Education researchers collaborate

People shall share: Student NBK Katjivirue presents his research during the 8th Regional education Students' Research Conference.

Scores of research students and scholars of education from the four Western Cape universities converged at UCT for the 8th Regional Education Students' Research Conference on 3 and 4 October.

About 35 postgraduate students and postdoctoral research fellows from UCT, the University of the Western Cape, Cape Peninsula University of Technology and the University of Stellenbosch shared their research through presentations.

Leadus Madzima, a UCT student who chaired this year's event, said the conference aimed to provide opportunities for inter-institutional collaboration, networking and information sharing among students. It was a supportive, sympathetic, and encouraging environment for education students to present sections of their research investigations, she said.

"The conference provided opportunities for these students to publish their on-going research findings rapidly in one of three forms - either as an abstract or as a full paper or even as an entire successful dissertation - as a formal part of acknowledged conference proceedings," she explained.

This year's theme was Education Research for Social Transformation and Development, and among the speakers were Professors Crain Soudien of UCT, Aslam Fataar of UWC, and Yusef Waghid and Lesley le Grange of Stellenbosch University.

Jean Baxen of UCT, a co-founder of the conference, challenged researchers to regard research as an on-going social project with which to transform the physical, social and intellectual spaces.

"We could only be able to do so by being sensitive to how we shape or are shaped by the transformative agenda."

Six members were elected to work out a plan to register the conference as a sustainable association.