In 2012, Prof. Eleanor Lemmer (Educational Foundations: College of Education) won the Education Association of South Africa (EASA) Research medal, and Unisa will acknowledge this achievement by presenting her with the 2012 Unisa Prestigious National Research Award during the gala dinner of this year’s Research and Innovation week (11 – 15 March). The main objectives of the week are for Unisa to expand research collaborations with research intensive organisations and BRICS countries and also to provide a platform for institutions to display their innovation initiatives. The week is designed to encourage Unisa staff to enhance their ability and effectiveness to engage in research. This year the week will be divided into four exciting themes – Monday, Nation Research and Innovation; Tuesday, Humanities at the core of innovation; Wednesday, Postdoctoral Career Path: Humanities at the core; and Thursday, ODL: Innovating access in higher education.
Unisa is committed to socio-responsive research, but if the university is to play a significant role in shaping Africa’s future, academics need to be mentored and encouraged on various levels to become all-rounded scholars. This will ensure that they are truly focused on the interconnectedness between their research and society when responding to the developmental needs of South Africa and the continent.
This is the view of Professor Eleanor Lemmer from Educational Foundations in the College of Education, one of the 2012 recipients of the Unisa Prestigious National Research Award. Lemmer, who has a distinguished academic career of 26 years at Unisa, said the university is following on the heels of converging trends in higher education worldwide which generally elevates performance and efficiency using micromanagement of researchers, “hard incentives” and continual monitoring and reporting to achieve its aims.
“I am convinced that this is only one dimension of an environment designed to enhance research productivity. The disposition of a researcher requires curiosity, imagination and creativity. These faculties do not function at the level of explicit consciousness. They are rooted in inspiration not only in the so-called utilitarian value of knowledge or the monetary rewards that follow. Research disposition is acquired over a lengthy period of time, even decades, in a community of like-minded scholars. It requires solitude rather than a constant round of scheduled capacity building activities. I maintain that this dimension is being lost and should be re-considered and preserved in the current Unisa milieu. I realise, however, that my viewpoint is not a popular one in the current climate which seeks to accelerate research skills at any cost.”
A seasoned academic
Lemmer’s comments come at time where Unisa celebrates 140 years of shaping futures in Africa. But more than that, this year, the university looks to its future where it aims to be a leading global centre of excellence in science and research. Advice from its seasoned academics can help Unisa achieve its goals. And Lemmer fits that profile. She was appointed as a Unisa Lecturer in 1987 and Full Professor in 1996 andcurrently holds the position of Research Professor. She has already been recognised by several prestigious Unisa awards and was the most highly rated professor in the 2008 and 2012 Apex rating exercises. Her specialisation is parent involvement in education.
In 2012, Lemmer won the Education Association of South Africa (EASA) Research medal, and Unisa will acknowledge this achievement by presenting her with the Unisa Prestigious National Research Award during the gala dinner of this year’s Research and Innovation Week (11–15 March). The purpose of this week is to provide a platform for cross-disciplinary engagements by Unisa and international researchers, networking and showcasing of the various Unisa research programmes and flagships.Through this award Unisa recognises researchers who win national research awards. Lemmer received the EASA Research medal for her contributions to research during the course of her 30-year career. The EASA committee said: “… You are an outstanding example of a researcher who meets all the criteria as stipulated in the call for nominations. Thank you for your outstanding contributions that you have made to education in South Africa and for how you promoted the prestige of education, both here and abroad.”
The mastery of autoethnography
In 2012, Lemmer’s main research project was the mastery of autoethnography as an unusual and somewhat controversial research method within the broad compendium of qualitative methodology. Autoethnography, she said, is a particular form of writing that seeks to reflect on the social world through the story of one’s own experiences. “Instead of observing and analysing the other, the researcher uses his or her own experiences in relation to some aspect of the social world and is thereby engaged in constructing a portrait of self. I have an ongoing interest in uncommon or innovative methods of qualitative research and I enjoy tutoring myself and experimenting with a new method. Moreover, I am committed to doing small research that documents how individuals are affected by social change.”
Lemmer’s research resulted in a conference paper and publication of an analytic autoethnography which was constructed around her own lengthy career in academe seen through the lens of a Bourdieuian framework using habitus as core construct.
She explained: “The article is entitled Constructing the scholarly habitus: An analytic autoethnography of twenty-five years in academe. Among others, Pierre Bourdieu, the eminent French sociologist, wrote extensively on university life and the professoriate. A core concept in his work is habitus which he saw as a set of acquired dispositions which gives an academic his or her sense of place and that of others in the context of the university environment. Habitus includes assumptions, beliefs and behaviours concerning the meaning of scholarship, for example, about what represent legitimate expectations for the chair of an academic department, the requirements for appointment or promotion to the professoriate and the length of time appropriate to completing a thesis. Habitus thus predisposes academics to choose behaviour that appears to them as to be most appropriate to the achievement of a desired outcome with regard to their prior experiences, available resources and the prevailing power relations.”
The article was translated and published in Afrikaans in LitNet, an accredited online Afrikaans journal. “My somewhat unorthodox choice of journal was due to two consideration,” explained Lemmer, “the controversial nature of the methodology and the length of an autoethnography, which exceeds the word count accepted by most regular journals. In addition, I wanted this article to be published in South Africa as it dealt with a uniquely South African experience.”
Autoethnography research relevant for Unisa
This research, said Lemmer, is relevant to Unisa, because it records her own experience – 25 years at Unisa in a turbulent environment. “It therefore contributes to addressing the erosion of institutional memory. It was also my intention to advance the use of autoethnography among educational researchers. I seldom entertain lofty, national or global ideals with my kind of research – I believe that research which provides individuals or small groups with a voice, shaped by their own perspective, has a significant place among large scale research and is no less important.”
In 2012, Lemmer also published other articles in the same area of academic identity and on her specialisation, parent involvement, as well as joint works with her mentee, Dr Tintswalo Vivian Manyike, and postgraduate students. She is currently using another less common method of qualitative research – classic grounded theory – to develop a substantive theory about father involvement in children’s education and development. “Parent involvement in education is my specialisation and school policy and practice largely see parent involvement as a mother’s responsibility. I hope my new study will address a gap in what we know about father involvement and fathering … I also retire in three years and a bit, so another project for this year is to explore the experiences of retired academics through narrative inquiry.”
On her Unisa award, Lemmer said she feels gratified and that it is always good to be acknowledged.
Professor Eleanor Lemmerhas had a distinguished academic career at Unisa. This year she will acknowledge 26 years of education contributions to the university. She served as the Vice-Dean in the former Faculty of Education at Unisa and was the first woman to occupy this position. In 2010 she was appointed one of the first Research Professors at the university on the basis of her Category C NRF rating, postgraduate supervision, and acknowledged contribution as mentor. She has twice been recognised as the overall highest rated professor at Unisa by the Accelerated Performance Excellence Initiative obtaining 82% and 86% respectively. She has also twice been the recipient of the Vice-Chancellor’s Award for Research: College of Education – the most prestigious research award at Unisa awarded per college. She has also received several other awards in recognition of research performance.Her main research specialisation in the last 15 years has been parent involvement in schools and in this area she has produced 13 articles (seven co-authored with co-specialist, now Professor Emeritus, Noleen van Wyk) as well as a co-authored book, Organising parent involvement in South African schools. Two grants for the support of this research were received by Lemmer and Van Wyk.Her earlier research interest in multicultural education and linguistic diversity was demonstrated by numerous teacher training workshops in diverse schools presented countrywide in the 1990s. In this regard, Lemmer produced eight articles (co-authored with postgraduate students or her mentee, Dr Tintswalo Vivian Manyike), as well the publications, Multicultural education: A manual for teachers and Multicultural education: A manual for educators/teachers, now in its second edition.
Lemmer has supervised 21 successful doctoral students and nine masters’ students to date and is committed to producing co-authored articles with successful students to ensure the dissemination of relevant research. She has also been recognised for her mentorship of colleagues at Unisa and at other institutions, both formal and informal. Her formal mentorship with Manyike has produced four co-authored articles and during their relationship, Manyike has moved from emerging to proven researcher.
Her commitment to, and interest in, the promotion of her home discipline, Comparative Education, can be seen in the editorship of, and contribution to six books designed for postgraduate students in this field. She is also an experienced qualitative researcher and has introduced postgraduate students to less common qualitative methodologies such as ethnodrama and long-term field-based ethnography as well as produced her own publications based on narrative research, grounded theory research and most recently, autoethnography.
Lemmer also entertains an ongoing interest in higher education change and its impact on the lives of academics. In this regard she has produced four publications (two published in 2012) in this field and is continuing this interest by virtue of the NRF incentive funding.
