Contextualised Critical Reflections on Academic Development Practices: Towards Professional Learning book soon to be launched
Contextualised Critical Reflections on Academic Development Practices: Towards Professional Learning book soon to be launched
by Qhawekazi Memani – 04 May 2021
African Sun Media in Stellenbosch as publishers will virtually launch the book, “Contextualised Critical Reflections on Academic Development Practices: Towards Professional Learning” on 24 May 2021.
The book features former and current academic developers of the Vaal University of Technology’s (VUT) Centre for Academic Development (CAD) department.
Each academic developer has contributed their knowledge to the book, which is reflected in the form of themes, e.g.
- Theme 1: Teaching and Technology Support
- Theme 2: Student Support
- Theme 3: Academic Development: Prospects and possible future trajectories.
“The book project emanates from concerns with the general impression that VUT, like other Universities of Technology (UoT’s) in South Africa, treated and continues to treat its challenges as defects in an otherwise well-functioning system,” says Dr Teboho Pitso; VUT Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship and the Editor of this book.
He further states that this defect-driven problem-solving is a corrective approach, designed to improve an existing system. UoTs in South Africa were designed to provide technical skills to the intermediate level of the economy under the industrial age. The advent of the knowledge economy with its productive complexity feature, noted for seeking innovative solutions demands that these solutions be derived from multiplicity of perspectives because problems are multi-dimensional which means that UoTs as custodians of technical knowledge rather than epistemic knowledge, need to fundamentally change their essence and nature.
The focus on technical knowledge means that UoTs have to be key drivers of innovation in the world and need to be reflected in their teaching and research, driving critical thinking, creativity and innovation the outcome of which is entrepreneurship.
“It is therefore axiomatic that the fundamental challenges of UoTs are structural and must be seen as a feature of these institutions rather than defects in a system. A new system is needed though. I suggest that such a system ought to take the form of an entrepreneurial university. This book is an important effort to nudge VUT to that direction,” says Dr. Teboho Pitso.
The book will be available on (ITSI), amazon kindle, takealot.com as well as google books.