By far the majority of South African students get their schooling in a second language, which means that our classrooms areEmultilingual. This state of affairs is not exclusive to our country, as can be seen in the many academic conferences on multilingual learning and teaching. Terms like translanguaging and biliteracy appear in many articles and books that discuss the role language in education. What makes the multilingual nature of our South African classrooms challenging, is the fact that many learners switch from one language of learning and teaching to another at various points in their school career: from home language to English or Afrikaans after the foundation phase, from one language of learning and teaching to another when they move to new schools, high school or tertiary institutions. This book is an attempt to highlight the transitions; from home to school, from foundation to intermediate phase, from primary to high school, and from high school to tertiary institutions.

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The book explores concerns about the lack of higher education transformation around issues of equity, curriculum reform, language and race, and how students navigate higher education complexities. Students’ self-reflective abilities, creativity and pragmatic approaches to surviving and succeeding are indicators that postgraduate student success is as much internally as externally determined. Each chapter speaks from a uniquely South African perspective. The editors have tried to remain true to the voice of each contributor, while simultaneously providing a coherent body of scholarly work.

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The 24 chapters contained in this volume provide diverse but also congruent perspectives on future foci for research into postgraduate education and supervision in the knowledge society.The chapters move from deliberations on challenges for postgraduate supervision at macro level (such as the pressure to increase postgraduate output and the implications of increasinglymanagerialist institutions) to meso level matters (the form and function of postgraduate education in specific countries) to the micro (rich case studies of individual institutions, programmes and supervisors).

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There is global evidence that ghosts of notions of essentialist differences between human groups continue to haunt in various forms. People draw upon ideas of religion, race, ethnicity, gender and sexuality, and nation to draw distinctions. Racism, xenophobia, sexism, and right-wing populism are ongoing and increasing phenomena. In addition, genetic science has introduced new forms of proof which lends itself to misuse, to confirm common sense perceptions. The valuable contributions of the authors in this publication not only warn against such notions, but offer ways of exploring, exposing and challenging the ghosts and the fears engendered through their contemporary forms.

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