Dr Lester Brian Shawa is Senior Lecturer in Higher Education Training and Development at the University of KwaZulu Natal where he also coordinates the PhD programme and Postgraduate Diploma in Higher Education studies. Prior to this appointment, he was Deputy Dean of the Faculty of Education at Mzuzu University in Malawi as well a research fellow at the Wits School of Education in South Africa. Drawing on Critical Theory, his PhD thesis is a critique of instrumental reasoning and neopatrimonial aspects that permeate policy-steerage, management and governance of the university sector. Dr Shawa has been a visiting academic of Philosophy of Education at St Augustine College of South Africa since 2012. He is board member of the LMUU: Strengthening Institutional Capacity for Higher Education Leadership and Management in Sub-Saharan Africa; member of the University of KwaZulu Natal Transformation Committee and member of the UNESCO Chair Forum in Teacher Education for Diversity and Development at Wits University. Dr Shawa's multi-disciplinary research chiefly draws on philosophies and sociologies of policy as they intersect with higher education policy praxis (policy, governance and management); quality discourses in higher education; higher education curriculum and pedagogy and teacher education. He is currently working on a book: Quality in African Higher Education: Perspectives of Practitioners; lead a project on Civil Society and Development Effectiveness in South Africa and the Internationalisation of the Higher Education Curriculum as well as the Role of Middle-Level Academics in University Leadership. Contact details Shawa@ukzn.ac.za
Selected publications
Ramrathan, L., le Grange, L., Shawa, L.B. (2017). Research ethics in educational research. In L. Ramrathan, L. le Grange & P. Higgs (Eds). Education Studies for initial teacher development (pp. 432-443): JUTA Publications.
Shawa, L.B. (2017). Challenges of university governance in Malawi. In J. Ssempebwa, P. Neema-Abooki & J. Masaazi (Eds). Contemporary issues in higher education Management: A book in honour of Makerere University’s 90 years of excellence (pp. 105-112) Makerere: East African School of Higher Education Studies and Development.
Reddy, S., Searle, R. Shawa, L.B., & Teferra, D. (2016). A balancing act: Designing and facilitating a university education induction programme for (early career) academics. Studies in Higher Education, 40(10): 1820-1834.
Shawa, L.B. (2015). Graduate output in South African Higher Education: The dilemma of policy intervention: Pre-conference proceedings of the 9th Annual Teaching and Learning in Higher Education Conference : Re-imagining higher education policy implementation: Can policy learn from practice? Complexities, challenges and possibilities (pp. 187-198).
Shawa, L.B., & Osman, R. (2014). Enhancing the learning environment in Malawian universities: The challenge of neopatrimonialism. Southern Africa Review of Education, 20(1): 58-69.