Prof Rudolph Britz of the Department of Philosophy at the University of the Free State visited the Two Oceans Graduate Institute on 5 February 2020 to facilitate a teacher development session on the role of research at a tertiary teacher education institution.
It is the vision of the Two Oceans Graduate Institute to be a research institution in the fullest sense of the word in order to inform teaching and learning with research based evidence and content. Teaching and learning underpinned by research should ‘perceive knowledge and knowledge production along the lines of innovative originality’, according to Prof Britz. He emphasised that ‘inspired research engagement, in terms of its scope of understanding, reflects a fundamental respect and acquaintance with the philosophy that carries the intellectual trajectory of which it is part, thus linked to origins, and innovation’.
‘The Two Oceans Graduate Institute will continually strive towards the establishment of a research platform and portfolio embedded in a paradigm conceptualised as innovative originality’, said Dr Lourens Erasmus, CEO of TOGI after the research day discussions. ‘The research portfolio at our institution and the contribution of our lecturers and academics will reveal the qualities and integrity of humility, respect, truth, reliability, authenticity, accountability and truthfulness, to serve our academic project and to educate teachers of high quality and competence, in the best possible way’, said Dr Erasmus.
As said on our website:
“Two Oceans Graduate Institute is committed to the continuous professional development of its own staff and to their participation in research as an ongoing component of their careers. It is an institutional imperative that research, as the scholarly act and process of knowledge creation, should inform teaching and learning in undergraduate and postgraduate programmes. The institution guides and motivates academic staff members to execute their teaching and research in a local, regional and international higher education context in the best interest of researched based teaching and learning. The institutional Research Policy emphasizes a specific focus on the continued development of postgraduate research capacity and output. Staff members are guided towards the implementation of relevant research methodologies in education as a contribution to the production of researched based knowledge in education. The research profiles of lecturers at the Two Oceans Graduate Institute signify the development of a scholarship of teaching and learning in a variety of educational contexts and fields. The vision of the institution is to develop through its cohort of academics, research designs and solutions as a contribution to the educational needs and challenges in the South African context and beyond.”