Professor Saloshna Vandeyar
Professor Saloshna Vandeyar is a professor of diversity in education in the faculty of education at the University of Pretoria, where she obtained a PhD in the history of education.
Vandeyar is a NRF C2 rated scientist and the winner of four international research awards, from the Venus International Foundation (2015), the Comparative and International Education Society (CIES) (2012), the American Educational Research Association (AERA) (2011), and an International BMW Award in Intercultural Education (2006). Vandeyar has won three national research awards, namely the National Science and Technology Forum (NSTF) Senior Black Researcher Award (2007), the Higher Education South Africa’s Higher Education Leadership and Management Fellowship (2013), and the Education Association of South Africa (EASA) Research Medal (2011). She was a finalist for the NSTF Lifetime Award (2014), and the Shoprite Checkers Woman of the Year Award (2006).
She has also won five institutional research awards from UP — the Laureate Award for Educational Innovation (2012), the Exceptional Young Researcher Award (2009), the Dean’s Award for International Scholarship (2013), the Gold Medal for Research, Excellence and Achievement (2009) and Research Perseverance (2002), two community awards for research, and two merit awards for teacher professionalism and teaching excellence.
Her areas of specialisation encompass identities, race, social, cultural and cognitive justice education, diversity education, teacher professionalism, and immigrant studies, which directly relate to national and global socioeconomic challenges of social cohesion. Vandeyar is a member of AERA, CIES and EASA, and serves on a number of editorial boards for publications such as Early Childhood Development and Care (UK), Learning for Democracy (USA), Perspectives in Education (SA), as well as editing a special issue of Power and Education (UK). Nine of her presentations have been published in conference proceedings. She has extensive international networks and is responsible for establishing the memorandum of understanding between UP and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
Vandeyar is the primary researcher of several funded projects, for example on good practice in culture-rich classrooms, immigrant identities and capacity building for the management of learner pregnancy in schools. Her supervision spans eight completed and three current PhDs, eight completed and six current MEds and over 300 BEd honours research reports. She has established a strong multidisciplinary research group and is currently working to establish the Centre for Diversity in Education at UP.