Social Exclusion & Inclusion

Postgraduate education is about the contribution to powerful knowledge. But whose knowledge is considered powerful and who gets to be recognised as a powerful knower?

Spend a few minutes brainstorming your own experiences (of supervising and being supervised) and consider ways in which the following variables or dynamics might play into the supervision process.

Post a message on this week’s forum about how any of these issues come into play in your own country or university.

These bullets suggest that these variables work discretely but we know that social reality works in intersectional ways. Furthermore, many of these issues play out through social structures that are not within our personal control. How does social exclusion work? Consider the diagram below:

To improve the quality and quantity of postgraduate scholarship, it is vital that we deal with problems of unequal power relations, social exclusion and discrimination that hinder the creative process of knowledge production and play a role in preventing candidates from successfully completing their studies.

This entails consideration of the following issues:

• Social exclusion and discrimination; recognising the impact of such exclusion and discrimination upon the knowledge production and creative potential of students.
• Supervisory challenges associated with diversities relating to gender, class, ethnicity/culture, ‘race’, geography and language.
• The demanding effects of discriminatory relations in supervisory encounters and the management of unequal power relations.
• Dealing with problems associated with power relations in supervisory contexts.
• Reflection on your role as a supervisor.

The issue of social inclusion and transformation in postgraduate education is a crucial one for the African continent. Low retention and throughput suggest that there are several issues that impact on the chances of students achieving their postgraduate degree.

Various reports indicate that racism, sexism and xenophobia are rife in our institutions and continue to pervade the attitudes and practices of university structures, the student body and of academics.