EDITORIAL

Editorial

Labby Ramrathan

School of Education, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, South Africa ramrathanp@ukzn.ac.za

This general issue of the Journal of Education focuses on basic and higher education with a specific emphasis on pedagogy and assessments. The articles contribute to the on-going discourse on quality education either through offering pedagogical insights or considering the use of technology to enhance teaching and learning. In the compilation of nine articles and a book review, this issue of the journal captures experiences, innovations, and reflections on teaching, learning, assessment, and support to learners/students across school and higher education.

Inclusive education continues to be a challenge globally. In Including learners with Autism Spectrum Disorder: Voices of mainstream teachers, Sharon Pienaar and Lorna M. Dreyer report on teachers who have expressed their concern about the policy-implementation gap that frames their teaching of learners, in inclusive schools, who are on the autistic spectrum disorder (ASD). Located in the literature that suggests that the most significant challenges teachers face are inadequate knowledge and training about ASD and providing accommodation and support in terms of teaching practice, these authors tell us why such challenges are difficult for these teachers to overcome in their daily teaching practices. In The use of assistive technology to minimise educational learning barriers for learners with cerebral palsy Soené Botha and Maryke Anneke Mihai acknowledge the barriers that these learners face and offer possible solutions involving assistive technologies that can help teachers and learners. They offer insights into how these technologies can assist with communication, mobility, and learning barriers.

Early learning in multi-cultural contexts has not been extensively researched. In Using vignettes to understand the social-emotional experiences of three-year-olds in diverse language contexts, Wietske Boon and Irma Eloff present a phenomenological study on social and emotional language and learning experiences of the children themselves. These researchers used vignettes to capture their observations of three-year-old learners interacting with their peers and teachers. The vignettes sought to foreground the intricacies of the learning experiences of these participants to highlight the individuality of the experiences of each participant, which, the authors argue, should be noted for the development of their social-emotional learning in multi-cultural learning spaces.

Noting that the role of visual arts in the formal education system has been limited, and access to art education has been unequal, in Enhancing pedagogy for teaching visual arts in the South African Foundation Phase classroom: A collaborative endeavour, Mari de Kock, Elma Marais, and Carolina Botha explore how visual arts can be taught by generalist teachers in the foundation phase of schooling. In this article the authors illuminate the barriers to teaching visual arts at this stage. Using a participatory action learning and action research (PALAR) approach, they make a case for how teachers can become creative and conceptualise possible strategies to enhance their praxis and pedagogy of visual arts.

In Trends and insights on multiple intelligences in Islamic schools: A bibliometric analysis, Kadis Kadis, Ali Imron, Mustiningsih Mustiningsih, and Raden Bambang Sumarsono highlight an emerging interest in applying MI in religious educational contexts. These authors argue for the fusion of the tenets of multiple intelligences with Islamic pedagogy to offer a robust approach to holistic teaching and learning in Islamic schools.

In the area of higher education, on-going research on student engagement and assessment continues to be carried out. In Students' and lecturers' perceptions of computerised adaptive testing as the future of assessing students, Priya Ramgovind and Shamola Pramjeeth focus on students' and lecturers' knowledge and understanding of computerised adaptive assessment processes in private institutes of higher education. The authors focus on understanding how technology can be used efficiently in assessing students in taking cognisance of who the student is. In addition, this article contributes to issues of assessment security that are topical in this transition juncture on blended teaching, learning, and assessment processes.

Focusing on the quality of student support, especially those who are studying through distance education, Assessing the quality of the integrated tutor model for student support in Open Distance Learning, Cynthia H.S. Ntuli and Mishack T. Gumbo explore the efficiency of an institutionally developed integrated tutor model to enhance academic engagement. The article describes the tutors' skills and creativity that provide quality support of student learning. Contributing further to teaching and learning using on-line technologies, Online entrepreneurship teaching and learning approaches: A South African conceptual perspective by Samuel John Chiromo, Risimati Maurice Khosa, and Vivence Kalitanyi offers conceptual insights on entrepreneurial education. These authors examine how entrepreneurship education can be offered through online teaching with constructivism as the theoretical framework, as well as the effectiveness and the design of online teaching for such education. Curriculum response to the students' demographical backgrounds in higher education is an area of scholarship that is very complex. In Achieving socio-cultural student engagement through curriculum responsiveness, Lee-Anne Lesley Harker, using the example of a course from a Law programme, explores how academics could integrate social and cultural backgrounds with the curriculum to make it easier for students to engage with the content and also make their knowledge transferable.

This edition of the Journal of Education closes with a book review of Understanding Higher Education: Alternative Perspectives (2022) by C. Boughey and S. McKenna (2022) by Paul Revai Svongoro who points out that the book contributes to the discussion about the goals and prospects for modern higher education in Africa, and South Africa specifically. These authors argue that contextualized higher education through an emphasis of social understandings of teaching and learning is key to curbing students' diminishing interest in the subjects they are studying.