
The Irish Minister (middle) flanked by Ambassador Gilsenan and Prof. Diale
By Simon Manda
The Irish Minister of State for Disabilities in the Department of Children, Disability, Equality Integration, Anne Rabbitte visited the University of Johannesburg Centre for Neurodiversity in Soweto on the 16th of March 2023 to experience the centre’s achievements and strengthen ties for good practises.
The UJ Faculty of Education has a strong flagship programme in childhood education and recently added the Centre for Neurodiversity (CND@UJ)) in September 2022 to strengthen its social impact goals. The Centre aims to address the neurodevelopmental learning needs of children and youth.
The delegation was welcomed by Professor Nadine Petersen, Executive Dean in the Faculty of Education on behalf of UJ’s executive management committee, accompanied by the Head of Department of Educational Psychology, Dr. Veronica Dwarika, Professor Maximus Sefotho, Deputy Head of the Department of Educational Psychology, the Director of the Centre, Professor Tumi Diale and the Director of UJ PsyCad Unit, Professor Alban Burke,.
“Our new Vice-Chancellor’s vision is for excellence and stature that has societal impact. What we do as a University must make a difference in the lives of our South African population. That is something we take seriously in the Education Faculty and want to promote in all facets of our work particularly through this Centre,” said Professor Petersen.

Speaking of the unique practises at the Centre, Professor Diale remarked,
“We believe in a community based-approach to psychology where we go out into the communities to understand challenges that people have. The people are the experts of their lives and we need to respectively be curious of these challenges.”
Minister Rabbitte noted the lesson she learnt from the Centre of using this educational psychology approach in the community and putting in place mechanisms to help support and educate the learners, teachers and students who are the next generation of educators. As a takeaway good practise for her, she pledged to take this back to her government for adoption.

She also noted the same challenges between the Global North and Global South in reasonable accommodation and support systems when it comes to employment space after transitioning out of the education system.
“We need to ensure that employers understand reasonable accommodation and that we create pathways to work to address poverty and work suitability.’ she added.

The Minister led an Irish delegation that included the Irish Ambassador to South Africa, Fionnuala Gilsenan, the Advisor to the Minister, Noel Byrne, the Secretary to the Minister, Adrian McLaughlin and the Education Lead at the Irish Embassy, Paul Deane.
