Quartet nets super teacher awards

This year UCT's highest honour for teaching, the Distinguished Teacher Award, has gone to Professor Jane Bennett of the African Gender Institute, Francis Carter of the School of Architecture, Planning and Geomatics, Dr Jenni Case in education and development at the Department of Chemical Engineering, and Dr Ivan Joubert of the Department of Anaesthesia.

Each shared some of their challenges and successes.

Bennett, who has 27 years' experience, teaches undergraduate and postgraduate programmes in the African Gender Institute.

Students remain the most rewarding aspect of her teaching career.

"It's who they are; how they think, reflect, imagine, and what their expertise brings into the seminar and lecture spaces."

The most challenging aspect?

"UCT's pedagogic norms, especially at undergraduate level. Fifty minute lectures, which are functionally 40 minutes long, in sloped lecture theatres, where students are in ranked rows, and always on their way 'somewhere else'. This is an utterly archaic approach to strong pedagogic planning. It drives me nuts!"

"So the teaching strategies require both clear structures and flexibility."

The challenges, Carter believes centre on transformation, both in terms of professional knowledge and representivity.

"Our regulatory discourse - even the syllabus - tends to suppress the links between design and implementation, and there must surely be a better way of bridging this gap in the curriculum.

"We've been working hard on an access and success project - targeted recruitment, financial aid, and academic support - but until we hit a 50% intake of black South African students we're not out of the starting blocks."