Launch of a New Educational Research Association, SAERA

The launch conference was the culmination of a series of discussions among members of various existing associations, including Nadeosa, that began late in 2009 in Stellenbosch. The intention behind the formation of a new association was to seek to provide an inclusive, cohesive and responsive educational academic research organisational infrastructure for the promotion and development of education research in South Africa.

According to the draft constitution accepted as an “interim constitution” by well over 100 delegates from various institutions, associations and interested stakeholders during a formal SAERA establishment session on 29th January, SAERA is “committed to the advancement of research in all fields of Education in South Africa”.

The broad goals outlined in the interim constitution are as follows:

• To advance research in all fields of education [and training] in South Africa.
• To liaise with the World Education Research Association (WERA) and its constituent associations, with the aim to promote research in all fields of education globally.
• To subscribe to the goals and aims of WERA.

It was felt that the new association would provide a space for inclusive development of research capacity and impact across disciplinary boundaries.

Prof Shireen Motala from the University of Johannesburg was elected as the first President of the new association, leading its development to its next conference and AGM planned for June 2014.

In an unusual, but impressive early achievement, the first volume of peer-reviewed conference proceedings was launched at the formal dinner function on the 2nd day of the conference:

Gouws, F. E. & Wolhuter, C. C. 2013. SAERA 2013 Conference Proceedings: Educational Research in South Africa: Practices and Perspectives . Cape Town: OUP.

The choice of the theme for the launching conference was to open dialogue towards the development of a new identity for academic research in South Africa, one that would “work across ossified intellectual boundaries, enabling us to break out of our old epistemological boxes, establishing responsive and vigorous epistemic communities, and providing us with the vehicle to distill interactive and vigorous intellectual and research conversations” (SAERA 2013 programme: A word from the SAERA steering committee).

In the spirit of the intent of the conference, keynote speakers were specifically chosen to help delegates to begin to move beyond the boundaries of their entrenched thinking and practice.

Prof Bob Lingard from the University of Queensland made a plea for a focus on the educative potential of educational research; the need to learn and adapt rather than to adopt the practice of others and the need to stimulate the development and sharing of the critical knowledge of the global South.

Prof Joel Samoff from Stanford University in the USA explored some of the unasked questions that remain unanswered in much educational research and made a plea for greater attention to the formation of questions and the design of research practices, within critical communities of practice.

Prof R Govinda from the National University of Education Planning and Administration in India explored exclusion and inequality in school education in India from a rights-based perspective, identifying the need for, and some of the barriers to the provision of quality education for all, in an address that had strong resonances for the South African context.

In the final plenary session of the conference, there was a panel discussion on the theme of Curriculum, Knowledge and the South African Educational Moment . This was a huge topic to consider and despite the fact that the discussion continued into the lunch break, it was agreed that it had been possible only to scratch the surface of the issues and that the conversation would need to continue within the association. The panellists were Prof Johan Muller and Prof Craig Soudien from UCT and Prof Catherine Odora-Hoppers from Unisa. In their theoretically dense mini presentations, the three speakers explored the rise of the scientific method as the dominant discourse since the 17th century and the ways in which scientism has stifled any other ways of knowing. Odora-Hoppers called for the transformation of the academy to undo the ‘epistemic violence' of, and to make ‘epistemic atonement' for, the silencing of the voice of the ‘other'. Soudien raised the possibility of transactionalism, building from the work of John Dewey and his followers, in which the acknowledgement that ‘there are things I do not know or understand' is an essential component in an iterative, context-specific and time-bound meaning-making process in conversation with others.

In one of the parallel sessions, Tony Mays presented a paper entitled: Open Educational Resources (OER): do they make a difference and how do/will we know? The full paper is included in the published conference proceedings and explores some of the work that has been done with regard to, and calls for further collaboration in, research into the use and reuse of OER.

Overall, the conference was very stimulating and it is felt that the new association, SAERA, could play a meaningful role in reinvigorating the research community in South Africa, and in collaboration with similar associations in other countries, contribute to raising the profile and quality of the theoretical and research discourse of the global South.