Dr Trevor Makhetha. Image: SuppliedPeople understand democracy through their own experiences. A constitution alone cannot guarantee this understanding, and the democratic spirit isn't renewed only during elections. It persists through habits formed over time: expressing opinions, seeking recognition, analysing evidence, challenging authority, accepting disagreement and working together toward joint goals. When these habits weaken, democratic institutions may still exist, but active engagement risks becoming superficial.
Education is closely linked to democracy. To foster democratic habits effectively, schools and universities should embed practices such as listening, engagement and recognising differences in their daily routines. These practices should be at the core of our institutional culture.
Audiencious Learning is a concept I developed from my research with young people in a rural Northern Cape school. It begins with the idea that learning is shaped by relationships: young people encounter knowledge in the presence of teachers, peers, families and communities whose responses can affirm, challenge or diminish their sense of who they are and who they might become. Drawing critically on dramaturgical thinking, the concept treats the teacher, the teaching practice and the learners as equally important in creating a meaningful educational encounter. It therefore asks educators to attend to how recognition, dignity, belonging and power shape participation, while taking learners’ needs, curiosity and agency seriously. Audiencious Learning offers a way to understand education as both the making of knowledge and a shared process of becoming.
Democracy, too, is learned through interaction: when contributions are sincerely considered, disagreements are addressed with reasoning rather than ignored, and listening helps a group grasp perspectives it might otherwise miss. Audiencious Learning is rooted in this principle. It views learning as embodied and socially constructed through voice, rhythm, storytelling, listening, performance, collective memory and mutual recognition. The learner is not a blank slate before an all-knowing teacher; instead, learning results from the attention people pay one another.
Audiencious Learning emphasises that both curriculum content and audience interpretation are important to teaching and learning. The audience in any classroom can either expand or limit a learner's sense of their potential. For instance, they might see hesitation as a sign of growth or as a sign of doubt, and interpret unfamiliar speech as either insightful or merely background noise. These perceptions influence student involvement, the willingness to ask for help, comfort with mistakes and the likelihood of withdrawing.
Democracy is shaped through such interactions. When students' voices are frequently ignored, it exposes a flaw in education and teaches an important citizenship lesson: some are allowed to speak, while others must listen. Only certain knowledge is valued, and others must prove their worth first. Conversely, a classroom that encourages questioning authority, where evidence can challenge beliefs and disagreement isn't shameful, serves as a training ground for democracy. It helps students recognise themselves and their peers as legitimate members of a shared community.
Schools and universities fulfil an essential role that goes beyond teaching about elections or the constitution. They promote democracy by supporting active engagement, valuing diversity, and providing real opportunities for participation. Students should see schools and universities not simply as rule-enforcing institutions but as communities where rules are transparent, reasoning is clear, and responsibility is cultivated. The aim is not to achieve full agreement, but to turn disagreements into valuable learning experiences rather than sources of shame. Students need to develop skills to analyse evidence, question existing systems and generate new ideas, skills that help universities nurture democratic courage and insight, and encourage pride in their role in society.
At the University of the Western Cape (UWC), our responsibility is closely tied to our history. It is therefore not enough to honour UWC's role in South Africa's anti-apartheid movement through institutional memory alone; this must also be evident in how we teach, listen and create knowledge today. We should consider whether students view knowledge as fixed and protected by experts, or as a shared, participatory process. Moreover, we need to assess whether the classroom environment maintains existing hierarchies of voice or fosters conditions in which students can engage analytically with one another.
Democracy should be seen as a continuous practice rather than simply a collection of procedures. Audiencious Learning provides a practical educational method aimed at developing individuals who can empathise with others, assess their surroundings, and work collaboratively. This should not be seen as an optional extra but as a central objective of education.
*Dr Trevor Makhetha is a sociologist and educator committed to rethinking the purpose of skills and learning in a world marked by great inequality, rapid technological change, and unfinished struggles for justice. He is currently a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Sociology at the University of the Western Cape. His work brings together education, technology and African humanist ethics to explore how students learn, belong and imagine their educational futures. He is the Principal Investigator on an NRF-funded project titled, "Educational Technology and Student Success in South Africa, Brazil, and the United States of America". Dr Makhetha is the President of the South African Sociological Association and an active member of the International Sociological Association Research Committee on the Sociology of Education (ISA RC 04). Dr Makhetha's forthcoming book, "Acts of Becoming: Performing Identity, Love, and Learning in Contemporary South Africa," is expected in early 2027 and will be published by Emerald Press.
