CHAPTER 1
ORIENTATION TO THE STUDY
INTRODUCTION
This study emanates from my personal involvement in and drives towards excellent teaching at the University of South Africa (Unisa). My academic career at Unisa began in 1985 when I was appointed as staff member in an academic department. My brief was to teach, do research and serve the community. I am still employed by the University, but in a different capacity than the initial one, namely that of learning developer in the Institute for Curriculum and Learning Development (ICLD). It is the aim of this Institute to serve the lecturing staff of Unisa on a wide front of matters related to teaching and learning development. During my lecturing career of close to eighteen years (1985 to 2002) I had an intense interest in the teaching aspect of academia and attempted through continuous self-development of pedagogic skills, education qualifications and teaching competencies to enhance my lecturing endeavours. Because pedagogic training and skills are not prerequisites for a teaching position at this institution, it was therefore not always easy to convince colleagues of the value of furthering one’s professional skills as a teacher in a context where the emphasis was mostly on discipline-related research. This could lead to possible tension between tuition and research1.
Unisa is an open and distance education institution of higher learning and its history goes back to the late nineteenth century when it started out as an examining body. Unisa has evolved over the last century and a half from an examining body to a mainly correspondence type distance teaching institution to what it is today (2006), namely a dedicated comprehensive open and distance learning institution. Unisa’s comprehensiveness refers to the fact that it merged with two other distance learning institutions during 2004. The merger was an attempt by the national government to streamline the higher education landscape in South Africa. Consequently the University of South Africa (Unisa), the Technikon South Africa (TSA) and the distance teaching component of the Vista University (VUDEC) merged to form one comprehensive institution. The merged institution is currently known as the University of South Africa,
1 The tension between research and tuition surfaced during the interviews held with academics who submitted their work for the Excellence in Tuition Awards during 2005. This is therefore an important contextual reality to be kept in mind throughout the study.
and is often referred to as the “new Unisa”. The University therefore currently offers a wide variety of professional, practice-related, academic and general formative programmes to a student number that exceeds two hundred thousand. Open and distance learning at this institution implies a specialised teaching approach and philosophy and it is therefore of paramount importance that teaching excellence becomes part of the fibre of the “new Unisa”.
The idea of awarding excellent tuition may have been in the minds of like-minded teachers but it was never formally proposed until in 2001, when two members of the Tuition Committee of the former Faculty of Theology and Religion raised the issue and pursued it. The rationale behind the initiative was to reward high quality teaching in the same way as excellent research outputs are rewarded. Unisa has an elaborate system of peer review for research outputs and Unisa researchers are rewarded annually with either the Principal’s Award or the Chancellor’s Award. The idea of awarding excellence in tuition therefore had its precedent in the existing research awards.
RATIONALE FOR THE STUDY
Since the merger in 2004, mentioned above, Unisa has undergone major structural changes. Faculties, with their respective academic departments have been reconceptualised and reorganised into Schools. A number of Schools constitute a College. For instance, the former Faculty of Theology and Religion, where the idea of a teaching award originated in 2001, became the School of Theology and Religion, situated in the College of Human Sciences. This background is important for this study since reference will be made to the way in which the Awards process was conceptualised during 2004, which on its part forms the backdrop to the investigation into the 2005 Awards process.
After the initial idea of an excellence in tuition award was tabled, a lengthy process ensued at a variety of managerial levels to formalise this idea. The concept was approved in 2003 by the Senate Tuition Committee and the Unisa Excellence in Tuition Awards was implemented for the first time during 2004. The Senate Tuition Committee is a standing committee of the Senate of the University and deals with matters of tuition on managerial level. The Committee is chaired by the Vice-Principal: Tuition and consists of heads of administrative and support departments that deal directly with affairs
related to teaching and students, as well as representatives from the Colleges – who often chair Tuition Committees in their respective Schools and Colleges2.
The Senate Tuition Committee delegated the responsibility of organising the Awards on School and College levels to a task team. This task team consisted of members of the Senate Tuition Committee who represented their Colleges, as well as three staff members of the Institute for Curriculum and Learning Development (ICLD). Considering my interest in teaching matters, as well as being a member of the ICLD, I was elected as member of this initial task team of the Senate Tuition Committee with the brief of putting the Excellence in Tuition Awards initiative into practice.
