Chapter Nine

Navigating Our Induction Journey at Nelson Mandela University: Rowing Downstream Alongside Others

Anne-Mart Olsen, Champ Champion-Ntamo and Kasturi Behari-Leak

Introduction

This case study shares two academic developers’ process of interrogating, reconceptualising and expanding an academic induction programme at a multicampus, comprehensive university, through our engagement with the New Academics Transitioning into Higher Education Project (NATHEP). We use social realism as an analytical tool in sharing our journey, using the concepts of culture, structure, and agency to critique and reflect on the enhancement of our programme. We adopted conceptual metaphor theory (Li, Li & Zhang, 2017, p.489) to visualise our data and “to analyse and comprehend information efficiently by mapping relationships between visual stimuli and semantic meanings metaphorically” as illustrated by the river of life metaphor in Figure 49.

The river of life metaphor demonstrates our journey from the placid safety behind the dam wall, to navigating rapids and swimming upstream while continuously growing the induction programme toward a tributary with the hope that it continues its journey into the broader higher education (HE) context. The data represented by the metaphor includes the institutional context, the induction programme offerings (2013 to 2021), our own reflections on the programme’s various iterations, associated feedback, and the reflections of the induction team, in addition we include our professional growth and development journey. We illustrate how the CRiTicAL Framework for the NATHEP curriculum (Behari-Leak, Ganas, Chitanand, Sabata & Toni, 2020) was applied to enable critical reflection on our context, assumptions, and practices. The study also shares the experiences gained from the COVID-19 pandemic before we conclude by highlighting implications of NATHEP on our own practice and the changes it brought to our induction programme.

Working across multiple islands: our institutional context

Nelson Mandela University (Mandela Uni) is a comprehensive, multicampus university, merged in response to the call to redress the inequitable legacies prevalent in the South African HE context post-1994. Nel (2007, p.2) states that “most merged, multicampus universities in South Africa comprise campuses that have historically not enjoyed quality equivalence in terms of the infrastructure, support services and facilities that have been available” and Mandela Uni is no different. In 2005, the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University (NMMU) was established by merging two historically white institutions of the University of Port Elizabeth (UPE), which had three campuses in Gqeberha (two were situated in Summerstrand and one in Central) and the Port Elizabeth Technikon (PET), which had campuses in George and Summerstrand, Gqeberha, and the Vista campus, a historically black university located on the periphery of the city, and known as Missionvale campus. Following the merger the Ocean Science campus in Summerstrand was added, resulting in four campuses being clustered in Summerstrand, one in Bird Street, Central, another in Missionvale (formerly known as Vista) and finally, our George campus. The distribution of our Gqeberha campuses is illustrated in Figure 50 and regular shuttles support travel between these campuses. Our George campus is approximately 400 kilometres away from our Summerstrand campuses and our seven faculties are distributed across our various campuses, with some faculties being spread over more than one campus.

Although the institution can be defined as “… the grouping of individual campuses under a common framework of governance” (Lee & Bowen, 1971, p.1), there have been indications of the presence of power imbalances in some processes, which needed to be recentred. One such example was the offering of the biannual academic induction programmes on the centralised Summerstrand North campus in Gqeberha, which necessitated that our George campus colleagues travel to Gqeberha to participate in this professional development opportunity (Nel & Neale- Shutte, 2018, p.28). The decision to host the induction programme on the North campus was two-fold: firstly, our unit is based on North campus, with dedicated resources and infrastructure allocated to teaching development initiatives, and secondly, it is more centrally located in relation to the Gqeberha campuses and the offices of key institutional agents that are included on the programme.

However, this perpetuated the remnants of a fragmented “us” and “them” discourse that remained after the merger. This is noted in the Higher Education Merger Study Group’s (HEMSG) report (2008) and the more recent vice-chancellor (VC) listening campaign (Nel & Neale-Shutte, 2018) indicating that the George campus remains isolated from the more centralised Gqeberha campuses. This became a pivotal consideration during the reconceptualisation of our induction programme.

Not always plain sailing: revisiting the academic induction programmes (2012-2019)

The academic induction, which was offered by the Centre for Teaching, Learning and Media (CTLM) was often conflated with the Human Resources Development’s (HRD) staff induction programme. We would often be asked to elucidate which offering was more important or relevant. The dominant discourse entrenched in that question was initially lost on us and instead of recognising it as a potential discourse, foregrounding how teaching and learning was valued at our institution, we dismissed it as an irritation. In retrospect the question highlighted the need to revisit the programme’s purpose to deliberately link it to teaching and learning. During 2012 we managed to negotiate a “stand-alone” induction programme that was not conflated with the HRD. Consequently, we had to generate a new name that resonated with an induction that was specific to teaching and learning.

Teaching and Learning @ NMMU: An Introduction

In November 2012 we revisited the induction programme and established the “Teaching and Learning @ NMMU: An Introduction” programme, implying that it was positioned as an introduction to other academic development (AD) programmes. The programme was full of back-to-back sessions in which academic developers and learning development colleagues were presenting or introducing their teaching and learning development initiatives (see Figure 51 opposite for an example of the programme).

The programme content included whatever information we thought would be needed by the newly appointed academics at the time they started teaching at NMMU. The aim of the introduction of the teaching development presentations was for the initial engagement on the programme to continue through articulation to other AD programmes. Academics were therefore required to sign a memorandum of agreement, committing to engage with future AD initiatives.

Although this approach seemed appropriate at the time, we found ourselves interrogating the structure and the perceived value, in terms of the relevance, authenticity, and legitimacy this approach lent to our programme. We also questioned whether it was necessary to place ourselves in this position of power, holding academics accountable in this manner. Although the programme was well received and supported by academic staff, the passive approach required participants to merely acclimatise to the context and to assimilate information, which often led to cognitive overload (Kirsh, 2000). When evaluating the programme, the feedback indicated that the two-day programme was content heavy, exhausting and overwhelming.

In response to the feedback, we developed a needs analysis (NA) questionnaire to identify key developmental areas that participants felt they needed to develop as HE teachers. The NA highlighted similar needs across all seven campuses, these focussed on aspects such as managing large classes, technology-enhanced learning, assessment practices and university resources that support the academic project. Based on the results obtained, the programme was extended from two to three days to include topics which were responsive to the challenges the participants identified in their own practice. However, we still included all the previous topics offered, as each presenter was adamant to “protect their territory”, which was possibly linked to the perception that specific fields, knowledges, or expertise were only valued if included. Additionally, our “non-academic status” as academic developers in an academic space was a challenge which perpetuated underlying power struggles. These struggles constrained our agency and each of us vied for the opportunity to “showcase” our meaningful contributions to the academic space to a “captive” audience. Consequently, the programme remained rather generic, content heavy and overwhelming, as we continued to “speak at” academics, punctuating our points with “death by PowerPoint”.

Additional reflection highlighted the need to formally articulate the programme purpose, which was to share services offered by the CTLM and other institutional structures. The target audience was expanded to all newly appointed academic staff, which included contract, full-time and part-time staff, and student teaching assistants. Although the programme remained voluntary it was well supported and newly appointed academics were referred by heads of departments (HODs), colleagues and HRD, which lent the programme some legitimacy, even though it remained as the introduction to another programme.

From 2013-2016, induction was expanded to include key agents from various teaching and learning structures, such as student wellness, the learning development unit, the examination office, and the disability unit. The dean and DVC Learning and Teaching (DVC:LT) were also invited to contribute to the programme. However, the inclusion of other departments and presenters without a brief was a constraint, as presenters would sometimes contradict what we espoused, effectively undermining the authenticity and legitimacy of the programme. Going forward, we mitigated this constraint by including a brief in our invitation to guide the presenter on the purpose of their contribution within the framework and ethos of the induction programme.

Due to the programme’s positive reputation and continued academic engagement, conditions were created for us to exercise our agency to reconceptualise induction from merely raising awareness to preparing academics for the classroom. However, the academics were still only inculcated in the institutional teaching and learning structures, and not the espoused teaching and learning culture.

At this stage, induction was still only offered in Gqeberha and academics from the George campus were still required to travel to participate, even though the programme was not contextualised or entirely relevant to the specific campus. This was particularly evidenced by the programme only including information from support services localised in Gqeberha, not approaching presenters from the George campus centres and units, and not including operational guidance around how certain aspects, such as the evaluation of teaching and courses, are operationalised. In addition, we could not confidently speak to certain processes as there was not a dedicated academic developer on the George campus. This highlighted the disparity between the Gqeberha and George campuses. Additionally, participants travelling from our George campus did not see themselves and their campus reflected in our programme.

Although we espoused an inclusive and collaborative approach, we did not consider how we were perpetuating the perceived inequalities and the “us and them” culture between the Gqeberha and George campuses. As such our actions unwittingly perpetuated the status quo instead of enabling a genuine commitment towards enhanced practice and change (Behari-Leak et al., 2020, p.115).

Beginning Your Journey at Nelson Mandela University

In November 2017, an opportunity to reimagine the programme emerged during the organisational redesign that followed the rebranding from Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University to Nelson Mandela University. CTLM changed to the Teaching Development (TD) unit under the umbrella of the Learning and Teaching Collaborative (LT Collab). The restructure enabled the development of collaborative partnerships through purposefully clustering units and departments together, effectively breaking down previous silos. TD was clustered with Learning Development, Digital Learning and Design, Student Wellness, Academic Planning and Quality Advancement. Our induction programme was also re-imagined as Beginning your Journey (BYJ) at Nelson Mandela Uni, affectionately known as BYJ @ Mandela Uni or just BYJ. It was a more “hands on” programme, underpinned by the collaborative approach to learning and teaching espoused by the LT Collab. Furthermore, the programme was envisioned as a vehicle to provide academics with the necessary “tools” to “function” in the classroom. The imagining process was met with some resistance, and it felt like we were swimming upstream as we found ourselves trying to reconcile our own conceptualisation of the programme with institutional demand and the participants’ needs.

Unfortunately, we still adopted a rather technicist approach, which was reactive, and we did not engage with the relevant theoretical underpinnings required to inform our practice. However, this changed in 2018 when Dr Toni, one of the NATHEP SC (SC) members, was appointed as the TD’s new director. She encouraged us to engage more deliberately with the theories that underpin teaching and learning and to translate these into our practices and engagement with academics. Dr Toni created an enabling space, or a proverbial island, for us to regroup and engage with the relevant theories associated with induction programmes. We developed as a team, and we grew together, enabling us to critically reflect on our assumptions, especially those around the George campus. Our reflective process was particularly informed by our TD colleague that was appointed on the George campus. The post was developed during the organisational redesign and informed by the fact that we did not have a footprint in George. Prior to the redesign there was not a dedicated academic developer on the George campus and members of the TD team occasionally travelled to George to offer condensed AD workshops based on our availability and the perceived need.

As part of our reflection and based on the feedback received from our TD colleague in Geroge, we realised that although “changes in the relevant structures can contribute to changes in the culture of an institution” (Quinn, 2012, p.36), our structures became “relatively enduring” (Case, 2013, p.31), as highlighted by the lack of belonging experienced by our George academics (Nel & Neale-Shutte, 2018). Our insistence that the academics from George travel to Gqeberha, instead of collaborating with our TD colleagues in George to present the programme on their home campus, emphasised our perceived position of power on the more centralised campus, inadvertently perpetuating the feeling of marginality.

This perceived power imbalance, combined with our technicist approach, prompted Dr Toni to invite us to join NATHEP. When we joined, we were confronted with the realisation that certain systemic social-political inequalities are still prevalent in our context. It was clear that it was necessary to reconceptualise and respond to how, and where, the induction programme is offered to enable inclusivity and belonging instead of perpetuating the discourses of alienation, discrimination, and stereotyping highlighted by our colleagues. We also identified strategies to theorise our programme, which enabled us to evolve the programme dynamically and so, we embarked on a reflective journey of becoming (Barnett, 2009) alongside our academic colleagues.

New wind in our sails: applying our learning from NATHEP to BYJ

Active engagement with the NATHEP CRiTicAL Framework provided us with tools to reflect on, and then critique our BYJ programme, in order to reconceptualise and recontextualise it. Firstly, through the interrogation of the theoretical underpinnings of the programme informing our institutional culture; followed by the structure of the programme, including the lack of a contextualised offering for the George campus; and finally, deliberately focussing on the relational aspects of the programme, such as the purpose, content, and presentation of BYJ and the goal to develop corporate agency as academic developers and academics alike.

When engaging with the substantive theory presented during NATHEP it became apparent that we often focused on what was on the surface and as coordinators, we realised that we needed to focus on aspects of our programme which were not observable and to identify and reflect on the causal mechanisms that inform our understandings. To achieve this, we applied social realism as an analytical tool to explore the structures and cultures that form our reality and how we may develop our identities as academic developers, as well as the relevant powers and properties to navigate our context as corporate agents. We applied the NATHEP CRiTicAL Framework to our case study, as a tool to reflect on and critique key “realist questions: what works, for who, in what context and why?” (Behari-Leak et al., 2020, p.112). As such, we were able to maintain reflexivity throughout our journey, pressing us to acknowledge and critique assumptions of our academic induction programme, enabling meaningful change within our context.

The contextual aspect of the framework further highlighted that we are inadvertently constraining our George campus colleagues’ ability to develop a sense of belonging to the broader institutional context, as “[r]elationality is evident in the interplay between Identity (who we are), Belonging (our sense of community) and Becomingwith (our co-existence)” (Behari-Leak et al., 2020, p.124). We identified the need to commit to using the agency we developed on NATHEP through theorised praxis to revisit and adapt our practices, regarding professional development, to change the perceived culture of isolation and the “othering” prevalent on the George campus. As such we identified the need to develop a shared understanding of the culture that underpins the practices on the campus and reframe our programme accordingly, while still meeting the purpose of the programme.

During our engagement on NATHEP we proceeded to analyse the George campus context, identifying how institutional structures may lead to a sense of “othering”. We also noted the difference in culture, as this campus had a strong focus on “green economy” and sustainability, as it was “situated in a pristine natural environment at the foot of the Outeniqua Mountain range which not only lends itself to being a ‘natural laboratory’ but offers students an escape from the hustle and bustle of city living” (NMU, 2021). This indicated that both the academics and student experience is significantly different in George; the classes are smaller, enabling academics to build a relationship with students. In addition, the campus had a strong research identity and there was a keen sense of community and collegiality among staff and students alike. The newly appointed academics who participated in the induction programme did not gain the full value from being inducted into their context. It became apparent that induction was not responsive or relevant to our George colleagues’ lived experience. Additionally, there were fewer new participants from the George campus, which inadvertently led to these participants still feeling marginalised, which did not enact the mutual vulnerability espoused by the institutional teaching and learning approach and it further limited opportunities for participants from George to connect with other colleagues.

Secondly, as we reflected on the overwhelming programme, we realised that, while we took pride in engaging with participant feedback, our evaluations were focusing on the “nuts and bolts” of the programme rather than the actual design. We were also overly focussed on the content we wanted to cover and completely overlooked what the programme purpose and desired outcomes should be. We then formulated the programme purpose to be “to empower academics along their teaching and learning journey, from classroom preparation, to delivery, to evaluation and, finally, to reflection to enable their own, and their students’, success at Nelson Mandela University”. The programme outcomes were also formulated so as to: (i) identify that teaching and learning is not a commonsense practice; (ii) enable conducive teaching and learning spaces for students; (iii) identify and engage in teaching, learning and research opportunities at Nelson Mandela University; and (iv) explore opportunities for collaboration across departments.

During NATHEP we were also encouraged to critique the need for adopting a humanising pedagogy in our induction, particularly in the South African HE context. We realised that we needed to understand what it means for an institution to have a pedagogical underpinning, instead of merely including it because it forms part of our institutional learning and teaching culture. We engaged the entire BYJ team, and we soon realised that we had significantly different interpretations of the pedagogy, which were influenced by our backgrounds, cultures and experiences. As these elements influenced our conceptions and dominant discourses linked to our individual teaching and learning philosophies, underpinning how each of us engaged with participants on the BYJ programme, we realised that we needed to develop a shared understanding of the pedagogy. As a team we critically reflected on our choices regarding what knowledge we legitimised during our programme and how our own practices and engagement highlight our own dominant discourses. Moreover, our engagement with the humanising pedagogy framework empowered us to model the institutional teaching and learning culture by implementing the framework in our own practices. The multilayered framework focusses on the cultural dimensions that influence the engagement and the “interactional relationship” between teacher, student, and discipline (Zinn, Geduld, Delport & Jordaan, 2014, p.108). Although the framework provided the BYJ team with the tools to enact the espoused teaching and learning culture of Mandela Uni, participants indicated that they felt intimidated by the expectations this philosophy placed on them. Following our interrogation of the humanising pedagogy, we proceeded to revisit our programme structure more deliberately, conceptualising the programme as a curriculum aligned to our institutional culture and programme purpose. We identified that we needed to develop the curriculum in a way that encouraged academics to move beyond a craft knowledge of teaching towards a more comprehensive understanding of teaching and learning, which emphasised the application and sharing of knowledge (Scott, Yeld & Hendry, 2007,).

We rearticulated the purpose of BYJ to focus on providing participants with the opportunity to interrogate their roles and to develop an academic identity and communities of practice within our institutional context. We were, however, aware that this approach may not be well received, as there were consistent requests to rather provide participants with tricks, tools, and skills, instead of what Sioux McKenna describes as “a theorised space for interrogating what it is to be an academic” (McKenna, 2012, p.15) at Nelson Mandela Uni. We therefore wanted to include a balance between theory and practice while enabling the development of a teaching identity among our participants. Taylor (1999) suggests that “there are three levels at which academic identity is constructed, one linked to the site of work, the second through reference to the person’s discipline, the third is a universal construction of what it means to be an academic” (in D’Andrea & Gosling, 2005, p.59). In contrast, we were only aiming to inculcate newly appointed academics into the current institutional culture at Gqeberha and to empower them to navigate this space more confidently. This highlighted the need to include an emphasis on the development of an institutional and teaching identity. This is also why it was imperative to have a contextualised programme for the George campus, enabling the development of a uniquely contextualised academic identity.

Taking this all into consideration we approached BYJ as a programme that needed a carefully selected, sequenced, and paced curriculum (Bernstein) using Luckett’s proposal for an epistemically diverse curriculum (Luckett, 2001), as the underpinning framework. Luckett (2001) identifies four ways of knowing and learning: “traditional cognitive learning of propositional knowledge, learning by doing for the application of disciplinary knowledge, learning experientially, and developing epistemic cognition so to be able to think reflexively and contextually about one’s learning” (Luckett, 2001, p.49). Luckett suggests that these four ways of knowing and learning may be integrated into the curriculum, along with the transferable and nontransferable skills that form part of the higher education curriculum to develop students as “doers” and “knowers” with a flexible and adaptable skills set (Luckett, 2001, p.52). BYJ endeavoured to facilitate “critical epistemic shifts” (Luckett, 2001, p.56) to provide participants with the space to engage with the propositional and practical knowledge associated with teaching and learning, while developing the foundational and practical competencies (Luckett, 2001), required to teach in HE.

We developed the academic induction as a stand-alone programme that was augmented by other teaching development initiatives and programmes instead of merely an introduction to another programme. The expectation was that the collaboration among the teaching development programmes would develop experiential knowledge (personal competencies) and epistemic knowledge (reflexive competencies) (Luckett, 2001) throughout the academic year. We also realised that we needed to purposefully include opportunities for participants to engage and reflect on the knowledge and competencies included on the programme and to engage with the HE context. As a result, the session on “The reflective higher education teacher” was changed from merely raising awareness to an engaging session focussed on reflective practice. The facilitator of the session introduced the participants to Brookfield’s four lenses and asked them to reflect on the lens(es) that they are familiar with, focussing specifically on how the evaluations were implemented and how they experienced the process. She then got to know which lenses were commonly used, which ones were not used, and explained the importance of using all four lenses, namely students, theory, peers and self-evaluations.

All our planning to this point has been collaborative and included our AD colleagues on the George campus to enable a sharing of the knowledge and values developed on our NATHEP journey. We also collaboratively recontextualised BYJ for the George campus, offering it for the first time in 2019. The programme was reconceptualised to address the various challenges associated with a multicampus institution by conceptualising, developing, and offering a contextualised programme for the George Campus. Some of the challenges included the engagements incorporated into the programme, creating the perception of a standardised learning and teaching approach between the “big” Gqeberha campuses and the “small” George campus with different resources and cultures, based on the geographic location and the size of the campus. In response to that feedback, some sessions where academics have to engage with university leadership were offered online, while the rest were face-to-face, facilitated on the George campus itself.

Navigating down river: implementing the reconceptualised BYJ Programme

BYJ remained a biannual programme, but we extended the programme to include two legs per offering, representing a journey rather than a single engagement. The first offering commenced in January with the first leg, which was two and a half days long and the second leg of two days commenced in March. A second offering takes place in the second semester in July and September.

Aiming towards a more facilitative approach, we developed a resource guide for the programme and adopted a blended approach, modelling various technologyenhanced teaching and learning strategies through using online tools such as backchanneling, Mentimeter, Jamboard, videos, quizzes and submissions using Moodle. Adopting a flipped classroom approach, enabled by the inclusion of online aspects, enabled the development of a more scaffolded offering. In addition, a problem-based approach was adopted where participants were required to do independent exploration of resources. They were also given tasks to do and submit online, which includes engagement with institutional resources and departments to gain information. For example, they would be expected to check for their timetable, class sizes and demographics. There were some facilitators who would give participants some readings and tasks to do in preparation for their sessions. Participants were sometimes expected to submit tasks that were not completed during the day, and each day was started with a reflection on the previous day’s sessions.

In order to encourage the continuation of reflexive processes we introduced a reflective journal as a completion requirement to purposefully guide participants from engaging with the theory, to applying it in their classrooms, evaluating their teaching and students’ learning and reflecting on their teaching. We guided participants through each journal entry, linking future entries to developing an identity as a HE teacher within their specific discipline.

The first leg of BYJ

During the first leg of BYJ, we focus on the learning and teaching culture of Mandela Uni, and on ways of being and doing, which is contextualised to the institution and the campuses discussed. There is a strong focus on our participants’ needs and their identity within our institutional context, which is why we recentred (Behari-Leak et al., 2020, p.113) BYJ to respond to the university’s mission of being “a dynamic African University” (NMU, 2021) by including an African “flavour” to the programme. For this reason, we open the programme by requesting academic developers and participants to bring an artefact that represents who they are, and their identities. The notion of an artefact is an African indigenous learning and teaching method for telling a story. This activity is purposefully designed to get to know the participants better, allowing an awareness of the various cultures and beliefs of both academic developers and academics and the influence these attributes have to the presenters’ and participants’ pedagogies. The artefact representation also brings out the academics’ authenticity, which is “concerned with … original thinking towards enhanced practices and change” (Behari-Leak et al., 2020, p.115).

Keeping with the African theme, we revisited the programme’s session about “Our institutional culture and ways of being and doing” to position the participants within the context of an African university and how it relates to their personal and professional identities. Opening the session with a video clip of Thabo Mbeki’s speech, “I am an African”, participants are asked to engage with the idea of being African by responding to the prompt.

We used Mentimeter to encourage participants to share their responses anonymously and included an activity in our resource guide to encourage a deeper engagement. These activities are well received, and the engagement links being African to one of the concepts associated with the humanising pedagogy, and the university value of ubuntu, which means being seen and heard even when discussing uncomfortable topics.

The activity represented by the illustration in figure 53 was an activity that was presented at NATHEP, and had a significant impact on us, which is why we decided to include it on our programme. During the session, participants are asked to work through the questions, first on their own, then with a peer and finally to share with the broader group, either in the venue or online. This activity also assists in us thinking about what it means to be part of an African university and has sparked insightful discussions and reflections on the programme.

As indicated previously the humanising pedagogy is a key aspect of our institutional culture, and NATHEP highlighted the need to critically engage with the relevance of this particular pedagogy. As such the activity reflected in figure 54 is included on the programme.

The humanising pedagogy espouses an active engagement with the redress of various kinds of inequalities, as highlighted by Freire (1970, p.17) in Salazar, 2013:

“Teachers who enact humanising pedagogy engage in a quest of “mutual humanisation” (p.56) with their students […] with the goal of developing “conscientizacao” (p.26) or critical consciousness, which is “learning to perceive social, political, and economic contradictions and to take action against the oppressive elements of reality”

To facilitate meaningful engagement with the pedagogy we developed an accessible group reflection activity, which we included in the BYJ resource guide and facilitated it during our “institutional culture” session. Participants, working in groups, reflected on the need to adopt a humanising pedagogical approach in the current HE context and linked the adoption of the pedagogy to student success. This activity seemed to enable a much deeper engagement with the implementation of humanising pedagogy in teaching and learning.

Through critiquing our own dominant discourses and contextualising these within our own lived experiences we were able to meaningfully engage with the humanising pedagogy and use the theory “as a functional mechanism to explain, trouble, problematise, confirm, affirm and position thoughts that relate directly to praxis” (Behari-Leak et al., 2020, p.115). We guided our participants to authentically reflect on their own thinking and practices to enable a critical consciousness regarding their students’ learning and how socio-economic, political, and other power structures may impact on their students’ learning.

Since NATHEP highlighted that induction is about laying the groundwork for a new cadre of academics capable of navigating the institutional and the HE contexts, BYJ aims to facilitate the co-construction of academic knowledge to be responsive to the HE contextual realities. One example is adapting the assessment session from only exposing new academics to assessment approaches, tools, and tricks to engaging them in the design and implementation of socially just assessment. Academics are encouraged to utilise their agency in creating a socially just assessment culture by starting with reflecting on their assessment experiences, using collaborative and reflective Jamboard activities. Figure 55 provides an example of the task.

Following this, participants draw on their own experiences to describe how they envision socially just assessments in their respective disciplines. Prompts are shown in the image extracted from the Jamboard. Participants are required to identify potentially constraining and enabling mechanisms associated with socially just assessment practices. The main aim of the engagement with the prompts is to encourage the new academics’ agency in enabling socially just assessment and getting strategies to mitigate the constraints associated with the creation of socially just assessment culture.

NATHEP empowered us to critically reflect on how BYJ can initiate collaboration among new academics to decolonise institutional cultures and practices. Reflecting on the programme’s contribution to the decolonisation agenda, we were reminded that “our academic and epistemological roots have not adequately prepared us for engagement with the concept of decolonisation” (Vorster & Quinn, 2017, p.36). However, it is critical for us as academic developers to initiate conversations with academics about decolonisation, which is why we pushed through our own discomfort to include the engagements with decoloniality illustrated in figure 57.

The creative reflection is included in the resource pack that new academics are encouraged to engage with during and after the programme. We recognise that there is a need to explore this aspect further by developing our own knowledge of decolonisation alongside our academics and to include additional sessions that will enable the engagement with academics regarding our and their agency in enacting the HE imperatives.

The second leg of BYJ

The second leg of the programme focuses on enabling reflexive practice, which provides participants with the opportunity to reflect on their experiences while considering both their teaching philosophy and practice (Hammersley-Fletcher & Orsmond, 2005, p.220). In this part of the induction, we request participants to reflect on how they experienced implementing the lessons learnt during the first leg. A blended learning space is provided for colleagues to engage, collaborate, and share challenges and experiences. During this process, the BYJ team facilitates peer collaboration and group work to collaborate with academics in co-creating possible strategies to mitigate the challenges they experienced in their learning and teaching spaces.

Still an island: BYJ for our George campus

As planned, a more contextualised BYJ programme was offered on the George campus. The substantive knowledge included on the programme remained the same across campuses; however, the programme’s implementation was not prescriptive, and the facilitator had the autonomy to include core aspects, specific to each campus on the programme. However, it was quite surprising when the feedback highlighted concerns regarding additional fragmentation and limiting the development of a shared larger institutional culture that may result in the academics not feeling the sense of being part of a larger vibrant whole. The George participants indicated that there was a potential danger that this approach may be insular and may create a culture of separation among academics that are from the same disciplines. This was quite a surprising turn in understanding, and while we were thinking about how to respond to the feedback, COVID-19 necessitated that we take the programme online.

Being swept in another direction: taking BYJ online

During our response to COVID-19, we had to adapt our blended approach to a fully online offering, and although it was quite intimidating it got our creative juices flowing. We learnt the technical nuances of online teaching, persevered, and were finally able to progress from a face-to-face to an online delivery in 2021. The programme was developed to include focussed topics, which align to the activities previously discussed. These are illustrated by the programme on the next page.

This progress encapsulated growth in anchoring the programme in the institution’s pedagogical philosophy as the feedback from our AD colleagues at George campus indicated that the experience was more authentic, with all the participants engaging together as an institution instead of separate campuses. The online approach to the programme created a space where we could include combined and remotely facilitated sessions, to be more inclusive. The experience we had in the first and second online offering of the programme gave us the impression that this was the best way forward. In the future we are considering a hybrid approach with combined online sessions, facilitated by academic developers on both the George and Gqeberha campuses, and contact sessions on the different campuses to incorporate different contexts.

Conclusion

This case study shared how Mandela Uni’s induction programme transformed from being given a slot in the HRD induction programme, to having information sessions using a drop-in-drop-out model, to a programme with a curriculum that aimed at cultivating a critical consciousness about the realities of the contexts of Nelson Mandela University and the HE context. The transformation was realised through a reflective journey that started by engaging with NATHEP. By engaging with the CRiTicAL Framework we were able to shift the programme from merely raising awareness to enabling participants to approach learning and teaching more purposively. There was also a move from a generic approach to a more deliberate approach in how we presented to the programme. Additionally, we shifted from inducting newly appointed academics to pedagogies of learning, teaching, and assessment to understanding the criticality of using socially just and decolonised pedagogies that will respond to the African and global contexts or realities. Approaching the induction programme as a curriculum has helped the AD team to select and pace the content included in the programme and, as such, the programme has pulled together in a cohesive whole.

The process enabled us to think about how we frame the programme, paying specific attention to the importance of the pedagogy of being and becoming as part of our induction programme. We reflected on our own individual beliefs, and although the programme was underpinned by humanising pedagogy, the pedagogy of self-engagement enabled us to realise the need to collectively engage with the humanising pedagogy’s framework to understand what it means in the context of academic development. Working as a team and drawing on each other’s strengths breathed new life into the programme, especially as we developed corporate agency, through enabling leadership. The corporate agency we have developed as a programme team and through our engagement with NATHEP has enabled us to continuously reimagine, shape and refine our programme.