M Walker
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 49488 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | M Walker |
| NOMBRES | M |
| APELLIDO | Walker |
| FIRMA | WALKER M |
| AFILIACIONES | University of the Free State |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-7859-6380 |
| VERIFICADO | Sí |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 44 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 140 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 44 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 1955 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 7 |
The ontological design of universities
The essence of the university manifests in its ontological design, which determines future goals and shapes processes and practices across all dimensions of the institution. In this paper, we argue that ontological design matters for universities, for fundamentally transforming institutions, enabling aspirations for decolonisation, and driving a more meaningful contribution to addressing the climate and Nature emergency. Drawing on a study across…
Young people’s voices on social justice
South Africa is home to a large youth population, defined in South Africa as aged between 18 and 34 years. In working to transform our unequal society, we need to take diverse youth voices, including young people at university, into account regarding what matters to them. To enable their voices, the paper recounts a participatory storytelling research project with students in the educational space of one South African university. Using individual…
How dignity matters for life and lifelong learning
The claim made is that dignity matters in both legal and recognitional aspects for flourishing and lifelong learning opportunities for young adults. Dignity is understood here as a foundational capability and functioning to be and to do in ways which matter to a person, requiring the material and non-material conditions which enable and secure equal dignity for each person. The claim is first explored drawing on both the capability approach and c…
Higher education and the public good as a repair project
This paper proposes that the public good in higher education can be understood as a project of repair, that is, contributing to the removal of past injustices, to fairer higher education and to better social futures. Drawing in the first instance on the global South, specifically higher education in post-colonial South Africa and sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), the available literature addressing the public good and higher education is first sketched, …
Female Venezuelan Migrants and Refugees
There is limited understanding of the underlying contributing factors to child marriage and the unique challenges faced by girls affected in the context of Venezuela's ongoing geopolitical and economic crisis. To bridge this knowledge gap, we employed an inductive approach to identify themes derived from 89 first and third person narratives, collected in 2022, about female Venezuelan migrants/refugees in child marriages/informal unions in Brazil,…
Forming an Eco-social Capability in the South African Higher Education Space
A Reparative Lens for Exploring Youth Aspirations in South African Universities
Repair in Education Spaces
The paper discusses repair as valuable for thinking about and acting towards sustainable human development. Repair asks us to take account of intersections of past, present, and reimagined futures; the end is becoming and being full human beings with dignity, attentive to the lives of others and to what Achille Mbembe calls the “living world”. We seek to repair that which is valuable to us, while also setting aside what cannot be fixed (for examp…
Development in times of conflict
In July 2022 the International Development Ethics Association (IDEA) held a conference on Development in times of conflict: ethical pathways towards peace and justice in Medellín, Colombia.Footnote1 The predominant but not sole focus was on Colombia, which has experienced decades-long armed conflicts that have torn at the social fabric, created distrust in the State and government, reduced the effectiveness of institutions and, altogether obstruc…
The impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on UK medical education. A nationwide student survey
The COVID-19 pandemic had a significant impact on the delivery of medical education across the UK, with the majority of face-to-face teaching cancelled during the first wave, and medical schools consequently making varied adaptations to education delivery. To identify and share effective adaptations, we conducted a cross-sectional, online survey (COVID Med-Ed) between 20th May and 31st August 2020 which divided undergraduate teaching by GMC “Outc…
Sustainable development goals and capability-based higher education outcomes
The paper explores the contributions of undergraduate university education to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)’ goals and development outcomes, proposing a normative capability-based approach oriented to human development. The approach is aligned with a developmental model of the university and development policy in sub-Saharan Africa and South Africa, where the study is located. It draws empirically from a four and a half year mixed-meth…
Adaptation and validation questionnaire for measuring the perceived quality by users external customer of the golf courses
Adaptation and validation questionnaire for measuring the perceived quality by users external customer of the golf courses: Andalusia (Spain) Adaptacin y validacin de un cuestionario para medir la percepcin de la calidad percibida por los
La responsabilidad social en los deportistas de alto nivel
Los deportistas realizan a menudo acciones de responsabilidad social para generar un impacto positivo en la sociedad. Este estudio pretende analizar las diferentes características de la responsabilidad social de los deportistas de alto nivel españoles. La investigación también explora los factores que influyen en la toma de decisiones, motivaciones o percepciones que tienen los deportistas sobre la responsabilidad social. Para ello se distribuyó …
Eventos deportivos propulsores de los Objetivos de Desarrollo Sostenible
Actividad Física y Deporte
Conceptualising (dis)advantage in South African higher education
Higher education policy in South Africa uses the concept of ‘historically disadvantaged’ to address inequities and inequalities. Disadvantage specifically refers to black students who are marginalised in higher education due to structural factors associated with the apartheid legacy of segregation. In this paper, drawing from the capability approach, the authors argue that (dis)advantage can be better understood in terms of students’ capabilities…
Epistemic governance and the colonial epistemic structure
Current epistemic governance analyses in higher education ignore systemic power relations between Northern and Southern researchers. This paper does focus on previous approaches to understanding epistemic governance, but rather moves beyond these towards a Southern evaluative and prospective comprehension. The paper is primarily theoretical. We draw on Fricker’s theorizing of epistemic justice, but note the importance of the institutional. Amarty…
Participatory action research
The paper explores the possibilities for promoting epistemic justice in a South African university setting through a participatory action-based photovoice research project in which university researchers worked alongside undergraduate students with no prior experience of doing research. The student voices are employed to understand how learning as capability development and agency expansion can advance epistemic justice in a university setting of…
Karen Education and Boundary-Making at the Thai-Burmese Borderland
This article argues that schooling and education are boundary-making devices in the volatile borderland straddling Burma and Thailand. We show that the development of Karen education was one of the ways in which the Karen National Union (KNU) erected ideological, symbolic and cultural boundaries to keep this borderland separate from the Burmese and Thai states. We draw attention to the conflict in what is considered valued knowledge, the recognit…
Low-income rural youth migrating to urban universities in South Africa
In order to understand how students from low-income rural backgrounds in South Africa experience higher education and the opportunities and obstacles they encounter, the paper draws on two waves of interviews with 30 students currently studying at three large urban universities. Using concepts of capabilities and functionings, monetary resources and ‘capitals’, the paper outlines common factors which shape rural students’ well-being and their age…
Failures and possibilities of epistemic justice, with some implications for higher education
This papers draws on the compelling example of a political movement in South Africa in the 1960s and 1970s to explore both how epistemic justice conditions of possibility and of failure play out in practice. It provides a springboard to understand how and why failures of epistemic justice matter tremendously for democratic and inclusive lives and how the historical example can point us in the direction of higher education as a space for Amartya S…
Political Agency and Capabilities Formation Through Participatory Action Research
This paper draws on a participatory action research (PAR) project as a potential space for undergraduate students at one South African university to develop as political agents. Participation and reasoning, grounded in reciprocal relationships, which are fundamental in a PAR project are introduced. The contributions of the capability approach and the case for the significance of relational capabilities of voice and participation as both objective…
Sustainable assessment for lifelong learning
This paper explores the alignment of assessment practices in universities and lifelong learning as a key process and outcome for expansive student development. It outlines Boud’s approach to assessment, operationalises this to analyse practices in two contrasting national contexts: the sociology departments of the Midlands University in the UK and Nam Du University in Vietnam, and reframes this framework as a guide to improving practices and bett…
Reconsidering girls’ education in Turkey from a capabilities and feminist perspective
A Capabilities-based Gender Equality Policy for Higher Education
The complex transformative intent of policy goals is often marginalized in favour of tangible, measurable outcomes. Such a pattern is evident in the tracking of global social justice goals, such as gender equality, where sole reliance on numerical parity data to track progress has led to the simplification of the concept for the sake of measurement. This intensifies the need to focus both on conceptual and methodological considerations in policy …
Shaping a gender equality policy in higher education
South African institutions still confront gendered inequalities, irrespective of transformative national policies, compounded by the absence of a national gender equality policy for higher education. We therefore explore the potential of the capabilities approach (CA) to inform policy formation and argue for the development of a policy for higher education institutions based on opportunities for valuable functionings as the informational basis fo…
Rainbow nation or new racism? Theorizing race and identity formation in South African higher education
This paper explores both the personal narratives of a group of black and white undergraduate students and the institutional discourse at one historically white and Afrikaans medium university now undergoing its own transformation in post‐apartheid South Africa. It considers how students talk about their actual experiences and the micro‐realties of their personal biographies, what this reveals about how they construct and reconstruct race and iden…
A capital or capabilities education narrative in a world of staggering inequalities
Low-income rural youth migrating to urban universities in South Africa
In order to understand how students from low-income rural backgrounds in South Africa experience higher education and the opportunities and obstacles they encounter, the paper draws on two waves of interviews with 30 students currently studying at three large urban universities. Using concepts of capabilities and functionings, monetary resources and ‘capitals’, the paper outlines common factors which shape rural students’ well-being and their age…
South African universities and human development
Height and social class in middle-aged British men
A study of 7735 middle-aged British men drawn from general practices in twenty-four towns shows that there has been a progressive increase in mean height in the men who were born between 1919 and 1939. This is true for both manual and non-manual classes, but the mean heights of the two groups are significantly different and remain widely separated over this period of time. Manual workers lag twenty years behind non-manual workers in their attaine…
Epistemic governance and the colonial epistemic structure
Current epistemic governance analyses in higher education ignore systemic power relations between Northern and Southern researchers. This paper does focus on previous approaches to understanding epistemic governance, but rather moves beyond these towards a Southern evaluative and prospective comprehension. The paper is primarily theoretical. We draw on Fricker’s theorizing of epistemic justice, but note the importance of the institutional. Amarty…
Failures and possibilities of epistemic justice, with some implications for higher education
This papers draws on the compelling example of a political movement in South Africa in the 1960s and 1970s to explore both how epistemic justice conditions of possibility and of failure play out in practice. It provides a springboard to understand how and why failures of epistemic justice matter tremendously for democratic and inclusive lives and how the historical example can point us in the direction of higher education as a space for Amartya S…
Participatory action research
The paper explores the possibilities for promoting epistemic justice in a South African university setting through a participatory action-based photovoice research project in which university researchers worked alongside undergraduate students with no prior experience of doing research. The student voices are employed to understand how learning as capability development and agency expansion can advance epistemic justice in a university setting of…
Political Agency and Capabilities Formation Through Participatory Action Research
This paper draws on a participatory action research (PAR) project as a potential space for undergraduate students at one South African university to develop as political agents. Participation and reasoning, grounded in reciprocal relationships, which are fundamental in a PAR project are introduced. The contributions of the capability approach and the case for the significance of relational capabilities of voice and participation as both objective…
Reconsidering girls’ education in Turkey from a capabilities and feminist perspective
Shaping a gender equality policy in higher education
South African institutions still confront gendered inequalities, irrespective of transformative national policies, compounded by the absence of a national gender equality policy for higher education. We therefore explore the potential of the capabilities approach (CA) to inform policy formation and argue for the development of a policy for higher education institutions based on opportunities for valuable functionings as the informational basis fo…
Challenges in accessing higher education
Context and history
Professional development through action research in township primary schools in South Africa
Karen Education and Boundary-Making at the Thai-Burmese Borderland
This article argues that schooling and education are boundary-making devices in the volatile borderland straddling Burma and Thailand. We show that the development of Karen education was one of the ways in which the Karen National Union (KNU) erected ideological, symbolic and cultural boundaries to keep this borderland separate from the Burmese and Thai states. We draw attention to the conflict in what is considered valued knowledge, the recognit…
Universities, professional capabilities and contributions to the public good in South Africa
The generation of a public-good, capabilities-based approach to professional education in South African universities is outlined and proposed as a contribution to wider social transformation. The relevance and importance of understanding what Amartya Sen describes as ‘capability failure' in the lives of people living in poverty is explored and, following from this, how professionals ought to contribute by virtue of their university education, and…
Repair in Education Spaces
The paper discusses repair as valuable for thinking about and acting towards sustainable human development. Repair asks us to take account of intersections of past, present, and reimagined futures; the end is becoming and being full human beings with dignity, attentive to the lives of others and to what Achille Mbembe calls the “living world”. We seek to repair that which is valuable to us, while also setting aside what cannot be fixed (for examp…
Sustainable development goals and capability-based higher education outcomes
The paper explores the contributions of undergraduate university education to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)’ goals and development outcomes, proposing a normative capability-based approach oriented to human development. The approach is aligned with a developmental model of the university and development policy in sub-Saharan Africa and South Africa, where the study is located. It draws empirically from a four and a half year mixed-meth…
A Capabilities-based Gender Equality Policy for Higher Education
The complex transformative intent of policy goals is often marginalized in favour of tangible, measurable outcomes. Such a pattern is evident in the tracking of global social justice goals, such as gender equality, where sole reliance on numerical parity data to track progress has led to the simplification of the concept for the sake of measurement. This intensifies the need to focus both on conceptual and methodological considerations in policy …
Women in the Academy
This article explores the experiences of a group of women on two senior academic committees at the University of the Western Cape, in order to understand how practices in such committees contribute to the exclusion and marginalisation of women, and particular constructions of subjectivity. The broader university context, its history and current ranking of academic women and men, black and white, provides a contextual frame for the narrower focus.…
Forming an Eco-social Capability in the South African Higher Education Space
Income Redistribution and Social Policy.
Public Property? The Habitat Debate Continued. Essays on the Price, Ownership and Government of Land
Canadian Confederation at the Crossroads. The Search for a Federal-Provincial Balance
Society for Social Medicine
Society for Social Medicine
Height and social class in middle-aged British men
A study of 7735 middle-aged British men drawn from general practices in twenty-four towns shows that there has been a progressive increase in mean height in the men who were born between 1919 and 1939. This is true for both manual and non-manual classes, but the mean heights of the two groups are significantly different and remain widely separated over this period of time. Manual workers lag twenty years behind non-manual workers in their attaine…
Professional development through action research in township primary schools in South Africa
Dietary carbohydrates and insulin sensitivity
Insulin resistance is associated with diabetes mellitus, ischemic heart disease, and hypertension both independently and as part of syndrome X. Environmental influences on SI are incompletely understood. Exercise has a strong beneficial effect and obesity a strong adverse effect. The balance of evidence suggests that a high-fat diet is likely to reduce insulin sensitivity but the effects of dietary carbohydrates are more controversial. Extensive …
Women in the Academy
This article explores the experiences of a group of women on two senior academic committees at the University of the Western Cape, in order to understand how practices in such committees contribute to the exclusion and marginalisation of women, and particular constructions of subjectivity. The broader university context, its history and current ranking of academic women and men, black and white, provides a contextual frame for the narrower focus.…
Open Houses and Invisible Guests
MELANIE WALKER tells stories from the lives of South African university women. By using narrative, and also inserting herself into the frame of her project, knowledge and identities excluded by dominant paradigms are recuperated and find meaning
Keynote Addresses
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A qualitative study of a successful shared care project for heroin users
Rainbow nation or new racism? Theorizing race and identity formation in South African higher education
This paper explores both the personal narratives of a group of black and white undergraduate students and the institutional discourse at one historically white and Afrikaans medium university now undergoing its own transformation in post‐apartheid South Africa. It considers how students talk about their actual experiences and the micro‐realties of their personal biographies, what this reveals about how they construct and reconstruct race and iden…
South African universities and human development
A capital or capabilities education narrative in a world of staggering inequalities
Context and history
Universities, professional capabilities and contributions to the public good in South Africa
The generation of a public-good, capabilities-based approach to professional education in South African universities is outlined and proposed as a contribution to wider social transformation. The relevance and importance of understanding what Amartya Sen describes as ‘capability failure' in the lives of people living in poverty is explored and, following from this, how professionals ought to contribute by virtue of their university education, and…
Social citizenship formation at university
The paper considers citizenship formation at universities, drawing on the example of a student leadership project at the University of the Free State, a formerly White South African university, in a higher education context and society where racialised difference continues to influence peer relationships. The paper proposes a multi-dimensional conceptualisation of social citizenship, as described by T.H. This is operationalised by investigating t…
Shaping a gender equality policy in higher education
South African institutions still confront gendered inequalities, irrespective of transformative national policies, compounded by the absence of a national gender equality policy for higher education. We therefore explore the potential of the capabilities approach (CA) to inform policy formation and argue for the development of a policy for higher education institutions based on opportunities for valuable functionings as the informational basis fo…
Challenges in accessing higher education
Sustainable assessment for lifelong learning
This paper explores the alignment of assessment practices in universities and lifelong learning as a key process and outcome for expansive student development. It outlines Boud’s approach to assessment, operationalises this to analyse practices in two contrasting national contexts: the sociology departments of the Midlands University in the UK and Nam Du University in Vietnam, and reframes this framework as a guide to improving practices and bett…
Reconsidering girls’ education in Turkey from a capabilities and feminist perspective
A Capabilities-based Gender Equality Policy for Higher Education
The complex transformative intent of policy goals is often marginalized in favour of tangible, measurable outcomes. Such a pattern is evident in the tracking of global social justice goals, such as gender equality, where sole reliance on numerical parity data to track progress has led to the simplification of the concept for the sake of measurement. This intensifies the need to focus both on conceptual and methodological considerations in policy …
Failures and possibilities of epistemic justice, with some implications for higher education
This papers draws on the compelling example of a political movement in South Africa in the 1960s and 1970s to explore both how epistemic justice conditions of possibility and of failure play out in practice. It provides a springboard to understand how and why failures of epistemic justice matter tremendously for democratic and inclusive lives and how the historical example can point us in the direction of higher education as a space for Amartya S…
Political Agency and Capabilities Formation Through Participatory Action Research
This paper draws on a participatory action research (PAR) project as a potential space for undergraduate students at one South African university to develop as political agents. Participation and reasoning, grounded in reciprocal relationships, which are fundamental in a PAR project are introduced. The contributions of the capability approach and the case for the significance of relational capabilities of voice and participation as both objective…
Political science (34 obras) · Sociology (32 obras) · Law (19 obras) · Law (14 obras) · Pedagogy (14 obras) · Gender Studies (11 obras) · Economics (10 obras) · Gender Studies (10 obras) · Higher education (10 obras) · Social science (10 obras)