DEAN OF FACULTY OF EDUCATION
Di has been appointed the Dean of the Faculty of Education. She has commenced her duties as Dean as from 1st October 2010 on return from her sabbatical to Cambridge University, England.
Dr Di Wilmot
Dr Di Wilmot - BA, HDE(PG Sec), BEd, MEd, Phd (Rhodes)
As the coordinator of the Rhodes PGCE programme from 1996 to 2009, Di has been a driving force behind pre-service education in the Department.
Di teaches various Educational Theory modules on Assessment, Critical Thinking, Curriculum and Pedagogy, HIV and AIDS Education, and Cooperative Learning in the PGCE and BEd(Hons) programmes. She also supervisors and teaches Research Methods especially case study and participatory action research at the MEd and PhD level. She was the Faculty's Project Leader for the HEAIDS Teacher Education HIV and AIDS Pilot Project, an EU funded project, in 2007/8. She has presented the curriculum and pedagogical work she has done in this field at national symposia and international conferences in Finland and the US.
Her PhD research focused on how teachers' recontextualised national assessment policy in Grade 9 Social Sciences, and the type of intervention that supported the teachers' acquisition of a deep understanding of change. Bernstein’s Theory of Knowledge Recontextualisation provided the theoretical lenses in her study.
Di teaches Geography Teaching Method in the primary and secondary school PGCE programmes. She has published in the fields of Teacher Professional Development, Environmental and Geographical Education especially pedagogy, enquiry-and issues-based learning, children's spatial perception and conceptualisation, HIV and AIDS and assessment.
During her sabbatical leave this year, Di will be a Visiting Scholar at Wolfson College, Cambridge University.
Di is a member of the Society of South African Geographers, the International Commission on Geographical Education (IGU) and the International Assembly of the US National Council of Social Studies (NCSS). She is the Faculty representative on the University’s Teaching and Learning Committee and serves on the Faculty’s Higher Degrees Committee. She has been a non-professorial academic representative on the Rhodes Senate from 2007 until the present.
She is Chairman of the Council of the Diocesan School for Girls in Grahamstown. She is a lay minister at St Cyprian's Church, Highlands. Di lives on a farm and loves Great Danes.
Email: d.wilmot@ru.ac.za
