Scielo RSS http://www.scielo.org.za/rss.php?pid=2221-407020160001&lang=es vol. 5 num. 1 lang. es http://www.scielo.org.za/img/en/fbpelogp.gif http://www.scielo.org.za http://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S2221-40702016000100001&lng=es&nrm=iso&tlng=es http://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S2221-40702016000100002&lng=es&nrm=iso&tlng=es This article is an attempt to bring the social complexity of education into a conversation with what is referred to as a humanising pedagogy. In the article, I work with a definition of humanising pedagogy based on a three-dimensional conception of social justice. Drawing on Nancy Fraser (2009), I suggest that such a pedagogy should involve 1) the question of knowledge redistribution, 2) recognition of the knowledges, literacies, and identities of students, and 3) an emphasis on participation that brings process pedagogical orientations back into view to counter the rigid pedagogical orientation that informs South Africa's curriculum approach. The article unpacks what it means to insert a conception of the social-subjective into educational theorising in South African education academic work. I argue that this dimension is largely absent in hegemonic educational academic orientations, the consequence of which is a thinned-out focus on curriculum and pedagogy, devoid of how the complex social-subjective frames the subject's access to education. Based on my ethnographic work in urban sites, the article offers a view of the social-subjective that is aimed at disrupting South African educational theorising and provides a "pedagogical justice" view of education that may, conceptually, be able to account for the complex social-subjective in education-and thereby better enable the emergence of a humanising pedagogy in our educational discourses. http://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S2221-40702016000100003&lng=es&nrm=iso&tlng=es There is often a disconnect between the dominant language of the classroom and the home language of South African learners. Consequently, this may lead to dehumanising experiences in classrooms. This article explores the possibilities of using translanguaging to bring about humanising experiences for learners and teachers. Translanguaging is a means of providing planned and systematic use of the home language of learners with the language of the classroom in order to foster learning and teaching. A poetic inquiry is used to explore and make meaning of my understanding of what I observe in multilingual classroom contexts. Poetry and photography are used as data to support an argument for using translanguaging as a pedagogic tool to enable teaching and learning. Researcher-voiced poems (vox autobiographia) and literature-voiced poems (vox theoria) are employed to encapsulate understandings of the complexities and possibilities of teaching in multilingual classrooms. This inquiry reveals that translanguaging practices allow for fluid movement between the home and school language. Instead of being dehumanised by traditional language practices, teachers and learners are encouraged to bring their languages to the classroom. In so doing, they are able to experience being human as social, thinking, transforming, individuals participating with others in the world they inhabit together. http://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S2221-40702016000100004&lng=es&nrm=iso&tlng=es This article discusses how current South African primary maths curriculum pedagogical changes are characterised by a strengthened frame. This strengthened pedagogical frame results from strong sequencing and pacing and a transformed regulative discourse combining positional and expressive social features denoting mixed pedagogies. Sociological research indicates that the strong sequencing and pacing of pedagogic practices resonate with middle-class children and disadvantages poor and working-class learners. Drawing from both educational sociological studies and Bernstein's central thesis about the social-class basis of pedagogic framing, the paper shows how responsive pacing, sequencing, and mixed pedagogies that reflectively relate with the mathematical concepts to be relayed, ensure learning for children from different social classes. Based on the theoretical framework and related literature review, the paper explores second sites of learning strategies and compensatory pedagogic interventions that can disrupt middle-class social assumptions and support learning access for low-income-background learners in South African primary maths classes. Contextual tensions within the suggested approaches are also considered. Thus, this review offers sociological insights on humanising primary maths interactions that may interrupt social reproduction and ensure low-income children's pedagogic realisation. http://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S2221-40702016000100005&lng=es&nrm=iso&tlng=es Initial teacher education (ITE) is a key focus in current policy particularly in respect to shaping student teachers' dispositions and capabilities to effect change within the systems they will work, and for the learners they will teach. Teachers' pedagogic strategies also mediate inequalities and continuities within the education system, linked to the schooling system and society they operate within. In South Africa, contextually relevant pedagogical strategies that address diversity, reconciliation, and promote social cohesion are crucial to enable initial teacher education to prepare teachers in this way (Sosibo, 2013). This paper draws on data from a case study of an ITE programme at one higher education institution (HEI) in South Africa. The data was collected through semi-structured interviews with students and lecturers, focus groups, documentary analysis, and a survey of initial teacher educators, and was part of a large-scale study that focused on teachers as agents of social cohesion in South Africa (Sayed et al., 2015). Specifically, it considers how student teachers are prepared to enact social cohesion in the classroom. The paper concludes by discussing several implications of the research for ITE in South Africa. http://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S2221-40702016000100006&lng=es&nrm=iso&tlng=es While a humanising pedagogy can be a mechanism to facilitate (re)humanisation in the South African education context, a diversity of perspectives related to the concept prevails. This is to be expected given the variety of lived experiences and histories in South Africa. This project attempted to develop and extend shared understandings of the concept of a humanising pedagogy through a process of enacted reflexivity and transformative learning. A participatory mode of inquiry using metaphor drawings was used as a means of deconstructing the complex phenomenon of a humanising pedagogy-this included self-study by four teacher educators (authors of this paper) to facilitate shared understandings of its praxis. Such processes have the potential to catalyse the kind of transformative learning that continues to inform praxis. http://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S2221-40702016000100007&lng=es&nrm=iso&tlng=es Arts learning forums can provide a crucial opportunity for communities undergoing massive social upheaval to gather, reimagine, and exchange ideas. By providing multimodal expressive environments in which to explore, process, create, and share, a community arts education programme might be considered central to the sustenance of community during periods of collective trauma. Arts education programmes similarly maintain a capacity to disassemble communities, leading to greater exclusion, alienation, and dependence on foreign aid. This article critically reflects on the design of the Our Kids' Teachers programme in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, which provided workshop training in arts education methodologies to over a thousand teachers and youth leaders in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Central to this design was an application of transformative, experiential learning, which might be posited as a practical example of threshold concept theory (Land, Meyer, & Smith, 2008). While scholarly research into threshold concept learning has predominantly focused on curricula within formal education, there is a clear relevance of this educational theory to community learning forums. Moreover, when contextualised within a community arts education process, it suggests ways of designing programmes to support a humanising pedagogy. http://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S2221-40702016000100008&lng=es&nrm=iso&tlng=es Environmental and sustainability issues prevail in modern society. Southern Africa, where this study is based, is one of the regions most at risk from intersecting issues of climate health risk, and poverty-related ills. Education has the potential to facilitate catalytic transformation of society through development of understandings of these intersecting environment and sustainability concerns, and to support engagements in more sustainable social practices oriented towards the common good. This requires a rethinking of education within a wider common good frame. It also has implications for how quality education is considered. However, little is said of how this could be done, especially in teacher education. The paper shares two cases of teacher educators' change project experiences, as they emerged via professional development support and the mediatory processes applied in courses conducted by the Southern African Development Community Regional Environmental Education Programme (SADC REEP) aimed at enhancing professional capacity of teacher educators and other environmental educators for mainstreaming environment and sustainability education (ESE)1. These courses are framed using a change project approach, and involve teacher educators as main participants. In-depth data were generated from interviews with two teacher educators, their assignment write-ups, and observations of their teacher education practice. Realist social theory, particularly the principle of emergence, was used to trace the emergence of change in teacher education practice. Sociocultural learning theory was used to explain mediation of learning-oriented changes in teacher education practice. We illustrate how the change project model and approach contributed to mediating change in practice, showing emergent attributes of capacity for mainstreaming ESE and elements of a concept of quality education among course participants oriented towards the common good. In conclusion, we argue that ESE seems to be a sensitising construct for initiating and sustaining change for ESE in teacher education. In addition, the change project has proved to be a potential vehicle for mainstreaming the notion and practice of ESE into social systems and teacher education practices. We argue that reflexive ESE praxis provides a sensitising focus, initiating quality education with humanising properties necessary for the common good. http://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S2221-40702016000100009&lng=es&nrm=iso&tlng=es Freire (1993) premised his pedagogical theory on the assumption that humanisation is the fundamental objective of education, and he emphasised the role of dialogue as praxis in achieving this. In South Africa, race has played a constitutive and dehumanising role in higher education since its beginnings during colonialism and apartheid (Soudien, 2015, 2016). During 2014 and 2015, higher education in South Africa came under attack from various student organisations for alleged discrimination, racism, and exclusive practices. We propose two conditions for dialogue as humanising praxis in higher education: the acknowledgement of situated selves, and the ontological need for, and right to, voice. We conclude that these conditions are interrelated and point to the possibilities of humanising post-1994 higher education. We use qualitative data from the NRF-funded project, Human rights literacy: a quest for meaning (Roux & du Preez, 2013) to explore student teachers' experiences of implicit and explicit exclusion, racism, and discrimination at institutions of higher education in South Africa. http://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S2221-40702016000100010&lng=es&nrm=iso&tlng=es Freire (1993) premised his pedagogical theory on the assumption that humanisation is the fundamental objective of education, and he emphasised the role of dialogue as praxis in achieving this. In South Africa, race has played a constitutive and dehumanising role in higher education since its beginnings during colonialism and apartheid (Soudien, 2015, 2016). During 2014 and 2015, higher education in South Africa came under attack from various student organisations for alleged discrimination, racism, and exclusive practices. We propose two conditions for dialogue as humanising praxis in higher education: the acknowledgement of situated selves, and the ontological need for, and right to, voice. We conclude that these conditions are interrelated and point to the possibilities of humanising post-1994 higher education. We use qualitative data from the NRF-funded project, Human rights literacy: a quest for meaning (Roux & du Preez, 2013) to explore student teachers' experiences of implicit and explicit exclusion, racism, and discrimination at institutions of higher education in South Africa. http://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S2221-40702016000100011&lng=es&nrm=iso&tlng=es Freire (1993) premised his pedagogical theory on the assumption that humanisation is the fundamental objective of education, and he emphasised the role of dialogue as praxis in achieving this. In South Africa, race has played a constitutive and dehumanising role in higher education since its beginnings during colonialism and apartheid (Soudien, 2015, 2016). During 2014 and 2015, higher education in South Africa came under attack from various student organisations for alleged discrimination, racism, and exclusive practices. We propose two conditions for dialogue as humanising praxis in higher education: the acknowledgement of situated selves, and the ontological need for, and right to, voice. We conclude that these conditions are interrelated and point to the possibilities of humanising post-1994 higher education. We use qualitative data from the NRF-funded project, Human rights literacy: a quest for meaning (Roux & du Preez, 2013) to explore student teachers' experiences of implicit and explicit exclusion, racism, and discrimination at institutions of higher education in South Africa.