No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

Widening of access and participation has become a paramount agenda for Allied Health Sciences education in South Africa. In response to the need the Department of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Cape Town introduced the Intervention Programme (IP) in 2009 as a strategy for widening of access and participation student. This study reflects on the design and implementation of IP, the complexities of the diversity of students entering the IP, and the implications for curriculum restructuring in the first year of study and beyond. The authors drew on Mezirow's (1990) theory of transformative learning to explain the multifaceted challenges encountered through our own reflection as programme designers and facilitators, as well as organisers of and participants in curricular reviews using data from student interviews, student performance in first and subsequent years of study, and review documentation.The study shows that curriculum restructuring for a diversifying student body across multiple programmes is a complex process with interrelated and influential factors. Our critical reflections revealed the complexities of aligning intentions that are significantly flawed by presuppositions relating needs and outcomes.

This special issue on Finding a Place to Belong: University Students, Academic Structures and the Processes of Integration contains nine papers on opportunities of belonging and highlights the cultivation of belonging as a fundamental for addressing inequality and inequity in a linguistically and culturally diverse higher education context. Here, belonging challenges the dominant university ideology, which can elude the marginalised or underserved student and staff groups of learning communities. The combination of individual/group agency and identity negotiation for developing and implementing enablers of belonging reveals the challenges and complexity of deconstructing belonging. The papers focus on the barriers and opportunities of belonging and the interaction of agency and enablers of belonging, such as equitable vision, policy, programmes and commitment, as a product of belonging. Keywords: Deconstructing Belonging Opportunities Barriers Transformation Multiple Identities Multiple Belongings