Rinelle Evans is a Professor in the Faculty of Education, University of Pretoria (UP), South Africa. In addition to teaching and research, she has management, mentoring, referee and leadership responsibilities.
Rinelle’s two defining roles are those of teacher and mentor, which is the way that her students and her professional community will primarily view her. But her career has other facets as well. Her services are in high demand by the Department of Higher Education, and in various teacher communities. Her current position as chairperson of the South African Association for Language Teaching bears testimony to her ongoing commitment to the teaching profession, and the recognition of her leadership in the field. Below are some highlights from her full CV.
RESEARCHER
Rinelle has a C2 rating from the National Research Foundation (NRF), which means that she is an established researcher recognised by her peers for sustained quality research outputs. She has served as an NRF reviewer for funding and rating applications for 10 years. At UP she serves on the Faculty of Education Research Committee and is responsible for its ‘Language and Literacies‘ focus area. Other current research foci are:
- language-in-education
- instructional design and communication
- educational technology
- language teaching methodology
Selected research outputs can be found under the tabs ‘Journal articles’ and ‘Books’ above. In addition to these, she has delivered more than 30 papers at national and international conferences, and is an authority on presentation skills. She is also the author of several technical reports, some commissioned by the Department of Higher Education and Umalusi, the South African Council for Quality Assurance in General and Further Education and Training. Between 2005 and 2016 Rinelle has supervised 9 PhD and 13 Master’s students.
TEACHER AND MENTOR
In teaching Rinelle has won several awards, notably the Dean’s award for scholarship in teacher education (2014), and between 2004 and 2010 she was four times the recipient of the Education Innovation Laureate at UP, the last one in 2010 for developing an undergraduate module designed to teach pre-service teachers an African language using multimedia.
Rinelle spent 14 years of her working life as a secondary school teacher. She was Deputy Principal for six years before she joined the University of Pretoria in 1998 – see “Work Experience” further down.
REACHING OUT
Various community projects include:
- reading programme with primary school learners in Mamelodi
- formalised guidance to teacher and parent communities
- in-service training of English language teachers on the Blue Ribbon Forum project
- televised lessons as exam support for Grade 12 learners on the TeleTuks Schools project (Several research articles emanated from this project -see the tab ‘Journal articles’.)
QUALIFICATIONS
| 2005 | PhD, University of Pretoria. Thesis: Explaining low learner participation during televised instruction in a developing country context. UP Academic Colours; Best PhD award. |
| 1995 | MA, University of Birmingham. Dissertation: The demands of the multicultural classroom on the English second language teacher in secondary schools with reference to Pretoria, Gauteng. Cum laude |
WORK EXPERIENCE
| 2018–Current | Professor, Faculty of Education, University of Pretoria (UP) |
| 2002–2017 | Associate Professor, Faculty of Education, University of Pretoria (UP) |
| 2001 | Project Manager of the TeleTuks Schools project – interactive television instruction via satellite, reaching ±80 schools |
| 1998–2000 | Head: Witbank Lifelong Learning Centre (Mpumalanga satellite campus) |
| 1992–1998 | Deputy Principal: Secondary school, Gauteng Department of Education (GDE) |
| 1984–1991 | Head of Department, Secondary school, Transvaal Department of Education (now GDE) |
| 1978–1984 | Teacher of English, Secondary school, Transvaal Department of Education (now GDE) |
Rinelle Evans 