The Faculty of Education is committed to the implementation of the University’s Overarching Strategic Framework (OSP) via the Strategic Plan. The Faculty is in the process of aligning its activities with the University’s ‘new positioning’ as announced by the Vice-Chancellor on 5 March 2009. In view of the fact that this ‘new positioning’ involves orienting the University’s activities to key development themes such as combating pandemic poverty, promoting human security (from food security to peace initiatives), maintaining and promoting human dignity, promoting democracy, and promoting and maintaining environmental sustainability, the Faculty wants to be

Acknowledged and respected unequivocally as a leading and engaged research-driven education faculty.

Undergirding the Faculty’s quest to be a leading and engaged research-driven unit is the idea of a pedagogy of hope which, according to the Rector, should constitute the research-driven activities of the University. In the light of the above, the Faculty of Education has begun to organise its activities in accordance with the OSP and its concomitant idea of a pedagogy of hope. For the Faculty, cultivating a pedagogy of hope implies that students who leave the University would enact their responsibilities in a critical, praxiological (dialogical) and transformative manner in order to engender just actions in post-apartheid South Africa. Against the backdrop of the challenges enumerated below, the Faculty recommits itself to its research-driven impetus, which commenced with the implementation of Vision 2012 in 2006.