We acknowledge that our current schooling system does not adequately prepare students for higher education. However, as ex-scholars and university undergraduates, we question that it ever did. What is true, however, and what may not be appreciated enough, is that every student comes to higher education with an existing repertoire of ways of knowing, doing and being. Many have had to teach themselves to get here, especially those from schools with poor facilities, few resources, large classes and under- and unqualified teachers. It is true that if the students’ repertoires of learning do not conform to the ways of knowing we expect or value in higher education, it is possible (even likely) that we overlook them completely. Importantly, these many and varied repertoires are not irrelevant to academic study; we have both been privy to how schooling frustrates learning and to the anxieties of teaching in secondary and tertiary contexts. Recognising the flaws, failings, and features of our educational system and society (Nodada (2023), it would not be easy to justify doing so. However, it is perhaps more important to appreciate how the challenges of schooling and life have shaped the learning, expectations, and values that students bring into university. It may very well be the case that many or most school leavers are wholly unprepared for university education in its current form, but this is not because they do not have the knowledge, skills or attributes needed to become so. Students and staff experience the multilayered challenges facing higher education, including increased class sizes, pressure to achieve high success rates, and the push to ensure students graduate in minimum time. All of this places an inordinate burden on students and university staff. The workload – both mental and academic – is enormous. Conversations with new students and research on students’ access into and through higher education highlight the nuanced and often sophisticated knowledge, skills, attributes and ways of learning that students have been exposed to, whether in formal educational contexts or as part of their socialisation in their communities and homes before coming to university. Research conducted with second-year students in three South African Universities as part of the South African Rurality in Higher Education (SARiHE) Project supports this. (You can visit their website for more information on this project, which UJ is part of: https://www. bristol.ac.uk/research/impact/social-scienceslaw/soe/impact-story-timmis-helpingstudents-from-rural-sa/). Students, who were co-researchers on the project, collected data and shared their experiences of learning in different contexts both formal and informal. The narratives shared shed light on the sophisticated knowledge and ways of knowing that students have developed before university study and their expressed desire for this to be recognised in higher education. The study suggests that good teaching and learning in higher education should begin with lecturers understanding who their students are and what they bring into higher education, and using that to develop their curricula and pedagogies (Timmis et al., 2022). Perhaps counterintuitively, in our experience (and for the moment, this is anecdotal), there are enough stories about students who were unsuccessful at school and did well at university. Perhaps it is because they had to teach themselves, or maybe they were so bored with schooling that it did not pay them to engage, so they disengaged. It is central to any teaching and learning endeavour to value the fullness of an ecology of knowledge and fundamentally to accept that no single knowledge is ‘complete’, including our own. To an extent, all knowledge is incomplete, and a variety of knowledge and ways of coming to know must be considered to ensure an inclusive and socially just curriculum and related pedagogies (Mbembe, 2016). If we immerse ourselves in the students’ strengths, acknowledge the actual value of the attributes they bring with them, and let go of the cynicism that can become the hallmark of a disaffected academe, we stand to gain as we lose some of the negativity surrounding ‘Gen Z’. The attributes (Mulaidi, 2020) point out are potent attributes to build the basis for a critical and engaged student body. We take it as given that students’ prior cultural and educational experiences profoundly influence their higher education experience and journey. However, we should not lapse into the view that privileges those literacies acquired in more formal, perhaps even more economically advantaged, settings over those acquired informally in the home, on the playground, or as part of protest and survival. No meaningful educational strategy can ignore the socio-cultural practices central to students’ lives and to do so would exclude students from the curriculum and from acquiring new ways of learning. Conversations with new students and research on students’ access into and through higher education highlight the nuanced and often sophisticated knowledge, skills, attributes and ways of learning that students have been exposed to, whether in formal educational contexts or as part of their socialisation in their communities and homes before coming to university. Teaching Innovation for the 21st Century | Showcasing UJ Teaching Innovation Projects 2024 79
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