The aim of the study was to evaluate staff experiences and interventions in teaching and learning research methodology in the Department of Entrepreneurship and Management Studies. However, the majority of staff and students belong to the previously disadvantaged communities where the latter continue to experience poor education infrastructure and quality of secondary education. Many previously disadvantaged communities still have limited access to information and communications technology (ICT) in addition to poor road networks, inadequate school infrastructure, lack of electricity, and a low economic status (Hlalele 2012). For example, during the COVID-19 pandemic, higher education institutions had to immediately revert to on-line teaching and learning which further disadvantaged students from townships and rural areas from the non-white communities. Overall, eliminating the apartheid policies of dispossession still remains a challenge for the South African government to transform education (Department of Education 2005).

According to Pirthiraj (2017) and Langtree et al.(2015), student performance is linked to  social, psychological, economic, environmental, and personal factors. While Hobden and Hobden (2015) highlighted that access to higher education is a matter of economic and social fairness, this being the case in South Africa. A further analysis of education history and quality shows that South Africa faces challenges in the accessibility and affordability for students who qualify to study at universities. As the majority of students registered at Durban University of Technology are derived from previously disadvantaged communities with poor school and educational infrastructure, low economic capabilities and complex social issues, their level of preparedness for university life and overall academic performance is compromised (Pirthiraj 2017).

Lombard and Kloppers (2015)  comments that while there is considerable international interest in promoting research skills at postgraduate level ,research methods in the context of undergraduate studies has  little attention as there are few systematic discussions about curriculum design and teaching research methods experiences. Students perceive research methods courses to be complex and demanding, which leads to poor performance in research methods and, as a result, a negative attitude toward the field of educational research as a whole. Acton and McCreight (2014) also found that students who struggled with basic arithmetic showed less interest in research methodology studies. This scenario is relevant as the majority of students registering at DUT originate from previously disadvantaged communities.

The aim of social justice is to guide societies on transforming different aspects for instance curriculum, historical injustices and cultural values, and to mitigate disparity (Albertus 2019).  In education, social justice relates to the extent of social fairness and equality within the schooling system. Social injustice occurs when circumstances such as wealth, gender, and/or race determine a person's educational opportunities. Hence students who do not acquire an education compared with more privileged students are provided with a poor foundation for the rest of their lives. In a socially just approach, the curriculum is chosen to help the learners extend their students’ worldview by exposing them to diverse concepts, opinions and challenging beliefs (Francis and Le Roux 2011). Schools that are committed to a socially just education give careful consideration to the selection of their curriculum and how it can be used to broaden the learners’ perspectives (Wassell, Wesely and Glynn 2019). In this regard, students who come from schools that are socially unjust often have a narrow worldview which will inherently affects their learning curve as they are inadequately prepared for the level of social and cultural diversity at the university and the world at large (Uleanya and Rugbeer 2020)

Research is defined as a scientific approach of answering a research question, solving a problem, generating new knowledge through a systematic and orderly collection, organization, and analysis of information with an ultimate goal of making the research useful in decision-making (Kabir 2016: 2). According to Ahmed and Shifraw (2019) there has been a significant increase in research conducted in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Despite this progress, Africa still lacks the research capacity to adequately address the continent's problems in food, security, energy, transportation, and health (Ahmed and Shifraw 2019). This is reflected in Africa's insignificant contribution to the global share of researchers, which has remained constant over time. Africa needs to urgently develop highly skilled student, academic and professional researchers. The qualitative research method was used to collect data which focused on staff experiences and intervention strategies used in teaching and learning research methodology in the Department of Entrepreneurship Studies and Management. A self-completed questionnaire with open ended questions was administered and thematic analysis was used to analyze data which is being presented by the paper. Cilliers, Davis and Bezuidenhout (2014) assert that the depth of human experience and arbitrary interpretations associated with a particular incident are of interest to qualitative research. Thus teaching experiences and the intervention could be discovered through the use of a qualitative approach. The participants were the 12 staff in the Department of Entrepreneurial Studies and Management in the Faculty of Management Sciences at Durban University of Technology. Nine questionnaires were completed, thus providing a 75% response rate.

Majority of the students registering at Durban University of Technology come from previously disadvantaged communities challenged by poor educational and communications infrastructure. This is due to the fact that curricular improvements are primarily influenced by technological advances, which are available in urban areas long before they reach township and rural settings (Landa, Zhou and Marongwe 2021). The consequences of the above is that affordability and access to education has become a challenge to the already disadvantaged students who have been exposed to poor quality education in secondary schools. This study revealed that both student and staff development in research methodology needs further institutional support and from the Department of Entrepreneurial Studies and Management. Staff expressed a concern on the lack of preparedness of students to undertake research tasks to successfully complete their assessments. To overcome these challenges, staff implemented a number of interventions to ensure students acquire the necessary research skills and competencies. In the interest of ensuring ongoing professional development staff requested additional workshops and seminars to capacitate them on statistics, data analysis and software packages. Students enter the university underprepared for campus and academic life and leave as graduates underprepared for the world of work. It is clear from the above discussion the education sector has not yet fully transformed and students continue to operate in a socially unjust education system. The study recommends that decolonization and the quality of the program offerings be reviewed to include research methodology course at all undergraduate levels. This change could further empower students through a more socially just education system to provide better stakeholder engagement and increase their employability when they graduate. In the absence of a socially just education system, the previously underprivileged students, continue to experience greater inequalities in the workplace.

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