Isaacs, Shafika (PhD)
Shafika Isaacs has a BSc from the University of Kwazulu Natal, after which she obtained an MSc as a Mandela Scholar at Sussex University. She has an Executive MBA with distinction at the University of Cape Town. Shafika is an international digital learning specialist working for many years with UNESCO, UNICEF, the Department of Basic Education and recently, as Re search Associate of UJ’s Centre for Education Practice Research. She serves on numerous governing boards, has published widely on digital learning in Africa and in 2017 won the Woman of Stature, Woman of the Year Award. Based on her PhD Study, she has a book chapter publication “A ‘Small and Thick’ Portrait of Kabelo’s Digital Play” currently in press with Springer. Ms Isaacs captured the everyday play-world of a Soweto boy-child, named Kabelo. In a carefully designed ethnographic study that foregrounds the societal labels of his overall underperformance at school, she juxtaposes these labels with his play- world capabilities and his practical knowledge of navigation in school and in his communities. In following Kabelo for 17 months across the vast expanse of his life in Soweto, Shafika used a range of creative ethnographic methods, including digital story-telling, to compose a photographic- and narrative, ‘zine - like’ portrait of his everyday play-world – a world that lies beneath his underperforming school test scores. This ethnographic portrait manifests in two interacting, complex activity systems, or worlds: a play-world and an academic performance world. The study concludes that the township boy- child’s everyday play, his play tools and his play capabilities should be recognised as powerful resources for learning, to counter deficit narratives about academically-underperforming township children.
Supervisor: Prof E Henning Co-supervisor: Prof N Roberts
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