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Raising the Impact of Education Research in Africa Published by AOSIS (Pty) Ltd, 15 Oxford Street, Durbanville 7550, Cape Town, South Africa Postnet Suite #110, Private Bag X19, Durbanville 7551, South Africa Tel: +27 21 975 2602 Fax: +27 21 975 4635 Email: [email protected] Website: https://www.aosis.co.za Copyright © Charl C. Wolhuter. Licensee: AOSIS (Pty) Ltd The moral right of the authors has been asserted. Cover: Designed by AOSIS. Created with the use of an image released under the Pixabay License which is free for commercial use and no attribution is required. The image is https://pixabay.com/en/drop-splash-drip-water-liquid-wet-3698073/. Published in 2018 Impression: 1 ISBN: 978-1-928396-78-9 (print) ISBN: 978-1-928396-79-6 (epub) ISBN: 978-1-928396-80-2 (pdf) DOI: https://doi.org/10.4102/aosis.2018.BK53 How to cite this work: Wolhuter, C.C. (ed.), 2018, Raising the Impact of Education Research in Africa, pp. i–412, AOSIS, Cape Town. Printed and bound in South Africa. Listed in OAPEN (http://www.oapen.org), DOAB (http://www.doabooks.org/) and indexed by Google Scholar. Some rights reserved. This is an open access publication. Except where otherwise noted, this work is distributed under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0), a copy of which is available at https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/. Enquiries outside the terms of the Creative Commons licence should be sent to the Rights Department, AOSIS, at the above address or to [email protected] The publisher accepts no responsibility for any statement made or opinion expressed in this publication. Consequently, the publishers and copyright holder will not be liable for any loss or damage sustained by any reader as a result of his or her action upon any statement or opinion in this work. Links by third-party websites are provided by AOSIS in good faith and for information only. AOSIS disclaims any responsibility for the materials contained in any third-party website referenced in this work. Every effort has been made to protect the interest of copyright holders. Should any infringement have occurred inadvertently, the publisher apologises and undertakes to amend the omission in the event of a reprint. Raising the Impact of Education Research in Africa EDITOR Charl C. Wolhuter Social Sciences, Humanities, Education & Business Management editorial board at AOSIS Chief Editor Andries van Aarde, Post Retirement Professor in the Dean’s Office, Faculty of Theology, University of Pretoria, South Africa Board Members Jan Botha, Professor in the Centre for Research on Evaluation, Science and Technology, University of Stellenbosch, South Africa Joan Hambidge, Deputy Dean at the Faculty of Humanities for the University of Cape Town & Professor for the School of Languages and Literatures, South Africa Sakari Häkkinen, Dean of the Diocese of Kuopio, Finland Glenna Jackson, Associate Editor, Professor Chair, Department of Religion and Philosophy, Otterbein University, Westerville, OH, United States Gregory C. Jenkins, Dean-elect, St George’s College, Jerusalem, Israel Reina-Marie Loader, Director and Filmmaker, CinémaHumain, Vienna, Austria Babita Marthur-Helm, Senior Lecturer, Organisational Transformation & Development; Managing Diversity Gender Empowerment, University of Stellenbosch Business School, Stellenbosch, South Africa Christopher Mbazira, Professor of Law & Coordinator of the Public Interest Law Clinic, Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda Piet Naudé, Professor, Ethics related to politics, economics and business & Director, University of Stellenbosch Business School, Stellenbosch, South Africa Charles Neill, Professor, Department of Business Administration, The British University in Egypt, El Sherouk, Cairo Governorate, Egypt Cornelia Pop, Full professor at the Department of Business, Faculty of Business, Babes- Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania Michael Schratz, Professor, Institut für LehrerInnenbildung und Schulforschung, Dekan der School of Education, Leopold-Franzens-Universität Innsbruck, Austria Johann Tempelhoff, Professor, Research Niche for Cultural Dynamics of Water (CuDyWat), School of Basic Sciences, Vaal Triangle Campus of North-West University, Vanderbijlpark, South Africa Anthony Turton, Professor Centre for Environmental Management & Director TouchStone Resources, University of Free State, South Africa Willie L. van der Merwe, Professor & Chair, Philosophy of Religion, Apologetics and Encyclopaedia of theology & Professor Extraordinary, Stellenbosch University, South Africa, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, the Netherlands Christi van der Westhuizen, Associate Professor, Department of Sociology, Faculty of Humanities, University of Pretoria, South Africa Joke van Saane, Professor, Amsterdam Center for the Study of Lived Religion, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, the Netherlands Paul van Tongeren, Professor, Department of Philosophy, Radboud University, Nijmegen, the Netherlands Robert G. Varady, Deputy Director and Research Professor of Environmental Policy, Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy, The University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ Anné H. Verhoef, Associate Editor, Professor, Faculty of Arts: School of Philosophy, North- West University, Potchefstroom, South Africa Xiao Yun Zheng, Professor & Assistant President of Yunnan Academy of Social Sciences (YASS) and Director International Center for Ecological Culture Studies (ICECS-YASS), Yunnan Academy of Social Sciences, Kunming City, China Peer Review Declaration The publisher (AOSIS) endorses the South African ‘National Scholarly Book Publishers Forum Best Practice for Peer Review of Scholarly Books’. The manuscript was subjected to rigorous two-step peer review prior to publication, with the identities of the reviewers not revealed to the author(s). The reviewers were independent of the publisher and/or authors in question. The reviewers commented positively on the scholarly merits of the manuscript and recommended that the manuscript be published. Where the reviewers recommended revision and/or improvements to the manuscript, the authors responded adequately to such recommendations. Research Justification The low demonstrable effect of education research done in South Africa in particular, and Africa in general, persists to be a problem in scientific records in the educational sciences. This scholarly collected work addresses this obstacle and focuses on recommendations from scholars in different sectorial categories in the field of education. Scholars from a variety of sub-fields within the educational sciences reflect on this particular matter, revisiting the history of research and research outcomes and offering informed recommendations based on in-depth investigation and analyses of aspects of the various discourses within the relevant sub-fields. The scope of the content of this collected work canters on the issue of the lack of scientific record concerning the scientific raising of the impact of education research. The book aims at making a specific contribution to the educational sciences by stimulating scholarly discussion as to how to increase the recording of the significance of educational research done in Africa, and in South Africa in particular, and to re-direct the research agenda into the direction of making more impact. Impact is conceptualised to mean both scholarly impact (that is being cited and being used as foundation for theory building and for further research) and practical impact (that is improvement of practice, of teaching and learning in education institutions at all levels). The target audience of this book is academic specialists and researchers in all fields of education in Sub-Saharan Africa. The chapters constitute original research, not published elsewhere. The chapters were put through iThenticate. The contents of this document reflect the views of the author, who is responsible for the facts and accuracy of the information. The contents do not reflect the views of the National Research Foundation or North-West University. Charl C. Wolhuter, Professor, Comparative Education, North-West University, South Africa. Contents Abbreviations, Figures and Tables Appearing in the Text and Notes xvii List of Abbreviations xvii List of Figures xx List of Tables xxii Notes on Contributors xxiv THEME 1: Education Scholarship Chapter 1: The Imperative for Raising the Impact of Education Scholarship in South Africa and Africa 3 Charl C. Wolhuter Introduction 3 Conceptual Clarification: What Does ‘Impact’ Refer to in the Sense of ‘Impact of Research’? 5 The Imperative for Impact-Making Scholarship, in Education in Particular 8 Scholarly Impact 12 The Scholarly Impact Factor of South Africa’s Education Scholars 14 The Practical Impact of Education Research in South Africa 16 Conclusion 18 Summary 19 Chapter 2: Leading the Way to Impact-Making Research: The Role of Comparative International Perspectives in Research on Leadership in Education in South Africa 21 Charl C. Wolhuter Introduction 22 Leadership as Latent Factor in Enhancing Quality of Education in South Africa 23 vii Contents School Leadership: Conceptual Clarification 24 South African Educational and Societal Context 28 Education System Context 28 South African Societal Context 29 Geography 29 Demography 29 Economy 30 Social System 30 Politics 31 Religion, Life and Worldview 31 Comparative and International Education 32 What is Comparative and International Education? 32 Significance of Comparative Education 33