South Africa’s young education researchers need networks to share experience more than pressure to produce outputs

By Mpho-Entle Puleng Modise, University of South Africa and Maureen Robinson, Stellenbosch University

South Africa has for many years been a strong player in several areas of world-class research. Some of the country’s researchers have made major contributions in areas like the biomedical sciences, palaeontology and astronomy

Good research matters. It can have broad, positive consequences. On paper South Africa’s government recognises this. The 2019 White Paper on Science, Technology and Innovation points out how knowledge from many disciplines interacts to deepen awareness of South Africa’s serious and long-standing challenges, like energy, food security and inequality. More importantly, this knowledge can be used to tackle these problems.

To this end, the Department of Higher Education and Training and statutory bodies like the National Research Foundation actively encourage research production. This is done through, for instance, funded research chairs and financial incentives to publish. Universities, too, are active here. They offer workshops and seminars on topics such as funding opportunities, research ethics, grant writing, and postgraduate supervision.

But several factors prevent these measures from bearing as much fruit as they could – particularly for those researchers just beginning their academic careers. In 2019 Universities South Africa held a symposium about early career researchers. It found that this cohort struggled to make time to conduct and publish research. The young researchers also wanted far more support when it came to, among other things, applying for grants and developing their research profiles.

In 2020 the South African Education Research Association established an early career researchers portfolio on its executive committee. We are both executive members of the association. We are also education researchers. We conducted a study to investigate how early career education researchers experience the organisation’s strategies.

The researchers we interviewed said they appreciated the practical skills and networking opportunities offered by the association. They valued its culture of collaboration and openness to sharing resources and knowledge.

Our findings show that there is a generation of dedicated, motivated younger education researchers in South Africa. They are asking for more training in areas like writing, plagiarism and citation, and supervising postgraduate students. They also want more networking opportunities and the chance to collaborate with each other and with older, more established scholars. This kind of support should be provided by more than just professional organisations like ours. Universities and research institutions have a crucial role to play, too.

Key findings

The South African Education Research Association defines early career researchers as those who are engaged in postgraduate study or are embarking on a research career at a higher education institution or any other research centre.

As part of our support for these researchers the association offers, among other things, doctoral awards, public seminars and mentorships. We also provide training in writing for publication. And we aim to establish a community which provides critical and supportive engagement.

For the study we approached a sample of 34 early career researchers in the educational research field. They had all taken part in the association’s various activities. Participation in the study was voluntary. We received 21 responses via an online survey. Participants were asked to describe their involvement with the association, and their positive and negative experiences of this involvement.

Many of these were positive. Said one respondent:

I enjoyed the (early career researcher) workshop, and the (association’s) conference gave me the opportunity to showcase my PhD research.

Another told us:

I have gone on to publish my presentation papers after benefiting from feedback from colleagues at conferences.

Other positive factors they highlighted included a culture of collaboration within a supportive research environment and the chance to network with more experienced researchers, as well as with their peers.

Researchers also told us how engaging with experienced scholars through the association’s programmes had positively influenced their own research trajectories.

A few participants told us their institutions were not providing enough support or proper mentoring. This made them especially grateful for the association’s approach, particularly as it related to openly sharing resources and knowledge.

They also identified some gaps in the association’s programmes.

For instance, they wanted more practical assistance in various areas of scholarship. These included topics like plagiarism and citation and the supervision of postgraduate students. Others wanted help in choosing the best design and methodology for their research.

Participants asked for more opportunities for novice researchers to engage and collaborate with seasoned academics. This was seen as especially important for those working at less research-intensive institutions.

The researchers also called for greater international collaboration, especially among Southern African Development Community (SADC) countries. It is encouraging that the organisation’s 2024 conference will be held in conjunction with the Southern African Educational Research Network. The network includes associations from Botswana, Lesotho, Eswatini and Namibia.

Finally, they wanted more avenues to be created for funding and knowledge sharing among early career researchers.

Broaden ideas of capacity-building

Our findings show the limitations of an approach to building young researchers’ skills and abilities that focuses predominantly on producing more research outputs.

This echoes the argument made by researchers Jack Lee and Aliya Kuzhabekova: an accounting of publications, patents and doctorates does not fully capture the complexity of capacity building. Instead, building research capacity involves shifting from, as researchers Alison Lee and David Boud put it, “what is produced [outputs] to the production of the person who produces”.

We are not denying that resources and infrastructure play an essential role in building research capacity. Our participants all flagged a lack of funding to attend conferences as a major hindrance. However, we would argue that attention must simultaneously be given to building cultures of collaboration and support that allow peer networks to flourish and reciprocal learning to become the norm.

Encouragingly, South Africa’s Council on Higher Education supports this kind of approach. It has called for doctoral programmes to enable students to engage with a wide range of stakeholders and communities outside their immediate research groups.

A strategy built on cultures of collaboration and support will encourage knowledge production and scholarly growth. This will help more young researchers to advance their careers. And that’s good for South Africa, as it will add to the country’s pool of experienced researchers.

Mpho-Entle Puleng Modise, Associate professor, University of South Africa and Maureen Robinson, Emeritus Professor, Faculty of Education, Stellenbosch University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.