From the Hood to the PWI: A Self-Reflective Journey as Learner and Educator

“Hip-Hop Permeates Everything I Do”: The Intersections of Education, Hip-Hop, and Global Politics

The Implied Student

This study argues that life skills, as conceptualized in South African vocational education, are disconnected from the lived realities of mature women students. A hermeneutic curriculum analysis of official guides and textbooks used in life skills education (LSE) in a South African vocational context was conducted, guided by the research question: What assumptions does the curriculum make about the being-in-the-world of mature women students? Viewed through the theoretical lens of the Capability approach and Heideggerian hermeneutics, the life skills curriculum constructs an “implied student” learning in a socioeconomic vacuum. The curriculum’s emphasis on individual responsibility for structural issues like poverty, unplanned pregnancy, and trauma is misaligned with best practices in adult education, causing shame rather than empowerment. Instead of holistic personal development and well-being, the curriculum takes a deficit view of LSE. Furthermore, the curriculum’s approach to health, relationships, and sexuality lacks contextualization, such as the pervasive gender-based violence in South Africa, focusing instead on prescriptive, individualistic behaviors rather than systemic support or trauma-informed care. Instead, the study proposes a culturally responsive pedagogy that recognizes the complex lives and responsibilities of mature women students.

Listening Across Difference: Pláticas as a Practice of Connection and Transformation for Adult Learners

This article explores the integration of pláticas—informal, culturally grounded conversations rooted in Chicana/Latina feminist methodologies—as a transformative pedagogical tool in adult learning contexts. Drawing from experiences as doctoral students and educators at a Hispanic-Serving Institution, the authors illustrate how pláticas foster connection, reflection, and critical consciousness across diverse learner identities. Through narrative, theoretical, and practical lenses, the article positions pláticas as a means of validating lived experience, disrupting traditional hierarchies of knowledge, and cultivating intercultural communication competence. The authors provide concrete strategies for structuring plática circles, co-constructing ground rules, designing reflective prompts, and integrating the practice into course assessments. They argue that when implemented with care and intention, pláticas promote inclusive, student-centered learning environments that enhance engagement, support emotional safety, and foster collective meaning-making. Ultimately, the article affirms pláticas as a liberatory practice that strengthens the social and relational dimensions of higher education and reimagines the role of educator as co-learner and collaborator.

Graffiti as public pedagogy: Cross-institutional collaboration for student expression, healing, and transformation

Higher education in South Africa has been widely critiqued for privileging Eurocentric epistemologies that marginalise local knowledge systems and distance learning from the socio-political realities students inhabit. Such dynamics constrain students’ capacity to critically engage the historical and structural forces shaping identity, belonging, and wellbeing. Responding to these concerns, this study examines how a collaborative, arts-based pedagogical strategy centred on graffiti can advance more inclusive and socially responsive teaching practices for diverse student populations. Grounded in critical pedagogy and decolonial theory and informed by the group psychoanalytic concept of the social unconscious, the study conceptualises a graffiti installation as a participatory archive through which students explore the intersections of identity, power, place, and collective memory. A qualitative, participatory design was employed with 12 postgraduate students (7 psychology and 5 design students) across 2 private South African institutions. Through a series of facilitated workshops, participants engaged in critical dialogue, collaboratively created a graffiti installation in a public campus space, and reflected on the meanings embedded in the evolving artwork. Data were generated through the visual artifact, transcribed discussions, participant reflections, and facilitator notes, and analysed using iterative thematic and visual analysis. Findings indicate that the collaborative process enabled students to articulate complex experiences of identity, belonging, and mental health while situating these within broader socio-historical dynamics. The installation functioned as a dialogical and multimodal learning space that supported diverse forms of expression, legitimised experiential knowledge, and uncovered both visible and silenced tensions. The chapter’s original contribution lies in demonstrating how participatory visual methods can operationalise intellectual decolonisation in practice while advancing inclusive teaching strategies that engage cognitive, affective, and spatial ways of knowing.

How social and cultural capital supports the transition of international foundation students to higher education

This study explores the experiences of international foundation students in the UK, focusing on how they develop and mobilise academic, social and cultural capital to navigate their transition into higher education. Drawing on alumni perspectives as experts of their lived experiences and using participatory methods, listening rooms and walking interviews, the research highlights the multidimensional nature of transition, encompassing academic preparation, intercultural competence, employability and a sense of belonging. Using Bourdieu’s concepts of habitus, capital and field, transition is reconceptualised as a relational and dynamic process, shaped by both individual agency and structural factors. Findings emphasise the importance of student-informed programme design, embedding academic literacy and employability skills, fostering peer and alumni mentoring and promoting meaningful engagement with undergraduate departments. The study also demonstrates methodological innovation in centring student voices, offering insights for policymakers, practitioners and researchers seeking to enhance international student support. Implications extend to curriculum design, institutional practice and ongoing research, highlighting how International Foundation Programmes (IFPs) can enable students not merely to adapt, but to thrive academically, socially and professionally.

DIMENSIONS OF EDUCATIONAL MENTORING: FORMATIVE VALENCES AND SUCCESSFUL PRACTICES IN CONTEMPORARY SCHOOLS

This study analyzes from a psychopedagogical and academic perspective the fundamental needs of modern early childhood education, focusing on the reconfiguration of the educator's professional identity as a vector of change. Premised on the idea that the evolution of current generations demands a definitive abandonment of professional comfort and traditional routines, the study explores the core pillars of the reflective teacher paradigm. It addresses the essential dimensions of didactic success: cultivating enthusiasm as an epistemic resource, the courage to implement methodological innovation, and the smart management of resistance to change. Aligned with European educational standards and grounded in the theoretical contributions of prominent Romanian academics (M. Bocoș, H. Catalano, I. Albulescu, A. F. Roman), the paper demonstrates that modern preschool didactics measures success not by classroom silence or rigidity, but by the level of authentic engagement and autonomy stimulated among children. The study advocates for a conscious and creative assumption of the modern educator's role, capable of opening new chapters in the praxis of early childhood education.