Re-engineering Sociological Constellations for Higher Education in South Africa

Abstract

Higher education in South Africa has experienced a number of challenges for the past three decades. From the days of apartheid to post-apartheid South Africa, to the challenges of transforming the higher education landscape. The merger of several South African higher education institutions in 2004 created a plethora of challenges to add to the already existing ones. These challenges were political, sociological, structural, and fiscal in nature. The desire to address these challenges has in a way created an epistemological backlog where access to higher education has increased drastically but epistemological access remains a challenge. These amongst other things fuelled the decolonisation movement which demanded for the decolonisation of knowledge. However, the decolonisation of knowledge amongst other things cannot be effective or complete without a re-engineering of the sociology of education. This paper articulates a pathway for the re-engineering of the sociology of education by articulating four sociological constellations.

Presenters

Kehdinga George Fomunyam
Senior Research Fellow, School of Education, Durban University of Technology, Kwazulu-Natal, South Africa

Details

Presentation Type

Paper Presentation in a Themed Session

Theme

Educational Studies

KEYWORDS

Sociology, Higher education, Re-engineering, Decolonisation, Society, Transformation