Stellenbosch University
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Teaching and Learning Seminar: Can excellence 'turn'? Rethinking teaching excellence awards for the public go
Start: 06/08/2020, 13:00
End: 06/08/2020, 14:00
Contact:Anthea Jacobs - 021 808 9258
Location: MS Teams

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Learning and Teaching Enhancement Seminar: 06 August 2020
 

You are invited to the next quarterly Learning and Teaching Seminar under the auspices of the Vice-Rector (L&T), Prof Arnold Schoonwinkel, and the Learning and Teaching Enhancement Division.

Topic
Can excellence 'turn'? Rethinking teaching excellence awards for the public good

Presenter
Dr Karin Cattell-Holden

Short biography
Karin Cattell-Holden is a senior advisor at the Centre for Teaching and Learning and manages the institutional Teaching Excellence Awards. She lectured in Afrikaans literature and Literary Studies at Wits University, Vista University and the University of Johannesburg. She completed a PhD in Afrikaans literature and philosophy at Wits University in 2008. Her research currently focuses on complexity theory as a lens on higher education, in particular the acknowledgment of excellent teaching.

Blurb
The extensive literature on excellence in higher education describes it as a multifaceted concept with contested and shifting meanings. Despite the original conceptualisation of higher education as a benefit to society, excellence and teaching excellence have acquired interpretations of individualism, performativity and competition in the present neoliberal approach to higher education. Teaching excellence awards highlight these interpretations, relegating values linked to social justice – equality, equity, social responsibility, etc. – to a position of secondary importance. Teaching excellence awards therefore contribute to the neoliberal prioritising of the individual (private) good at higher education institutions rather than the social (public) good.

In this seminar Dr Cattell-Holden will discuss the individualist focus of the teaching excellence awards at Stellenbosch University (SU) and propose a re-contextualised approach to the awards in response to the call for social justice in South Africa. She will argue that conceptualising excellent teaching in post-colonial South Africa should be linked to excellent learning and should emphasise the ideological and unequal contexts in which teaching and learning take place. Excellent teaching / learning should include a twofold collaboration between 1) academics and students to advance the relationship between teaching, learning and society, and 2) university management, academics and society regarding the social responsibility to deliver graduates who can function effectively in a democratic society. Shifting the individualist focus of excellent teaching to collaboration would not only enhance the value of the teaching excellence awards but also contribute to reclaiming teaching at SU as a public good.

Time: 13:00-14:00 on 06 August 2020 on MS Teams
Enquiries: Anthea H M Jacobs (jacobsa@sun.ac.za)
RSVP by 04 August 2020
Click here to register:
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