Student success is UCT’s success

The success of the University of Cape Town (UCT), its academics and its good name is inextricably linked to the success of its students. This was the message from UCT Vice-Chancellor Professor Mamokgethi Phakeng to the latest cohort of the New Academic Practitioners’ Programme (NAPP).

Speaking at the NAPP residential workshop held at the Mont Fleur Conference Venue in Stellenbosch from 29 to 31 January, Phakeng urged the recruits to challenge themselves when measuring success in teaching.

“We need to understand that the measure of our success as academics is not how much we know, but how much we help our students to learn,” she said. “It’s to our benefit as an institution to be [one] that succeeds in helping our students learn.”

NAPP is an induction programme for the professional development of new academics at UCT. It is based at the Centre for Higher Education Development (CHED) and is run by NAPP convenor Dr Kasturi Behari-Leak, administrator Avrill Dawson, coordinator for curriculum and course design Associate Professor Jeff Jawitz and CHED interim dean Associate Professor Alan Cliff.

The academics who join NAPP have fewer than five years’ experience in higher education and are supported with the resources and practices necessary for their development as educators, researchers and members of the UCT community.

Transformative teaching

Phakeng, who spoke to the NAPP cohort on the last day of the workshop, said measuring teaching success based on students’ success is a significant departure from the “point of pride” still present in many departments across universities.

Often, it is natural for academics to boast about high failure rates in their courses. And unlike high school teachers who are criticised for, say, poor matric results, there is a lack of accountability from academics who do not prioritise students’ success.

“We are not ashamed when [students] fail in our hands. We don’t blame ourselves,” said the VC.

This despite the negative impact failure rates have on, among other things, the university’s reputation, its finances and its contribution to society.

“We should, therefore, accept the challenge to make our students succeed,” urged Phakeng.

Stepping up to this challenge involves viewing teaching as transformative.

“As academics, we have to realise that our work is about changing people.”

Phakeng said that while education was, in and of itself, transformative and that students would undoubtedly be changed by their experiences at university, this change was too often a traumatic one, particularly for first-generation students, students of colour and students from disadvantaged backgrounds.

“Increasingly, many of our students are the first in their families to go to university. While they may have excellent results and great potential to succeed, they are often less than optimally prepared for higher education,” Phakeng said.

“As academics, we have to realise that our work is about changing people.”

These students enter university without guidance from graduates in the family, with no cultural capital, poor language fluency, a lack of study skills and shaky academic self-esteem.

Traditional teaching often ignores students’ socio-economic backgrounds, so Phakeng urged the NAPP cohort to accept that “access and success are inextricably linked to privilege”.

“This is where the calls for decolonising the curriculum can make a real, positive difference in our disciplines and leadership as teachers,” she said. “So, the calls for decolonisation are also about recognising these differences in class.”

Lifelong learners

A further measure of success in teaching, said Phakeng, is that the teacher joins their students on the journey of transformation and lifelong learning. One way to ensure this is for teachers to create a context that “communicates a profound respect for the otherness of our students”.

“They need to know that we respect and honour who they are, even as we invite them to embrace the transformation that education brings,” said Phakeng.

Another way academic staff can do this is to allow themselves to be transformed too so that students know they are on the journey together.

“I’m saying education is a process of change, of transformation – not only of the self, but of the context as well. [And] we are part of the context.”