Undergraduate Research in South Africa: Understanding the Quandary

There are concerns that the South African higher education system is not producing sufficient graduates to meet national needs in respect of economic and social development. Systemic reform such as strengthening the undergraduate teaching and research relationship, which is inextricably tied to curriculum structure, is necessary to meet the goals of equity and development and enhancing graduate quality. This can potentially widen the pipeline into postgraduate studies and produce the next generation of academics. The main argument of this chapter is the need to profoundly change the manner in which teaching is structured in South Africa, in order to shift the prevailing culture of undergraduate students as receivers to one in which they are inquirers. This requires pedagogies that enable inquiry-led learning to be developed, to actively engage students in the research process and for them to make the linkage to their discipline-specific practice. An increased focus on building an undergraduate research culture through pedagogical reforms is still needed.