Research

Much of the research in this faculty is cross-disciplinary. Various departments often work together and such research is located in projects in the Centre for Education Practice Research (CEPR). Other projects are located within departments. The main funded projects focus on aspects of education and educational support in schools and school communities. Current funded projects are the following, with links to project or programme leaders:

Research Projects

• Department of Higher Education and Training invited the Faculty to conduct research into the development of Teaching Schools.
• Gauteng Department of Education (GDE) Research Projects include: E-Content with the GDE E-Learning Framework (Duan van der Westhuizen and Geoff Lautenbach as prinicpal researchers and Alan Amory as project leader), Science education (Josef de Beer and Umesh Ramnarain) in the GET and FET bands, novice teachers and their preparation for the profession (Sarah Gravett)
• University Research Committee (URC): an investigation of socio-drama as therapy (Elzette Fritz); and service learning in the university curriculum (Nadine Petersen)
• UNSECO/ Unitwin Chair: Researching Values Education in an International Consortium (Nazreen Dasoo)
• UJ Institute for Childhood Education: longitudinal research on children’s cognitive development (Max Bergman) , language development, and “the grade R experience” (Elizabeth Henning). The organisational structure of these research programmes can be accessed here.
• The Department of Educational Management is currently involved with three research projects. One of them seeks to find out what the relationship is between learner performance and financial resourcing in various schools classified as being poorly-resoruces. The second project investigates whether the so-called “standardization” (or “equating” procedures) of examination marks, inherent in the Senior Certificate (Matric) Examination, can be regarded as fair, objective and politically legitimate. This is a GDE funded project. The third project is directly linked to the national roll-out of the Advanced Certificate in Education (ACE – School Management and Leadership) and investigates the feasibility and the impact of the new qualification on school leaders, behavioural change and school effectiveness. The project leader is Coert Loock.
• Teachers’ curriculum literacy is investigated by Maropeng Modiba in an NRF-funded research project.
• The Centre for Educational Rights and Transfor​mation (CERT) houses a number of research projects on human rights in education.

Planned research on literacy education in the UJ Institute for Childhood Education is discussed in an article entitled ” Education Partnerships: Initial Reading, Instruction and Research” in “Focus” (56), which is a Helen Suzman Foundation’s publication.