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Pedagogy and underprepared staff: the challenge of academia

Presenter

I am a senior lecturer in an engineering department at CPUT, where I teach mathematics to under prepared students. My teaching informs my research interests. My research focus has been on teaching on extended programmes, diagnostic testing and placement and, recently, staff development in the context of transformation. I am also in the process of developing a mathematics tutoring and resources centre.

Abstract

It is widely known in the South African tertiary context that a significant percentage of new cohorts fail in the first year. This is often attributed to the nature of the secondary schooling system which, it is claimed, fails to prepare the students adequately for the demands of tertiary studies. There is the additional fact that still more of these students carry conceptual gaps through their schooling years and find it increasingly difficult to cope with the demands of the next level of schooling. Students such as these are considered “underprepared”. Yet, in spite of these known facts, many of these students still meet the minimum requirements for tertiary studies in their exit examinations and, in the interest of widening access to higher education, are admitted to tertiary institutions. As a result, these institutions are challenged to deal with the academic problems the incoming cohort present without dropping the standards of their programmes. 

Consequently, the staff has to adjust to these students without lowering their standards or changing the outcomes.  In this presentation we look at the academic and technical support staff of a department and the role that they play in providing support to underprepared students. Much has been said about the need to shift the mindset of academic staff to adapt to the challenges which an increase in access to higher learning has brought. This study indicates how those challenges are perceived by staff and how some of their suggested solutions are indicative of a mindset which struggles to adapt to change. Staff engagement with the challenges were conducted via workshops and a questionnaire. 

The study is based on the concept of a community of practice (of engineering education) as introduced by Wenger and Lave in an attempt to show common cause between students and staff in order to enhance positive outcomes. (see Lave, J. (1991). Situating learning in communities of practice. Perspectives on socially shared cognition, 2, 63-82..)