Expanding educational boundaries: making dialectical shifts

Abstract

This article proceeds from the perspective that education is situated in broader cultural systems of interpreting and knowing reality, and that education is an integral part of the socialisation process. The article highlights the inadequacy of many present academic practices in meeting the learning needs of diverse groups of learners. In the light of changing social circumstances, and the new purposes that higher education should meet, we need to rethink and redefine conventional educational boundaries. Dialectic thinking is advocated as a way of transcending discrepancies between theoretical perspectives and actual educational practice, and among different kinds of knowledge that teachers, learners and academic disciplines bring to the learning scene.


South African Journal of Higher Education Vol.16(3) 2002: 13-20