CRHED

Research Institute

205 Nelson Mandela Dr, Benito Khotseng building, Bloemfontein camus, University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, 9301, South Africa

The international research group based in the Centre for Research on Higher Education & Development (CRHED) is concerned with advancing social justice and removing inequalities in and through education. We research well-being and agency formation, understood as creating worthwhile human capabilities and reducing poverty in society.
We are concerned with what would be needed to transform schools, colleges and universities (and education more broadly) to advance the richness of people’s human capabilities. What should be the informational basis of policy? What should curriculum and pedagogy, gender equity, reconciliation and diversity, professional education, voice and governance look like? What should diverse students have reason to value being and doing? How would values, access, opportunities (capabilities) and achievements (functionings) connect, in order to interrupt inequalities and produce more justice in the university and in society? How could this inform the making of the post-2015 world and global policy agendas? All these questions are taken up in our research projects.
The main focus of the research programme is therefore to interrogate the role of education in advancing human development, including economic opportunities and economic development, in education and in society. We address questions about what kind of society we want; what is important in a democratic society; and thus, what kind of higher education is valuable, relevant and desirable. Questions and strategies which focus only on economic growth cannot be sustainably addressed in the absence of these questions.