of effective social innovation engagement by HEIs. The interdisciplinary approach of the volume makes it a must-read for scholars, students, policy-makers, and practitioners of economics, education, business and management, political science, and sociology interested in a better understanding of social innovation.

Hibbert explores South Africa’s higher education crisis utilising case studies and first-hand experiences with English as the language of instruction. The historical overview provides a framework with which to understand the complicated nature of using English as a language of instruction in South Africa, past and present. Student narratives are presented to illustrate mainly breakthroughs, but also challenges. An overview is provided, of imported English teaching methodologies and how they have emerged and developed in the local educational system over decades. It is demonstrated how these methodologies relate to socio-economic and political events and trends at each juncture. By applying defamiliarisation as a research method of investigation, students’ translanguaging struggles are recorded and discussed, both pre-pandemic and in the pandemic period. The experiences of non-monolingual English-speaking staff and students, and of local English/African language bilinguals is foregrounded, as they are by far the majority in South African higher education and schools. The relevance of the experiences and learning paths of those staff and students is enhanced. This book aids lecturers across disciplines and English language facilitators in the improvement of English acquisition curricula through exposure to arguments, case studies and learning path narratives in this volume, and prompts and inspires researchers to develop further theories and experiments in their own context.

Higher education contributes to the development of countries and their competitiveness in a global marketplace. However, to remain relevant and meet the demands of an ever-changing world, institutions and their operations must progress in unison with the changing world in which they function. Innovation can play a critical role in transforming and advancing practice and therein address socio-economic, organizational, operational and social challenges. The complexity and scope of higher education opens up the possibilities and potential for innovations to transpire in diverse settings and contexts. This book is a collection of easy-to-follow, vignette-based innovations that have transformed or advanced practice and in doing so contributed to ensuring the relevance and value of higher education in a continuously changing world.

This book offers a much-needed appraisal of two key social change movements within higher education: civic engagement and social innovation. The authors critically explore the historical and contemporary contexts as well as democratic foundations (or absence thereof) of both approaches, concluding with a discussion of possible future directions that may make the approaches more effective in fulfilling the broader democratic mission of U.S. higher education. This is an essential resource for those in higher education who wish to promote and advance social change, as it provides an opportunity to critically examine where we are with our civic engagement and social innovation approaches and what we might do to best realize their promise through changes in our educational processes, pedagogical strategies, evaluation metrics, and outcomes.

Tensions in South African universities have traditionally centred around equity (particularly access and affordability), historical legacies (such as apartheid and colonialism), and the shape and structure of the higher education system. What has not received sufficient attention, is the contribution of the university to place-based development. This volume is the first in South Africa to engage seriously with the place-based developmental role of universities. In the international literature and policy there has been an increasing integration of the university with place-based development, especially in cities. This volume weighs in on the debate by drawing attention to the place-based roles and agency of South African universities in their local towns and cities. It acknowledges that universities were given specific development roles in regions, homelands and towns under apartheid, and comments on why sub-national, place-based development has not been a key theme in post-apartheid, higher education planning. Given the developmental crisis in the country, universities could be expected to play a more constructive and meaningful role in the development of their own precincts, cities and regions. But what should that role be? Is there evidence that this is already occurring in South Africa, despite the lack of a national policy framework? What plans and programmes are in place, and what is needed to expand the development agency of universities at the local level? Who and what might be involved? Where should the focus lie, and who might benefit most, and why? Is there a need perhaps to approach the challenges of college towns, secondary cities and metropolitan centers differently? This book poses some of these questions as it considers the experiences of a number of South African universities, including Wits, Pretoria, Nelson Mandela University and especially Fort Hare as one of its post-centenary challenges.

Springer is proud to announce that 'Universities in the Knowledge Society' has received the ASHE-CIHE award for Significant Research on International Higher Education. Congratulations to Timo Aarrevaara, Martin Finkelstein, Glen A. Jones, Jisun Jung and all contributors! This book explores the complex, multi-faceted relationships between national research and innovation systems and higher education. The transition towards knowledge societies/economies is repositioning the role of the university and transforming the academic profession. The volume provides a foundational introduction to the concepts of knowledge society and knowledge economy, and these concepts ground the detailed case studies of eighteen systems, located across five continents. Each case study was written by a leading expert in that jurisdiction, and provides a critical analysis of the research and development infrastructure, the role of universities, and the implications for the academic profession. The book describes how nations in various geographic regions and at various stages of economic maturity are restructuring their university systems to adapt to the new imperatives, and provides a cross-case analysis identifying common themes and distinctive features. In telling the story of higher education’s on-going global metamorphosis, the contributing authors place current developments in the context of the university’s historic evolution, survey the changing metrics that national governments are adopting to measure university performance, and describe a new international project, the Academic Profession in the Knowledge-based Society [APiKS] that involved a common survey of academics in more than twenty countries to take the pulse of developments “on the ground” while documenting the challenges confronting knowledge workers in the new economy.