Author Archives: Gert van der Westhuizen

(Afrikaans) Emancipatory learning and educational research
Educational research plays a critical role in bringing about social change in South Africa. The knowledge contributions made by researchers not only shape what is accepted as the science of teaching, but also forms the basis of the education systems, policies and practices.
The recent calls for decolonisation can be accepted as symptomatic of the crisis of relevance and applicability of among others, knowledge in curricula and school education. This is not a technical crisis of low pass rates and the improvement of academic performance by educational authorities, but a crisis of collapse and reproduction of social inequalities still prevalent in society, reminding educators and researchers that schools are sites of struggle, as they have been considered in the past by community activists such as Neville Alexander.