In 2004 the universities of Durban-Westville and Natal merged as part of the national restructuring of higher education in South Africa. These institutions' faculties and schools of education were, arguably, centres of excellence for research in adult education, teacher education and professional development, mathematics education and gender in…

This article examines the discourses of theses titles as postgraduate students name and frame their research. It does this by analysing the discourse, nature and trends of title construction in Master's and Ph.D. research titles 1995-2004 in all universities in South Africa. The dominant discourses are analysed using Foucault's approach to…

It is widely known that there is a dearth of education research in South Africa which takes as its methodological basis experimentation. The emphasis has been on educators' and learners' experiential understanding in the first decade of democracy after apartheid, when qualitative research predominated. The article investigates, first, the extent…

The Project Postgraduate Educational Research (PPER) data indicate that case study is the most popular methodology among South African education masters and doctorate students in the period 1995-2004. This article reflects on the reasons for the preference for case study by considering epistemological and contextual factors. It unpacks the links…

Adult Basic Education and Training (ABET) and Early Childhood Education (ECE) are the stepchildren of the South African education system in terms of resource allocation and public attention, and yet vitally inform the enterprise of lifelong learning and the prospects for developing a learning nation. The paucity of research on ECE and ABET, and…

Historically, rurality and rural education have been marginalised bodies of knowledge in South Africa. The post-1994 era has seen an emerging government concern to address the continuing interplay between poverty, HIV/AIDS, underdevelopment, and underachievement in schools categorised as rural. To address these concerns, scholars in South African…

Supervision might be understood as the provision usually by an academic to a student of either the expert guidance in subject knowledge or genre knowledge in relation to postgraduate thesis development. The Project for Postgraduate Educational Research (PPER) team members, in the course of their field visits, sought to interview supervisors of…

Increased demands on academics due to the changing work and higher educational environments challenge traditional approaches to postgraduate supervision. Supervisors often tend to follow the apprenticeship approach uncritically. Supervisors therefore need to be aware of alternative approaches to supervision and of the need for structured planning…

This article aims to interrogate possible assessment problems arising from a community-based-research mode of research and consider some of the assessment approaches that generate scepticism among some examiners, and endorsement from others. The article explores specific challenges in supervising, accommodating and evaluating diverse candidates…

Quality research supervision leading to timely completion and student satisfaction involves explicit pedagogy and effective communication. This article describes the development within an action research cycle of an online learning space designed to achieve these goals. The research "spirals" involved interventions in the form of instructive…

Many postgraduate interdisciplinary research (IDR) candidates in the applied disciplines work across two or more traditional areas of study. Such candidates often spend considerable time on knowledge-building activities outside their home (or undergraduate) disciplines; IDR candidates venture into new fields and are exposed to the cultures and…

In this article, I examine three claims that in some senses can hinder the supervisory process rather than facilitate it. These are the claims that the relationship between supervisor and student should be a friendship; that students writing their theses should demonstrate "own voice"; and that students should choose supervisors on the…