TRANSFORMING PSYCHOLOGY: ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN PRACTICE

Abstract

This article explores transformation challenges in postgraduate psychology in the Clinical Masters programme at the University of the Witwatersrand. Although black students form the majority of students in the undergraduate psychology degree programme, this trend is reversed in postgraduate progammes throughout the psychology department, where white students form the bulk of the class and black students make up only a small percentage of the numbers. The research aims to offer a clear and coherent analysis of the underlying inequalities that underpin the racial unevenness between undergraduate and postgraduate psychology classes, while at the same time interrogating the very notions that serve to reproduce this uneven terrain. The research is conducted using both psychology lecturers, and students in undergraduate and postgraduate psychology programs at Wits, and is made up of a sample of twelve in-depth interviews from postgraduate students, undergraduate students and lecturers. These have been analysed qualitatively, using a Thematic Discourse Analysis. Findings centre on the pivotal role that language plays in the subject of racial transformation, both as an indicator of socioeconomic status and as a barrier to the psychology profession. Language is explored for its ideologically bound nature and the ways that this manifests both demographically and institutionally in the University of the Witwatersrand.