Maths education researcher wins prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award

1 September 2023 - Wits University

National Research Foundation awards Wits Professor Jill Adler for advancing maths teaching, research, and empowering maths educators in post-democratic SA.

The annual National Research Foundation (NRF) Awards, which honour prolific scientists behind some of the outstanding research done at South Africa’s higher education institutions, took place in Durban, KwaZulu-Natal, on 31 August 2023.

NRF CEO Dr Fulufhelo Nelwamondo, said, “The NRF Awards embody the NRF’s overall mandate for the support and advancement of research and human capacity; our development of the country’s National Research Facilities; the fostering of public awareness and engagement with science; and our commitment to the promotion of the national science system for national development.”

In addition to the Lifetime Achievement Award, the Research Excellence Award for Early Career/Emerging Researcher (Life Sciences) also went to Wits University, with Dr Ekene Emmanuel Nweke being recognised for his research in pancreatic and gallbladder cancer.

Furthermore, four Wits researchers were again NRF A-rated while another received an A-rating for the first time.

A lifetime of mathematics education adds up to excellence

The NRF Lifetime Achiever Award recognises an individual who has demonstrably made extraordinary contributions to the development of science in and for South Africa over an extended period. These contributions must be of international standard and impact.

The Lifetime Achiever awardee, Wits Professor of Mathematics Education, Jill Adler, said, “At a personal level, receiving recognition of work done over many years, is enormous – indeed overwhelming. More broadly, the award represents an acknowledgment, by the NRF who funded so much of my work, of the significance of inter-linking research and development in the teaching and learning of mathematics.”

The Lifetime Achiever award comes with a R50 000 grant, which Adler says will enable her to continue and enhance her current work on language-responsive-mathematics-teaching, which she says is so critical in the South African context and gaining more and more interest world-wide.

Academic 'mathactivism'

Professor Jill Adler is an NRF A1-rated researcher, indicating that she is recognised by all reviewers as a leading scholar in her field internationally for the high quality and broad impact (beyond a narrow field of specialisation) of her research outputs

She completed a BSc in Mathematics and Psychology at Wits in 1972 and a Secondary Teacher’s Diploma at the University of Cape Town in 1973, after which she taught for three years.

In 1977 she joined the SACHED Trust, an educational NGO concerned with enriching the quality of education of those disadvantaged in apartheid South Africa. Adler’s work here, over a decade, enabled her to further her social justice advocacy by improving mathematics education by developing and evaluating distance education courses.

She was studying her MEd at Wits at this time and graduated cum laude in 1985 before joining academia in 1987. She lectured in the Department of Professional Studies at the Johannesburg College of Education before moving to the Wits Education Department where she worked variously as a Lecturer, Head of Department, Professor and, from 2010 to 2019, as SARChI Chair of Mathematics Education.

Seminal research for educators to teach maths in multilingual classrooms

Adler’s PhD, completed in 1996, looked at the dynamics of teaching and learning mathematics in multilingual classrooms, specifically examining secondary teachers’ knowledge in this context. This was later published as a book.

This seminal research in early democratic SA, along with a range of papers in peer-reviewed journals, has had a lasting impact on the broader field of mathematics education, providing valuable insights for educators and policymakers.

Her theoretical and practice-based innovations, which have paved the way for new and transformative approaches in mathematics education, address two fundamental research problems: the complexities and challenges of teaching and learning mathematics in multilingual classrooms; and the enhancement of professional education for mathematics teachers, particularly in democratic South Africa in the 1990s.  

Adler took proactive steps to establish a range of transformative higher education programmes to address the deficits of apartheid teacher training on mathematics educators. She designed programmes that empowered the research community, including a doctoral programme, all of which fostered a rich and dynamic research environment for scholars and students to explore and advance mathematics education.

In 2005, Adler established the renowned Marang Centre for Mathematics and Science Education at Wits, which became a hub for advanced studies and innovative research and empowering educators.

As the DSI-NRF SARChI Research and Development Chair in Mathematics Education at Wits from 2010 to 2019, Adler directed a large professional development project, reaching over 200 secondary mathematics teachers and many learners across 80 schools in Gauteng.

Today, the Wits Maths Connect Secondary Project is a research- linked professional development project with the central goal of improving mathematics learning in school through professional development of teachers, and researching related processes and problems.

On receipt of her award last night, Adler said, “The NRF has been a bedrock of my research post my PhD, through multiple research grants over many years, supporting empirical work, graduate students, as well as opportunities for international conference participation." 

The gall to confront cancer

Dr Ekene Emmanuel Nweke won the Research Excellence Award for Early Career/Emerging Researchers (Life Sciences), which recognised outstanding research performance by current early career/emerging researchers in any discipline, who are NRF grant holders.

Nweke is a molecular biologist and a researcher in the Department of Surgery in the School of Clinical Medicine at Wits.

His research interests include discovering biomarkers and illuminating the molecular mechanisms in the development and progression of pancreatic and gallbladder cancer amongst patients of African ancestry. Nweke is also interested in using precision medicine to improve diagnosis and therapy for cancer patients.

He is Y-rated by the NRF, which is a rating awarded to a promising young researcher. He has published 17 articles and eight book chapters. Passionate about training and mentoring students, Nweke currently supervises six PhD and six Master’s students. He previously successfully graduated two PhD and four Master’s students.

He is co-chair of the Biospecimen Laboratory Analysis Committee in the African HepatoPancreatoBiliary Cancer Consortium (AHPBBC) and an executive member of the Surgical Research Society of Southern Africa.

A Wits alumnus, Nweke obtained his MSc in Molecular Biology (cum Laude) at this institution in 2015 and his PhD in 2017. Other accolades include a Wits University Inventor Award and the Bert Myburgh Research Prize. He was formerly the recipient of significant grants, including an NRF Thuthuka grant.

NRF A-rates Wits researchers (again)

In addition to the special Lifetime Achiever and Emerging Researcher Awards, the NRF also presents ratings-based awards.

The NRF rating system is a key driver in the NRF’s aim to build a globally competitive science system in South Africa. It is a valuable tool for benchmarking the quality of South Africa’s researchers against the best in the world.

NRF ratings are allocated based on a researcher’s recent research outputs and impact, as perceived by international peer reviewers. Several South African universities, including Wits, use the outcomes of the NRF evaluation and rating process to position themselves as research-intensive institutions.

The Foundation awarded an A-rating for the first time to Wits researcher Professor Kenneth Ozoemena in the School of Chemistry.

Professor Achille Mbembe, in the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research (WISER) received an A-rating for the second time.

Wits researchers whom the NRF in 2023 A-rated for the third time include Shabir Madhi, Professor of Vaccinology and Dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences, Professor Lyn Wadley in the Evolutionary Studies Institute (ESI), and Professor Yevhen Zelenyuk in the School of Mathematics.