Rhodes University

‘Context in a Textbox’: How Textbooks Erase Place and Reproduce Curriculum Authority

South African curriculum transformation is lived through teaching decisions: what gets prescribed, what becomes ‘basic’ and what students can realistically access. This paper examines prescribed textbooks as epistemic infrastructure in Industrial and Organisational Psychology (IO...

Remaking place relations for social‐ecological restoration: Reflections on placemaking in South Africa

Abstract Ecological restoration is an ongoing relational process involving interconnected reciprocal social and biophysical interactions that shift and change over time and space. Conceptual literature proposes that placemaking can deepen and enhance the understanding and impleme...

Towards a systemic approach to fitness-based feature optimization under limited resources for IoT attack detectors

Purpose The paper aims to propose, through feature extraction/selection techniques, a systematic approach for the optimization of features based on fitness and allowing IoT attack detectors to operate efficiently with limited resources. Design/methodology/approach Through a syste...

Developing South African Primary Pre-service Mathematics Teachers’ Reflective Practice

Mathematics education is an area of concern across multiple countries, and, while reflective practice is a recommended skill for improved teaching, research has found it a rare and difficult skill to develop. This has resulted in increased research into ways for developing both p...

Craniometric evaluation of population affinity among South African subadults

Although standard craniometrics is typically regarded as the method of choice for estimating population affinity in adults, its application to subadults has received limited attention, despite potential population-specific signals demonstrated in cranial growth patterns. This stu...

Power, Temporality and Heterogeneous Multiplicities: Framing Indigenous Knowledge in Sustainable Technologies Curriculum Design in Pre-service Teacher Education

As education policies increasingly engage Indigenous Knowledge (IK), challenges arise regarding how IK can be mobilised in teacher education without either romanticising the past or instrumentalising knowledge practices as techniques to be extracted and incorporated into contempo...

Geographical Provenance-Associated Differences in Lipophilic Phytochemical Fingerprints and Biological Activities of Peltophorum africanum from Two South African Collection Sites

Medicinal plants collected from different environments may yield chemically and biologically distinct preparations even when they share the same botanical identity. This study compared the lipophilic phytochemical profiles and in vitro antioxidant and antibacterial activities of...

Not speaking my language: playback experiments reveal early-orphaned human-reared adult cheetahs lack interest in species-specific vocalizations

Abstract Early adult models, particularly the mother, play an essential role in tuning perception to build the multimodal representation of species-specific social signals, especially in mammals. Therefore, early maternal loss adversely impacts social integration in mammals. More...

Anxiety and Depressive Symptoms among Undergraduate Health Sciences Students at a Rural South African University: Prevalence and Multivariable Correlates

Introduction/Objective Health sciences students may experience substantial anxiety and depressive symptoms, yet evidence from rural South African faculties remains limited. This study estimated the prevalence and severity of anxiety and depressive symptoms and examined associated...

Applying convolutional neural networks to X-ray images to improve postharvest detection of fruit fly infestation

Early detection of fruit fly (Diptera: Tephritidae) infestation in traded fruit is important for maintaining phytosanitary security, particularly for quarantine pests. This study evaluated the integration of micro-focus X-ray computed tomography (µCT) and deep learning as a non-d...

Cyber diplomacy as networked securitisation: an empirically grounded framework

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to develop an empirically grounded framework of cyber diplomacy. In the modern era, conflicts have moved online, challenging the suitability of traditional diplomatic frameworks for this new context. While the dimensions and practices of tradi...

A search for high-redshift radio galaxy candidates with the MeerKAT Galaxy Cluster Legacy Survey

Abstract High-redshift radio galaxies (HzRGs) are among the earliest and most massive galaxies whose powerful radio emission allows us to probe the large-scale structure, galaxy evolution, and the epoch of reionisation. We present a new sample of HzRG candidates constructed using...

Researching Social Science: Methodological Insights and Possibilities from Basic Critical Realism

This paper begins by arguing that the tight relation between the selection of a theoretical framework, its related methodology and the type of knowledge produced in social science research is not an arbitrary matter. If the goal of research is to improve practice, then the way in...

On the productivity of length-based alternations in Xhosa noun class prefixes

Noun classes in isiXhosa are each associated with specific prefixes on the noun stem. Some of these noun class prefixes exhibit length-based allomorphy: they take one form before multisyllabic stems and a different, longer form before stems that are monosyllabic. Specifically, cl...

Regime Shifts and Transformations in Social-Ecological Systems: Advancing Critical Frontiers for Safe and Just Futures

Current research challenges in sustainability science require us to consider nonlinear changes—shifts that do not happen gradually but can be sudden and difficult to predict. Central questions are therefore how we can prevent harmful shifts, promote desirable ones, and better ant...

Ecological quality assessment of the Keta Lagoon, Ghana: integrating water quality, sediment quality, and benthic macroinvertebrates

Coastal lagoons are ecologically and socioeconomically valuable ecosystems, yet they are highly vulnerable to anthropogenic pressures. This study assessed the ecological quality of the Keta Lagoon Complex Ramsar Site (KLCRS), Ghana, by integrating water physicochemical parameters...

Rural women and coping with extreme heat in South Western Zimbabwe: livelihoods, water and energy

This article focuses on rural women’s agency and innovation in the context of the global acceleration of climate change-induced extreme heat. Specifically, it considers the intersecting challenges encountered in relation to livelihoods, water, and energy, as well as the coping st...

Impressions of writers of isiXhosa texts about the United States of America and Magona’s bridging role

The article presents impressions of writers of isiXhosa literary texts about the United States of America during the colonial and apartheid eras. A qualitative research methodology, which allows content and textual analysis, is employed. General Marxist literary theory is the too...

Restoring microbial relations and landscapes: a relational conceptual framework for fermentation, culture, and health equity

Introduction: Biodiversity decline in both external environments and internal human microbiomes indicates disrupted relationships between humans, microbes, food systems, and ecological landscapes. These interconnected landscapes are important for global health and sustainability...

Early Childhood Singing in Diverse Socioeconomic Backgrounds in South Africa

Abstract Research highlights the benefits of singing in early childhood for the development of cognitive, language, emotional and social skills. Grounded in this theoretical framework, this article draws on data from Statistics South Africa’s, The General Household Survey (2023),...