Over the past few decades, there has been an increased awareness of the strategic role of indigenous African languages in multilingual South Africa. This article discusses the strategic role that indigenous languages could and should play in the promotion of multilingual South Africa. The article pays attention to bilingual education and the…

In some areas of rural Africa, long-standing cultural traditions and beliefs may discourage parents from verbally engaging with their young children. This study assessed the effectiveness of a parenting program designed to encourage verbal engagement between caregivers and infants in Wolof-speaking villages in rural Senegal. Caregivers (n = 443)…

This paper contributes to current sociolinguistic research on the rapidly-changing landscape of digitally mediated communication (Androutsopoulos and Staehr 2018) by presenting mediagrams, a new method for research on transnational mediated interaction. Based on an ethnographic study of mediated multilingual communication in four families with…

Efforts are underway to globalize sociology in the United States through study abroad experiences. At the same time, there is a push to extend the reach of such programs to students of color. We use student journal entries and fieldnotes from trips to South Africa to analyze how students of color grapple with a disruption of identity in a Black…

An earlier paper focused on how born-free learners constitute, negotiate and represent their identities after almost two and half decades of democracy in South Africa. Utilising the theoretical framework of subjective realities of educational change, in this article I set out to explore what implications teachers' beliefs hold for born-free…

African township schools are characterised by cultural and linguistic diversity, hence, teachers have the dual task of ensuring that learners grasp scientific concepts, while also catering for the diversity in the learners' backgrounds. The study reported on here was aimed at investigating teachers' beliefs and practices in teaching life sciences…

This paper seeks to understand how the curriculum is experienced across two higher education institutions to probe students' understandings of epistemic access in the context of decolonisation debates. Three particular aspects of student experience of the decolonised curriculum and pedagogy are scrutinised. First, we look at the kind of sociality…

In many countries of sub-Saharan Africa, the release of each year's results for the end of high school examinations heralds an annual ritual of public commentary on the poor state of national education systems. However, the exoglossic/monolingual language regime for these examinations is infrequently acknowledged as contributing to the dismal…

This paper explores the different uses of symbols to express power and interpersonal relationship in Ngugi's bulkiest novel "Wizard of the Crow" (2006), with a few illustrations from "Matigari" (1987). It draws on the semiotic approach and identifies about a hundred discourse strings in which signs are used to express tenor…

Terrorism is not new. It has existed since the beginning of recorded history and more particularly after the Second World War Terrorist activities have been witnessed around the world. These attacks have multiplied since the terrorist attack on the United States of America on September 11 2001. In recent times in Nigeria, the unity of the country…

The use of computing technologies in less commonly taught language (LCTL) and endangered language (EL) learning is different from mainstream computer-assisted language learning (CALL), where several languages, most noticeably English, dominate the literature. Many most commonly taught language (MCTL) learners learn a language for a variety of…

This exploratory research focused on describing Setswana-speaking early adolescents' perceptions of respect in educator-learner relationships in the South African context. A lack of mutual respect obstructs adolescents' freedom to pursue personal goals in South Africa's school communities. Adding to this incongruity is the isolating of relational…

When teachers and learners of English face challenging circumstances such as limited access to books and teaching supplies, local practices such as oral storytelling traditions can provide creative resources for supporting language and literacy development. We describe how a cultural imaginary of stories told by Rwandan and U.S. students supported…

Issues of positionality of Black African researchers researching African issues is seldom discussed in methodological literature. In this article, I reflect from an African perspective on issues of insider/outsider positionalities and of serendipity and unexpectedness during my fieldwork which are areas often dominated by writing from the global…

Academic writing in higher education involves acculturation of discourse characterised by new and unfamiliar social, cultural and academic conventions which remain a huge challenge for instructors and students worldwide. This study aimed at investigating the use of Blackboard Collaborated-Based Instruction to improve academic writing skills of…