The “bland and meaningless” National Plan on Higher Education underestimated what it would take to build a strong institutional research culture in South African universities and technikons, according to Jonathan Jansen, dean of education at the University of Pretoria.
Jansen says that to build a strong research culture, expertise in each institution is necessary, good libraries for research are essential and good leadership at the institutions for research should be a priority.
“Faculties of education in South Africa are very thin on the ground when it comes to staff with strong and recognised research expertise,” he adds.
Writing in the University of the Witwatersrand education policy unit’s quarterly review, Jansen said faculties of education remain marked by their historic teaching missions rather than research missions.
“And frankly, if you do not have at least a critical mass of acknowledged research experts in a faculty of education, you will not and cannot build a strong research culture.”
In historically black universities, Jansen said, the libraries hardly exist, the periodical holdings are poorly managed, the time taken to get a good book or journal is ridiculously long, and rates of theft and damage are very high.
“The library, in many places, has become a hangout for students rather than a serious place in which scholarship can be fostered and productivity enhanced.”
Jansen claims that libraries have become neglected, even in historically white universities, especially those holding the education colleges.
“With the possible exception of Unisa, there is no library in which you can readily find or receive the latest education journals or books on education research and theory without some level of frustration,” he added.
But the most serious problem that was underestimated in the national strategies for building institutional research cultures was the importance of research leadership in faculties of education.
“To be sure, there are some outstanding individuals whose research activity and output as individuals are admirable. But there is a very big difference between individual research excellence and institutional research leadership: the former category of person can neither lead nor inspire institutional change within or beyond a faculty of education,” Jansen said.
Research leadership, according to Jansen, requires at least three qualities.
Firstly, the capacity to mobilise resources within and outside of an institution in support of the research ambitions for the faculty. Secondly, the ability to model performance by generating the quality and the levels of research outputs that young academics would wish to emulate. Thirdly, the flexibility to create spaces within the traditional university work schedule so that those young academics can flourish as researchers.
Money, Jansen said, is not the primary factor in building strong institutional research cultures. At two historically advantaged institutions the per capita research output for the faculties of education is less than that for two corresponding historically disadvantaged institutions last year.
“Unless we recognise and apply the hard lessons learned from recent experience, we are unlikely to make much progress in building world-class faculties of education which have something to say to the developmental challenges of the Third World – and beyond,” he added.
– The Teacher/M&G Media, Johannesburg, August 2001.