The swift transition from face-to-face contact to online learning due to coronavirus (COVID-19) in teaching and learning is unprecedented on the globe, fraught with a myriad of challenges, and many developing economies being hardest hit. However, several efforts have been made, albeit at different levels in the various parts of the world to adjust and to continue with tuition under the difficult circumstances. The study intends to determine the potential of online teaching and learning in a developing country to propose a more applicable and sustainable integration of information and communication technologies (ICT) in teaching and learning in crises and unforeseen circumstances. The study was conducted as a survey based on a case study of a tertiary institution. The objective was to find out lecturers’ and students’ experiences of online instruction since the beginning of lockdown periods due to COVID-19 in early 2020 so as to map future trajectories. The major findings include a lack of digital literacy among both lecturers and students; inadequate data and properly functioning gadgets; resistance to change revealed in limited adoption on the part of both lecturers and students despite efforts to provide training being made; a lack of systematisation of integration of ITCs in teaching and learning making commitment to transition to online modes difficult; a lack of commitment to attending online sessions and plagiarism in assignments by students. However, adequate commitment to online instruction is crucial to embrace the fourth industrial revolution.

The study aimed to determine students’ perspectives on a shift from a dual-medium (English and Afrikaans) language policy to a monolingual (English-only) language policy at a University of Technology in South Africa and to establish whether the shift had any impact on student learning at the institution. The study used a quantitative method of inquiry, with a questionnaire used for data collection. The findings revealed that language-related challenges vary amongst students, and these can be categorised as low, medium and high language learning problems. The article concludes that the language policy shift does not reflect the multilingual nature of the c ountry, student demographics or their language needs at the institution. Instead of addressing the real challenge facing the majority of students who speak Sesotho, it merely dropped a second medium of instruction (MOI), Afrikaans, instead of developing a dominant indigenous language (Sesotho) for educational use alongside English and Afrikaans.Transdisciplinarity Contribution: The article lays bare the access paradox in higher education owing to the misalignment between the country’s progressive language policies and learning institutions’ language policies. The students’ perspectives bring a much-needed dimension to the ongoing debate on the use of the learners’ home languages as languages of learning and teaching.

This study examined the factors that influence the sense of self efficacy of pre-service teachers at a university of technology in South Africa. To this end, a questionnaire was used in a survey to collect data from the population of fourth-year Bachelor of Education students. The Teachers' Sense of Efficacy Scale (TSES) was used to measure the teaching self-efficacy of pre-service teachers whilst the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (EPQ) was used to measure their personality dimensions. The findings revealed that pre-service teachers differed in terms of the extent of their teaching self-efficacy. The findings also revealed that gender and study programme had no influence on pre-service teachers' teaching self-efficacy. The findings further revealed that there is no relationship between pre-service teachers' teaching self-efficacy and personality factors, namely neuroticism (N) and extraversion (E). Furthermore, the findings revealed that the programme of study emerged as a significant predictor of efficacy in the classroom management subscale of teaching self-efficacy.