First-Year Students Set to Benefit from New Critical Social Justice and Citizenship Module

First-Year Students Set to Benefit from New Critical Social Justice and Citizenship Module

A university-wide module that is compulsory for all first-year students is set to be rolled out in the 2024 academic year.

The Critical Social Justice and Citizenship Module is a groundbreaking initiative by UKZN to address the ongoing social injustices of gender-based violence (GBV), racism, xenophobia and homophobia.

Aimed at challenging students to recognise a bit of themselves in everyone else and to respond with kindness, humility, and humanity, the module will encompass eight online lectures and eight supporting tutorials taught by masters and PhD students familiar with social justice issues.

Around 9 000 first-year students will make up the majority of the first cohort to benefit from this module which will be offered in English or isiZulu and run in the first and second semesters of each year.

The module was initially developed in response to the high number of GBV incidents in the country and across university campuses. However, during its conceptualisation, the task team recognised that GBV intersects with other social issues and a much broader subject framework which incorporates and engages with race, culture, xenophobia, homophobia, disability, class, and other forms of difference was adopted.

The teaching of the module was piloted in the College of Humanities in the second semester of 2023, using blended learning consisting of pre-recorded online lectures and small in-person group tutorials, which encourage full participation and experiential learning through shared experiences.

As the module develops, it will include written activities and mini projects which students will need to pass, aimed at understanding how negative attitudes towards otherness develop, and how to challenge these to disrupt old ways of thinking and learn new ways to study, live and work together with people who are different.

In this way, UKZN will contribute to the development of students who are equipped with the appropriate knowledge, skills, values, and conceptual frameworks to critically engage with various forms of social oppression, discrimination, and violence within the South African context.

Deputy Vice-Chancellor for Teaching and Learning at UKZN and Task Team Chair, Professor Thabo Msibi said: ‘Through this module, we hope to produce graduates who are more conscious of their own humanity and that of others, and who have a good sense of dealing with injustice in society.’ 

Words: NdabaOnline

Photograph: Supplied