Children moving from middle childhood to adolescence experience challenges that require effective skills to cope with the increasing complexity of life. This is particularly true in South Africa where the exposure to violence, poverty and ongoing socio-economic transformation leads to high levels of stress. Accordingly, children need to be resilient to cope with stress and trauma. The goal of this investigation was to develop, implement and evaluate a resiliency programme for 12–year-old children. A total of 161 participants was selected from four schools in the Bloemfontein area and divided into experimental and control groups. The Solomon Four Group Design was used. The following measuring instruments were used to assess the participants' resilience: the Behavioural and Emotional Rating Scale, Resiliency Scales for children and adolescents, and the Fortitude Scale. The intervention programme consisted of 15 sessions presented over a period of three weeks and focused on activities promoting emotional regulation, stress management, interpersonal skills, and problem solving. Two post-test evaluations were conducted: three weeks after the intervention programme and a follow-up three months later. Findings indicated that intra personal characteristics such as emotional regulation and self-appraisal increased significantly after the children had been exposed to the resiliency programme; while interpersonal skills and external resources such as family and general social support did not increase significantly. The content of the resiliency programme and the recommendations for interventions are discussed in the article.

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Consistent economic downturns, political uprisings, and social upheavals from the 1980s have significantly depleted the quality of higher education in Africa, particularly graduate training. While remarkable strides in graduate training have been made in countries such as South Africa relative to other parts of the continent, policy and funding challenges continue to threaten the quality of students and programs. Over the past two decades, new forms of institutional collaborations aimed at revamping graduate training in sub-Saharan Africa have emerged. Debates on how to revamp the higher education system are ongoing among scholars, policymakers, administrators, and funders, but minimal attention is paid to the students’ voices, particularly women’s that speak to the dire conditions under which graduate training is carried out. To spur more discussion about this gap in literature, we conducted focus group discussions with female graduate students in four higher education institutions in Nigeria and South Africa. Our participants identified five major challenges that graduate students often wrestle with: financial challenges, limited sources of and dated curricular materials, institutional infrastructure and program logistics, academic supervision, and gender relations among students as well as between students and scholars. These challenges, our participants assert, often place female graduate students in a more vulnerable position than their male counterparts. Our findings, though preliminary, point to the need to actively engage students, especially women, in academic debates and initiatives aimed at improving graduate training in Africa.

The Faculty of Humanities held a research webinar on 30 July 2021 covering the role of the supervisor in student research. <div><br></div><div>Presentations were made by Dr Henriëtte van den Berg, Prof Luzelle Naudé from Psychology, and Prof Theodore Petrus from Anthropology.</div>